The Sin Maker didn’t stop speaking as I fumbled for a fresh match.
‘My brethren locked me in here to keep me from protecting the First Hero at the cost of their own lives.’ His voice echoed through the dark. ‘They set a mortal guard outside, and they left him with an endless supply of food and drink so that he never left his post.’ The chest that Noorsham had found. ‘The guard was to visit me once a year and ask me if I was sorry for betraying my own kind.’ I knew the story. The Sin Maker was doomed to be apart from the earth until the day he atoned for his sin. ‘Only when I said I was sorry would I be released.’
I struck a fresh match.
‘I was not sorry in the short life of my first guard. Especially when he told me that she had died. He told me my son was fighting in her place now, using the name of the First Hero as she had. I was not sorry in the lifetime of my next guard either, or the one who came after that. After a time, they stopped coming as often as they had. Then they stopped coming altogether. They forgot about me. Now it is only my so-called brothers who come to see me, when they remember. They bring me news. Bahadur was the last.’ His eyes scraped over me. ‘Bahadur never changes. He tries to hide his children, ever since the first one died. The princess with the sun in her hands who fell from the walls. He gives you all those eyes like hers….’ He trailed off. I didn’t know if he meant Princess Hawa or the First Hero now. ‘But he never can hide you, because he gives you all far too much power. He thinks it will help keep you safe. But all it does is make you burn too brightly and too quickly, and then you snuff out.’ The flame in my fingers wavered; it was burning low, but it had some life left to it. ‘He’s so desperate to protect you that he gets you all killed.’
‘The Bahadur you’re talking about sounds real different from the one I know,’ I said, trying not to sound bitter. I remembered my father watching me mercilessly as the knife plunged towards my stomach, ready to let me die. I remembered railing at him for letting my mother die and finding no remorse there. I remembered the stories of Princess Hawa, his first daughter, who had died long ago fighting in the war the Djinn were too cowardly to fight on their own. She’d received no help from him.
I had wanted to know why he couldn’t save them. I had my answer. Djinn who tried to save humans ended up here. Like this.
The Sin Maker smiled, like he could read some of what I was thinking in my traitor eyes. ‘Your father came to ask me if I was sorry. That was nearly two tens of years past,’ he said, like he was trying to decide how old I was. ‘Nearly.’
Nearly. But not quite. I could guess the true number. I was seventeen. So was Noorsham. Our father had come here for the Sin Maker’s penance and found our mothers instead.
‘You owe me gratitude, daughter of Bahadur.’
A small, almost hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest. ‘Because your imprisonment made me?’
He rattled his chains conspicuously just as the light snuffed out again, leaving only his voice in the dark. ‘I might know a way to thank me.’
The silence in the cave was palpable as the matches in the box rattled together. I slid one of them over the sandpaper so I could see him again.
Truth was I wanted to release him. We were going up against an impossible barrier. We needed an ally like him. But I had to ask all the same. ‘Are you sorry?’
The Sin Maker got to his feet slowly, bringing himself to his full height as he faced me. ‘Have you ever been in love, daughter of Bahadur?’ I was suddenly keenly aware of the rope around my waist, stretching through solid stone back to Jin’s hand. I didn’t answer. ‘Is there anything you wouldn’t do to save them if you could?’
I was still silent. This time I really didn’t know the answer. I would take a bullet to hold on to Jin; I had once, and I had a scar to prove it. But the Sin Maker would have doomed the whole world for the First Hero. I didn’t know if I was selfish enough to doom the whole world for Jin. I didn’t know that I was selfless enough not to.
‘No,’ he said finally, watching me struggle. ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘How would you like to be freed anyway?’
I had the satisfaction of catching him off guard. The Sin Maker tilted his head to the side just a little. ‘And why would a daughter of Bahadur the noble do that?’ he asked warily.
I ran my tongue across my dry lips before finally settling on the part of the truth I wanted to tell. ‘There are some people I care about, and there’s a good chance they’ll die if I don’t get to them soon. I want to save them.’ Like you wanted to save her. It hung unsaid between us.
