“There’s another thing.” She paused. “Atish sent a message this morning. He’ll be here soon. I had forgotten that you had a holiday today.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded anyway. “You’d better get dressed.”
I tried to copy the way Laira styled her scarf. She looped it around her neck instead of over her hair, letting it drape down her back. I had just finished tying mine when someone rapped hard at the door.
“Go on. Don’t make him wait.”
I opened the door and found a boy wearing nothing but a leather vest and trousers. He had a strong face, golden-brown eyes, and short-cropped hair. The profile of a golden lion was tattooed on his left shoulder—the emblem of the Shaitan, the most destructive arm of the jinni army, according to my father. They were evil and bloodthirsty. They took their captives to the Cavern—here—and dipped their bodies in the Lake of Fire. But he didn’t look evil or bloodthirsty.
He leaned into the doorframe, and I sucked in a breath, trying not to give myself away by leaning away from him. “I was going to show it to you last night, but no one knew where you were,” he said, turning his tattooed shoulder toward me. Was it new, then?
“That’s … nice.”
“I had always thought it would burn, but it didn’t. I don’t know why they don’t tell us this before we go through it. There’s no point to the surprise,” he said.
I couldn’t think of anything to say in response, but he didn’t seem to care. He reached out for my hand and pulled me out of the house.
“I can walk on my own,” I said flatly. No man had touched me since I was a child. And he was a jinni.
He grinned. “That’s not why I hold your hand.” It was useless. I’d have to hold his hand if I was pretending to be Najwa. At least his palm wasn’t sweaty.
He stepped around a large rock that lay on the path. Had it fallen from somewhere? I looked up, but jagged crystals swept the ceiling, and there weren’t any holes. I managed to get my hand out of Atish’s as we moved around the rock, and then I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“No.”
He looked as though he was going to say something, and then shrugged and smiled. “Good, because you don’t want to start today off shivering.”
“Why? Are we going somewhere colder?”
“Najwa!” a girl shouted at me as she ran up from a side trail. She hopped over a smaller rock and landed beside me. Her long braided hair, dipped in purple dye, swung behind her. “Where did you go yesterday?”
“Uh …”
“Faisal said she was working on something for him,” Atish answered.
“Yes,” I lied, taking the opportunity to move a step away from them.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. “Well, now you’ve seen Atish’s mark. He was all depressed when he couldn’t show it off to you yesterday.”
“Shirin, please,” he groaned.
She grinned. “You were. Admit it.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Anyway,” Shirin continued, “can you tell me where you went, or is it a Corps secret?”
Again, I was lost in the dark, so I shrugged.
“Lovely. Between the three of us, I’ll be the only one who can talk, and our conversations will be all about wounds and diseases.”
Atish chuckled, but I didn’t respond. I was trying too hard to figure out what was going to happen next. We wound between jinni houses and ended up in the same courtyard I had arrived in. This time, there were more jinn wandering around, and half of them were our age. It must have been because of the holiday Laira had mentioned.
When Atish and Shirin stopped by the fountain, I thought maybe that was as far as we would go. I didn’t want any more surprises. What I needed now was a way to get out of the Cavern before someone noticed I wasn’t their Najwa.
Shirin sat on the edge of the fountain and gestured for me to join her. Atish paced like a cat.
“They should get here soon,” Shirin said.
“Right.” Maybe she wouldn’t notice I had no idea who “they” were.
She leaned in close. “You seem more relaxed than I thought you’d be,” she whispered.
“Why wouldn’t I be relaxed?”
Her eyebrows rose. “I can think of one reason.” Clearly, there was something secretive going on between Shirin and Najwa that Atish was not supposed to know about.
Atish turned around and stopped. “When they get here, we’ll have to divide into groups. Shirin, you want to go with us or with them?”
“You have to ask?”
