Freedom's Slave

  Kes had never liked the Cauldron. He’d lived there since he was a child, brought to the ebony stronghold after he lost his family. Built entirely of shimmering volcanic rock, the Cauldron got its name from its location above the volcano’s caldera. Unlike the other volcanos in Ithkar, Ifrit chiaan kept the fiery mountain from erupting so that the castle could be built over it. A still lake of lava filled the crater, covered by a thick layer of steam that pooled over the edges so that the Cauldron seemed to be smoking day and night. It was an improbable structure, held up by stilts fused to the rim of the volcano and towering over Ithkar’s eastern border, close to the setting sun and buffeted by the harsh, dry winds of the volcanic plain. The sun rose over the palace in Arjinna and fell when it reached the Cauldron. The metaphoric implications of this had never been lost on Kes.

  The sun had risen hours ago—between the sunlight and the Cauldron’s fire, the heat was nearly unbearable. Kes found himself longing for the cool halls of the Ghan Aisouri palace, the sweet winds that blew through its delicate arches. There was nothing delicate or sweet about Ithkar. In the distance, Mount Ravnir, the largest of the volcanos that dotted the ashy plains, was spitting fire into the sky. Lava burst from its circular top, flowing into the lake bed surrounding it. Other volcanos simply belched black sulphuric smoke into the sky, while still others rumbled ominously. This was the land of fire and blood, shadows and terror. A beautiful nightmare.

  He’d be happy never to see it again.

  Kes turned from the plains and made his way across the Cauldron’s open-air courtyard that stood before the entrance to the castle, the wind so strong he had to brace himself against an onyx pillar or be thrown over the edge and into the fiery lake itself or, even farther, into the moat of lava that flowed at the base of the volcano. He hadn’t forgotten the way the wind clawed in Ithkar, filling his nostrils with the scent of sulphur. He wanted the lush fields and forests of the south, protected by the mighty Qaf from Ithkar’s misery. It wasn’t until Kes had moved to Arjinna that he realized just how terrible Ithkar had been. How cruel it had been for the Ghan Aisouri to banish an entire caste to this hateful land. For this reason alone, he was glad the Ghan Aisouri were dead.

  The heavy double doors swung inward as he approached, and Kes stepped into the entryway, cooler than the outdoors but warm enough to keep Ifrit chiaan in balance. The hall was lined with the skulls of long-dead enemies. Fires blazed along the wall, a torch on either side every few feet. Kes ran his fingers over the flames of the one nearest him as he awaited Calar. The fire’s energy coursed through him, refreshing.

  He heard the empress before he saw her, the heeled boots she wore every day cutting across the stone, like an axe to a chopping block.

  “They’re ready,” she said as soon as she saw him, breathless, her ruby eyes alight. She wore a glittering black kaftan with red stitching at the neck. “They’re finally ready.”

  Kes felt his horror at what she’d just said in the pit of his stomach, an oozing, living thing that had grown inside him like a tumor these past three years. He’d begged Ravnir, the patron god of the Ifrit, for this mad experiment to fail, but either he had refused to listen or Mora, the goddess of death who Calar had been cavorting with, was more powerful. Kes tried to muster up some enthusiasm, but Calar scowled, his reaction too slow for her pleasure.

  Gods and monsters, Kesmir, he thought to himself. Get it together. He was slipping. It was getting harder and harder to feign his allegiance to her. She’d see through him before he’d changed a damn thing.

  “I’m sorry, was the fact that I created hundreds of soldiers who cannot die not impressive enough for you?” she said.

  Calar’s hands shook, ever so slightly. It had been happening more and more now, these little tremors, cracks in her strength. This ignited both sorrow and hope in him, dueling emotions that he would never be able to resolve.

  “My love, you know how I feel about what creating these creatures has cost you,” he said, forcing himself to draw closer to her. Not a total lie. If she read his mind right now, she would see his concern over the toll this dark magic took on her.

  Calar awarded him with a small smile and took the hand he offered her, mollified. “Do you remember the night we made love right in this very hallway?” she said.

