Freedom's Slave

  Raif smirked. “So, what, Malek thought he was ‘divinely inspired’ to enslave you?”

  “I thought you weren’t religious,” Nalia says.

  “I’m not.” Malek stubs out his cigarette and comes to stand beside her and together they gaze at the painting. His hand slips around her waist and he pulls her closer to him. “I just like to remind myself that it’s possible to have God’s ear every now and then.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can tell him to get out of my way.”

  Nalia shook her head. “Malek didn’t have a god,” she said softly. “He was his own.” She leaned forward. “I think the humans are right, though. The lote tree is the voice of the gods, speaking in images and feelings. And I know with everything in me that the gods want Arjinna to be my master. That was clear in the vision. I thought it was symbolic, but the more time I spend here, the more I see that everything they’ve shown me has been real. No metaphors, no symbols. I saw shackles go around my wrists. If we’re to reverse the power of the ring and the jinn become my master, it would explain why I will have those shackles.”

  Taz leaned forward. “An empress shackled to her people? How could you rule? What would be the limits of the commands they could give you? Is any of this even possible?”

  Ajwar shook his head, still deep in thought. “I honestly don’t know.”

  But Nalia knew. This would be the only way an empress would be unable to hurt the land or her people.

  “It is possible. It has to be,” she said.

  “Nalia, you can’t be serious!” Raif exploded. “You’d be a puppet on a string. You wouldn’t have time to rule—you’d be too busy granting wishes for fishermen and farmers.”

  She turned to her father. “Would it be like that? In the vision it felt like . . .” She sighed. It was so difficult to put into words what she’d seen in the Eye. “Like destiny.”

  She plants a seed. The seed becomes a tree, its roots extending in all directions, traveling deep under Arjinna. Nalia feels the burn of a new set of shackles encircling her wrists.

  “The gods want me to be enslaved again.” An end, the lote had shown her, if she was not its beginning. “I’m sure they can figure out the details. Just do what you can. Please.”

  Raif pushed his chair back and it crashed to the stone floor. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Raif—” She stood just as he slammed the door behind him.

  “Let him go, Nalia,” Taz said. “These are hard words to hear, no?”

  She knew Raif felt powerless to help her. She knew it killed him to know she would be hurt again.

  “He doesn’t understand—” she started, but Taz shook his head.

  “He does—that’s the problem,” Taz said. “He knows he can’t take you off this course. And, unlike you, he doesn’t trust the gods.”

  “And you still do?” she asked. “After . . . everything?”

  Taz inclined his head. “I don’t like the choices they make all the time,” he said softly. Nalia knew he was thinking of Kesmir, his own bottle, and the love he’d lost to Solomon’s enslavement. “But I never would have survived that bottle with my mind intact without them. I spent a lot of time contemplating their nature. They are ineffable, yes, but they gave us chiaan.” His voice softened, reverent. “Imagine: they gifted us with the very life force of the universe. Our manifestations, our bonding to the elements, the physical feeling of our souls—not a concept, but a tangible living thing inside us. The human god never did that—no gods have ever done that. Even if our chiaan was the only gift the gods gave us, they’d be worthy of our worship and respect.”

  Nalia smiled. “This is why I want you to be my spiritual adviser—it’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  She’d already asked Taz when she’d begun assembling her court. He’d demurred, worried that his grief over Kesmir and his new fatherhood would keep him from adequately serving her, clouding his judgment.

  “If I may,” Ajwar interjected, “my daughter speaks truth. You are a wise jinni, Tazlim. And she needs your wisdom as much as she needs my magic and Raif’s battle expertise.”

  “It’s the best way you can serve Arjinna,” she said softly. “And me . . . if that’s what you want to do.”

  “I can’t help but feel I’ve just been tricked,” he said with a small smile.

  “An empress can never be too cunning,” she teased, eyes sparkling. “So . . . yes?”

  Taz met her unwavering gaze. “I serve at the pleasure of the empress.” He inclined his head. “It would be my honor.”

  “Excellent—so we have that settled,” Nalia said. “Taz will be my spiritual adviser and my father will find a way to reverse the ring’s power.”

