He didn’t wait to hear what Raif said. He stalked through the frozen tunnel, dimly lit by Raif’s chiaan as the boy followed, to where the other jinn stood near Nalia on the bank of a frozen lake. She looked up as Malek neared, but his eyes slid away before they could meet hers. One look at Nalia would shatter him. He was far too unhinged now, unsure of what he’d do next. Cry like a child, no doubt. The tears had burned.
“How many more bottles are we looking for?” Zanari asked no one in particular.
“We have eighteen hundred and fifty,” Anso said. “And we know for a fact that two thousand jinn disappeared after the City of Brass was built.”
“Are you ready?” Samar asked Nalia, coming to stand beside her.
“Yes,” she said.
Nalia kneeled next to the lake and set her hand against the thick slab of ice that covered the water. It cracked in two almost immediately, creating a large entrance to the dark, frigid world below. She stood and glanced at Samar.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” Samar said.
She grimaced. “Nor I.”
Nalia handed her coat to Zanari and stepped to the edge of the hole. Malek had seen the Marid gather the bottles several times now, but it never ceased to amaze him how their forms could become water and yet, when they stepped out of the lakes, they’d be fully clothed and not one hair on their head would be wet. He supposed it was similar to the magic of evanescence.
Samar gestured to Nalia with a grin. “Ladies first.”
She rolled her eyes and jumped in, letting out a very un–Nalia-like screech as her body hit the water. She disappeared under the surface and, seconds later, her head popped up.
“Fire and blood,” she said, gasping. She picked up a wayward chunk of ice and threw it out of the hole. “Get your ass in here, brother.”
Zanari laughed. “Boy am I glad to be a Djan right about now.”
Samar closed his eyes and jumped. Several expletives passed through his lips before he remained under the surface long enough to gather bottles.
Every few minutes one of them would come to the surface and deposit bottles onto the ice, then slip back into the arctic water. The others counted them before placing the vessels safely in the bags they all carried. It was nearly two hours before Nalia and Samar were through.
“Zanari, can you manifest us some tea?” Nalia asked.
“I’m on it, sister,” Zanari said.
Nalia’s lips were blue and she’d barely got the words past her chattering teeth. It was hard not to go to her, give her the Ifrit heat that lived inside him. Malek doubted very much that Nalia would ever suffer his touch again and so he stayed where he was, on the outskirts of the group.
Raif manifested a thick blanket and wrapped it around Nalia’s shoulders. She clutched at it with a murmured thanks, but deftly dodged his arms. Malek wondered what that was about, but only dimly. He’d forfeited the game: even if he had the sigil, Nalia would never be his. In fact, he’d order her as far away from him as possible.
“Two thousand!” Anso yelled.
Nalia clutched her cup of tea. “We got all of them?”
Anso nodded, beaming. “I doubt there are any more, but we should still keep an eye out, just in case.”
The Dhoma whooped and hollered, sounding out a tribal cry. They embraced one another and Noqril grabbed Nalia, spinning her around. Her tea flew out of her hand, but she threw back her head and laughed. Somehow, their victory had become hers, as well.
Malek turned and walked away from the celebration. He fished a headlamp out of the small rucksack he’d brought into the cave with him and walked until he could no longer hear their joy. This was his place, hugging the shadows, making the next move. The ice rippled overhead, as though he were just beneath the surface of a frozen sea. White turned to blue, then green. Mesmerizing.
There was a fork in the path.
Two roads diverged in a wood . . .
Short, dark tunnels and, he quickly realized, dead ends, both of them. Except. He drew closer to the wall at the end of the tunnel on his right. The rock jutted out of it, like thick, knotty pieces of coral, each knot twisting to a point. Eight points. He took another look at the peach rock, then stepped back to confirm what he had seen.
The sixth star.
Raif passed through the entrance at the end of the tunnel where Malek had found the star. His whole body was numb with cold after days in the ice cavern and he sighed gratefully as the temperature warmed considerably.
