Freedom's Slave

  “Olram?” he said in disbelief.

  The jinni gave a mock bow, his eyes twinkling. “At your service, my lord.”

  Olram had been on the plantation since before Raif himself was a child, nearly eight hundred summers. Raif’s father had tried to free him, but Olram had been a slave to the overlord for too long. Dthar Djan’Urbi’s magic wasn’t powerful enough to break such longstanding bonds.

  Raif moved forward and embraced the old man, whose grip was surprisingly strong despite his years.

  “We heard you were back,” Olram said. “Come to give the empress more trouble, eh?”

  Raif smiled. “What other purpose do I serve in life, grandfather?”

  Zanari shifted behind him and Olram’s eyes landed on her. “Ah, my pretty girl. You look well.”

  “As do you,” she said with a warm smile.

  “Liar.”

  It was true—he was too thin, and his back had begun to hunch over. They embraced and then Olram beckoned for them to follow him down the slope toward the slave cabins.

  “How are you holding up here?” Zanari asked.

  The old jinni shrugged. “We do the best we can. The young ones scrounge up this and that in the Vein.” He patted Raif on the back. “Thank Shirin for me, will you? She made sure we got supplies even when you were gone.”

  Raif nodded. “I will.”

  “So what brings you to us?” Olram asked. “Besides the wonderful company, of course.”

  “Nothing good,” Raif said. “I need to speak to everyone—Calar has a new weapon.”

  Olram nodded, descending the small hill toward the collection of buildings as nimbly as a billy goat. “I heard about the Marid village. May the gods torture her forever.”

  “We were hoping that you would join us in the forest,” Zanari said.

  “We’re mostly women, children, and the elderly, you know. Not much help to your revolution.”

  “That’s all right,” Raif said. “There’s space. It’s not safe for you here anymore—”

  Olram put a hand on Raif’s shoulder. “I loved your father, and you know how I feel about you kids. But if you don’t win this war, you and your tavrai will be sent to Ithkar or killed. These jinn,” he said, gesturing to the serf quarters, “just want peace. They want safety. Give them that first. No one—not even you—is free until the fighting stops.”

  Raif sighed, nodding. There was certainly truth to that—he was freedom’s slave, giving everything he had to a lost cause. Calar had taken away the overlords, and yet nothing had changed. The former serfs still lived in squalor, still went hungry at night.

  “Maybe after you hear what I have to say, you’ll change your mind,” he said.

  “Just as stubborn as your father, I see,” Olram said.

  Zanari leaned close to the old jinni, conspiratorial. “More, actually.”

  Raif laughed softly. Gods, he was going to miss her. Before they reached the serf quarters, Raif gently held Olram back. Zanari waited beside them, curious.

  “When I was in the Marid village, I saw something—something I didn’t know existed anymore,” he said.

  Olram raised his eyebrows. “Speak plainly, child.”

  “A Ghan Aisouri baby.”

  Olram’s eyes became shuttered, closed off. Raif knew his hunch that Olram had information was correct. You didn’t live to be his age and not learn a thing or two about survival. Information was the only real currency anymore.

  “Are there more?” Raif asked softly. Taz had told him there were, but he couldn’t trust an Ifrit general’s word. He needed to know from someone who wouldn’t lie to him.

  Olram shrugged. “Who’s to say? They are the daughters of the gods, eh? It is for the gods to decide.”

  “I wish the Aisouri no harm,” Raif said.

  Olram snorted. “I’ve never heard a Djan’Urbi say that before.”

  Zanari stepped forward. “When we were on Earth, we found an Aisouri on the dark caravan. She is Raif’s rohifsa—and we lost her to the Eye. Grandfather, believe my brother when he says he wishes Aisouri children no harm.”

  Olram’s eyes sought Raif’s in the darkness. “She speaks true?”

  Raif held the old jinni’s eyes. “Yes.”

  Olram stared at him. “This changes . . . everything.”

  “Are they safe?” Raif asked. “That’s all I want to know.”

  The old jinni hesitated, his eyes on Raif’s. “Safe as they can be,” he finally said.

