Shirin jumped up. “But you have to help Najwa. She’s your—she’s your sister. Right, Atish?”
Atish had a strange look on his face, as if he’d tasted something he wasn’t sure about. “Yeah,” he said tonelessly.
“Faisal,” I said, “if Hashim hated my mother so much—”
“He didn’t hate her. He was in love with her. Everyone was.”
“But he—”
“He was angry she was a jinni, and even angrier when he found out who her father was.”
“Who was her father?” I asked.
“An official. It’s not … I will explain that later.”
“Fine. But if Hashim was so upset, why did he come back to Zab? Why did he choose me for the prince?”
Faisal froze. “Hashim chose you for Prince Kamal?”
“He wanted someone from our tribe. He came out himself, the first time since—” The words caught in my throat. “Since that night. He picked me.”
Faisal stood up quickly. “Atish, go get Captain Rashid.” Atish nodded, but moved slowly, like he was half-asleep. “Don’t just stand there. Hurry. Hashim has something planned. Something he needs jinni blood for.”
After Atish left, I stared at the frankincense curling in the air. Everything was different now. I wasn’t who I’d always thought I was. I was half-jinni. I had a twin sister. And I had sent her straight to the man who killed our parents.
Atish returned with another jinni, who wore a leather vest studded with obsidian points. His face was carved in a permanent scowl, and his belt held two daggers. He was broader than Atish and had a long scar that stretched over his right shoulder, over the lion mark of the Shaitan. He was holding a map clamped on a piece of slate, and I noticed that his knuckles were white with scars. From training or from fighting humans?
Faisal spoke first. “This is Rashid, Captain of the Shaitan. This is Mariam’s daughter Zayele.” Rashid was exactly what I’d always thought the Shaitan would look like. Fierce, determined, and bloodthirsty. He grunted a hello, then pointed at the map, showing it to Faisal and Atish.
“She’ll have to go in. They are there, there, and there.” Faisal nodded each time Rashid’s finger jabbed the map.
“Who will go in?” I asked. “Me?”
Atish nodded solemnly. “You’re the only one who can. You’re part human—”
“I’m more human than jinni,” I said bitterly.
Faisal placed a hand on my shoulder. “Zayele, the truth is, we need you. You can get past the jinni wards, just as Najwa did.” His voice had gone dry, and he swallowed.
“I know the wards keep jinn out of the palace. But what are they, exactly?”
Atish sounded very tired. “Hashim put them in place after he murdered Mariam. We don’t know what’s on them, but we’ve gotten intelligence that tells us where they are.”
“They’re just paper,” Rashid said, “but they’re powerful. They have a holy mark on them that blocks anything made by the devil.”
“So, jinn were made by the devil?” I had heard rumors about jinn, but I’d never paid attention to that part. I had only cared about the wishes.
Shirin took my hand. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We aren’t demons, you know.”
“The first jinni was a human,” Atish said.
“Iblis?” I asked, throwing out the one name I knew.
Shirin nodded. “He found an angel lying broken on the ground. Fearing it was a test, he helped the angel, and then—”
“The angel offered to give Iblis a gift,” Faisal cut in. “But Iblis declared he did not need any gift from an angel. The angel laughed and said he could not resist such a gift—and he gave Iblis what we now call ‘wishpower.’ ”
“And it changed everything,” Atish said.
“How?”
Faisal smiled grimly. “Human bodies can’t handle the power needed to grant wishes, so it changed his body. He twisted into a being of fire and sand. A jinni. Then the angel showed Iblis where he could take his tribe, to start a new race. They followed a tunnel that led here. It wasn’t until later that Iblis discovered he’d helped the first of the fallen angels, and by then it was too late.”
“Iblis built the Cavern out of wishes?” I asked.
Faisal and Rashid eyed each other. “We don’t have time for this,” Rashid said. “Jinn are as evil, and as good, as humans. That’s all you need to know. We need to take down the wards.”
Faisal nodded. “Zayele, whatever the wards are, they stop us from going anywhere near them. I don’t know how Najwa got there the first time, but she did. And I believe you can too. It must be your human blood.”
“But I don’t know her. Not like my brother—” I stopped. Yashar wasn’t my little brother. Not anymore. Something cold went through me as I thought of how nothing had been real. “I just took a wish from her. That was it.” I looked again at the map that showed the palace. She was in there, somewhere.
“It was a Fire Wish,” Atish said. He sounded grave. “When a jinni demands a wish from another jinni, that’s what it’s called. It’s the worst thing you can do to a jinni.”
Shirin cut in. “But she didn’t know she was a jinni. She didn’t know about Fire Wishes.”
Atish looked at Rashid. “So what happens?”
“Zayele,” Rashid said, looking me squarely in the face, “when you made the wish, you took away Najwa’s choice, and most of her power.”
“She can make everything right again,” Faisal said, stepping between us. “She can go back, and she can expose Hashim. She can save her sister.”
“How?” I asked. “No one listens to me. I was nothing but a bride.”