  “Of course.” The smile he gave her this time was real, not for the Calar before him, but for the one on that night so long ago. “I distinctly remember the scent of burned hair.”

  She laughed, the sound echoing in the silent caverns of the Cauldron. “I hadn’t even realized it was on fire until the guards were throwing water on us.”

  “Your father was furious. He threatened to throw me into the moat,” Kes said.

  “He threatened to throw everyone into the moat.”

  Kes had always been terrified of her father, and had not grieved at all when the Aisouri did away with him. Calar had learned her cruelty at the knee of that necrophiliac shirza who delighted in dark atrocities. Along with the Ash Crones, he’d molded Calar’s power, whittling away at the good in her until, finally, the Calar Kes had fallen in love with had disappeared altogether.

  She swept through the Cauldron, its dark interior even darker now that the bulk of her staff was in the Aisouri palace. He pointed to the intricate tapestry that ran the length of the wall off the council room they’d planned the coup in.

  “When do you imagine this will be finished?” he asked.

  The tapestry told the story of the Ifrit in garnet thread against a black velvet background. The earliest days, when they were a powerful tribe among the jinn. The war with the Aisouri that resulted in Ifrit banishment and the beginning of Aisouri rule. Centuries carving out a life in Ithkar—if it could even be called that. The last panel showed the beginning of the dark caravan. A wizened jinni sat in a room off the hallway, painstakingly working on the final tableau: the coup and Calar’s coronation.

  “Oh, not for a year, I’d say,” Calar said. “He tried using chiaan but it simply didn’t come out right. Some things you have to do the hard way, I guess.”

  Kes thought of his secret meetings in Thatur’s nest at the top of an impossibly tall elder pine in a grove near the coast. Learning to build a wall in his mind that would keep Calar out was like creating this tapestry. It required intense concentration and careful attention to detail. It had to be done the hard way.

  She motioned for a nearby guard. “Take a torch and help us downstairs,” she said.

  He followed Calar into the Cauldron’s depths, a labyrinthine series of cells, both dungeon and lab. They didn’t speak and he wasn’t sure if it was because they had nothing to say to each other or too much. Silence, he’d learned, was best.

  For years Calar’s father had been working on his shadow army, but his attempts had had little success. It wasn’t until the coup that Calar had been able to garner the power necessary to create her monsters.

  The room is locked from the inside. Only Calar, Kesmir, and the matriarch of the Ash Crones, Morghisi, are present. The dead bodies of the royal caste lie in piles, where Haran and his executioners left them after being ordered to contain the civilian population. Kesmir wonders if this room is what the underworld smells like: a butcher’s wet dream.

  “Has anyone been in here since they died?” Calar asks.

  Kesmir shrugs. “Who knows? It’s been total chaos.”

  Morghisi narrows her eyes at him. They are as black as the tar gardens in Ithkar. “Can you be a little more specific for your empress, boy?”

  He stiffens. Why did Calar have to keep such awful company? “Haran and the others left an hour ago—that is all I know.”

  Later, much later, Kesmir will realize that the hour between Haran’s leaving and Calar’s arriving with Morghisi had been precious indeed: those minutes had enabled Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh to be “rescued” by a servant, a notorious slave trader Calar would later execute herself.

  “Is it too late?” she asks, turning to where Morghisi
has placed thin white stones over the eyes of each Aisouri.

  Before answering, the crone rests her palm over the stone on the nearest body, muttering in a language Kesmir has never heard. It sounds evil, even to his ears: crushed bones and dark teeth glinting in the night. The crone lifts her hand. The rocks now glow with dark amethyst light, pulsing with life.

  “No, My Empress,” Morghisi says in her reedy voice, “it is not too late.”

  Before the guard pushed open a door at the end of the underground passageway, Calar turned to Kes and slipped a gold chain over his neck. A familiar white stone dangled from it. The yaghin had been set into a disk of gold so that it looked more like a strange piece of jewelry than a dark magical object. Calar, he now saw, had taken a similar one and placed it around her own neck.

