When the sky finally darkened that night, we took our seats around a table laden with food. Though I entertained my guests as I had been trained—as though nothing was amiss—I could see Emel watching me silently from across the table. People asked after her, wondering who this salt chaser was at the king’s table. A king’s daughter we were hosting, I explained. They looked between us with curiosity, whispering loud enough for me to hear.
“But what of Helena?”
“When will she return?”
“When is the wedding?”
Guests lingered long after the meal was over. Emel stayed, too, as if waiting for something. Sons, these people wanted to stay and talk deep into the night.
Emel stood and mumbled about a walk outside before she retired. As if she was the signal they needed, the others left, and I found her in the gardens, sleepy-eyed and smiling.
“It seemed to never end,” she said. “You do this every night?”
I nodded, drawing near, breathing her in, wanting to have all of her. My hands never left my sides, though they yearned to touch her hair, her neck, her hand. We walked together beside the fountains, following a path through the grass and stone that felt as if it had been made for us alone.
Helena flashed in my mind as I wondered about the answers to the guests’ questions, but I brushed her away. Think of her later.
Next to Emel, I was anchored. I was home. It was there already, on this path that led me to her, I realized. In Alfaar’s settlement, on our journey to Almulihi, when I saw her in the palace as the healer’s apprentice. But it was Edala’s words that had cleared the way, made me see it was there all along.
Emel and I talked of nothing that night, standing a fist’s distance apart. Proper in case of watchful eyes. None could think her anything but a woman of court.
But oh, how I thought of that day in the oasis. I longed to go back to that spot of sand, to live a lifetime with her there. We could string a hammock, dance under the shadows of leaves.
“I should sleep. So should you,” Emel said after we had taken many steps in silence.
“Tomorrow night?” I held out my hand.
She took it, our fingers slipping through each other’s until our hands were at our sides again. “I will be here.”
It was not enough.
When I lay in bed, I imagined she slept beside me. Sleep did not find me that night, lost as I was in thoughts of my father and his choice. Was the woman who birthed me the one who, like Emel, uncovered the better part of him? Did he miss that part of his life by marrying my mother? Or was my mother his proper half?
How strange it was to shift into the place of your parents, and to realize that they, too, were humans who had secret thoughts and unmet desires. That they had lives separate from those of their children. I had thought my father infallible, but now I understood how his actions had led to Edala’s unhappiness, Kassim’s anger. Would his choice lead me to a life of satisfaction or unhappiness?
I held onto that question like a talisman until the sun rose and the day started anew. But with the day came duty. Rising, I pushed away thoughts of Emel and awaited Kassim and Zahar.
I returned to my role as king.
Our second day home, I found Edala in the atrium lifting the wilted leaves, her touch imbuing life. “Who cares for these now?” she asked me when I went up to inspect the vine’s leaves, now shining and green.
“Ah . . .”
“That is your problem. You don’t even know.” She turned to me. “They are doing a poor job. You’re paying someone to do nothing.”
That she felt she could leave me in Almulihi by myself thinking my entire family dead, when she ran wild in the desert, then come here and tell me how to manage my staff was intolerable. I curled my fingers into my palms. The instant irritation, the venom that pooled on my tongue was familiar. That generous anger only reserved for a family member. Someone you think you can abuse because they are permanent and won’t leave you. I took several breaths. Edala was anything but permanent. And I was a child no longer. I should not hurl my frustration with my own inadequacies at her. She was my sister.
“You are right.”
Satisfied, she looked down at the polished floor. “I miss them more than I expected.”
“I know.”
“I saw the gardens. Nadia would have wept to see them charred so. I am glad she will not.”
“They will regrow.”
She eyed me and swept the vines aside. “Not with the same attention whomever is giving these.”
“Fair.”
She took my elbow, and we walked past the bubbling fountain down the hall. Past the dining rooms, the sitting rooms, the entertaining halls. All these empty spaces for people to come and be seen in the palace. I never filled them like my mother had.
Pointing down the tiled hall, Edala said, “I remember running through here during the parties late at night, trying not to be seen.”
“And if a guard caught us, we’d run to our hideaways.” I always hid in the alcove behind the roped curtains.
“We thought if they only caught one of us, the rest wouldn’t get in trouble. As if they didn’t see us all huddled together, whispering about this and that.” Edala laughed.
“You and Kassim always led the group.”
