Freedom's Slave

by Heather Demetrios

  “I went to Earth in search of Solomon’s sigil,” he began.

  The reaction of the tavrai was almost comical—jaws dropping, eyes bulging in surprise.

  There was a derisive snort to his right. “Bullshit.”

  Raif went still, only his eyes sliding toward the jinni who’d spoken. Jaqar, the one chosen to be Shirin’s second while Raif was gone, a wonder on the battlefield but a heartless skag who Raif had never liked or trusted. If he took Jaqar’s bait, he’d say something . . . regrettable, at least in terms of keeping the peace. And, Raif had to admit, Jaqar wasn’t in the wrong to say what he had. It was more how he said it. The insolence, the mocking upturn of his lips.

  Raif looked away. When he spoke, he weighed each word, channeling his father’s razor-edged dignity. There would be no debate.

  “My companions and I found the ring and used it to free the soldiers I brought with me,” Raif said. There were gasps around the table, but he pressed on. “They’d been trapped by the Master King for three thousand years and yet they have agreed to fight with us against the Ifrit. These are true warriors who deserve our respect.”

  Raif glanced at Jaqar, who simply shrugged. He’d have to deal with him soon. The jinni stank of mutiny.

  “Are you saying you have the ring?” asked one of the elderly jinn, voice incredulous.

  Raif shook his head. “No. During our battle in the Eye against the ghouls it was lost.” He paused, his throat tightening. “As was the Ghan Aisouri who carried it.”

  The reaction was immediate, violent in its intensity: outrage that the ring had been lost, that a Ghan Aisouri had been entrusted with it in the first place. Raif let the shouting and table pounding go on for a few moments—they’d earned the right to it after he’d abandoned them in his grief. He had an army behind him and the blood of Dthar Djan’Urbi within him—there was no reason why Raif couldn’t at least keep control of this meeting, whichever way the council voted. He turned to Shirin and tugged his right earlobe—their old sign. She looked at him for a long moment—she’d had no idea whatsoever about the ring. Despite the shock and anger in her eyes, she managed to tug her earlobe in response. They were on the same side. Raif turned back to the tavrai.

  “Enough,” he said. His voice cut through the din and the tavrai went silent. All except for one voice.

  “I don’t know about anyone else,” Jaqar said, drawing out his words, clearly relishing the chance to take Raif down a peg or two, “but it’s becoming pretty clear to me that our commander is no longer certain which side he’s fighting for. Tell me, tavrai,” he said, turning to Raif, “was it your choice to entrust a royal with the most dangerous weapon against our kind, or did she force your hand?”

  Raif’s future with the tavrai hung in the balance with this question: one wrong word and what was left of his life would fall apart. He hadn’t even answered yet and he could already tell the council smelled blood.

  Screw it.

  “Yes, it was my choice,” he said.

  The table erupted. Shirin stared at him, something like grief settling into her features. If he lost her, too, that was it—they’d hang him by sunrise.

  “Listen to me,” he roared. Silence—at least he still commanded that. “I made the wisest decision I could, given the circumstances I was in. She is—was—the most powerful among us. It stood to reason that the ring was safest with her.”

  “But she’s dead, so it actually wasn’t safest with her,” one of the jinn said.

  All he heard was that one word: dead.

  “I can’t be perfect all the time, sister,” Raif said. “The only reason I would entrust anything to a Ghan Aisouri was if she were on our side. I planned to come home with the ring, a Ghan Aisouri who intended to kill Calar herself—and could very easily have done just that—and an army, which, by the way, we still have.”

  Jaqar hit his palm against the table. The sound was like thunder, reverberating through the room. “This is exactly what I’ve been telling you,” he said, his eyes on Shirin’s. “All those jinn he brought with him—royalists.”

  Shirin held Jaqar’s furious eyes but made no reply, her face stony and unreadable. She wasn’t speaking against Raif, but she wasn’t sticking up for him either. This was a very bad sign.