  “But their eyes—” Zanari started. Olram waved his hand, silencing her.

  “There are still mages who know how to change eye and chiaan color.”

  “How many Aisouri are there?” Raif asked.

  “More than my fingers can count.”

  Was that possible? Aisouri were born once every several years. There had only been forty-six of them when the Ifrit destroyed their line.

  “The gods must be trying to bring them back,” Zanari said. “Make up for the loss.”

  “And the Ifrit know this?” Raif asked.

  Olram nodded. “The mothers who try to hide their daughters without getting help . . . the Ifrit usually find them before those who would help them do. You cannot hide those eyes for long. This is what happened in your Marid village. Someone told the Ifrit—maybe a jinni with a family member in prison, maybe someone just tired of being hungry. This was why that village suffered as it did.”

  Of course. Calar wouldn’t want anyone challenging her for the throne.

  “How can I help?” Raif asked.

  Saving Aisouri children—he’d never thought he’d want that. But Nalia had changed so much in him; her influence was seismic.

  “Don’t breathe a word of this to your tavrai, that’s how you can help,” Olram said. “Your soldiers are . . . not so open-minded as I would like.”

  There was a time when Raif would have bristled at the comment, but not anymore. The tavrai had begun to worry him. A lot. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep them in line much longer.

  Raif nodded his head once. “I will guard this secret with my life.”

  Zanari and Raif spent just a few moments with the serfs. It was quickly evident that none of them wanted to be under the protection of the tavrai, just as Olram had explained. They were even willing to take their chances with Calar’s shadows.

  “So, that went well,” Zanari muttered as they made their way to a clearing they could evanesce out of.

  Raif tried to tamp down his anger. It was hard to fight for people who didn’t want to be saved.

  Maybe Zanari was right. Maybe there was no hope for Arjinna or the jinn. If the portals ever opened again, maybe they should all get the hell out.

  The phoenix brought its beak down on the skin covering Nalia’s heart, bare now from where the ghoul had torn at her garment in their fight to the death.

  She cried out as the beak broke into her flesh and her heart began to burn, a fire inside her. The pain, at least, was very real. This was no dream.

  Nalia turned her head away from the creature and sobbed, her tears mixing with the gray dust of the Eye. What had been the point of it all?

  Nalia screamed into the ground beneath her, cursing it, this land that had imprisoned her more than the bottle ever could. Her mouth filled with dust and she didn’t care that her death would be undignified—she breathed it in, great, heaving gulps. If the gods were going to let her die, then they would see just what she thought about it.

  The last Ghan Aisouri. Yes, Calar had done her job quite well.

  Except: she wasn’t dead yet. They were punishing her, these loveless gods. They wanted to draw her last moments out, make her see just how much she’d failed. Just how much she’d lost.

  The phoenix began to sing again and she glared at it. The gods’ messenger. He—she? Yes, she, Nalia was certain—loomed over her, roughly the size of a swan. Her long tail feathers dragged on the dusty floor of the Eye like the train of a bridal gown, yet the dust never settle
d on the bird’s pristine coat. Nalia cocked her head to the side, observing just as intently as she was being observed. The feathers reminded her of an opal, a shimmery faint rainbow glaze over downy white. Eyes the color of a blazing sunset, eyes that were more human than animal. Intelligent, all-knowing.

  Nalia hated the godsdamn thing.

  “You can go now,” she snapped at her as she struggled to her feet. “Go pester another soul. I’ll go to the godlands when I’m good and ready. And I’m not ready.”

  The bird continued to sing as she swayed, and Nalia’s eyesight began to go in and out. It’d been ages since she’d had food or water. Still, she wasn’t going to just hand over her soul to the first pretty bird that came to visit her. Nalia reached down and grabbed a fistful of dust, but before she could chuck it at the phoenix, she recognized the melody.

  Awake, awake, the dawn is yet to come.

  She stared, frozen, her fist of dust still clutched in her hand. Was it possible that instead of ushering her into death, the gods had answered her prayers for aid?

  “Are you here to—to help me?” she whispered.