Edala scoffed. “That was because you always tried, and we hated how pushy you were.”
“I was rather imperious, wasn’t I?” Constantly, I had tried to control my siblings. Kassim and I had argued the most. He drove me mad with his stubbornness. Always thinking of himself, never stopping to help our father with the palace duties—especially as he got older. But then, I was not much different.
Edala said, “Truthfully, I had the best ideas.”
“Ah yes, like the time you decided to steal the sweet cakes from the kitchens.”
“How was I supposed to know those were to be thrown out?!”
“They were the saltiest things I’d ever tasted.” My tongue burned at the memory.
“Kassim fetched us all water while Nadia sobbed her apologies to Mariam, remember?”
I smiled. “She hated disobeying the rules. Not Kassim. He was always on your side and ready to do whatever you thought of next. You two were very close.”
She slowed some and gripped my elbow more tightly. “I think because our hearts ached the same. We felt like outsiders. I belonged out of the palace. He felt he belonged in your place.”
Our footsteps were the only sounds in the hallway despite the guards standing by. I feared for them all when Kassim arrived. How easily they would fall to a magical sword.
“I can’t understand how he has become this,” she said quietly. “I wish I could talk to him, take him from Zahar. But he is a jinni. Every fiber of him bends to his master, to Masira.”
“Emel said I had some control. Maybe Kassim has some, too.”
“Perhaps if I talk to him, we won’t have to . . .”
I did not have the heart to tell her what Emel had wondered aloud last night on our walk, when we spoke of castor seeds and poisons, the tonic I was meant to drink. It was enough to have a brother try to kill his sibling. Edala did not need to know there may have been more. I was not sure I even could believe it . . .
Kassim needed to die. No matter how we considered other options, nothing else was safe. A family forced to kill one of their own. Anger steeped in heartache.
Three days. That was the only peace we had together before the world shifted one final time.
Three days of planning and sending and arranging and warning and ordering. Guards sent here and there through Azim, Ekram monitoring the docks, pausing exports and meeting imports armed. Civilians were warned of strangers who might approach with odd requests. Letters were sent to settlements and tribes, warning that if a new king were to assume the throne in Almulihi, it was done through treachery.
Three nights of sitting with my sister, watching her radiate warmth as she took Tamam’s hand. He grinned like a fool, a new man without his stoic soldier’s mask. The quiet evening walks with Emel both settling and buoying me.
The nights made worthy the draining day. The rhythm of it was quite calming. So, of course, it could not last.
Helena had insisted we keep coffee in the palace. I was still not sure of its taste, but it grew on me. Emel refused it outright, saying it looked like sickness. The sun rose as I sipped it, flipping through the letters piled on my desk.
A woman’s voice met my ears. Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
I held my breath, hoping I was mistaken.
It could not be time. Not yet. Sons, please not yet.
Edala rushed into the room. “They are here.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dark, hiding something.
“Where?” I said, standing up from my desk.
“In the west city. Kassim has done something. The pull was enormous.” The sight of Edala looking out the windows, seeing something I could not see, was the most inhuman I had ever seen her. The soul she had given up to become this si’la had never been more absent. “I will go to meet them.”
A low horn sounded. The signal of a threat. So the sentinels had seen something, too. Fastening my scabbard, I said, “Where in the west?”
Her gaze whipped to me, and she held out her hand. “You must stay.”
“I won’t let my sister go and kill our brother alone.”
Her throat tightened, and I knew I had stumbled on the problem. But then she was gone.
Damn that woman. I adjusted my belt and ran back to my wardrobe to finish dressing.
Emel needed to know. I ran to the guest tower and found her sitting up in the bed. Naked and as distracting as a pool in the desert. She pulled the bedding around her when she saw me.
“They’re here?” she asked. The horns blared on. Everywhere in Almulihi people were either cowering or crowding. I hoped they all heeded our warning: Stay home.
“Yes. Edala has gone to meet them.”
She scrambled out of bed and dressed quickly.
“Wait in Edala’s tower or mine. Guards will be the heaviest there,” I said.
She did not respond. She wrapped her hair in a long scarf, and pulled a dagger from a shelf, turning it in her hand a bit before tucking it into her waist band. She did not know how to wield a blade.
“You won’t need that,” I said, turning toward the stairs. The horns made me anxious. Though I wanted to stay with her and be the blade she felt she needed, I knew I must go.
