Had the weather changed, or had Edala’s choice stirred the sky? The sun was gone, and dark, gray clouds blanketed the blue. Were I home in the desert, I would be celebrating, waiting for rain. Now, it felt wrong. It felt, somehow, sad.
The wind whipped around us as we walked down the dock. It was in disrepair, used only by lone fishermen and lovers who wanted to stand above the sea. Today, none were out. Was it the impending rain? Was it magic?
Madinat Almulihi was quiet behind us. Had Saalim found Zahar? Was he unharmed?
Tamam and Edala reached the end of the dock. I stayed behind, feeling like an intruder already. Their backs were toward me as they stared out to the horizon. The wind gusting so hard the waves were flecked in white.
Tamam edged closer and wrapped his arms around her, their heads bent together. I saw his mouth move, whispering into her ear. She nodded her head, then pressed her face into his neck. Her shoulders shook, and he pulled her to him more tightly.
My throat clenched so hard it ached. I remembered myself in the oasis, grasping at the sand where Saalim had disappeared, remembering too well the pain of a forever goodbye. The gutting, scraping, emptying out of one’s soul.
I could not look away.
Their lips pressed together, soft, delicate, then harder, desperate. Tamam’s face twisted into grief.
Finally, Edala called. “Emel.”
When I reached them, she turned to me, pressing her lips to the small puzzle box that a young boy’s hands had once pulled apart to hide his treasures. That boy would die with his box of secrets. That man, too. With infinite tenderness, she gave Kassim’s vessel to me.
Edala’s gaze met mine. “Thank you, sister. My brother has found his life’s fortune in you.” She pressed her lips to my brow.
Bending over, she crafted a small brass basin from nothing. It was filled with wooden pellets soaked in oil. It roared aflame. “When it is done, place him here,” Edala said, her fingers caressing the edges of the basin like a baby’s cradle. She went to Tamam and wrapped her arms around his neck. Like she weighed nothing, he lifted her into his arms. One last time, she whispered into his ear. He curled her into his chest, eyes shut tight as he pressed his cheek against her, kissing her temple, her neck, her mouth.
Suddenly, her head fell back, her arm dropped away from her.
“What?!” I rushed toward them.
“She sleeps,” Tamam said quietly, his voice trembling. “She will feel nothing but the waves.”
Moving as if the world had been stilled, Tamam went to his knees, then seated himself on the edge of the dock. I heard the rumble of his whispers as he held her to him. Was it a prayer or a goodbye? Then, he dropped Edala into the sea. The splash too small, like a stone had fallen.
Edala’s eyes were closed, her hair flowing out beside her, the robes billowing at the surface of the sea as if trying to stay afloat.
Tamam flinched as if to jump in and grab her. I put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.
When the fabric could buoy her weight no longer, Edala sank into the green sea. I was not sure if I imagined it, but her mouth seemed to lift into the smallest smile.
When I could see her no more, I went to the flames, fearing they would die with their creator. There were things I thought to say to Kassim, thought to whisper to the vessel about how he could have chosen differently. Could have chosen joy over jealousy, satisfaction over pride. But in many ways he was as broken as Sabra had been. He had made the wrong choices, and it was not my place to punish him in his final moments.
“Go to the goddess,” I whispered, then tossed the box into the flames. It clanked loudly against the bronze basin.
Nothing happened. What if Edala had been wrong?
But then I saw the edges of the vessel bend, the carvings melting into something smooth, the sharp corners dulling. The entire thing collapsed into itself, glowing orange like metal poured for forging. It spread through the wooden pellets, the flames reaching higher and higher as it burned.
Perhaps I thought that there would be some final cry, something dramatic and frightening as Kassim was killed, as a conduit of Masira was cut from the goddess. But there was no epic end, no final signal that it was done.
The fire died away as the metal was melted completely. When no flames were left, when there was only smoke and charred wood with tendrils of silver between them, I reached for the basin. It was cold, despite the flames just having died. I poured the contents into the water, the waves of the sea carrying him back to Masira.
Tamam glanced only briefly at the ash and silver as they spread over the ocean’s surface before looking back to where Edala had disappeared.
I left him there, watching the waves that took his lover, and returned to the city.
As I stepped across the dock, I considered how so much life could be lost with so little fanfare. No bang of a drum, no explosion of firepaint. Only the whisper of the wind, the snuff of a flame. No one knew, except those who had witnessed it. How could two lives so big end so small?
A guard rushed up to me as I ascended the steps of the palace. “The king waits for you in the throne room.” Light rain speckled his shoulders with dark drops.
