Traitor to the Throne

Kadir lunged for her. The Sultan gave a flick of his wrist and Kadir was pulled back by the soldiers again. ‘Take my son somewhere he can regain a level head.’

‘My wife—’ Kadir started, but the Sultan cut across him.

‘This is business for rulers. Not petty husbands.’

I could hear Kadir’s protests as he was dragged across the garden.

‘You know what the penalty is for violating your marriage vows, Shira.’ The Sultan’s voice was calm as they disappeared. I had an image of a moment like this, fifteen years ago: Delila being carried away as the Sultan wrapped his hands around Ahmed’s mother’s throat.

‘Kadir will never father a child. He can’t. And I reckon you know that, too, Your Exalted Highness.’ Shira pulled herself up straight. ‘I did what I had to do for our country.’

‘I believe that some part of you thinks that you did,’ the Sultan said. ‘I always liked you, Shira; this is a shame. You were cleverer than most. I’ve heard that you like to strike bargains. I have one last one for you. Your son’s life, in exchange for the name of the Djinni who fathered him.’

‘Shira—’ I warned. But it was too late.

‘Fereshteh.’ She raised her chin in defiance, oblivious that she had just given the Sultan another Djinni’s true name. ‘He told me he would make me the mother of a ruler. A true prince. A great Sultan. A greater Sultan than Kadir could ever hope to be.’

I had never seen uncertainty on the Sultan’s face before. But I thought I saw it there for just a moment. And I couldn’t blame him. A truth out of a Djinni’s mouth was a powerful thing. If Shira wasn’t lying, she might be holding a future ruler.

‘Fereshteh,’ the Sultan repeated. ‘Good. Take the child, Amani.’ It was an order and I was already fighting my arms’ urge to obey.

‘What will happen to Shira?’ My arms were moving without my meaning them to. The Sultan had never looked so much like Ahmed as he did in that moment. It was the same face Ahmed wore when he told me something he knew I didn’t want to hear but that had to be done anyway. ‘Please,’ I said. Shira was whispering to her son, making him promises she wasn’t going to be able to keep. Clutching at the only moments she was going to have with her child. My mind was racing, trying to find something. An escape, anything. But we were trapped. Some things there was just no way out of. Her child was in my arms. ‘Please don’t kill her.’

My cousin’s eyes met mine. Her lips parted. The Sultan’s words came back to me. Shira was good at making bargains. And she had one last thing to trade. One last coin she could try to buy her life with. Me. She could offer the Sultan the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the whole Rebellion in exchange for her life.

She could destroy me now. I didn’t have anything.

‘His name is Fadi,’ she said. Fadi was our grandfather’s name. The name our mothers had before they were married.

‘Lock her away,’ the Sultan ordered dispassionately, already turning. Already forgetting her now that she was just another useless girl in the harem. ‘Amani, come with me. Bring the child.’

Fadi wailed louder in my arms the further away we got from his mother.

Chapter 32

The Traitor Djinni

In the days that only immortals remembered, the world was changeless. The sun did not rise or set. The sea had no tides. The Djinn had no fear, nor joy, nor grief, nor pain. Nothing lived or died. Everything just was.

Then the First War came.

It brought with it dawn and dusk. It brought with it high seas and new mountains and valleys. And more than anything, it brought mortality.

The humans were made with a spark of Djinni fire, but they were not endless. And that seemed to make all the difference in the world. That changed everything. They didn’t just exist. They were born and they died. And in between they felt so much that it drew the immortals to them, though they were only sparks to the Djinn’s greater fires.

As the war ended, the Djinn of the great desert gathered and gazed across a changed world. The land that had been theirs. The war had ended. The mortals had served their purpose. They had fought. They had died.

Then they multiplied.

The Djinn looked on incredulously as the humans built walls and cities and found a life outside of war. They found new wars to fight. The Djinn wondered if they should let the humans carry on. The Djinn had made the mortals; now the war was over, they could unmake them if they so chose.

Some of the Djinn argued that humanity had served its purpose. Humans would only cause trouble. Better to burn them now, all at once. Return them to the earth from which they had been made before they overran it.

The Djinni Fereshteh agreed with this. The world was simpler before mortals. He had watched his own son, born to a human woman, survive a dozen battles with the Destroyer of Worlds’s creatures, only to die in a brawl with another mortal. And though the Djinn had quickly forgotten to be afraid of death when the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, they were slower to forget this new thing the humans called grief. It seemed like a feeling too great to contain for a Djinni who was eternal.

But the Djinni Darayavahush argued against destroying them. He said humans should be allowed to live. They had earned their right to share the earth by defeating the Destroyer of Worlds. They were remarkable; they had fallen in waves on hundreds of battlefields but had somehow continued to stand in the way of the Destroyer of Worlds’s armies. Such will to survive should not be ignored.