“Six down, two to go,” Zanari said. “Almost there, little brother. Almost there.”
He nodded. “We can’t find that godsdamned ring soon enough.” What was happening in Arjinna? He wished he could contact his mother, but hahm’alah didn’t work in the cave. Of course. Antharoe wouldn’t have wanted anyone outside to know how to get in. Hold on. Just a little longer. Maybe if he thought the words hard enough, his tavrai would feel them.
As soon as the last jinni stepped through the passageway, the cave crumbled behind them and the ice disappeared. Raif looked at the rock formation before him, groaning.
“We’ll never find this next star,” he muttered.
It was like being in the middle of a beehive. The cavern they were now in branched out into countless passages in all directions, each one accessible through a small arch. The arches were layered so that from the floor to the cave’s roof, it seemed as though there were hundreds of windows looking down at them. He craned his neck. He could scarcely see the stalactites that hung from above.
For the next several hours, the cavern was full of multicolored strands of evanescence as the jinn flitted from one cavern entrance to the next, marking each one they checked with pieces of glowing chalk. Some were no deeper than a few feet, only big enough for a child to lie down in. Others were entrances to long tunnels that led to dead ends or starless caverns. There were nearly a thousand arches to explore in all and it was slow, mind-numbing work.
Raif kicked at the wall of one particularly frustrating passage, cursing. He heard a low chuckle nearby. Raif whirled around, the hair on his neck standing on end. Haraja.
“Throwing a tantrum, brother?” said a familiar voice.
Raif let out a breath. “Noqril. Has anyone ever told you it’s unspeakably rude to be invisible without giving fair warning?”
“Yes.” Noqril’s form materialized before him. “But warning people takes all the fun out of it.” The Ifrit leaned against the wall, grinning. “Besides, you wouldn’t want me to tell Malek of my impending invisibility when the time comes to help you get the sigil, now would you?”
“Not unless you want him to put that ring on and make you his slave,” Raif said.
Noqril followed Raif back to the main cavern. “I don’t understand what you’re so worried about. Between me and the other Dhoma, the pardjinn doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Let’s just say he has an uncanny way of getting what he wants,” Raif said.
When he emerged in the airy central cavern, most of the others had given up their searching as well.
“We’ll look no more today.” Samar manifested a bottle of wine and held it up with a flourish. “We need to celebrate recovering all the bottles. It’s not savri, but—”
“—it’ll do,” finished Anso. The common refrain among jinn.
“I like the way you think, brother,” Raif said.
Noqril manifested a campfire with his Ifrit energy while the others set about preparing food. Malek sat outside the warmth of the circle, lying on his back and gazing into the darkness of the cavern’s ceiling. Raif wondered what the pardjinn was plotting. Two more stars. Raif would find out soon enough.
Nalia was still combing through the tunnels, but she joined the group once the jinn were settled around the fire and the bottle was making its rounds. There was an empty space beside him, but she chose to sit as far away as possible, on the other side of the fire. Raif knew Nalia would come back to him when she was ready. He would wait as long as i
t took, hundreds of years if need be.
But it was hard.
He caught her watching him from across the dancing flames. He smiled a little and she bit her lip and looked away. He took a large swig from the bottle before passing it on.
As the night wore on, Raif felt himself becoming more withdrawn, brooding as he stared at the flames. You’ll never grow old, Malek had said. Fearless heroes of doomed revolutions rarely do.
Raif felt the truth of those words, much as he didn’t want to. He’d fight like hell to stay alive as long as he could, but Raif couldn’t guarantee a future with Nalia. Even if he got the sigil, it didn’t make him invincible. There were far too many jinn who wanted to see him dead. And if he put that ring on, it’d be a different kind of death. Nalia might not ever forgive him for it. And Raif wasn’t sure he’d be able to forgive himself. Could he bind every jinni in Arjinna to his will, even if it was for the greater good?
Noqril manifested a zhifir, a traditional jinn instrument that sounded like a cross between a violin and sitar. The sound it made as he played was rich and mournful, a beautiful rush of sound that Raif never would have thought the vexing Ifrit capable of.