‘So it’s a trade you want? My help for my freedom?’
‘Something like that.’ I could already see him burning a little brighter. But for once, I had the advantage on him. I might not have been alive as long as he had, but I had lived in the world with mortality a whole lot longer. And I knew centuries of stories about making deals with Djinn. Only the gifts given willingly by Djinn ever brought good. The rest – cheated or bargained out of them – brought ruin. One misplaced word brought disaster instead of fortune. One slippery, undefined turn of phrase left all the room the Djinn needed for us slower, stupider mortals to slip off the edge.
The Sin Maker hated me. I could see it written all over him. He hated me because I was mortal, because I existed through the sacrifice of a hero he had loved long, long ago. And I was the child of one who had chained him up. He wouldn’t give me anything willingly. Not even in exchange for his freedom after centuries. And if he tried, I couldn’t win. I couldn’t outsmart him. ‘You’re thinking that you’ll trick me,’ I said, stilling the thoughts roiling in his mind. ‘That I’ll try to bind you to me, to give you orders. But I don’t want to do that.’
‘What do you want then, daughter of Bahadur?’
‘I don’t want to fight you.’ I wanted to rest. I was tired. I was wrung dry by this war. By leading. By everything. ‘I don’t want to play games where I weigh every word I say to check for loose footing and you prod at them to find the cracks to slip through. So here’s my offer: I want you to agree to do what I want.’
What I wanted was different from what I asked for. I might ask for our friends to be freed, but what I wanted was them alive, in one piece, not freed through death. I might want a way through Ashra’s Wall, but I didn’t want to release the Destroyer of Worlds, if she really was trapped behind it. I was asking him to agree not to the letter of my orders but the heart of them. ‘I want help,’ I said finally.
‘Help?’ The Sin Maker sounded interested.
‘Yes, agree to my terms and I will free you from this cave now, and from servitude to me when it is done.’
‘You drive a hard bargain.’ He was watching the match in my fingers burn down. ‘That’s your last match.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘And it’ll be my last offer, too. I can leave here without you. But you can’t leave here without me.’
‘Then I agree,’ the Sin Maker said simply.
‘Say it.’
‘Amani Al-Bahadur.’ His tone wasn’t without sarcasm, but it was his words that mattered. ‘Your wish will be my command. I will honour what you want in exchange for my freedom from here. And eventually from you.’
I turned it over carefully. But he was right, we were running out of time. It was my last match. ‘Tell me your name,’ I said.
‘My name.’ It was my first want, my first order. I saw his jaw work, like it was unused to the word that was coming forwards. ‘It was given to me a very long time ago. My name is Zaahir.’
‘Zaahir, the Sin Maker,’ I repeated. And then I saw the rest of the words, the ones that had been carved into the arch above the door, which Tamid had read off for me. I spoke them out loud, carefully, painstakingly, ending with his name.
I finished almost breathless. Waiting for something to happen. For the circle around him to break, maybe. Or for his chains to shatter. A flash of light or fire. Or a clap of thunder to shake the mountain.
But all that happened w
as that Zaahir smiled at me as the flame of the match reached my fingers, close to extinguishing. The last thing I saw was him stepping over the line of the circle before the match died, plunging us both into darkness.
Chapter 24
‘Well, daughter of Bahadur.’ A new light bloomed just enough so that I could see him, free of his prison, standing suddenly too close to me. The fire wasn’t flickering across his face, I realised. It was coming from within it, a faint glow betraying that he was not quite human. ‘What is it that you want now?’
The sensation of power rushed in, as if to consume me. I wanted so much. I wanted the Sultan to die for what he had done to Shira, to Imin and to Hala. I wanted to win this war for their sakes and the sakes of everyone else who had died for it. I wanted Ahmed to sit on the throne and rule it in the name of its own people instead of some foreign power. But I knew better than to ask for something that big and imprecise. I wasn’t stupid. I’d heard stories of Djinn deception.
‘I want you to take me to Eremot.’