  Raif turned to Jaqar. “Say your piece and then hold your tongue,” he said, seething. Best to be out with all of it. Jaqar might be an insubordinate ass, but Raif knew he wasn’t the only jinni at the table with these concerns. He’d hear them out—it was what his father would have done.

  Jaqar’s eyes glittered with malice. “While you were busy with your salfit and her army, we’ve been making plans. Without you.”

  Raif gripped the table, letting the slur slide. Hadn’t he himself called Nalia that? He’d had to fall in love with her to rid himself of the impulse. If she were here, Jaqar wouldn’t have dared.

  Jaqar’s eyes flicked to Raif’s hands, satisfied with the tension he’d created. He addressed the others at the table.

  “I say Raif’s a traitor. He’s guilty of collaboration with the enemy,” he said, “and extreme stupidity. He’s a fool to have trusted her—we should be thanking the ghoul that ate its fill of royal flesh out there.”

  Raif didn’t care if it was murder, he was going to kill this jinni. Stab him in the back on the battlefield, suffocate him in his sleep—it didn’t matter. He wanted to watch the light go out of those eyes.

  Enjoy this while it lasts, he thought.

  “Raif,” his mother said, her voice soft, “is this true? Was she planning to be empress? Is this why the Brass Army has purple armbands?”

  Purple and white, he thought. Pure-white armbands would have been greeted with joy, as it was the color of the revolution, symbolizing a future Arjinna where the color of one’s eyes did not determine their fate. But purple—that had only ever symbolized the royal Aisouri. Jinn weren’t even allowed to manifest clothing or jewels of that color before the caste’s end.

  Was Nalia planning to be empress, his mother wanted to know. How to answer that question? It was too difficult to explain those stilted, fearful conversations he and Nalia had had after they’d left the cave. Too terrifying to explain those words he’d said to her—long live the empress—just before he planned to die in her place.

  This was the truth: if Nalia walked through that door right now, he would bend the knee.

  Raif sighed, heavy. “She didn’t want the throne.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” Fjirla said, the warmth disappearing from her voice.

  He met his mother’s eyes and in them he saw something he’d never seen before: disappointment.

  Raif turned to the rest of the group, all jinn who had fought in his father’s day along with a few of the most accomplished soldiers Raif had trained himself.

  “I know it’s hard to see that I put my faith in an Aisouri. Believe me. I saw the royals murder my father, saw them condone evil after evil. I’m glad Calar killed them—it was justice. But we’re lucky she didn’t manage to kill the one who’s out there right now, lost forever in the Eye. The army I brought was saved by her for us.” He took a breath, then another. Help me, Nal. “It’s true that the Brass Army originally planned to fight for her, but Nalia herself was never interested in ruling. She only would have taken on that burden if that was what Arjinnans wanted.” He paused. To hell with it. “I’ve never encountered a jinni more worthy of a crown.”

  Raif could feel the very air around him bristle as the tavrai heard that word: crown. He ignored it. All his worries over whether or not Nalia was the true empress had disappeared. She was—and he’d lost her.

  “I agree with my brother,” Zanari said. “I was with him on Earth and I both supported and helped him in all of these decisions.”

  Raif shot her a grateful look and she nodded. The silence that followed was awkward, heavy with uncertainty.

  “This is precisely why my people have never felt that Arjinna could be a home to them,�
�� said a voice near the door.

  Raif glanced at where Samar leaned against the wall, his expression one of profound disgust and disappointment.

  “We Dhoma have created the society you claim you wish to have. All the castes live peacefully together. We break bread with one another, we marry who we love regardless of their caste, and we care for everyone in the camp. This is what you say you bleed for and yet you shun the Ifrit in this forest and look down upon the Shaitan courageous enough to join your fight.” Samar stepped into the light. “The choice isn’t whether or not you want Raif to continue leading you. It’s whether or not he’s willing to command an army of bigots.”

  Raif nodded his head in thanks, overcome. How quick his tavrai, who he’d known all his life, had been to discard him. Samar was here only to rescue the Dhoma from the prison in Ithkar and yet he spoke up for Raif, supporting his brother-in-arms, a jinni he’d known for a matter of weeks.

