Tamid bleeding out onto the sand. I pushed the image away. ‘Is that why Mouhna and Uzma have disappeared? Your survival?’

‘Interesting.’ Shira sucked on the date pit between her teeth. ‘Here I’d been thinking Mouhna and Uzma were your doing. Seeing how you’re rubbing elbows with the Sultan now. They weren’t all that nice to you. And it looks to me like you’ve got the power to make them disappear if you wanted …’

If I was going to get rid of them, I’d start with Ayet. I shoved that thought away. ‘So if it wasn’t my doing or your doing … Girls don’t just vanish into thin air.’

‘Not outside of stories, at least.’ Shira ran her tongue along her teeth, a hint of worry creasing her eyebrows as she looked far away. Then her attention snapped back to me. ‘Let’s say I wanted your help for something.’ Shira peeled one of the cloths from her forehead. ‘What would you want in trade?’

‘Why should I help you?’ I crossed my arms. ‘I’ve got your life to trade you if I need anything. What else have I got to gain from you?’

‘You’re a lot worse at this survival game than I thought you’d be.’ Shira sounded really and truly exasperated. Like we were kids again and I was too stupid to understand the rules to some game she’d made up in the schoolyard.

‘Then why don’t you tell me how you want to play?’

‘I want information,’ Shira said. ‘I’ve seen you with Leyla. The scrawny princess with no charm.’

‘What about her?’ I sounded defensive even to my own ears. Whatever time I did spend in the harem was usually spent with Leyla. We took our meals together. Usually I ate while her food went cold as her whole attention spilled into whatever little mechanical toy she was constructing.

‘She’s up to something,’ Shira said simply.

‘Leyla?’ I failed to keep the scepticism out of my voice this time. ‘Is it all the toys she builds for children that makes you suspicious, or the fact that she’s still almost a child herself?’

‘She sneaks around.’ Shira reached for a fresh cooling cloth. ‘She leaves the harem and I don’t know where she’s going. I can’t follow her. But you can.’

‘You want to know where she’s going?’ It was hard to take her seriously when she was making accusations against someone two years younger than us. ‘You’re worried about Leyla?’

‘Of course not.’ Shira rolled her eyes. ‘I’m worried about her brother.’ Prince Rahim. Ah. Now, that didn’t sound so stupid. ‘Rumour has it he’s in a great deal of favour with his father the Sultan.’ That much was true. I remembered what the Sultan had said about Rahim over duck that night.

‘You think he might have designs on the throne.’ I suddenly saw where her train of thought was going. There was no love lost between Rahim and Kadir. I just didn’t know if he hated him enough to snatch away his wives. But if he did, Shira had to be a target.

‘Oh, look at that, you’re not as dumb as you act.’ Shira draped the new damp cloth over her brow; it sent rivulets of water across her eyebrows and down her cheeks. ‘The rumour was that before Kadir proved he was able to conceive an heir’ – she ran her hand along her swollen middle – ‘the Sultan was close to taking the throne from him. Rahim was said to be the favourite. Why else is he back in court when he’s a commander in Iliaz?’ That name sparked a pain in my side where the bullet scar was. Iliaz was a sore reminder of being shot. ‘If he does have designs on the throne and he’s using his sister’s knowledge of the harem to get to it, I want to know. And there must be something you want in return for information on Leyla and her brother.’

Leyla had helped me when I needed to get free of the harem. She’d guided me in my first days in the harem. She’d saved me from Kadir’s wives. She was as close to a friend as I was going to get inside these walls.

And I wasn’t the girl who betrayed friends any more. Only Shira didn’t know that. She knew me as the girl from Dustwalk who left Tamid bleeding in the sand. Who would do what she needed to get what she wanted.

But the beginnings of an idea were sparking in my mind. I’d been looking for a way to shed my guard. This might be one.

‘What if I needed a distraction? For the guards.’

‘A distraction like a pregnant Sultima pretending to go into childbirth weeks early?’ She caught on quick.

‘And folk in Dustwalk used to say you were as dumb as you were pretty.’ I couldn’t keep it in, petty as it was. I was still angry with her about my hair.

‘I made it through sixteen years in that town with a whole lot less trouble than you did,’ Shira pointed out. ‘Why do you need a distraction anyway? Are you trying to slip off to see a certain cripple of yours hiding in the palace? Because you ought to know, you might not get as warm a welcome as you’re hoping for.’

‘Tamid is none of your business.’ My thumb jabbed at the metal under my arm painfully. It was almost a tic now. She’d found my sore spot. And the smile playing over her mouth said she knew it.

‘Oh, so you do know he’s here.’ She saw the answer written all over my face. ‘They took both of us. Because you left us.’

‘You wanted to go, because Fazim was done with you.’ That blow landed so hard that I almost regretted it the second the stricken look bloomed over her face. But she’d hit first. It was a bad idea to play chicken with someone who’d known you your whole life. Nobody came out a winner.