“I will.”
“You’re not coming.”
Again she said nothing.
“Emel,” I said.
“Cover your face,” she said like a mother.
Exhaling, I wound my guthra across my face. It was best if I went unnoticed in the city. No regiment of guards would be permitted to follow me—they would die too easily should Kassim desire it—and I did not need bitter opportunists taking advantage of a lone king.
“Come on, then,” she said, slipping on her sandals and running down the steps out of the tower. Without another word, I followed her.
We found Azim in the weapon stores by the stables pointing this way and that as the guards were lined along the palace border. “She went that way,” he said to us and nodded in the direction of the river.
“On foot?”
He nodded.
With Emel at my back, I ran to the stables, barking at a stable boy to ready a horse. Farasa did not appreciate being rushed, so I was given a black mare. In a hurry, she was dressed—straps tightened, reins pulled—and I helped Emel onto her back before jumping on behind her.
The horns soon were a hum behind us. The shouts of people and the thundering of hooves overpowering them. Emel gripped the pommel tightly, head bent down, fearless as she squeezed her legs against the horse’s side.
As we neared the city’s edge, I understood what the palace sentinels must have seen, because I could smell it.
It brought back the horrors from what felt like so long ago—the palace on fire. Now, it was Almulihi. The street was hazy up ahead. Pulling Emel tight against me, I hurried the mare on.
Turning onto the smokey street—completely engulfed in flames—I pulled the reins. Orange blazes licked up the sides of shops and homes. People were fleeing or were being dragged away by others, unable to collect their possessions.
The mare was picking up her feet at the sight of the chaos. We dismounted, and I found a young woman who watched the destruction with fascinated horror.
Handing her the reins, I said, “Take her to the palace, and you will receive six dha.”
She looked between me and Emel, then beyond us at the fire, deciding if the coin was worth missing the spectacle. With a nod, she took the mare away.
The canal was behind us, and the people were already hauling water to throw onto the flames.
Emel edged toward the fiery street.
“Where are you going?”
“Firoz,” she said. “And Kahina. All her maps . . .”
Kahina? I looked at the street again.
We were in the baytahira, I realized. It looked different coming from this direction. It looked different without people crowding the streets. It looked different aflame.
Following her, I said. “Where is he?”
Before she could answer, water rushed down the street from behind us, nearly costing me my balance. It was at my feet, then ankles, then shins. Sons, what was happening?
“It is rising!” Emel said, terror ringing loud in her voice.
Behind us, the canal overflowed and surged down the street. Only the street of the baytahira. Several of those who had not gotten out of the water’s path fell to the ground, sliding along with the current.
Emel clasped my arm as we waded through the flood.
“Stay away!” a voice boomed, and understanding flooded me just as the water did the street.
Edala.
Magic.
She had come from the same direction we had, with a retinue of guards at her back who helped to disperse and guide the people away from the bizarre scene.
With invisible, impossibly powerful hands, she guided the water to the flames.
“Kassim!” she called out through the smoke and steam. “Stop hiding.”
“I am not hiding,” he said.
I could see him nowhere, but he sounded as if he was right beside us.
Then, a shadow blossomed like ink in water, and Kassim was in front of us. I edged in front of Emel.
“Why, brother?” Edala asked quietly, stepping toward him.
“If you have to ask, then you deserve death as much as he.” He nodded to me.
“Where is Zahar?” she asked.
“She doesn’t matter.”
“She does,” Edala said. “Does she hide somewhere safe while you risk yourself? I thought you were to be made king. Why should you die for her?”
“I have no intention of dying,” Kassim said.
“She should be here with you.”
“She is human. She would fall too easily.”
“Or does she simply want you to risk yourself, because she has plans of her own?”
I glanced at Edala, who crackled with pent up magic. Emel moved around me. It was bold of us to be there, and I regretted allowing her to come with me. We were like Zahar—too human, too easily felled.
Did Emel hope Masira would protect us? It was not a gamble I wanted to make. Carefully, I picked up the water on my fingertips, pressing it against my skin in silent prayer.
“Kassim, you will not survive this,” Edala said, now an arm’s length from him. “I can free you. Make you human again. You can atone for what you have done.”
“Atone? Tell me all that I have I done, Edala. There is so much even you don’t see. Too far I’ve gone for atonement.” His voice cracked. Was it rage or regret?