  “If this Brass Army wanted a Ghan Aisouri on the throne,” said one of the older tavrai, “how can we trust that they won’t try to put a Shaitan in her place?” The jinni had been close with Raif’s father, a hardened old soldier who’d seen more than his fair share of suffering. “You talk of fighting, but what happens afterward?”

  “Our army,” Taz interjected, “has members of every caste. Our empress is gone and we fight for what she said she always wanted: an end to masters and slaves. We want the same thing.”

  Jaqar’s eyes narrowed as a cruel smile twisted his lips. “All I can gather from this conversation is that it’s time for a new leader,” he said. “One who doesn’t fuck Aisouri whores while tavrai are being cut down on the battlefield.”

  “You are out of line,” Raif said, his voice low. It took everything in him for Raif not to pummel Jaqar.

  “I wonder if I am.” Jaqar’s dagger lay on the table in front of him. He picked it up and twisted its point idly into the wood, spinning the blade in lazy circles as he looked at Raif. Shirin stood, her eyes on that dagger as her hand moved to her scimitar. Raif didn’t need her help. He knew better than anyone how short a fuse Jaqar had—and how good he was with a dagger.

  “Believe me when I say that you are,” Raif said, his voice full of cold fury.

  Jaqar stared at Raif, and the room sizzled with their energy, chiaan just barely under the surface.

  “It’s too bad about her being dead and all,” Jaqar continued, ignoring him. “It would have been a nice distraction for all of us, too. Taken our minds off the war. I, for one, would have taken her as many times as I could before we hanged her. Or maybe we would have cut her up, nice and slow like those Aisouri witches did to my brother—”

  In seconds, Raif had leaped from his chair and had Jaqar pinned against a wall. “That line I mentioned a moment ago?” Raif said. “You just crossed it.”

  He grabbed Jaqar’s head and slammed it against the wall. Once, twice. Jaqar’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and the light wood of the widr wall turned red where his skull had hit it. Raif let go and the jinni crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Raif said, turning to the tavrai in the room, “I won’t tolerate insubordination any more now than I did in the past.” He looked at Shirin. “Keep him in line or he hangs.”

  Shirin glanced at the bloodied wall, then back at him, her eyes troubled.

  “As you wish, Commander,” she said.

  Raif returned to his seat at the table and took in the shocked faces of the tavrai.

  “Now,” he said, his voice calm and his eyes hard, “where were we?”

  Nalia had only seen Raif asleep a handful of times in her life. She watched him now, the way he lay on his back, one hand beneath his pillow, one hand on his bare chest. His lips were parted, his long lashes brushing tanned cheeks. She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair and he sighed, leaning into the touch, recognizing her even in his sleep. It’d been a long time since she’d seen him in anything other than pitch-dark. He was too thin, the bones in his face jagged, too defined. Thick stubble covered the lower half of his face and she gently ran her fingers over it, remembering the night when she’d helped him shave. The way he’d picked her up and carried her to bed. Nalia glanced at her wrists—no shackles. Just two thin scars, like bangles. This boy had saved her in so many ways.

  Moonlight trickled in through the windows, a soft breeze rustling gauzy curtains. There was a tinge of salt on the air blowing in from Malibu, carrying the low rumble of the traffic at the bottom of the hill, out on Sunset. It was the middle of the night and still the wishmakers were honking their horns, impatient to get to the next after-party. The neighbors across the way were having a party of their own—loud pop music blared, the sound grating.

  Nalia’s eyes scanned the familiar room. It looked the same as it had the day she left Malek’s mansion, all those weeks ago. The wallpaper with velvet fleurs-de-lis, the carved bedpost. The clothes on the floor that she’d left in a pile, in a hurry to escape the Ifrit. She could almost smell Malek’s clove cigarettes. She used to hear him at night, pacing up and down the hallway between their rooms as he chain-smoked. Now she knew what had kept him up, why he couldn’t sleep. Malek. The distinctive scent of those cigarettes was exactly what his evanescence would have smelled like, if he’d been a full jinni. But Malek wasn’t out there—she knew that: Malek was dead. He’d told her so himself.