The song was familiar, an ancient melody known to all jinn. It was home wrapped in weeping notes. Each time Noqril swept the bow across the strings, the responding note seemed to draw deep from the well of longing within Raif. He had been gone too long from Arjinna. He wanted a glimpse of the dawn sun glinting off the snow-capped tops of the Qaf Mountains and to bathe in the moonlight of the Three Widows. Yet without Nalia, it’d be meaningless. Without the ring, it’d be impossible.
Samar turned to Raif. “Why do you fight, Raif Djan’Urbi?”
The question caught him off guard. He should have an answer—a good one. The right one. But nothing came to his lips.
“I don’t know anymore,” he said, surprised.
Nalia stood and moved away from the fire, slipping into one of the long tunnel passages. Raif’s eyes followed her.
“That,” Samar said, pointing to Nalia, “is what you fight for. Caring for your realm, your people—that will only get you so far. Victory comes when you fight to save the ones you love. You will stop at nothing for them. It’s a good strategy, no?”
Raif remembered the last conversation he’d had with Dthar Djan’Urbi, on the sand dunes beside the Arjinnan Sea the day before his father died. For all his powerful rhetoric and the fierceness with which he fought in battle, Raif’s father had said he fought because he wanted his family to be free, because he could no longer bear seeing Shaitan overlords whip and demean his wife and children. His father hadn’t died for the revolution—he’d died for his family. And lived for them. Nalia was wrong: Love wasn’t a weakness. It was love that had given the serfs a voice for the first time in thousands of years. It was love that had returned their dignity.
Raif clapped Samar on the back. “Thank you, brother.”
“I’m just telling you what I see.”
As Raif moved toward the tunnel Nalia had disappeared into, he could hear Noqril begin a new song, a field worker’s tune Raif knew by heart. He remembered singing it as a little boy, when he was still a serf who’d had to labor on his overlord’s land. He could see the scarred backs of the male jinn, shirtless and dripping with sweat as they swung their scythes. He whispered the words as his pace quickened.
I love you as the earth loves rain
Without you I will die
36
THE TUNNEL WAS A WIDE-OPEN MOUTH AND NALIA LET it swallow her.
The darkness was a comfort and a shield. Here, no one would see what she knew must be written so plainly on her face: she’d never wanted anyone or anything more than Raif Djan’Urbi. When he looked at her, she lost all sense of herself, of time and space and everything under the sun because he was her sun. The only light in her life, the only thing that could fight the endless night inside her.
Nalia stayed in the darkness just inside the tunnel, listening, but Noqril’s next song had only made the feeling building inside her worse. It was a favorite of hers, one that caused her chiaan to rush faster through her veins. She remembered late summer nights sitting on her balcony, when everyone in the palace was asleep except for the servants. In the heat of an Arjinnan midnight, they would convene in the garden, playing music and singing in soft, rich voices. This song, and others. How many hours had she spent in the bottle, humming that very tune? Sometimes, it was the only thing that kept her sane.
The last notes of the song faded as Nalia moved deeper into the tunnel. It was too much, this sudden longing for home that filled her, this need for Raif and Arjinna, as though the two were somehow one and the same.
She kept reaching for the fury, the desire to kill Calar, because the ache in her hurt less when she thought about the vengeance due her. But the rage wasn’t there like she thought it would be. Revenge is what she wanted, what Bashil deserved. And yet all Nalia felt was an overwhelming grief: for Bashil, for the land, for all the people of Arjinna, and for the slaves on the dark caravan.
In the darkness of the tunnel, in that place without light or hope, Nalia realized that she didn’t want to fight. She wanted to build. To plant and grow and nurture. She wanted long, uneventful days. She wanted time. But to get any of those things, she’d have to fight and fight hard.
And she wasn’t sure how much fight was left in her.
