Blood Passage

by Heather Demetrios

  “Tell us your story, brother,” Samar said. He motioned toward the fire. “Most of us here are Dhoma, like you. We understand.”

  The jinni’s eyes widened. “Some of our people survived the Master King?”

  Samar nodded. “Those who didn’t rebel were freed after Solomon died. They settled near the place where you were imprisoned.”

  “The City of Brass,” Touma said.

  “More or less,” Raif agreed. “It’s much changed. We have a lot to discuss.” He directed Touma’s attention to the hundreds of bottles on the table. “But first, I’m sure you’d like to catch up with some old friends.”

  The jinni burst into fresh tears.

  It took the entire day to free the jinn. By sunset, the sand was littered with empty brass bottles. Touma’s tumultuous re-entry into the world made it obvious they needed a more gentle transition for the imprisoned jinn. Touma refused to leave Nalia’s side, so grateful was he for her kindness. She finally put him to work as the official emissary. A system quickly developed: Raif would open the bottle, Touma would greet his old comrade and ease his fears, and Nalia would hand the jinni off to Phara for healing treatments and immersion in their element in order to replenish their chiaan.

  It wasn’t long before the camp became loud and boisterous. The Dhoma spent the better part of the day manifesting food, clothing, and shelter for their ancestors. Laughter and stories were traded over fires where succulent meats roasted. Some of the Dhoma who hadn’t been captured by the Ifrit in the raid met their great-grandparents and other relatives for the first time. Raif had never seen such joy. The jinn who played music manifested their instruments, and as night descended, the air filled with song. Jinn covered the desert for as far as Raif’s eyes could see.

  He sat on one of the low dunes surrounding the camp, watching. Raif longed for his own reunion with his mother and the tavrai. But first he had to find a way to convince these jinn to go into the darkness of the Eye with him and fight for Arjinna. Judging by the festive atmosphere of the camp, he expected a fair amount of resistance to the idea. A part of him felt guilty for asking them to give up the stars so soon—and possibly their lives. But the longer they waited, the more tavrai died at the hands of the Ifrit. He sighed and rubbed his temples, exhausted. He wasn’t at all ready to take on Calar.

  Raif felt Nalia before he saw her, an energy that called to his. She stood beside him and gazed at the jinn. “I guess the Eye will have to wait a few days,” she said.

  He sighed. “It’s starting to look like it. What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the small bag that dangled from her wrist.

  A look of embarrassment crossed her face, something he hadn’t seen on Nalia before.

  “It’s a tonic Phara made for me. You know, since last night . . . we, uh . . .”

  “Ah. I suppose it would be difficult for you to fight Calar while pregnant.”

  “Oh, gods,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder.

  Raif wrapped an arm around her and laughed softly. They sat there for a while, content.

  “Did you meet their leader?” he asked quietly. He nodded toward a Shaitan who held court at a nearby fire.

  “Not yet. Do you think you’ll have trouble getting him on your side?”

  Raif had only spoken to him briefly, a short conversation full of wary sizing up, each of them trying to determine the strength of the other’s character. The jinni’s name was Tazlim, but his jinn called him Taz. He was young, like Raif, but their ages on Earth meant little. The bottle may have arrested Taz’s age, but his lengthy prison sentence made him Raif’s senior by far.

  Raif sighed. “I haven’t had a real chance to talk with him. I’m not sure what he’s about.”

  “It’s his first night free of his bottle in thousands of years,” Nalia said. “If I were him, the last thing I’d want to do is discuss several ways in which I could die. Give him some space. I’m sure he’ll come around. Who can resist Raif Djan’Urbi?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Plenty of people, I assure you.” He intertwined his fingers with hers. “Mind working on him for me?”

  “What makes you think I’ll have better luck with him?”

  Touma had been singing her praises all day and the story of Nalia’s survival of the coup and years of slavery had spread like wildfire through the camp.

  “Just a hunch,” he said.

  “I’ll try.” She brushed her lips against his cheek and headed in Taz’s direction.

  Raif watched her for a moment, then trudged through the camp, waving at the newly freed jinn who called out to him. He located the tent Zanari shared with Phara. A light shone inside, but the flap was closed.

  “Zan?” he called.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Zanari was seated on a thick cushion in the center of the room, surrounded by a circle of earth glowing with chiaan.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Her eyes were heavy, lined with dark circles that hadn’t been there in the morning.

  “It’s . . . going,” she said.

  “That bad, huh?” Raif sat across from her. “Tell me how I can help.”

  “I found it,” she whispered.

  His eyes lit up. “Zan, that’s great!”

  But Zanari’s expression was troubled. “Are you sure you want to do this, little brother?”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” She looked at her hands. They trembled. “It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been, Raif. There’s nothing there. I mean nothing. It’s like hanging out in Haran’s soul.”

  “Zan, we have to do this.”

  “Stop saying have to,” she snapped.

  Raif stared at her. “I only meant—”

  “Say want to. Because we have a choice, little brother. We’re here. We’re alive. I don’t know if that will be the case tomorrow.” Her voice shook and she drew her arms around her knees. “It’s like being in one of those boxes the humans put their dead in. There’s no chiaan. No light. The air is . . . dead. No wind. I put my hands on the ground and the earth gave me nothing. It was dry, not like sand, like ashes.”