“Let’s go outside,” Faisal said. He motioned for me to follow, and I did. We left the school building, and for the first time, I looked at the Cavern’s ceiling, at the jutting crystals and the ever-changing homes, and knew my mother, Mariam, had lived here. Part of me was from this place.
Faisal walked toward the wall that stretched along the lake. He held his arms behind his back while he strolled. He was at ease, the opposite of everything inside me. Finally, he stopped.
The lamplighter walked past, high on his stilts, and Faisal gestured toward him.
“Zayele, if that man can wish a light out of empty air, you can find a way to show the world the truth.”
I leaned forward and pressed my hands into the coarse stone of the wall. “I can’t.”
“But you must. You’re stronger than an old jinni like me, which is why you’ve got to go. You’ve got to save her. You’re the only one who can undo what you did, as much as that is possible.” He frowned. “A Fire Wish is the most devastating thing one jinni can do to another. A long time ago, when we first came to the Cavern and we were learning about our power, there were a few who commanded wishes from the others. They stole their free will, just as you took Najwa’s. Whenever she tries to defy your wish, and I’m sure she will, it will be excruciating.”
Again, I’d done too much. “I didn’t know.”
“We know you didn’t mean to harm Najwa, but what is disturbing is that you so freely took from someone else.”
There wasn’t anything to say to this. What could I do now?
Atish, Shirin, and Rashid came toward us. Rashid was holding his map rolled up like a scroll, and he held it toward me.
“We need to focus on what’s most important. We need to get in there and take down the wards. You’re the only one who can do that, other than Najwa,” Rashid said. “You are as much a jinni, and a human, as Najwa.” He had gotten even more intense, and I found myself backing away from him.
“We can help you,” Shirin said, placing her hands on my shoulders and gripping me firmly. “After you take down the wards, we’ll come.”
“And after that? Where do I go?” I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t face my f
ather—my adoptive father. And the Cavern, even with its jewels dripping from the ceiling, was too alien. I didn’t belong anywhere.
“It’s up to you,” Faisal said. I watched the flames on the lake while I thought about it. They twirled around each other, no two alike.
“All right. Show me how,” I said.
37
Najwa
I sliced the lemon in half and squeezed the juice over the back of my hand, right over where the henna hid my mark. It stung, and I gasped. I had been rubbing at the skin for several minutes, and it was already raw. The lemon juice was like a poison, seeping into the cracks of my skin, but I felt nothing like the agony of the jinni in the Memory Crystal. That had been real pain.
“I told you it would hurt,” Rahela said. She was sitting across from me, rolling another lemon in circles on the tabletop, pressing it beneath her flattened hand to make it juicier. “Is it fading?”
It was, but only because I was scrubbing off a few layers of skin. “Yes,” I said, wincing. The Eyes of Iblis mark was almost whole, although it was a little redder than it should have been. “I don’t know if it will work, but what else can we do?”
We had decided not to hide it anymore as soon as we’d gotten back to the room. If the caliph was dying, we didn’t have much time before they’d decide to marry me to the prince, and I needed someone to find Zayele before that happened.
The lemon’s acidity worked better than any of my scrubbing, but I couldn’t sit still. It stung, and I flapped my hand in the air, trying to get it to stop.
“Maybe you should do something else for a while. Like read that book you found,” Rahela suggested. “I’m afraid you’ll rub all the skin off.”
I picked up the book with my non-stinging hand. “Good idea,” I said. “I’ll try a distraction.” I tucked it under my arm and went out onto the patio. Kamal had said he’d meet me here tonight, but I wasn’t sure he would come now that his father’s condition had gotten worse.
The sky above was the bruised color of a dying day. On the other side of the palace, the sun was setting, but there was still enough light to read by. I sat on the bench, took a look at the cutout between my garden and Kamal’s, and opened the book I’d taken from the House of Wisdom.
It wasn’t long before I discovered it was a journal. The charts and lists of names had thrown me before, but now I realized it was organized by date, and each entry began with some activity that had happened that day. I flipped through the pages and came to an entry I had to read twice.
I’ve told Faisal, but he doesn’t believe me. He trusts Hashim too much, and I think it’s because he helped Melchior bring Hashim into the Cavern. He never wants to admit he could have been wrong. I have sent a letter to his supervisor, but have not yet heard back.
Faisal and Hashim were friends? He had never told me this. Everything he’d ever said about the man concerned his betrayal and his hand in the start of the war. He’d never said he knew him.
I flipped to the end, but it was blank. The last entry was halfway through the book, and hurried. It was darker now, and I could barely make out the words:
Someone attacked a human village, and they’re blaming Faisal. Hashim was there and is due back tonight with more details, but I cannot bring myself to believe a word he says. He wants more than the ambassadorship. He wants the caliphate, the Cavern, and a jinni to command.
Delia says I should return before Hashim arrives, but someone must stay and defend Faisal. Someone must keep the flame going. I will continue in my translation work until I hear from Faisal himself.