  She stood, but Ajwar put a gentle hand on her arm. She stilled at that small, unexpected touch.

  “You must understand,” he began, “this magic . . . it might not work. And it will take some time. I’ve never done something like this before.”

  “It has to work,” she said simply.

  “What do we do about the war in the meantime?” Thatur asked.

  There was a soft knock on the door and Touma moved toward it, scimitar drawn, just in case. “Enter,” Ajwar called.

  The door swung open and Raif walked inside. His eyes met Nalia’s, his expression contrite. “I apologize,” he said.

  Nalia wondered how many things he’d had to break before he came back. Gods, she loved him.

  She smiled and reached for his hand. “You’re just in time.”

  “We’re discussing our next steps with Calar,” Taz said.

  Raif nodded. “I have a few ideas about that. Most of them involve her lying dead on the palace floor.”

  “Agreed,” Nalia said. “So we kill Calar and her shadows, then take back the palace while my father figures out what to do with the ring.”

  She held up a hand. “And before either of you say it, I refuse to use the ring at all—I did that once already, and you saw what happened.”

  “Justice is what happened,” Thatur sad.

  “Death. Death is what happened.” She was still haunted by that bullet in Jaqar’s head. Nalia didn’t regret killing him. She regretted how easy it had been.

  She turned to Taz. “So, how do we destroy those shadows?”

  It was a discussion they’d had little time for between the move to Ithkar and the reorganization of the Brass Army and its new Ifrit members.

  “The only way to do this is to get the yaghin Calar wears around her neck,” Taz said. “Kes told me it’s how she stores and controls the shadows.”

  “Around her neck, huh?” Nalia said.

  The things she’d had to do to get her bottle off Malek’s neck. Nalia frowned, her eyes on the moons: pulling him closer in her bed, sitting on his lap in a movie theater, getting him drunk on drugged wine while she endured his kisses, waiting for him to pass out. And, sometimes, she wasn’t enduring it and that had been the very worst part.

  Raif slipped an arm around her shoulder. “We’ll figure something out together.”

  Together. Nalia wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to not facing everything alone.

  “I draw the line at me having to seduce Calar,” she said.

  “Yes,” Raif said immediately, “I like that line.”

  Ajwar pushed up his glasses. “I believe I’ve lost the thread of this conversation.”

  “It’s going to be challenging to get something off Calar’s neck,” Nalia said.

  “Yes, I imagine it will be,” Ajwar agreed.

  She wondered how this absentminded scholar had caught the eye of Nalia’s mother, one of the most vicious Aisouri in the palace. Opposites attract, Malek had once said to her. Maybe he was right. Did her father grieve her? Did he long for her late at night? It was hard for Nalia to imagine, and yet Mehndal Aisouri’Taifyeh had had two children by Ajwar and kept him as her lover all of Nalia’s life.

  “I need a little more time to regain my strength before we
put any of our plans into action,” Nalia said. “But we can’t wait too long.”

  “And what of the Godsnight?” Taz asked.

  The moons remained full to bursting, each night becoming more luminescent. And yet nothing happened. Sometimes, Nalia even caught herself forgetting about the prophecy.

  “We just have to hope the gods will be on our side when it happens,” Nalia said.

  Raif frowned at the moons. “Good luck with that.”

  Nalia and Taz burst out laughing. It was such a Raif thing to say, so utterly irreverent.

  “What?” Raif said.

  “Nothing, rohifsa,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Nothing at all.”

  42

  THE NEXT DAY, NALIA GOT UP EARLY—AT LEAST, SHE thought it was early. It was difficult to tell time when the sun never rose.

  She found Taz in the Ifrit’s main temple for Ravnir. It was, perhaps, the most austere of the temples in Arjinna, with its stark, almost violent, beauty. A large open square built in the center of a lava lake, the temple was easily big enough to fit five hundred jinn on their knees in prayer. The volcano that had birthed the lake towered over it, no longer active but imposing nonetheless. As in the Cauldron, thick stilts held the temple above the lava. A wide circle, cut in the center of the onyx tiles, looked down into the liquid fire below. There were no railings or walls to prevent worshippers from falling into the lake. There were no ornaments or altars or symbols of Ravnir. The fire was enough.