“She isn’t that bad, you know.” Atish sighed, then resumed his pacing, stopping only when a group of boys passed by. One of them separated from the group and approached Atish with an adoring smile. He was short and thin, and looked to be about twelve years old, if jinn aged the same as humans. He looked like the sort of boy Yashar would have played with, before he had to count his steps and hold my hand.
The boy waved. “Atish! I heard you got your mark yesterday.” He smacked Atish’s shoulder, right where the Shaitan mark was. “I can’t wait till I get mine.”
Atish crossed his arms, took in the boy, and grinned. “Good to see you, Farhad. I’m sure you’ll get yours soon enough.”
“So, what are you doing today?” He squared his shoulders in the way boys do when talking to men they want to impress. He did it naturally, without any of the arrogance of Destawan.
“Going out on the lake. Where are you boys off to?”
Farhad cleared his throat. “We’re going to climb to the topaz point,” he said, gesturing at one of the inward-curving walls of the Cavern. The crystals there were more jagged, and milky white except for one of the longer shards, which ended in a golden-yellow tip. It had to be a hundred feet above the houses. Anyone who climbed that high had to cling to the slick crystal upside down, like a caterpillar beneath a leaf. I looked at the boy, certain that either he was joking or he had lost his mind.
“Are you, then? Be careful,” Atish said, bowing his head at Farhad.
“Oh, we’re always careful,” Farhad said. Then he smiled at Shirin and me before skipping away to join his friends. They disappeared in an alley between two tall buildings.
“They’re climbing that?” I asked Atish.
He shrugged. “It’s not that hard.”
Shirin rolled her eyes and bumped her shoulder into mine. “It’s easier than dealing with her,” she said.
“Right,” I said, pretending I knew what I was agreeing with.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out, because a minute later three jinn walked up to us. Two were men a few years older than Atish, with the same Shaitan mark. The other, a girl, must have been the person Shirin had referred to. She stood like a lioness, ready and watching for prey. She was wearing one of those ridiculous glowworm shawls, and her hair was weighted down by twice as many jewels as Laira’s.
“Hello, Atish,” the lioness said. She practically purred. “Your mark looks good.”
“Uh, thank you,” Atish said. He looked to the two Shaitan. “You want to go in the same boat as her? I’ll take Najwa and Shirin.”
“Sure,” the taller of the two men said with a shrug.
“But, Atish, I thought we could go together,” the girl said. “I don’t really know them that well.”
“Oh, um, I …”
I stood up. “We already have our group ready, but thank you for being so welcoming.” I could tell this girl was not going to be good for Atish. I brushed off my skirt and looked at him. “Should we go?”
The girl’s mouth opened, but she said nothing. I led them away from the fountain, even though I didn’t know if I was going the right way, and everyone followed. Fortunately, Shirin bounced up and took my arm again. She pulled me away from the courtyard and toward the lake.
“Y
ou should talk to Irina like that more often,” she whispered. So that was Irina, the girl Laira was teaching. She didn’t look half as sweet as Laira had made her out to be. “I heard she can’t stand Cyril because he’s smarter than her, and she thinks Dabar is boring. She’s going to have such a wonderful ride.”
Shirin grinned the rest of the way to the lake, which wasn’t far. When we got there, I realized Atish had said we were getting on boats, and I couldn’t help but think of the barge. And Rahela.
I’d left her alone with a jinni. And here I was, surrounded by the rest of them.
Shaking my head, I took in where we’d stopped. We were at a rounded stone that peaked up from the ground. It was covered in moss, but not in a natural way. The moss had been cultured, and spread out in a series of diamonds. I traced over them with my fingers. The moss was spongy.
“You always do that,” Atish said. He had gotten too close.
“Oh?” I followed Shirin to a little stone building on top of a wall that lined the lake. We all gathered there, and Irina crossed her arms and glared at me.
“Gal?” Atish called out. A large woman in scarlet and green plodded out from behind the building and smiled.