The Sin Maker didn’t answer me. He just smiled.
And then the mountain began to move. He didn’t raise his hands like I needed to when I moved the desert. He didn’t strain, didn’t so much as blink, as earth and rocks that had remained unmoved for centuries shifted, like a behemoth awaking from a long sleep and stretching its colossal body.
A split in the mountain appeared, a tunnel. Not leading back towards the ruins of Sazi and the cave where the others awaited, but deeper into the maw of the mountain. He’d just cleaved a mountain, effortlessly.
Only then did real understanding descend on me.
This was an immortal being, a maker of humans. His power was cosmic and beyond my understanding. He could move mountains and shake the earth. He didn’t care anything for the wars of men. He hadn’t ever lived in our world. He was from legends, not reality.
And I’d just gone and set him free.
The Sin Maker extended one hand straight down the tunnel. ‘After you.’
I glanced at the wall that led back to the others.
‘You want to save the people you care about.’ He parroted my own words back at me. ‘There is no one you care about more than the boy who is waiting for you on the other side of that cave, is there?’ I didn’t know how he knew about Jin, but I didn’t like it. ‘You would rather die for them than have them risk their lives for you. You want to do this alone, don’t you? To keep them safe.’
There was no point in telling him he was wrong. So I untied the rope around my waist, letting it slither to the ground. Useless. Untethered. And I stepped into the tunnel, Zaahir close behind me, and the entrance closed, sealing us in. When Sam came back for me, he’d have no idea where I’d gone. No way to follow me. I hoped the others would forgive me for this.
We walked in silence for a long time, the glow from the Sin Maker’s body the only thing keeping the dark at bay.
Finally another light appeared ahead. Far at the end of the tunnel, like a star in the darkest night.
I’d always imagined Ashra’s Wall like the walls of Saramotai: huge and impenetrable and impossible, fire guarding against ghouls and the night. But this wall was not made just to keep out ghouls. It was made to keep something in. And it didn’t look anything like the messy, violent fire the Sultan had domed the city with. It reminded me of the light that had come from the machine when it killed Fereshteh, only clearer, brighter. It wasn’t a Djinni’s light, it was gentler. A girl’s soul outside of her body, burning. As we got closer to the light of Ashra’s Wall, I swore I could see patterns in it, like the weave of a carpet.
Once upon a time, this fire had been a girl. Born in a desert at war, just like I was. Now her body was long gone and all that was left was the ever-burning fire of her soul.
‘Was she human?’ I asked Zaahir as we stopped an arm’s reach from the wall. ‘Ashra.’
‘I think you already know the answer to that, daughter of Bahadur,’ the Sin Maker said, his own coal-red eyes dancing over the wall of light.
I did.
I knew as soon as I saw the wall as a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. Ashra was another Demdji who had sacrificed herself for the wars of our fathers. Only for the stories to forget what she really was, just crowning her a hero instead. Just like they had with Princess Hawa, and probably hundreds of other Demdji.
When I was dead and gone, burned up by releasing Fereshteh’s fire, and they told the story of the Rebellion, I wondered if they’d forget me as a Demdji, too, and just remember that I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit.
We were almost at Eremot. Somewhere beyond this wall was whatever remained of our rebellion.
‘How do we get through?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it’s no trouble getting in.’ Zaahir knelt down, his movements strange and unnatural, like he was just pretending to use human muscles when he was really bending like a flame in the wind. He peeled a small stone from the floor of the tunnel like it was a blade of grass and tossed it. The pebble passed easily through Ashra’s Wall, landing on the other side with a few bounces. It didn’t even look singed. ‘This wall wasn’t made to keep anything out.’
A gust of unnatural wind rose around us, picking up the stone on the other side of the barrier, shooting it back towards us at full speed, aimed straight for my head. It hit the barrier, but this time, instead of passing through, it turned to dust, incinerating as it met the barrier. Just like the stone Jin had thrown at the wall back in Izman. ‘It’s made to keep things in.’