  Taz was sitting near the center of the temple, alone. His legs were crossed, hands on his knees. Though he was silent, Nalia knew he was in prayer, his head tilted back to look at the moons. This, she thought, was Taz in the highest form of himself. A pajai in the making, always in conversation with the gods, always seeking to understand.

  But alone. Always, it seemed, alone.

  Yasri would ease some of that burden, Nalia was certain of that. The little girl was rarely not at his side. She preferred to be held, rather than walk. She called him Tazeem. She patted his cheeks, as though she knew an invisible river of tears flowed there. Though young, she had an old soul.

  Sensing her presence, Taz turned. He stood, bowing. “My Empress.”

  She reached out her hand. “Taz. Do we need the formalities?’”

  He took it. “Sometimes they’re a good reminder.”

  “How could I possibly forget I’m the empress?”

  He smiled. “How indeed?”

  To herself, she’d always be Nalia. But not to anyone else, save Raif.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Come,” she said. “This temple terrifies me.”

  He laughed. “Where are we going?”

  “My favorite place in Ithkar.”

  He held her hand as she evanesced, picturing the one place in this foreign land that gave her peace. When they arrived, Taz smiled.

  “This is my favorite place, too,” he said.

  She’d come to call it the Mist Lake. The water was light blue, almost white—opaque, like a blind eye—and a permanent cloud of mist lay over it. Here and there broken tree trunks shot up through the water, large sticks with jagged ends. A thick silence lay over the lake like a shroud. It was the eeriest place Nalia had ever been, but something about it drew her. Maybe what she liked about the Mist Lake was that it was unabashedly sad. It didn’t pretend at happiness; it wallowed, something she wasn’t allowed to do.

  They settled on its banks, arms around their knees. “I love the silence here,” he said. “I don’t miss the bottle at all, of course, but there are days when all the noise, the people—it’s too much.”

  She nodded. “I don’t miss the Eye—or my bottle, for that matter—but I know what you mean. It’s strange to be alone and then suddenly be surrounded on all sides. All I wanted for the past year was to be around people, to be drenched in light, and yet I find myself wanting to sit in the dark, alone.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Funny how it works out that way.”

  Nalia reached out a hand and trailed her fingers through the mist. It was cool, deliciously damp. Perhaps the only place in Ithkar where she wasn’t sweating. The Ifrit territory—like the Ifrit themselves—seemed to operate only in extremes.

  “What do you think about when you’re here?” she asked.

  “Kesmir,” he said softly. “Always Kesmir.” He sighed and she reached out, placing a hand on his arm. There were no words she could say, Nalia knew that well enough.

  He glanced at her. “What brings you here?”

  “I come to think about Calar. It suits her, no?”

  “That it does,” he said. “What do you think about, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I try to understand what she wants. She’s always getting into everyone else’s head—but what’s in hers? What drives her?”

  “Power.”

  “Maybe. Yet I can’t help thinking there’s something more.” She shook her head. “Raif told me you’d learned that the Ash Crones have been training her since childhood.”

  Taz nodded. “Yes. Delightful bunch of hags, aren’t they?”

  Nalia’s lips turned up. “Yes, I’m sure we’ll be making their acquaintance at some point. It makes me wonder . . . what did they do to her? How could one jinni be so evil?”

  “The lure of power warps the soul. Look at Jaqar,” Taz said.

  Look at Malek.

  “What a senseless . . .” She sighed. There was so much that could have been avoided. She turned to Taz. “Enough talk of sad things. I came looking for you for a very important, very happy reason.”

  He smiled. “Well, we could all certainly use more of those.”

  For once, the task at hand was a warm glow that filled her up. There was a war and the gods were going to bring chaos to the realm and yet all she cared about was what would happen tonight.

  “Taz, when you studied at the temples, did you ever see the priests perform a . . . well . . . a marriage ceremony?”

  He gave her a long look. “My Empress, I’m flattered, really, but I just don’t think we belong together.”

  She swatted at him and he laughed, his eyes warm. “Be serious,” she said. “This is kind of really important.”