“Dear, dear, you’re here for your boats,” she said. She hugged Atish, who nodded and slipped out from underneath her arms. She was as tall as he was, and almost as big around. Her cheeks were circled with crushed, sparkling stone, and I stared until I saw she was coming for me next. I stepped aside.
“Najwa, I must congratulate you too,” she said. She took my hand and held it up, inspecting the henna around my thumb. “Why did you cover it up?”
“Cover what up?” Shirin asked. She peered over my shoulder.
Gal smiled, revealing large golden teeth. “Her mark. Faisal marked her for the Corps last night. Right there on her hand.”
“He did what?” Shirin squealed, and she took my hand, flipping it over to stare at it. “You didn’t tell us? And you covered it?”
I freed my hand and pulled my sleeves down over my knuckles. “There didn’t seem to be a good time to say it,” I said. “And it’s small.” I hoped it was small. I hadn’t noticed anything on Najwa, but then, I hadn’t been looking.
“You could have told me when I showed up,” Atish said. He was glowering. “That would have been a good time.”
Gal grabbed a set of oars that had been leaning against her stone building and handed them to Atish, then gave another set to Cyril. “Don’t harass Najwa. She needs this holiday at least as much as you do. Now get on your boats and go have a good time.” She ushered us down to stone steps that led to a pier set into the enflamed lake. Six rowboats lined the pier, each made of wood. Or something like wood. I hadn’t noticed many trees in the Cavern.
Atish jumped down the steps and climbed onto the first boat. The bottom was painted in blue and yellow flowers and streaked with mud.
Gal said to me, “I know it’s not your favorite, but that one’s already taken out.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, while Gal helped Shirin and me climb into our boat. Then she helped Irina, Cyril, and Dabar into theirs.
Atish picked up the oars and shoved off. The boat rocked and I felt my stomach lurch. The barge hadn’t been as wobbly. I looked out at the lake, which didn’t help. It was coated in wisps of flame that danced across the shallow ripples. Some of them lifted up into the air and wavered before disappearing. Others gathered more flames around them, building up into giant swirls of fire that twisted across the surface. I prayed they wouldn’t harm the boat.
I gripped the edge of the boat, taking comfort in the familiarity of something made of wood. I needed any comfort I could find, because I was sitting in the Lake of Fire, stared at by a boy with a fierceness to him that matched his Shaitan tattoo.
17
Najwa
“Bow your head, Zayele,” Rahela said, almost too quietly to hear. I was no longer Najwa. The cloak of Zayele’s name tightened around my shoulders, and I bowed both in obedience and to breathe. “That’s the vizier,” she added.
I looked through the window again in alarm. His gray beard reached his chest, where it met a cloisonné pendant heavy with gold and emeralds. The man had eyes as blue and cold as aquamarine, and they were staring into me. I tried to look away and instead felt myself drawn in.
This was Hashim, the caliph’s vizier. He was the second most powerful man in the caliphate, the first and only ambassador to the Cavern, and the one who had started the war. He had hunted jinn ever since, and had been the army’s foremost informant on our weaknesses. I knew all this from Faisal, who had never been able to say Hashim’s name without spitting afterward.
Hashim handed a key to a servant, who unlocked the door. There was a hint of anticipation in Hashim’s face, but it disappeared when he said, “Welcome to Baghdad,” and stood back to let the servant pull open the door.
Rahela and I climbed out onto the deck. My hands were shaking when I grabbed the railing, and he saw. “You’re right to be anxious,” he said, frowning. “Your life will change a great deal here. In more ways than you expect.”
We followed him off the barge’s plank, over the blue-green water, and stepped onto smooth stone. The rain had fallen here too, and the ground was slick and shimmering. Stretched out around us were fifty or so men, all dressed in fine linen. They lined both sides of a white-tiled path and called out their loyalty to the caliph.
Someone shouted, “Allah save the caliph!”
Another said, “Yes, Allah will save him!”