  In answer, the phoenix changed her tune to another familiar song. It was a temple hymn Nalia had learned as a little girl.

  The gods do look upon the brave with favor and delight.

  The phoenix continued to sing, lifting herself into the air. She was like a small moon that lit a path just for Nalia. She began to fly at shoulder height, hovering above the Eye’s plains, her wings gently flapping. She looked back to make sure Nalia was following.

  “They’ll see you, you know,” she said to the creature as she began to move her feet. She stumbled, legs weak. If she didn’t eat soon, she’d die, mystical bird or no.

  The phoenix didn’t seem to care, so Nalia wouldn’t either. She followed the phoenix for hours, each step faltering. She tried to stamp down the hope that was beginning to grow in her chest. She was afraid she’d die of despair if the thing disappeared—unless the bird killed her first.

  Please, she begged the gods. I will be and do whatever you want, just please get me home to Raif, to my land.

  The thought of him threatened to crush her entirely. He had to be going mad after seeing her collapse. Had he seen the phoenix, too?

  The bird stopped, flapping her wings in the air to stay aloft.

  “Now what?” Nalia asked.

  She was so grateful for the company. Even if it was a mythical harbinger of death. The phoenix chirped—again, a temple song from her childhood.

  Nectar of the gods, eat and never be hungry.

  The song had never made sense to Nalia. She’d assumed it had to do with chiaan. The phoenix dipped her head and Nalia followed the line of her beak to the ground below. There, glinting in the diamond light, was a small bush with thick, heart-shaped leaves—palest green, rimmed in lavender. Nalia had never seen such a plant before.

  Nalia drew closer to it. The leaves shone, their undersides velvety. When she touched it, the plant’s energy pulsed against her skin. She glanced at the phoenix—gods, was she nodding at her?

  Nalia broke a leaf off the cluster and tore it in half. A milky white substance that released a faint anise scent oozed over her palm. For a moment, she could picture Malek standing before a goblet filled with absinthe and she scolded her heart for missing him, just the tiniest bit. If he were here, he’d be snatching the leaf out of her hand, his arm around her, holding her up. Hayati, no, he’d say. We’re not as desperate as all that. Then he’d light a cigarette and curse the darkness. To hell with this place, he’d say. We’re going home.

  Nalia’s stomach growled.

  She stared at the plant, considering. The empresses had woken her up. The phoenix had led her here. If she didn’t eat or drink something within the next few hours, she’d pass out again and never wake up. Risking poisoning herself was her best option.

  Nalia opened her mouth and set the leaf on her tongue. Warmth immediately spread through her. Nalia’s skin tingled, as though she could feel every grain of dust coating her arms and face. It was a lovely feeling, like being dipped in a pool of pure chiaan.

  The leaf was down Nalia’s throat before she realized that this might be the way the gods had decided for her to die—a poisonous plant, a quick, painless end.

  Her heart sped up, her breathing growing more shallow as the darkness writhed and swirled before her, suddenly full of pulsing life.

  “Wait,” she gasped as the plant’s blood sped through her. “Not yet—please!”

  The phoenix’s light dimmed until the gods’ messenger was nothing but a pinprick of light in the night that swaddled Nalia in its arms.

  “I’m not—I’m—”

  A burst of light.

  Her body, convulsing, head spinning.

  Not ready—not ready—not—

  20

  KESMIR WAITED IN THE SHADOWS OF THE CRUMBLING plantation as night stole over the land, his scimitar drawn. He was alone but for one large black bird that occasionally roamed over the fields, then flew away in the direction of the Forest of Sighs. It wasn’t meeting the handsome Shaitan commander again that had set Kes on edge. No, it was Raif Djan’Urbi Kesmir couldn’t trust. The revolutionary commander was fearless, an elegantly brutal fighter who’d cut down some of Kes’s best jinn. Kes had tried to give the tavrai leader an opportunity to take Calar before she released her shadows, but he wasn’t sure if his intent had been clear. No doubt Djan’Urbi had thought it was a trap. Though the battle at the Marid village had been over for nearly two days, a haze of burial smoke still hovered over the forest and the Ifrit barracks, the dead of both sides burning continually. There were so many souls to usher into the godlands. Too many. He suspected the tavrai wouldn’t be in the best frame of mind when they arrived, and certainly not in a mood to negotiate. Except for Tazlim. He seemed honorable. Good.

