Freedom's Slave

  Gods, he was tired of death.

  “I need a meeting with Raif Djan’Urbi,” the Ifrit said. He took a step forward, hands still outstretched plaintively, but stopped when Taz raised the sphere of chiaan he was still holding. “Please. I need your help to end this war.”

  “Do I look easily fooled?” Taz said.

  “No. You look like a commander who doesn’t want to see any more of his jinn die,” the jinni said. “I saw you on the battlefield. Killing you would be a waste of a good soldier.”

  Taz frowned. “Then you would know I have no interest in surrendering. I fought your kind long before you were born, and I suspect that I will continue to fight Ravnir’s children long after you are gone. Pray to your fire god, swine, because I’ve no more patience.”

  “My name is Kesmir,” the jinni said. “But swine is not entirely inaccurate.”

  Taz paused, yet again. It was harder to kill a jinni once you knew his name.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance like this,” Kesmir continued when Taz remained silent.

  “A chance to die in the middle of an abandoned kajar?” Taz said.

  “No. A chance to join the resistance.”

  Taz stared. “You would betray your empress?”

  “To follow her any longer would be to betray my people,” Kesmir said. “Betray myself.” His eyes latched onto Taz’s, his gaze unflinching. “I’ve begun training with . . . someone . . . to protect my mind against Calar. We’ve been building up our own resistance in the Ifrit ranks, but it’s not nearly strong enough. If we combined forces, we might have a chance at peace.”

  Taz looked at him, thoughtful. It was possible the Ifrit commander was telling the truth. His face was drawn, weary. Lips pulled in a permanent frown. He didn’t have a cunning look about him. But it was the sorrow in his eyes that made Taz believe this conversation wasn’t just another strategy of Calar’s. His was not the face of a jinni who’d just won a battle.

  “Why did Calar choose to attack that village?” he asked.

  Kesmir closed his eyes, his expression pained. “They were harboring a Ghan Aisouri infant.”

  Taz went still. “Is she alive?”

  Kesmir shook his head. “No. Killed in the battle. I . . . couldn’t get to her in time.” He looked away from Taz, his eyes glistening.

  “You nearly annihilated the entire Aisouri race and yet you’re concerned about one child?”

  Something passed over Kesmir’s face, a hurt of some kind, something fierce, but Taz couldn’t place it.

  “Any Aisouri born from now on is an innocent. They aren’t being trained to hate and kill.” Kesmir met his eyes once again. “I’m not a butcher. Not anymore.”

  Taz stood there, unmoving, trying to understand what it meant, that an Aisouri had lived, however briefly. The loss was crushing. A child—the only Aisouri left now that Nalia was gone—cut down before she could even speak. Taz hadn’t dared to hope any Aisouri had been born in the past three years. The birth of a royal child was incredibly rare. Sometimes decades would pass before one was discovered. And without the Aisouri themselves to claim them . . . A thought occurred to Taz, so suddenly that he couldn’t believe he’d never considered it before.

  “What happens when a Ghan Aisouri is born among the Ifrit?” he asked.

  To his knowledge, the Aisouri had ventured into Ithkar as often as they could in search of their own kind, but breaching the border between the two lands was never an easy task, and to Taz’s knowledge, they’d never discovered a purple-eyed child among the Ifrit. It was possible there were Ghan Aisouri children there, hidden away in the crags of Ithkar’s volcanic mountains. The royals had always been worried the Ifrit would brainwash any Aisouri gifted them by the gods and send the children to destroy their sisters in Arjinna. But it had never happened and so the worst was assumed—the Ifrit were killing the babes that so resembled their greatest enemy.

  “As you must know, in Arjinna, the Aisouri were always taken from the parents and brought to the palace to train,” Kes said. His eyes flashed. “A despicable practice, taking a child from its father. Its mother. But in Ithkar, it’s even worse. The Ash Crones claim the child. They drain it of its energy, using the power for dark magic, and then . . .”

  “It dies,” Taz whispered. An atrocity so horrible, he could hardly comprehend what he was hearing.

  Kesmir nodded. “Yes.”