As soon as I entered the room, I stopped. At least one hundred people were crammed in front of Saalim on his throne.
At first I could not hear his address. I could think of nothing except that he was whole and unharmed in front of me. I wanted to run and cling to him. Make him promise me that we would never part.
Slowly, his words seeped in. Without using his name, he told them of Kassim—what he looked like, what he might do. He advised that they should not approach him and to report to the guard if they saw him. Then he described Edala, told them her name. She was a friend and could be approached if help was needed.
He had no notion of all that had transpired. Edging around the room, I tried to catch his attention. Finally, he saw me.
His speech paused for a moment—none would have noticed—and his shoulders eased ever so slightly. Then he said, “If there are questions, Nassar will answer them.” Not concerned by the confusion left in his wake, he stepped away and through a heavily guarded hallway. I followed his trail of soldiers and servants into the atrium.
Saalim broke through the tangle of people and was in front of me.
“Saalim!” I cried, running to him, uncaring of who watched.
Tamam’s farewell to Edala was burned in my mind. It brought with it the memory of feeling I had lost Saalim forever.
Saalim, too, was surprised by my urgency as I went to him, and when he saw my face he went rigid.
“What has happened?”
I shook my head. “Not here.”
“A moment,” Saalim said to his retinue of staff, taking me to the vacant hall adjacent.
He pulled me to a stone column of the balcony archway, stopping just before we were under the rain.
“Where is Edala? Kassim?” he asked quickly.
I stared off at the city, smudged by the rain. I could just make out the sea, docks tapering off into the haze. Squinting, I tried to see if Tamam was still there, but I saw nothing.
Saalim said, “Tell me, Emel.” His urgency told me he was beginning to understand, beginning to fear.
“Kassim is dead,” I said.
“How?”
I told him. How Edala and I magicked here to take the vessel before Zahar could, how Edala became his master, how at first he would not burn. I talked and talked, telling more details than necessary, I realized. Anything so that I did not have to tell him why Kassim was able to be killed.
“Emel,” Saalim said as if he understood my sorrow. “I am sorry that you had to see that.” I heard the tightness in his words, the bend as he fought sadness.
I dropped my eyes to the ground. He thought me sad because his brother had died.
Oh, Saalim.
He continued. “There was no other choice. His anger was the death of him.”
Anger fueled by the healer. “Where is Zahar?” I asked.
He gave a small smile, his eyes glinting like his crown. “We found her on her way here. She’s in the prison now.”
“What will you do with her?”
“I thought to ask you.”
“Ah.” What would be a fitting punishment for the woman who had dismantled Saalim’s family, was the cause of death for so many? Weighing death with imprisonment, exile with isolation, it seemed a decision too great to allow for my opinion.
Saalim remembered suddenly. “Where is Edala?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I cursed Edala for making me do this, for not being brave enough to face him herself. Finding the letter I had tucked away, I handed it to him with a shaking hand.
The shadows on his face darkened as he took the letter. The parchment crumpled in his hand. He did not bother to open it.
“Damnit!” he shouted, the word splitting as he spoke it. “Damnit,” he said again, striding back and forth. He sucked a breath in. There was a muffled cry, and he threw the letter to the ground.
After several long moments of pacing, he said tightly, “She is gone.”
“Yes,” I said, wanting so much to turn away from the grief in his voice.
“She will not return.”
“She said it was the only way.”
He put his arms against the wet stone column, and hung his head between them.
Silently, I retrieved the letter and again stuffed it away. When he was ready, I would have it for him. “I am sorry,” I said finally, pressing my hand to his back.
Wordlessly, he turned to me and pulled me to him, clinging to me as we hid from the others behind the stone.
That night, after the city had been reassured that the threat was gone, while the guards were sent through the streets to find any lingering members of the Darkafa and people set to work clearing the street of the baytahira, I found my way to the prison.
The cells were beneath the palace, a place I had not yet gone. It grew cold as I took the steps down, and I could not pull my cloak any more tightly around me. The sounds and scents from below hit me simultaneously. Unwashed bodies, excrement and urine. Clamor of metal, demanding shouts. I nearly turned back, feeling dinner rise.
Though the narrow hallway was poorly lit, I could see servants carrying meals to and fro. Guards stood by, watching the fluttering servants, unlocking and locking doors for them.
Another wave of foulness hit me like a wall. A door paneled with interlocking wood and metal stood to my left, and inside I could just make out the shape of a figure on the ground, bent over what I assumed was his meal. Another chamber had two women inside, screeching at each other. A guard ran up to the door and banged the flat of his sword against it, startling me as much as the prisoners.