Faisal had told me once that his brother had been working in the House of Wisdom. He had been a translator, but had died during the first wave of attacks the humans made on the jinn. This had to be his journal.
I swiped my thumb over the last of his words. They’d been written just before the war began. If he had left the palace like Delia suggested, he wouldn’t have been killed.
Saddened, I laid the journal on my lap and glanced up at the moon. It seemed I could only get my hands on tragic stories, recorded either in pen or in crystal.
“Hello,” someone said, and I jumped. The voice had come from the wall, and I saw Kamal’s face peering through. “You looked very absorbed. I almost didn’t want to disturb you.”
“It’s very engrossing,” I said, sighing.
“What is it?”
Quickly, I snapped the book shut and held it behind me. “It’s just an old journal.”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Interesting. May I see it?”
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t exactly run back into my room. That would raise too many suspicions. But what if he saw who had written this, and it made him even more curious? “I found it lying around,” I said, holding it up. His eyes darted to the leather.
“Is that a jinni journal?”
“Uh—yes,” I said. “That’s why it’s so fascinating.”
He smiled. “May I see it?”
Maybe if he read it, he’d discover the truth about Hashim. Maybe he wouldn’t suspect me at all. I hesitated, then went to the wall and passed the book through the cutout. “Of course.”
Just before our fingers touched, a tiny spark flashed between them. I dropped the book, and he caught it. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
He was still holding the book between our gardens, like it was the one solid link between us. He kept it there, until I asked, “How is your father?”
The book slid through the cutout into his garden and he frowned. He looked away, then up at the darkening sky. “His heartbeat is weak, and the physician is having trouble getting any water in him.” He pressed against the wall. “I’m afraid, Zayele. If he dies, I won’t be the only one affected.”
“You mean, because he is the caliph?”
“Yes. My brother wants to be caliph next, and I don’t think Baghdad is ready for him.”
“Why?” I asked. I had heard his brother was a soldier, the kind who thought of nothing but battles and sieges, but I hadn’t heard anyone say he wasn’t a good man.
“It’s the war. He and Hashim had been pushing my father to take the next step—”
“The next step?” Finally, I would learn something.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, sighing. “The truth is, Ibrahim wants this war to continue. He wants to keep fighting the jinn. He wants to bury them.”
“And—and you don’t?”
He balked. “Well, I don’t want them to destroy us, but I would like it all to end. I barely remember it, but before the war, they were here, in the House of Wisdom. Jinn. We learned so much, working side by side. Even Hashim has to admit that.” He brushed his fingers over the journal, as if pining for a lost friend. “If Ibrahim becomes caliph, he will never stop fighting them.”
His words chilled me. And not even the moon could soothe my own fears. If Ibrahim became caliph, and if he discovered me, it’d be all over. He’d have a jinni to command, and I would have to attack my own people if he so wished.
“Then your father mustn’t die,” I said.
“Yes. I will pray throughout the night for him. Will you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And if you are not offended at the idea,” he said, still looking at the journal, “would you also pray that the jinn will once again be our friends, rather than our enemies?” Then he looked up, right into my eyes.
My insides were in a flurry, like a spinning cloud. Right there, on the other side of a very thick wall, was a human who did not want the war. I felt an urge to run my fingers across his sharp cheekbones, feeling the face of someone who thought differently. Someone who, like me, was not put off by differences in race or power. The moment I realized I wanted this, I pulled my hand back abruptly, scraping it against the edge of
the cutout. Now both of my hands were raw and reddened.
“I’m not offended by peace,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said, smiling. “War brings only death and lies. But when people work together, they can do great things. When the jinn were here, mathematics was advancing faster than ever before. And, strangely, so was our music.”
I looked behind him, trying to climb out of his gaze. “Have you brought your oud?”
“It’s always here,” he said. He went to his room and came back with the oud, then sat down. He set the instrument on his lap and laid his hand on the strings before turning to face me. “I wish you could sit by me.”
Then he ran his fingers over the strings and played. I was instantly saddened. The music pulled out all the parts of me that had been afraid, or lost, or hidden, and my heart grew heavy in my chest. He bent his head further over the strings and furrowed his brow while the pain I’d felt slipped down my cheeks in two streams of tears. My life had been stolen by Zayele, and I had no way yet to get home. I’d disobeyed Faisal by seeking her out. I had caused all this trouble. I thought of the man who’d written the book, the man who had stayed back to keep the flame going. He’d given his life for nothing. No one had listened to his warnings, and the Lamps had been snuffed out anyway. I thought of the caliph, and how his death might give greater power to a bloodthirsty prince. I thought of how Kamal had been meant for Zayele, of how he only knew me by her name—if I told him who I was, he would never look at me again like he had tonight. Even if he claimed he wanted friendship with jinn, it did not mean he wanted me.
He slowed his fingers and looked up, then stopped. “You’re crying,” he said.
I wiped away my tears, but he had already seen. Quickly, I pointed at one of the stars that shone so brightly beneath the moon. “Does that star have a name?”
The Fire Wish Page 19