  Raif went cold. Zanari was the one person he’d always been able to count on. But maybe being on Earth had changed that.

  “Are you backing out?” he asked.

  Part of him wanted her to. The evil, selfish part. He’d grab Nalia and run. Make love every night and never think of Arjinna again.

  “No,” she said. “But I wish to the gods I could.”

  “Tell me,” Taz said as he wiped grease from the evening meal off his hands, “how does an empress find her way to the Dhoma?”

  There it was again: empress.

  Nalia sat back on her hands. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  He was handsome, pretty in that Shaitan way. Princely: almond eyes, bronze skin, delicate features. And yet the leader of the rebellion against Solomon was like Raif in many ways. There was a stubbornness in his eyes that all his years in captivity hadn’t been able to erase. He held himself with the tenseness of a soldier, as though he expected to be attacked at any moment, but knew he would defeat whoever attempted to harm him.

  “A trade,” she said. “Your story first, and then I’ll tell you mine.”

  “You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you, Ghan Aisouri?”

  “Nalia,” she said. “And, no, I rarely get my way.”

  “No doubt you do with Raif Djan’Urbi.” Taz’s Shaitan eyes met hers, a challenge, but of what she didn’t know.

  “Raif’s my rohifsa,” she said softly. “It isn’t about getting my way or not getting my way with him.”

  Taz cocked his head to the side. “A royal with a Djan peasant? Times have changed in Arjinna.”

  Something flashed in his eyes, a secret hurt. Nalia recognized it and wondered at the source of the wound.

  “Not in Arjinna,” Nalia said. “We’ve made our ow
n rules here on Earth. That’s what Raif’s fighting for.”

  “And you?”

  The weight of the crown. The empress’s dead eyes looking up at her.

  “I was a slave on the dark caravan for years and have only just been freed. Other than the Djan’Urbis, I’ve lost everyone I love. What am I fighting for?” She hugged her knees to her chest. “Life. The right to go home. Same as you, no?”

  Taz nodded and cast thoughtful eyes on the fire. “I left Arjinna just before I was enslaved by Solomon. My father was an overlord and I couldn’t bear the way he treated his serfs. He sent me to the border wars—he thought making me kill Ifrit would turn me into a real jinni. Instead I fell in love with a fellow soldier. He was a Djan, same as your Raif.” He shook his head, as though he could make a memory fall out. “Anyway, my father and I fought. Horrible things were said. Me to him, him to me.” He studied his hands. “I’ve thought of that last conversation with him so many times. I wish . . .” He sighed. “Anyway, my rohifsa and I came here—ran away. We thought it was romantic. An adventure. But then Solomon and his ring turned us into serfs and I lost . . . more than my freedom.” That flash of pain again, just for an instant. He glanced at where the sigil lay around Nalia’s neck. “You should destroy it.”

  “I know.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “But . . .”

  She said nothing. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. Talking to this Dhoma was a mistake.

  “Ah,” he said. “Your rohifsa.”

  “He hopes it will drive Calar and the Ifrit from Arjinna.” Even to her ears, Nalia could hear how defensive of Raif she was.

  “But you think otherwise.”

  This is not going well, she thought.

  “I think there are many ways to fight our enemy,” she said. “The ring is one of them. You and your jinn are another.”

  He smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to this.”

  Nalia leaned forward. “You said you hated how your father treated the serfs. I felt the same way when I was a Ghan Aisouri. They made me do . . . terrible things. Even if I lived as long as you have, I could never forgive myself for the pain I caused. I’m trying to make things right. Better. With us, you have a chance to change all those things that made you leave Arjinna. You can go home: we have a way even though the portal’s closed. And you can help free the Dhoma who’ve been captured. What would you do instead, Tazlim? Ya ghaer bhin fa’arim.”

  It was a scrap of ancient poetry, beloved by the Shaitan.

  “My land, a whisper on the wind,” he quoted. His eyes misted and he looked away. “I can see why Raif sent you over here.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand.

  “It’s hard to resist a beautiful, learned jinni with passion for the oppressed. But tell me, Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh, what will you do when the Amethyst Crown is no longer upon Calar’s head?”

  “Return to Earth.” No matter what role she played in Arjinna’s future, this was nonnegotiable.

  His eyes widened. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “I plan to free the slaves on the dark caravan, not sit on a throne.” She smiled. “When that’s done I want to be a farmer’s wife.”

  A fantasy, that last part. Still, it was true. It was what she wanted.

  Taz threw his head back and laughed. “You don’t like having power, then?” He brought a clay mug of wine up to his lips. He offered it to Nalia first, but she shook her head.

  “I rule myself,” she said. “And no one else.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, a searching gaze that took the measure of her. “Tell me your story,” he said softly.