  All those centuries of meditation and chanting sadrs were of little help to Taz right then. Pure hatred scorched through his blood, destroying the inner peace he’d spent so long cultivating. Children. They’d killed their own innocent children.

  “You disgust me,” Taz spit. “How dare you ask for our help—”

  “We were wrong,” Kes said. “All of us were raised to hate, don’t you see? Me, you, every jinni born in this cursed land. Calar is brutal, our army is brutal. I know this. I want it to stop.”

  “Why?” Taz asked. “Because you suddenly realize your empress is just as happy killing Ifrit as she is any other caste? You’re just trying to save your own skin.”

  “I have a better reason,” Kes said quietly.

  “And what is that?” Taz growled.

  He shook his head. “Get me a meeting with Raif Djan’Urbi and I will tell you then.”

  Taz frowned. It would be folly to dismiss helping Kesmir out of hand. If he was telling the truth, there was a chance to stage a coup, end the war.

  “I need something better than that,” Taz said. “To begin with, why don’t you tell me about those shadows?”

  Kesmir’s eyes hardened. “Abominations. Calar’s been working on creating them ever since we slayed the Aisouri. It’s the dead caste’s energy that powers them.”

  Taz took a step back, appalled. Things were far worse than he’d thought. And the situation had been rather hopeless to begin with.

  “How is that possible?”

  “When a jinni dies, their chiaan flows back into the earth,” Kesmir said. “Calar captured that energy—dark energy now because it came from dead jinn—and discovered a way to create these creatures. It’s ancient magic, still practiced by the Ash Crones.”

  There was a kind of logic to what Kesmir was saying. Everything had its opposite. Light and dark. Life and death. If chiaan came from life, from the living force of all that existed, then it only made sense that its opposite existed, as well: the energy of death and decay—just as powerful, but with a far different agenda. Only in Ithkar were there temples to Mora, the goddess of death. There she was worshipped as Ravnir’s equal, the patron goddess of a lifeless land.

  Kesmir held up a white stone that hung around his neck. “This is the only thing I know of that can protect us from Calar’s shadows. It’s a yaghin. I’m not sure how it works—I only know that it absorbs the creatures. Other than the ones Calar and I wear, the Ash Crones have the few that are in existence.”

  “Is there no way to fight them?” Taz asked.

  “Not that I know of. You saw what they can do.”

  Yes, Taz had seen. The creatures couldn’t be harmed, at least not through conventional means.

  “They obey Calar, yes?” Taz said.

  Kesmir nodded.

  “So the only way to destroy those creatures is to kill their empress and keep them entrapped in her yaghin.” Taz finally let the ball of glowing chiaan in his hand bleed into the ground below. He sheathed his scimitar, staring down the other jinni. “Is this what you’re offering to do for us?”

  Kesmir swallowed, his expression pained. “Before the shadows, I couldn’t. But now, after seeing . . .” He sighed. “Yes. I will kill Calar.”

  Taz softened at the pain and despair written over Kesmir’s face.

  “Tell me your story,” he said, gentle. It was a question he’d asked Nalia not so long ago.

  Kesmir hesitated, then began to speak, the words pouring out of him. Taz wondered if this was the first time the other jinni had given voice to the tumult within him.
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  It was a tale so sensational Taz had to believe it—only the most fanciful of jinn could have made it up, and Kesmir did not strike Taz as fanciful.

  A jinni in love with the girl who’d rescued him from his burning village, their love forged in the wake of a Ghan Aisouri slaughter of the Ifrit. The careful planning to rise above their oppressors and install the boy’s rohifsa on the Arjinnan throne. Calar being crowned empress after dancing in a pool of Aisouri blood. Then: her swift decline into madness and a power that only served to erode her sanity and increase her cruelty.

  “I thought I would have followed her anywhere,” Kesmir said, his eyes dark and haunted. “But she’s gone to places no one could follow, not even me. The power didn’t free Calar; it created a prison she can’t escape from.”

  He spoke of torture, paranoia, and an increasing need to control the minutiae of the Ifrit government.

  “It’s her voiqhif,” Kesmir added softly. “The more she uses it, the worse she gets. It’s doing something to her. The best parts of her are . . . rotting. I’m not the only one who sees it.”