Perhaps it would be better to return when Saalim could spare a guard to escort me. Or maybe—
“Emel?” a woman asked, pausing in front of me with a tarnished silver bowl filled with stew. I recognized her from the kitchens and felt ashamed I did not know her name.
The smell of yeast and spices wafting off of her was like shade on a summer’s day. “I hoped to speak with a prisoner,” I said, moving close.
“Ask him.” The woman pointed behind her with her heel, then carefully moved past me.
The guard was facing a cell door, speaking quietly to someone. As I neared, I could tell he was soft-spoken, mild-mannered. Certainly not someone I would expect to manage prisoners. He stopped his conversation when I was beside him. He was surprisingly young for his station.
“It is not often that a woman like you finds herself in this part of the palace.”
Like me? He obviously had no idea who I was. Living the past few days inside the palace, wearing the fine clothes and rich oils, conveyed more than I realized.
“I need to meet with one of your prisoners.”
“I might be able to arrange that. Who?” The way his eyes creased, the shape of his nose, the cut of his beard all nagged me with familiarity.
“Zahar, the healer.”
He nodded. Though his face was shadowed in the dim hallway, I could see that his expression softened. “I wondered. She is this way.”
He held out his arm, directing me down the hall, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t help staring at him. Where had I seen him before? “What is your name?”
“Rafal.”
I paused. It was impossible that he was a younger version of the storyteller. “I knew a Rafal.”
A little sadly he said, “My father?”
“Your father?”
“Mapmaker. We used to travel all over together to create his maps.”
“The storyteller?”
“Yes!” He smiled so broadly that I forgot we were in a prison with stale air and unfriendly faces. “I played the drums.”
“Yes!” I laughed. “I saw you! I thought you were familiar. But why are you . . .” I looked around.
Rafal’s smile fell. “After my father died, I needed work. So many from my mother’s neighborhood wound up here. Many unjustly, I think.”
“Your mother.”
“Kahina? You might have heard of her. Some might say her reputation is soiled. I think otherwise.”
“The proprietress of the baytahira?” I gasped. “Rafal was her husband?” Saalim had not been sure. My head spun, thinking of the maps on her walls, the strange and beautiful illustrations I saw in her home.
“I chose to work here,” his son continued, “to see if I might make it better for the prisoners. Those that perhaps don’t deserve . . . this.” He spoke quietly so none could hear him over the clamor. “Does that make sense?”
I remembered when I was imprisoned by my father for the whole cycle of a moon. How unjust it felt. If it had not been for my brother—and Saalim—my imprisonment might have killed me.
“I understand completely,” I said, smiling. Stepping in the direction he had indicated, Rafal followed behind.
Toward the end of the hall, he began muttering about new prisoners over here, then peered through a gap in the door.
“She’s here,” he said. “Zahar, would you allow a visitor?” Holding his ear against the door, he nodded, then inserted a key into the lock. With an easy push, the door swung in, and he gestured inside.
“I’ll wait here. The door will be unlocked, so come out when you’re finished.”
Rafal swung the door closed behind me and what little light had bled in was gone. It was nearly dark, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw Zahar sitting on a mat in the corner, the same woman with smooth skin and black hair who had tried to take my life the same day.
“I imagine it gives you great pleasure to find me here,” Zahar said once the door was closed.
“It does,” I said after I had surveyed the space. There was no window, so was it always this dark?
Zahar was quiet.
“Did you expect me to deny it?” I asked.
“What do you want?”
“To understand.”
“Explain yourself.” Zahar spoke slowly. I imagined that even if she had no interest in seeing me, talking with me provided at least something by way of entertainment for her.
“They know what I can do,” she said. “The food they’ve given me, the things in this room. Nothing I can use.”
For magic.
“Saalim has asked me what I am to do with you.”
“What have you planned?”
“I haven’t decided. It is why I came. I still don’t understand everything. Tell me the whole story, Zahar.”
“Since I’ve nothing better to do.” She stretched out her legs. “My mother only had two children. Daughters, of course. I was the youngest, so it was Tahira who was to ensure our parents could live comfortably until death. We were not poor, but we were not wealthy either.
“They pulled together a fine gift for any man of high status to consider. But then the sea royals came through, and my sister captured the attention of their king. We thought nothing of it—just another man looking for an evening companion—but two moons later she confessed she had not bled.
“My mother knew that if she ended the pregnancy, she could still be wed. Tahira would hear nothing of it. She wanted the baby. She loved the king.”
Anger simmered beneath her words.