  “Why do I need to wear this?” he asked.

  She smiled, a carnal upturn of the lips that made him shiver. “You’ll see.”

  The guard stood beside the door, fear radiating off him, a stench that turned the air sour. “Is there . . . is there anything else I can do for you, My Empress?” His voice shook and Kes wondered just what exactly had been going on here.

  “One more thing, if you will,” Calar said.

  She drew an elaborate key from the pocket of her kaftan.

  “Open the door.” She reached out and grabbed the torch from his hand.

  Her eyes shone, greedy, and the flames danced in their crimson depths. The guard took the key with a shaking hand. Whatever was about to happen, Kes knew it wouldn’t be good for the guard. The jinni turned and threw Kes a desperate look, a cornered animal. Kes’s stomach turned and he forced his face into the mask of cool detachment that had kept him alive all these years.

  “Your empress has commanded you to open the door, swine,” he said. “So open it.”

  Calar leaned closer to Kes and rested her head on his shoulder for a moment. She loved him this way: cold and cruel.

  The guard turned the key in the lock and the door swung inward.

  “In you go,” Calar said. He reached for the torch and she shook her head. “There’s no need for that.”

  The guard’s hand dropped and he moved forward into the pitch-black room, his steps reluctant, a jinni walking to his execution. As Kes’s eyes adjusted, he could see that the room wasn’t dark as in the absence of light. The space writhed, the darkness a living thing that pulsed. It smelled of death, like a battlefield. Calar pulled Kes into the room with her and shut the door behind them.

  “My Empress?” the guard said, his voice barely a whisper. Naked, unabashed fear.

  “Sahai,” Calar whispered in the old tongue. Awake.

  The whirling mass of shadows instantly broke up into individual columns of onyx evanescence, conscious energy that sought to feed its hunger. A hundred screams pierced the air, distinct and somehow one at the same time. A chorus of terror. Kes forced himself to stand still as the shadows descended on them.

  Calar turned toward him, her eyes the only light, a terrible beacon. “It’s the sound of their victims’ screams,” she shouted above the agonized wails. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  He didn’t bother to attempt an answer. It was all he could do to keep from running from the cell, screaming himself.

  Though the shadows had no form, the smokelike substance of each creature made its intention felt. Nausea overcame Kes as the swirls attempted to feed on him, but the yaghin around his neck began to glow, a dull pulse that repelled the creatures.

  The guard, however, was not so lucky. He howled as the shadows surrounded him, their substance strong enough to wrestle him to the stone floor. Kes looked away as the jinni’s chiaan was violently ripped from his body. Shreds of crimson energy flew into the air, electric blood that the killing shadows gorged on, the sound of their feeding like a howling wind. They lapped up his soul like spilled milk.

  Calar laughed, clapping her hands in delight. “Yes, my darlings! Yes!”

  Kes doubled over, resting his hands on his knees, dizzy. How would the tavrai be able to fight this? He should just try to kill her now, wrap his fingers around her neck—

  Calar placed her hand on Kes’s back. “My love, are you ill?”

  He nodded and she spoke once more into the room, this time calling the shadows to her. “Đæł.” Sleep.

  They obeyed, flying into the yaghin around her neck. The stone absorbed them, throbbing with black light, its surface swirling as though it contained a roiling ocean.

  “I want to try them out,” she said. “Let’s pay a visit to one of the villages, shall we? See if their precious tavrai come to save them.” She grinned, white teeth glinting like pearls in the darkness. “I hear there’s something of interest in a Marid village in the south.”

  Something of interest. Gods, he knew what that meant.

  Kes glanced at the necklace around Calar’s neck. There’d be no time to warn the villagers. It’d be a massacre.

  He forced himself to match her sadistic joy. “Lead the way, my love.”

  13

  JUST AS RAIF WAS ABOUT TO ENTER THE LUDEEN WHERE the tavrai council was gathered, someone grabbed his arm. He turned, expecting a tavrai with a message of some kind, but it was Touma, the grief in his eyes echoing Raif’s own.

  “A word, please,” Touma said. “Sir.”