  When Kesmir finished, Taz had to ask the obvious question. “Do you still love her?”

  It took a while for the jinni to answer. When he did, his eyes were full of grief. “Enough to make sure she’s taken down with as little pain as possible. I owe her that much.” Kes wrung his hands, pacing. “My teacher—the one who’s helping me control my mind—he’s told me time and again that I have to kill her. But I’ve always refused. It wasn’t until today that I knew for certain all hope that she could change was gone. And yet, it pains me.” He glanced at Taz. “That must sound crazy to you.”

  “No,” Taz murmured. Wouldn’t he have done the same for Lokahm? It would have been impossible to slit his rohifsa’s throat. He didn’t envy Kesmir that task, though it was a just punishment—an easy punishment—after the Ghan Aisouri genocide.

  “I have to be honest,” Taz said, “I’m not sure Raif or the tavrai are going to be thrilled with any kind of alliance with you—or amenable to sparing Calar pain. You assisted in the execution of the Ghan Aisouri, and that’s a bit of a sensitive subject with our commander right now.”

  “We all have ‘sensitive’ subjects, do we not?”

  Taz had expected Kesmir to show some remorse over killing the Aisouri, but there seemed to be none. “You don’t regret making an entire race of jinn extinct?” he asked.

  This time, Kesmir did not hesitate before he answered. “No. The only way to take the power away from the Aisouri was to kill them all. You’ve seen what havoc just one Aisouri can cause.”

  Kesmir looked at Taz, magnetic eyes that called to something inside him that had been dead for thousands of years. Eyes of blood and fire, garnet eyes that didn’t look away.

  “What of that child who died this morning?” Taz asked. “You say you would have saved her. But if you had, Calar would find out. And where would that leave you and your resistance?”

  “If I’d been the one to discover her, I could have hidden her. Faked her death,” Kesmir said. “Most of the Ifrit soldiers would never dream I was capable of that mercy—they’d never suspect. I’ve done it before.”

  Taz stepped forward. “What do you mean you’ve done it before?”

  It was too much to hope for. He had to be misunderstanding.

  Kesmir’s expression became closed, as if he realized he’d tipped his hand, revealed far more than he’d intended. “There’s a jinni in the Vein. He . . . helps. That’s all I can say. It’s his story to tell and I don’t want to put him in more danger than he is already.”

  His voice caught and Taz widened his eyes. Where was this emotion for the Aisouri coming from?

  “Have you ever been to Ithkar?” Kesmir asked unexpectedly.

  “I fought in the border wars, long ago. Never on the Ithkar side, though,” Taz said.

  That had been a brutal year full of bloodshed and the endless chill of the Upper Qaf. But there’d been warmth, too. Long nights with Lokahm and the thrill of illicit love, or fighting alongside Erah, his Ghan Aisouri sister.

  “I didn’t know any Ifrit until I went to Earth,” Taz continued. “Now, some of my closest friends are from your caste. Our late empress’s most devoted guard is an Ifrit.”

  Late empress. Did he really believe Nalia was dead? It seemed so impossible, after the stories he’d heard of her survival.

  Kesmir cocked his head to the side. “You lived on Earth?”

  “A story for another time,” Taz said.

  “So there will be . . . another time?” Kesmir asked. The jinni was unable to keep the hope from his voice.

  The sun had risen higher in the sky and it brought out the gold in Kesmir’s bronze skin, turned his eyes rusty. Taz could see that there were several shades of red to those eyes, just as there seemed to be several layers to the jinni they belonged to. There was kindness in his face, lines from countless worries. Did he ever smile? Laugh? Despite his uniform, Kesmir didn’t look like a killer when he was off the battlefield. Taz wanted to know more, but he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “I need to consult with Djan’Urbi. Meet us here tomorrow—midnight,” Taz said. “Alone, it goes without saying. We need to burn our dead, have a few meetings. I’ll be here either way.”

  Kesmir nodded and crimson smoke began to pool at his feet. His evanescence smelled of campfires, not an unpleasant scent. It reminded Taz of late-night secrets and shared bottles of savri. He held Kesmir’s eyes until his unlikely accomplice disappeared, swallowed by the morning sun.