  He leaned back on his hands. “Yes, I did. But that was thousands of summers ago. I’m sure things have changed. Then again,” he added softly, “some things are timeless, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are.” She smiled, joy and terror and love threatening to spill out at any second. She imagined Raif, holding the wedding chalice to her lips.

  “What does Raif say about all this?”

  “I haven’t told him. I thought it could be a surprise.”

  She’d spoken to Zanari about her plan before she’d returned to the Dhoma. Raif’s sister would be coming through the portal in just a few hours to help by keeping Raif away from Nalia while she put the finishing touches on the temple she’d chosen.

  He smirked. “Pretty confident, aren’t you?”

  She thought of her proposal, in the bathtub of all places, of his Yes, Nalia, I’ll marry you. They’d held that in their hearts like a secret, speaking of it in late-night whispers.

  “I don’t think he’ll be opposed.”

  “You’re aware that no Ghan Aisouri has ever married, right?” he asked. Nalia nodded. He looked at her for a long moment, thoughtful. “When you become empress, I don’t quite know what that would make Raif.”

  “Emperor,” she said. Taz’s eyes widened. “I want him to rule by my side as an equal.”

  “I . . .” He shook his head, overwhelmed. “That’s . . . very unorthodox.”

  “This kingdom cannot be as it once was,” she said. “I want to build it on love. On acceptance and tolerance and understanding. What better way to start than have a Djan and an Aisouri on the throne, ruling together? The gods chose me. The people chose Raif. This way, everyone’s happy.”

  Taz grinned. “Mahan laudik. You bless the realm with this decision.”


  Many favors—yes, this was what a life with Raif would bring. Many favors from the gods. Nalia hoped, anyway.

  “So, you’ll perform our ceremony?”

  Taz bowed slightly. “Yes. When do you wish—”

  “Tonight.”

  “Raif. You’re not honestly going to wear that?” Zanari said. She gestured to his faded uniform. “I mean, it’s easy enough to manifest something clean. Gods.”

  Zanari flicked her fingers at him and his uniform switched to the dark-green tunic and tailored pants of a sawal-hafim, formal attire worn for special ceremonies.

  “Isn’t this overdoing it?” he said, looking down at the elaborately embroidered tunic. “Taz said it was just a blessing for the troops.”

  “Trust me, little brother, you’ll be glad not to look like you just rolled off the battlefield. I’m doing you a favor—you can thank me later.”

  Raif snorted as he headed up the lavender marble steps that led to the temple. He sort of missed being bullied by his sister.

  Few jinn knew about the temple located high in the Qaf Mountains. Raif only knew of its existence because Nalia had started going there not long after she returned home. Because the Aisouri could access all elements, it honored every god; and so Nalia had opened it up to all jinn, making it the first temple of its kind. Each day saw more and more jinn coming to the temple, worshipping their gods together. It was a start, but it would take a lot more than a temple to unite Arjinnans.

  Though he railed against the gods, Raif had taken comfort in this place. The arch at the entrance to the temple was made entirely of amethysts that sparkled in the moonlight, reminding him of Nalia’s eyes, of the crown that she would one day wear on her head. Much like the Djan temple in the Forest of Sighs, it had no roof but the star-studded sky. Colorful prayer flags shivered in the breeze, the fabric covered with the handwritten prayers of the faithful. A widr tree suspended in midair honored Tirgan. Though its roots were not packed beneath the earth, it was as alive as any tree in the Forest of Sighs. Flowing over a large section of the stone floor beneath it lay a piece of the Arjinnan Sea that had been plucked out by a pajai thousands of years before in honor of Lathor. Raif could hear the gentle rush of its waves, reminding him of the months spent training with the tavrai on the black sand beaches. The air that blew over the temple carried the scent of spices and herbs, and whenever Shaitan entered, they were surrounded in a gentle gust as they honored Grathali, goddess of air. And then there was Ravnir: a bolt of lightning caught by Antharoe. No matter the weather, it never went out. Yet instead of reminding him of the Ifrit, of death and destruction, the bolt made Raif think of Nalia. He could still see the lightning strike her over Erg al-Barq, the way it had filled her body. Witnessing what had happened to her atop that sand dune in the Sahara had been a turning point for Raif; after that he never questioned that she was a daughter of the gods.