So that was what the Sultan had done. He had sent his prisoners in, never to come out again. Because it didn’t matter to him if they died down there. He would have killed them himself if he didn’t need disposable bodies.
He feigned mercy to his city, letting the rebels be imprisoned instead of executed. And then he sent them off to the dark to die quietly in a place where nothing could ever leave. Ending any trouble rebellious captives might be.
‘If we go in there,’ I said warily, ‘can you get us back out alive?’
‘Yes,’ Zaahir said cryptically. ‘I can.’ I didn’t trust Zaahir as far as I could throw a horse. But he wasn’t lying to me about this.
‘After you,’ I mimicked his words from earlier.
Our gazes locked for a long moment, a battle of wills passing between us. Zaahir finally nodded. ‘As you wish.’ And he moved forwards. He passed through the wall as if it were nothing but air, and then he was standing on the other side, watching me expectantly.
This was a bad idea. I knew this was a bad idea. But I’d done a lot of things that were bad ideas. Usually they turned out all right. This might be different though. This was a bad idea of mythic proportions. But what else was I supposed to do? I took a deep breath and tried not to think too hard about what I was doing as I stepped through a wall made of light.
It felt like passing through a patch of sunlight in between shady trees, pleasant and warm on my skin. And then I was stumbling through to the other side, next to my dubious Djinni ally.
Beyond Ashra’s Wall, the mountain didn’t look any different from the tunnel that Zaahir had created for us, but I could feel the change instantly. The air was filled with the taste of iron. Even worse than in Sazi. Probably not enough to take away my power, but I could feel my skin itching against it. I caught myself holding my breath for fear it was going to get into my lungs. I could see even Zaahir chafing against it as we moved through the dark tunnel and into the mountain.
It wasn’t long before we lost the last of the light from Ashra’s Wall behind us. The darkness made me nervous. It felt like we were ghouls in the night, stalking somewhere we shouldn’t be. Or like there might be things in here stalking us.
The ground sloped steeply into the belly of the mountain. We quickened our steps as it descended. I kept my eyes on my feet at first, careful of any stone that might trip me up, but the ground was remarkably smooth. At first I thought it had been swept clean; then, as the path narrowed, my hand brushed aga
inst the wall. It was smooth, too. Like it had been worn down by something. And suddenly my mind summoned up every image I had ever seen in the Holy Books, of the Destroyer of Worlds’ enormous monstrous snake, released in the early days of the war. And I imagined it down here, roaming through these mountains impatient for escape, wearing the walls smooth and round…. I stopped that thought in its tracks. That monster was dead. The First Hero had killed it.
But that didn’t mean there was nothing else down here.
For the first time in my whole life, I was alone.
I wasn’t crammed into a house with my aunt’s children. I wasn’t with Jin and a caravan crossing the desert. I wasn’t in a tent in the rebel camp with Shazad, there to watch my back if I needed her. I wasn’t surrounded by women in the harem. I wasn’t stacked on top of the remnants of the Rebellion in the Hidden House.
I’d wanted to keep them safe, but now I didn’t have Jin to back me up. I didn’t have the twins to fly me out of this if it all went wrong. I didn’t have Sam to crack a joke to break the silence that was carrying my mind away to fearful places.
I was in hell, and I’d walked into it willingly.
I began to feel exhaustion catching up with me. I hadn’t slept since Juniper City, and here in the dark I couldn’t tell how long it had been since we left Sazi, though I got the feeling dawn must’ve come and gone. Which would mean I’d been awake a full day. I stopped, sinking to the ground, leaning back against the wall. I just needed a moment to rest. Zaahir stopped as well, watching me with a curious look on his face. Had he forgotten, after all this time, how fragile we mortal things were?
As I was leaning there, I noticed something on the ground, in the light from his skin. I reached out to pick it up. It was a button. My button. I checked the collar of my shirt, and sure enough, there was a loose strand of thread there.
‘We’ve been this way already,’ I mumbled, trying to get my tired mind to focus.
Hero at the Fall Page 19