A third man said, “Welcome, Vizier Hashim.”
Hashim nodded at them all, raising his arms in salute. Then he picked up his pace and headed toward a looming arched gate with a double door covered in scrolling arabesques of leaves and birds. We stood in the gate’s shadow while a pair of guards pulled the doors open.
Hashim studied me curiously while we walked through the gate. It was almost as though he was watching for something, so I forced myself to look confident. I didn’t want my first steps into the palace to betray me to this man who knew much about jinn.
We entered a courtyard so immense, it reminded me of the training fields in the Cavern. A long reflecting pool shimmered in the center, flanked by narrower strips of water. Palms, as tall as the courtyard’s walls, lined the pools. And everywhere, as if to remind the people of who had built this city, was the caliph’s family name: al-Mansur. It was hammered into the copper basins holding fruit trees. It was molded into the border, repeating a hundred times around the courtyard.
Benches sat scattered throughout, and the vizier stopped at the first one.
“I have business to attend to,” he said. “We will meet again this evening.” Then he walked away, leaving us with half a dozen servants who stood like statues behind us.
Rahela perched, rather than sat, on the bench. “This isn’t right,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
We weren’t alone, but the nearest people who were not servants were at the other end. They were men, and they were speaking in harsh words and making abrupt gestures. I would have liked to be invisible just then.
“We should have been taken directly to the harem. And given refreshments,” she said, keeping her voice low enough that it wouldn’t echo. “Not kept here waiting like dogs.”
I scanned the courtyard, looking for any sign that someone might have noticed me. Although I might have looked like a human, all covered in wire and beads, I felt like a jinni. But no one paid us any attention. We were just girls who had been dropped off on a bench.
Finally, a woman slipped out of one of the many arches in the courtyard wall and marched toward us. She wore a gown of flowing white silk. The men fell silent and watched her out of the sides of their eyes. She stopped three paces from the bench and motioned for us to rise, so we did.
“Welcome, Princess
Zayele.” Her face was barely perceptible beneath her sheer scarf, but the hollow sound in her voice came through clearly enough. “I’m Aaliyah, one of the caliph’s wives. I have been asked to welcome you to the palace. Unfortunately, I am also the bearer of sad news.”
Rahela’s body tightened beside mine, but she nodded, urging me to do the same. We followed the caliph’s wife out of the courtyard and into a small room that reminded me of Faisal’s office. Richly colored carpets and cushions blanketed the floor. Silks of every color draped down from the central lamp in the ceiling. Somehow, none of them caught fire.
She ushered us onto the floor, where we knelt, facing each other. I brushed the carpet with my fingertips like I always did in Faisal’s office. But this wasn’t the Cavern. There wasn’t a bare stone in sight, and the carpet was velvety and bent under my fingernails like moss.
She didn’t see that I was a jinni.
“This is my meeting room,” Aaliyah said. “We use it to inspect the women who are brought into the harem, but I am in no state to perform such duties today. You may remove your veils.” She pulled hers off, showing deep lines between her eyebrows and a small scar on her chin, but it was the redness spreading across her face that startled me. I took off the beaded headpiece and veil and held them in my lap. Aaliyah’s lips wavered while surveyed me. “You will have to excuse us all today. The palace’s peace has been disturbed.”
“Disturbed?” I repeated.
She dabbed her eyes with the hem of her sleeve. “Our caliph was injured a few hours ago.” She began crying openly now, pressing both hands to her face. Rahela coughed into her hand, catching my attention. I was supposed to say something.
“I am very sorry,” I said. If the caliph was injured, Faisal needed to know right now. I looked down at where my mark was hidden by the henna dye. How could they get to me now, even if I sent them images? I should have let them know before, on the river. I should have sent an image the moment I realized Zayele’s wish had imprisoned me. Now it was too late for help, and I couldn’t even let them know what I’d just learned.
The Fire Wish Page 9