“Don’t you want your freedom?”
His eyes narrowed, fury pinning his gaze to Edala.
“You’re imprisoned,” she said.
“I am freer than I was before. I know you feel the same. We aren’t squashed under the thumb of some man who thinks he can control us because he fathered us.”
Some man. I bristled, listening to him disparage our father. The water was at my thighs now.
Kassim continued, sounding almost manic. “Must we all suffer for his mistake?”
“Suffer?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “Because you are not to be king, you think you suffer? None of us have suffered. Is being caged and tied to the will of another better? Sitting on the throne is not all drinks and dinners and comfortable chairs. It is exactly what you are. I am tied to the will of everyone else, constantly at their mercy. One hundred scimitars hang by threads above my head. Do you see nothing?”
He came toward me, the water slowing his steps. “You can only act brave with Emel at your side.” He searched behind me.
“Leave her out of this,” I said.
“You are weak. We both know you failed to protect Almulihi from my army. You had to beg an old woman to save it. To save you.”
His army? The people who attacked our home, who killed our entire family, who threw me into a vessel as a jinni, who made me the king of Almulihi . . . it was all Kassim.
Spots clouded my vision, dizzy with sickness and grief. Of course it was Kassim. That had always been a possibility, I knew, and yet here was the terrible truth. He wanted the throne, and he knew exactly how weak it had become. Father ill, soldiers complacent. Shame poured into me, sudden and suffocating. My family had destroyed my family. I turned to Emel to tell her to get far away from here.
But she was gone. I looked back to Kassim and Edala. My sister’s eyes were wide, her head reared back in horror as she understood that our family was gone because of Kassim. “You didn’t,” she whispered.
Kassim smiled, boastful and proud. “It was not hard to gather people to our cause.”
It was just the three of us standing in this strange, flooded street. Thank the Sons Nadia was not alive to see this. Never would I have thought being killed a mercy, but for her—to escape this—it was.
“There are those who felt like Almulihi should share its wealth, that the salt trade is unfair,” Kassim went on. “People who don’t want to work hard, prefer to steal what others worked for. They’re everywhere, it turns out. They came in droves to kill the weakened king, take the stone city.” He held his hands out with false shame. “It isn’t how I wanted it to happen, of course. Father never seemed to die, you know. I tried to wait, let it happen on its own—”
I stepped forward. No, no. Emel couldn’t have been right. “Let what happen?”
Edala raised a hand to her mouth, understanding.
The recipe for death in Zahar’s book. Emel had wondered if the healer had not only tried to get me to drink it, but my father, too. An inappropriate dose of the poison would explain his disease if he didn’t drink enough of it to die. If he had grown cautious after feeling ill from her tonic . . .
Kassim crossed his arms, the water at our hips. “If he had simply died, I could have taken you by sword and had the throne. But . . .” He shrugged, then nearly smiled.
Edala slammed her hands down to her sides, the water pushing away from us with a hot wind, and at once we were on dry ground. “She convinced you to kill your own father?” she shouted.
“She didn’t have to convince me! You knew it was unfair, said it yourself.” He waved his hands at her. “Even you said I would be best on the throne.”
I looked at Edala. She had thought so? Had all of my siblings thought of me as an imposter?
“No,” Edala began, her fingers sliding along her cheek. “Not like this, Kassim.” She hardened to stone. “So you killed father to become a king, and as your reward Zahar made you a slave.”
He shook his head. “Zahar will free me when he’s gone.” He nodded to me. “And then I’ll wear the crown.”
Edala said, “When will she free you? When she’s done using you?”
Where was Zahar? Surely she was not far. A wall of water spun around us as though Wahir himself guided the waves. The height of it grew until the maelstrom was nearly at my shoulders.
With fists still clenched, Edala said, “Because you were jealous, you killed our family. You are a monster, Kassim.” Her voice broke on his name, the sorrow slipping through. “You deserve to be put down as such.”
Kassim backed away, chains of fire forming in his hands. He flung the chain at me, but the heat dissipated before it touched, Edala deflecting it as if swatting a mosquito. The whole display so peculiar that I nearly forgot my own life, my home, was at risk.
“You wouldn’t kill me,” Kassim spat at her. “Your favorite brother.”
“I would kill a jinni who threatens my home.”
A flash of movement came from a rooftop.
Bent over the edge, watching us with a vicious grin on her face, was Zahar.