  Nalia started with the afternoon in the dungeon with Calar, before Nalia knew the prisoner she was freeing was actually the Ifrit leader. She described the coup, the slave auction where the human wishmakers stared at her body and bid on her. She told him of Malek and the bottle and trying to take him to her bed. Losing Leilan to Haran’s fiendish appetite, and her night in the shadow lands of death. Bashil, dying in her arms, and that long, grief-filled sleep in the Dhoma camp. The terror of losing her chiaan, the burn of the lightning as it split her wide open. The si’lahs and the other horrors of the cave. Malek falling into the chasm. It took less than an hour to narrate three years of terror and grief.

  Taz pressed his hand to his heart. “Hif la’azi vi, My Empress.”

  My heart breaks for you.

  “Don’t call me that,” she whispered.

  “I said I opposed the way my father and the Aisouri treated the serfs—not that I opposed royal rule,” Taz said. “I don’t want a Master King ruling over me, as Solomon was. But you know the history of our land as well as I do. Before the Aisouri took power, we were just warring tribes. Uncivilized. Do you really think the jinn today will fare much better? And what of the Ifrit who follow Calar? If they’re anything like they were three thousand summers ago, I doubt very much you want them crawling over your land.”

  “Our land. And that’s not for me to decide. Arjinnans want to be free, they want—”

  “A leader. Look at your Raif. He leads them, does he not? Will he wear the Amethyst Crown?”

  “Raif isn’t a dictator. He doesn’t want—” Nalia shook her head. “You don’t understand him. He’s good, through and through. It’s not power he wants: it’s freedom. Ruling is just another kind of shackle. Besides, if he really wanted to rule, he wouldn’t have risked his life so many times for me.”

  “Then you have answered my question.”

  “What do you mean?” she snapped.

  “You told me how Raif stayed to help you fight Haran. How he jumped into the chasm before you could sacrifice your life for your master’s third wish. He would have died if your master hadn’t saved him. These are the actions of a subject who values his empress’s life above his own.”

  The truth of what Taz was saying hit her hard. But Nalia didn’t want it to be the truth. “You’re wrong. He did those things because he loves me.”

  “Yes, he does. But you, I think, are empress of his heart in more ways than one. He just might not yet know that yet.”

  Taz stood and bowed. “My army is yours, My Empress. We will fight for you.”

  He turned and walked away, toward the tent that had been manifested for him. Nalia wrapped her arms around her chest.

  What have I done?

  47

  ZANARI GAZED ACROSS THE SEA OF BODIES THAT COVERED the Sahara from her vantage point atop a mountainous dune. Most of the jinn in the bottles had agreed to join them in the Eye. They were calling themselves the Brass Army, and their ranks glimmered in the early-morning light, where their chests bore witness to their imprisonment in the form of brass pins, melted down from the bottles that had trapped them. Zanari had seen a few of the pins already: the sign of the Djan—a widr tree; the cresting wave of the Marid; the flame of the Ifrit; a swirl of wind for the Shaitan. All four castes, wearing the same uniform. This, in and of itself, was a victory.

  Those who had refused to join their ranks were unwell. Their haunted expressions told the story of what their time in the bottle had cost them. Phara, along with Samar’s wife, Yezhud, and most of the fawzel, would be staying behind to care for the jinn whose spirits had been shattered by their enslavement, and prepare the camp for the return of her people.

  “So this is it? I just . . . leave and you stay?” Zanari had said the night before.

  Phara had smiled, sad, but certain. “Yes, I think so.” She rested her forehead against Zanari’s. “But I will miss you. And pray to the gods for your safety every night.”

  It hadn’t been a surprise. Zanari knew that Phara was Dhoma through and through. She had no love for Arjinna, no desire to be there. And though Zanari could see herself making a life on Earth, she missed her land. More than that, she couldn’t abandon her brother.

  Zanari didn’t know what it meant, that she’d been able to make the choice to leave Phara.
When Raif and Nalia thought they had to be apart, it was the end of the world for them. What they shared wasn’t just love: it was a partnership that would shake the very foundations of the realm. Someday, jinn would sing songs about them around campfires.

  Zanari and Phara didn’t have that, but maybe love didn’t always look that way.

  She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun, savoring these last few moments of light and fresh air. Phara wasn’t the only thing she’d be leaving behind when she and the army crossed into the Eye.

  Raif came to stand beside her, a low whistle escaping from between his lips. “I want to see the look on Calar’s face when this walks through the Gate of the Silent Seers.”

  She opened her eyes. “You can say that again, brother.”

  The Brass Army stood as one. Female and male, they all wore the black uniform of the revolution and their brass pins, but there was one other addition to the uniform—something that worried Zanari to no end. Where she and Raif wore the white armband of the tavrai, the Brass soldiers wore a braided one with white and purple fabric twisted together: the white of the revolution and the violet of Nalia’s royal line.

  “And those armbands?” she asked softly. “What do you think of those?”

  Raif sighed. “Nalia wants the people of Arjinna to decide for themselves who will lead them, but Tazlim was very clear that his jinn are fighting for her to take the throne. These armbands were a compromise, trust me.”

  “And . . . how do you feel about this?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” she repeated. Fear bloomed inside Zanari as the words sank in. So she hadn’t been imagining the change in her brother since that moment in the cave when he’d nearly died for Nalia. He’d been silently wrestling with something, she knew, but Zanari had no idea it was something this big.