“So she left to find him. My family looked to me to take on the burden, but you have seen my hips—narrow as a boy’s. My feet are big . . . it doesn’t matter. I would never serve in my sister’s place.
“I followed her to Almulihi. I planned to bring her back.”
When Zahar finally found her, she was nearly ready to have the child, and King Malek had already wed the Hayali princess Kena. The king had known of Tahira’s pregnancy by the time Zahar arrived. He promised he would raise the child as if it were the queen’s, and Tahira could see the child grow happily and comfortably. She only could not meddle in the upbringing. Tahira agreed.
On the fall equinox, Saalim was born.
Zahar tried to bring her sister home. Her son would be fine, she said, there was nothing more she could do. But her sister would not leave. She wished to live and serve at the palace, but the king refused, worried that it placed her too close to Saalim.
“The king did not know how good my sister was.” Each word, Zahar spat like poison. “She would never have said a word to Saalim that gave her away. She just wanted to see her boy.”
The separation from her son consumed her, and she would spend nights sitting on the palace steps, staring at the windows instead of sleeping. There was nothing Zahar could do to convince her to leave, so Zahar worked to become the palace healer. If Tahira could not watch Saalim grow, at least Zahar could. She thought it would please her sister.
At first, it worked. Tahira was thrilled with every word of news, every token of Saalim’s that Zahar gave her. Tahira carved wood into little soldiers that Zahar would give to Saalim. Stories of his joy delighted Tahira. Saalim was raised well, and this, too, pleased Tahira.
But it could not last, and soon, she grew jealous. Zahar tried to temper it, tried to bring her more things, lead Saalim out with errands, but it was no use. In her despondence, Tahira grew distant.
“I lost the only sister I had. The only family that remained.” She did not know where her parents had gone, only that they had long ago left their caravan.
“One morning, Tahira was not at the palace steps. I searched everywhere and could not find her. Kahina was a friend of Tahira’s, see, so I went to her. She had housed her and provided her with small work. Kahina told me she sent her away. Away! Kahina said Tahira suffered watching her son from a distance. Unable to share in his life. She said Tahira needed to leave for her health, her sanity. And my sister listened to her! She did not even say goodbye to me.” Zahar’s voice broke. “Here I was, in this city I cared nothing for, serving people I despised for family who had gone.”
There was a long silence
Finally, Zahar said, “The king got what he deserved.”
“Do you realize that you still have family? That Saalim is your family?”
She spat. “He is no family of mine.”
“You hate him because of the king’s blood he carries? But he is also your sister. He, too, is a salt chaser. You and he share blood, but instead of cherishing all the ways he was like you, you focused on the ways he was not. You destroyed everything.” Were Tahira’s eyes the same gold color? Did she have high cheekbones, too?
“I did only what Malek deserved!” Desperate, she clawed at the past.
“When did you realize that most of the mistakes were not your sister’s, but your own?” I asked. Zahar had never needed to leave her family to force Tahira to do something she did not want. She had never needed to destroy the possibility for a friendship with her sister’s son.
There was a long silence. Then, “Have you decided how you will be rid of me?”
“I have not.”
She scoffed. “It matters not.” She leaned against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “I flew as a bird all over this desert. If I could, I would live that life again and again.” She was far away now. “Do you know what the sea looks like from above? Flat, almost smooth but for the finest wrinkles in the surface. Do you know what your village looked like from above?”
I could not see her eyes, but I felt as if they bored into me.
“A faceted gem.”
My breath hitched.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I watched you. When I realized Saalim was there, I followed him.
“I thought I would stay there forever, watching ahiran traipse to the healer to make the decision my sister should have made. But it was better than being a pathetic cricket. It was better than this. I am so tired . . .”
Edala had been right about everything. I was reeling. Zahar had seen me? I tried to remember that day Raheemah and I had gone to the healer’s. Two birds were posted on the entrance to his home. One, a brown griffon.
“I worried when the healer said you were marked,” she said. “Still, I could not believe that one would free a jinni.
“I thought I would be stronger when I returned to my human form, but he was freed so soon. And then you landed in my home as my apprentice as though Masira herself had placed you there. I wonder if perhaps she did.”
“You hoped to turn me against Saalim.”
“I hoped you would see that he was a spoiled brat. That you would feel less protective over him.”
“He changed because of you.” Everything he was now came of who he had been as a jinni. Even if he remembered none of it, the hardships of being a slave to another had been carried with him into this life. Unwillingly, Zahar had made him a better king.
“He slept on a salt mine and appreciated none of it.”
Unable to listen to her vehemence any longer, I stood.
“What will you do with me?” she asked.
“Return you home.”