  It was possible, of course, that the whole conversation was part of an elaborate trap. Raif would certainly think so. But Taz’s instincts about people were never wrong.

  “Gods help him,” he muttered, his eyes on the few remaining tendrils of Kesmir’s evanescence that hung in the air.

  17

  KESMIR KNOCKED SOFTLY ON THE WIDE DOUBLE DOORS that led to Calar’s rooms. They opened immediately, one of the servants peeking out. When she saw Kesmir, she motioned for him, frantic, and he slipped inside.

  “How is she?” he murmured.

  “A little better,” the girl whispered. The bruise on her cheek and the quiver in her voice told a different story. “She wants more medicine. Will you sit with her while I call for a healer?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Kes moved farther in. The lights in the opulent sitting room were out, but a fire burned in the grate, hearty flames that licked the stone.

  To his left was the large bathing room and to his right the bedroom he shared with Calar, though it’d been quite some time since they’d made good use of it. Thank gods, he thought.

  His mind turned over the promise he’d made to the Shaitan commander: I will kill Calar.

  He had to. He knew that now. The knowledge threatened to crush him. If he lived through it, he would one day have to tell his daughter that he’d killed her mother. Would Yasri ever forgive him? Could she possibly understand?

  Kes straightened his shoulders and entered the bedroom. A cold breeze slipped past the window on his left, causing the candles in the room to flicker, and yet the room still felt cramped and stuffy. Calar lay in the center of the large bed that took up most of the room. She was propped up against several pillows, her eyes closed.

  “Who’s there?” she said, not bothering to open her eyes.

  “It’s me.” He crossed to the elaborately carved cabinet beside her bed, knowing what Calar wanted before she asked for it.

  “Can you—”

  “Yes,” he said.

  The gaujuri water pipe was made of a single sheet of windblown glass with a small silver bowl placed above the pipe’s small opening. Filled with fragrant gaujuri leaves, its smoke would travel through the bowl to the pipe below. A sheet of foil dotted with minuscule holes sat atop the leaves. Kes grabbed a coal out of the fire with his fingers, the chiaan from the burning ember coursing through him, a comfort. He placed it on the foil. A tube dangle
d from the side, fused to the glass, with an ornate mother-of-pearl mouthpiece. This Kesmir placed in Calar’s hand as he had so many times in the past three years. She inhaled the drug’s fragrant smoke, one of the few things that eased the pain of using her gift.

  “You went too far tonight,” he said. “You could have hurt yourself.”

  A day spent in the Cauldron with her shadows and a fight with Raif Djan’Urbi—what had she been thinking?

  “I’m fine,” Calar said, her voice heavy.

  It wasn’t love or pity, this hollowed-out feeling that pushed itself into his consciousness whenever he was near Calar—it was grief.

  “Do you remember when we first met?” she said, her voice thick. The gaujuri was already doing its work.

  “Yes,” he said. Kesmir slid to the floor and sat with his back against the bed.

  He held his head in his hands as the memory washed over him. A memory he had just betrayed in a burned plantation with the commander of the Brass Army. He’d never forget her gentleness that day. He’d lost everything, everyone. And then Calar was there, in his head, in his heart. All that hate and horror was cast aside by this bloom, pushing through the ashes.

  Calar was mumbling and he had to move closer to hear.

  “What?” he asked softly.

  A strand of her white hair was plastered to her forehead, and he reached out and gently tucked it behind her ear. Gods, how could he betray her?

  “. . . so . . . good . . . to me. . . .” She reached her hand up, grasping at some invisible object the gaujuri had conjured. She laughed softly, a girlish, carefree sound. “For you.”

  Kesmir held out his hand and pretended to accept whatever she’d given him. Like this, he could almost believe she was still the Calar he’d fallen in love with. Those wine-red lips, skin like snow. She’d been a vision that day. And what of the day when Yasri came into the world, the pain Calar endured, her tears of joy when her daughter was placed in her arms? The purple eyes hadn’t mattered—the little miracle in her arms was theirs. Love, pure and good, filled that room. Their little family.