  She sat up, her breath catching in her throat. Malek was dead. But how could she be in his home when she was in the Riviera—no, in the Eye. She was in the Eye, so how could—

  Nalia turned to Raif, panicked.

  “Raif.” She shook his shoulder and his eyes snapped open. He blinked. Shook his head. Stared at her. And stared, and stared.

  “You’re alive,” he breathed, drinking her in.

  Raif thought she was dead. Gods, he thought she’d left him behind, gone straight to a land of not-life without him. A smile snaked across his face as he reached out a hand and ran his fingers through her hair. It had grown past her chin now, no longer as short as it had been when she’d cut it off, grieving her brother.

  “Yes,” she breathed, reaching for him. “I’m here. I’m here.”

  His face fell. “I’m having another dream.”

  But that didn’t make sense. If Raif was having the dream, why had she woken up first? Why could she think, feel—touch him? If she were only a figment of his imagination, then wouldn’t she be unaware of her presence in his mind?

  “Raif, I don’t think—”

  He sat up in one swift movement and pressed his lips to hers. Whatever she was going to say was lost in the feel of him, so real. His earthy, spring scent, the tang of savri on his tongue. He pulled off the thin shift she wore, running his hands over her body, his eyes full of wonder, marveling at the beat of her heart under his palm.

  “I love you,” he whispered into her ear as he leaned in, his lips warm and soft as he pressed them against her neck.

  She pulled Raif closer, until he was on top of her, his breath ragged as she slipped off her underwear, pulled down his pants.

  Their lovemaking was frenzied, the threat of one of them waking from this dream, from this whatever-it-was, hanging over them. Raif never took his eyes off her. He whispered her name again and again, moaned as she wrapped her legs around him, holding on, silently begging the gods to let them stay here, to let her keep him.

  There was sweat and tears, his breath on her skin, kisses she never wanted to end. They finally collapsed, still holding one another. Nalia gripped him as the moonlight vanished, as, one by one, every item in the room was consumed by a swirling cloud of darkness.

  “No,” she whispered. “Please. Please.”

  “Look at me,” Raif said, his fingers under her chin, gently turning her face toward him.

  Her eyes found his, bright green, the only light left in the darkness that was smothering them.

  “Don’t go,” she begged him. “Raif, don’t leave me here.”r />
  Silent tears streamed down his cheeks as his fingers traced the lines of her face.

  The Eye pulled at her and she slipped out of his arms, no matter how hard he tried to hold her.

  “I love you,” she said. “Raif, I love you.”

  The Eye swept her away.

  14

  THE ALARM SOUNDED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

  Shirin’s eyes snapped open and she sprang out of bed, fully clothed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn nightclothes.

  She evanesced to the center of camp, clouds of smoke surrounding her as the tavrai stumbled out of bed. She grabbed one of the jinn guarding the camp’s border.

  “Is it us? Are they attacking the camp?” she asked.

  The tavrai shook his head. “We’re good. There’s something happening by the coast.”

  She turned toward Raif’s ludeen: he was already striding toward her, eyes glinting. Gods, she loved that look on his face, that maniacal battle glee.

  “What do we know?” he said.

  “Right now, next to nothing.”

  He hadn’t spoken to her since the meeting with the council. Once they’d gone over their strategy for rescuing the prisoners in Ithkar—one Shirin thought had little chance of success, and she said as much—he’d left the ludeen with Tazlim, Samar, and Zanari. She couldn’t help but feel she’d been replaced. She was his second in name only.

  Shirin put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, getting the attention of a group of jinn near the camp’s main entrance who were sticking weapons into every available slot on their belts. “Where are the godsdamned scouts?” she yelled. The jinn raised their hands, uncertain, and Shirin scowled, turning back to Raif. “It’s something by the coast. Maybe it’s—”

  A jinni hurtled toward them, his body pushing out of his cloud of blue evanescence. “A Marid village,” he gasped, sweat dripping down his face. “They’re killing everyone.”