So she walked. As far away as she could, as fast as she could. Nalia didn’t know where she was going, didn’t care. All she knew was that she couldn’t sit across the fire from Raif any longer or hear songs that made her blood cry with homesickness.
Raif. Oh gods, Raif.
She was so close to giving in to him. And she couldn’t.
What the two of you have—it’s reckless.
This was a fact. Irrefutable.
But he wasn’t making it easy. Every chance he got, Raif reminded her in some way that she was never far from his mind—a whispered kindness, a light touch on her arm, eyes that never looked away. Nalia’s fingertips slid along the rough rock and her mind conjured his laborer’s hands, how they were surprisingly gentle when he touched her and how his chiaan whispered to her own.
Reckless.
Hadn’t she been reckless when she set Calar free in the palace dungeon all those years ago? Reckless mercy turned into the ruin of her realm.
Nalia’s hand fell from the rock. These thoughts were pointless, little tortures she came to again and again. Nalia didn’t deserve Raif, not after what she’d done to Kir. Not after her very existence had snuffed out Bashil’s short life.
She pushed on through the darkness, as though physical distance from Raif could somehow erase him, little by little, from her heart. Up ahead, the tunnel widened and as she rounded a corner, she stopped, her breath catching as a faint aquamarine glow emanated from further along the passage. She curled her fingers into her palms, extinguishing her chiaan, then she slid her dagger into her hand and crept closer, hugging the wall. Her skin prickled as she imagined stumbling into Haraja’s lair or some other as yet unseen monster.
The light pulsed, growing brighter the closer she got. Now Nalia could see that the tunnel opened up into a small cavern. She raised a hand, ready to beam her chiaan at anything that came toward her. She pointed her dagger outward, and its jade tip caught the light. Then she lunged forward.
Nalia gasped, her hands falling to her sides, any thought of foes completely forgotten in the face of the incandescent beauty before her. The entire ceiling and walls of the cavern were covered with glowworms, thousands of them. They looked like sea-green fireflies or the phosphorescence that floated in the Pacific at night. A small pool of water took up most of the cavern, reflecting the ethereal light of the creatures. The water was pristine, so clear that she could see the pool’s sandstone bottom. A low, rocky ledge covered with thick tufts of moss ringed the pool. It glimmered, verdant.
This was a place the gods had touched.
Nalia kick
ed off her thick hiking boots and pulled off her socks. She stepped onto the moss and let the soft cloud of vegetation caress her tired feet. The energy of the plants and stone grounded her, as though Earth were holding her in the palm of its hand.
“If you had three wishes, what would you choose?”
She turned, startled. Raif stood a few feet away, leaning against the rocky wall of the cavern’s entrance. She didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.
“I’ve never thought about it,” she said, recovering. She looked away from him, her heart pressing, pressing, bursting. It wanted free. As though it knew it belonged in his hands.
Nalia dipped a toe in the water. It was warm, like a bath. “Everything I would wish for is impossible—the dead to come back to life, the coup to never have happened. For Malek to know nothing of the sigil.” She sighed. “Wishes are for humans.”
“Then what is left for the jinn?”
Nalia gazed at the glowworms’ impossible beauty. “Hope,” she whispered, turning to him.
He smiled, a secret hiding somewhere inside him. “Hope,” he repeated. “And what are your three hopes?” he asked.
“For the war to end. For Calar to die. For . . .” Her eyes slid to his, purple to green, heart to heart. “For you.”
Raif walked toward her, slowly. “That would be a waste of a third hope. I’m already yours.”
He placed his hands on her arms and drew her to him. Nalia’s body obeyed, even though her mind screamed at it to stop.
Selfish, reckless, selfish selfish selfish.
“Nalia, I know you think by keeping me away that you’re somehow protecting me or punishing yourself or saving the realm. But when we’re not together, when things are unwell between us . . . I’m lost. Utterly. It’s all I can think about, all I care about. That’s no way to command soldiers and win a revolution. You have to agree, it’s not a very good strategy.”
“Then I’m a distraction, something that keeps you from—”