  Kes’s mind had wandered to Tazlim so many times since they’d met. He’d spent the past day since that conversation with the Shaitan commander trying to keep him out of his mind, terrified that Calar would decide to barge into Kes’s thoughts before he’d had a chance to properly stow Tazlim into the darkest recesses of his memory. He had a room in his mind, one he’d spent the past few days learning how to build with the gryphon, then training to keep the door to that room barred—and invisible. If Calar knew he was hiding something, it was as good as her discovering the secret. In her increasing paranoia, she would assume the worst, which, in Kes’s case, was true. He was betraying her, every day now, in thought, word, and deed. Just this morning he’d gained the trust of one of the jinn Calar relied on to help her govern, a jinni more than capable of creating a post-coup strategy that would keep order in the land.

  By virtue of even thinking about dethroning Calar, Kes had constructed a house of cards that was certain to collapse at any moment. It didn’t matter that he trained his mind with Thatur, that he was careful. There were too many people involved now, and those people were not trained, though he tried to pass on what he’d learned when he could.

  He would die, and soon. The question was only whether or not his death would mean a damn thing at all.

  Kes sighed, kicking at the debris near his feet. The plantation was in shambles, the family, he imagined, likely killed in one of Calar’s purges. The only Shaitan who’d been able to maintain their holdings were Calar’s lackeys at the palace: mages, scholars, and overlords who hadn’t fought the new regime. Kes couldn’t deny that it gave him pleasure to see the disrepair of the home, nothing but a rotting mansion full of useless trinkets, manifested over thousands of years and passed down through generations of oppressor Shaitan. The rooms had been filled with nothing but broken ceramics, delicate cups and plates with a repeating floral pattern, destroyed paintings that hung cockeyed on the walls or had fallen to the floor, and rugs that were little more than shredded pieces of string. After a life spent on Ithkar’s merciless lava plains, Kes had no sympathy for the former owners of this home.

&nbsp
; Now he settled on the front porch, where he’d have the best vantage point should the tavrai simply decide to surround and kill him. Kes looked up at the sound of a faint, familiar whoosh of wings. Seconds later, Thatur landed, hardly disrupting the dust beneath his feet.

  “You look nervous,” Thatur said, by way of greeting.

  “I am,” Kes admitted.

  “Do you think he’ll come?”

  Kes nodded, grim. “I’m not sure what his intentions are, but, yes, he’ll come.”

  They gazed in silence at the sky, Kes careful to keep up the blocks in his mind. He wouldn’t be surprised if Thatur were testing him right now.

  Better, Thatur said. Not up to snuff, but acceptable for the time we’ve spent working.

  Kes suppressed a smile. He doubted he would ever be “up to snuff.”

  “You say my mistress planned to help him?” Thatur asked, his voice doubtful.

  Kes wondered how much to tell the gryphon. Best to let Djan’Urbi open that can of worms. Calar had told Kes of what she’d seen in Djan’Urbi’s mind when she’d attacked him the other day: intimate moments that were not her right to see, let alone share. Kes knew how Raif must be feeling—violated was too soft a word. There was no doubt, though, that Raif loved Nalia something fierce, and she him. Kes wasn’t sure how Thatur would react to discovering that not only had Nalia joined forces with Raif, he’d become her rohifsa as well.

  “Yes” was all Kes said. “They’d formed . . . an alliance of sorts.”

  Thatur snorted. “Well, when she returns we’ll see about that.”

  Kes kept his eyes averted. Thatur was still convinced that his Aisouri would return, triumphant and ready to govern. But she was dead—everyone but Thatur seemed to accept that.

  The air shifted, just long enough for Kes to call up his chiaan. Thatur slipped into the shadows—they’d already decided not to bring him out until it was absolutely necessary. No use letting the tavrai know Kes had a gryphon on his side unless they too were on Kes’s side.