  Raif nodded, motioning for Zanari, Taz, and Samar to wait for him before entering the council room. He walked a few paces away, Touma at his side.

  The jinni took a long look at Raif, then shook his head. “You’ve given up.”

  “Yes.” Even to his own ears, Raif’s voice sounded hollow, dead. Shame pooled in his gut.

  “Do you really believe she’s gone?”

  Raif gazed at the bright green stars above, which now always reminded him of Jandessa and Rahim. Maybe every time two jinn tried to change the stars, it ended badly.

  “I can still feel her,” Raif said quietly. “She’s my rohifsa. I think that even if I stood beside Nalia’s burning body I would still feel her.” He sighed. “Even if she lives, we can’t get to her. And she can’t get to us. I’d hoped for a way, but Zanari said it’s impossible. I have to . . . to let her go, Touma.”

  “Would you permit me to remain at the gate?” Touma asked. “If her . . . if her spirit wanders, she will know we have not forgotten her.”

  If her spirit wanders.

  It would wander. There was no one in the Eye to burn her. Raif closed his eyes for a moment. Oh, gods, Nalia. Come home to me. Please. Please don’t be gone. He’d make sure to die where no one could find him, where there wouldn’t be a body to burn. They could live out the ages together, ghosts forever joined in the in-between. It was the only future that gave him any hope.

  Raif nodded, then cleared his throat. “A year and a day?”

  It was the traditional mourning period for jinn. Touma nodded. “I will guard her—body or spirit—with my life.”

  Raif placed his palms together and gave a slight bow. “You honor her. I’ll never forget it.”

  Before Touma could say anything more, Raif returned to where the others waited for him. Without a word, they followed him into the ludeen in the center of the camp. He wasn’t prepared for the comfort that initial sight of the room would give him. When Raif stepped inside, he was enveloped in a familiar warmth and the barnlike scent of unwashed bodies and hundreds of meals long since eaten.

  The large tree house served as both mess hall and war council room. Raif well remembered late nights sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall while his father planned Arjinna’s future. Ever since he could remember, he’d been allowed in the room, inducted into the secret club of the men and women who’d raised him.

  Now it went utterly silent as Raif made his way to the long tables that had been pushed together in the center of the room. As Zanari, Taz, and Samar filed in behind him, Raif could feel the power in the space shift, settling upon him and the three jinn who flanked him like a mantle.

  He’d b
een wrong when he’d first entered the room—there was no comfort in this place, not anymore. It reeked of defeat and rebellion.

  Shirin stood and offered Raif the chair at the head of the table—was he imagining that hint of reluctance in her slow movement?

  Stop it, he chided himself. Shirin had every reason to be upset. He hadn’t exactly been the leader they needed him to be since his return from Earth. She was a good soldier, his best. He wanted to keep her on his side.

  Raif squeezed Shirin’s shoulder as he passed her. “Thank you for taking over while I was gone,” he said quietly.

  He wasn’t just talking about the time he’d been on Earth. The past two days, when he’d done nothing but rage in his ludeen or sit vigil beside the Gate of the Eye—those were the hours he was most grateful for. And sorry about. Not because of grieving for Nalia, but for leaving the tavrai on the brink of surrender, caring little if any of them lived or died. It’d been impossible to see beyond the gaping hole inside him. Still was. He was just getting better at hiding it.

  Shirin gave him a curt nod, then slid into the chair beside Raif, the one she’d occupied ever since he’d made her his second. This was not the Shirin who’d kissed him so many weeks ago or the one who’d stayed up late with him for the past few years, planning and drinking their way into the possibility of peace and justice. This Shirin was hurt, confused. Furious. But as her eyes roved over his face, he saw something in her soften.

  “Welcome back, tavrai,” she said.

  Raif didn’t sit down. Instead, he looked around the room at the jinn who’d bled for him. Who he’d fought beside since he was a child. They were his family, blood brothers and sisters who he’d pledged to protect. He met each of their eyes in silent apology, lingering on his mother’s sea-green ones the longest.