He set the coin down on Layla’s palm. “See for yourself. Flip it, and if it comes up on the human side, the answer is yes. If it comes up on the other, the answer is no.”
Layla would not have believed it was truly magic had the coin been given to her a few days ago. But things had changed. She was no longer so naive.
“My family is dead,” she whispered as she flipped the coin.
It came up on the human side.
She breathed out and tried again. “A jinn saved my life.”
Human.
Tears sprang to her eyes as the coin continued to come up on the human side, confirming her new reality. Truth. Truth. Truth.
“I am alone.” Her shoulders shook with sobs as she threw the coin into the air. It bounced off her knee and rolled away, back to the jinn. For a few moments, Qadir said nothing. Then he silently reached for her hand and set the coin on her palm.
Jinn.
He curled her fingers around it. “Not alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Loulie was lost in her memories and absently making the two-faced coin vanish between her fingers when she returned to the Aysham’s deck the next morning. The crowds from the previous night had dispersed, and the sailors paid her no mind as she wandered past them in her plain brown robes. She had traded the scarves obscuring her face for a light shawl, which she wrapped loosely around her head and shoulders to better feel the sun on her cheeks. It was a relief, as always, to doff her merchant apparel and bask in anonymity the day after a sale.
Also a relief: the familiar, hazy shape of Madinne in the distance. Loulie smiled at the sight of the city. “Qadir, do you see that?”
The jinn, now in his lizard form and humming softly in her ear, shifted on her shoulder. He made a sound of confirmation.
She drew closer to the ship’s railings. Even through an orange veil of sand, the sun was bright enough she could make out the tiers of the great desert city of Madinne. At the top was the sultan’s palace, made up of beautiful white domed towers and minarets that reached for the sun. It was surrounded on all sides by colorful buildings—stone and wooden constructions both domed and flat, tall and squat. And somewhere in the midst of those buildings, nestled in a nexus of crooked, winding alleyways, was home. Their home.
“I wonder how Dahlia is doing.” Qadir’s voice, made much softer by his smaller form, was directly in her ear.
“However she’s doing, she’ll be much better when we drop by with our rent.”
Qadir made a clicking sound—she still wasn’t sure whether he did it with his teeth or tongue—and said, “Yes, because our rent is equivalent to all the coin in our bag.”
“I won’t give her all of our earnings.”
“That last exchange was for my blood, you know.”
Loulie suppressed a smile as she looked over her shoulder at the sailors. Though the men were far from graceful, she could not help but think they resembled dancers in the easy way they went about their docking preparations.
“Would you like me to keep your blood money, then?”
Qadir hissed. “I do not need your human gold.”
“Ah, what a shame. And here I thought you’d enjoy spending it on wine or women. You know the dealers won’t take your commemorative coins.” She glanced at the two-faced coin between her fingers.
“Loulie?”
“Mm?” She slid the coin into her pocket.
“I overhear talk of the sultan.”
Suppressing a groan, Loulie turned and surveyed the deck. Other than the sailors, she spotted a few scattered groups of people. She walked between them, keeping her expression blank as she eavesdropped. As little interest as she had in the sultan, she could not afford to ignore the gossip. Not when she, a criminal, always tried to avoid his men.
But while she caught two sailors trading profanity-laden opinions, heard a couple confessing forbidden love to one another, and was audience to a strange riddle game, she overheard nothing about the sultan.
She had just given up hope when she spotted Rasul al-Jasheen speaking with a man wearing the uniform of the sultan’s guard. Loulie quickly glanced away and slowed her pace as she approached them.
“The sultan’s councillors are beside themselves,” the guard was saying.
Rasul snorted. “Why does he not send the high prince to search for the relic?”
The guard glanced in her direction. Loulie grabbed hold of a passing sailor and asked him in her most pleasant voice if he knew where they were docking. The sailor responded, but she was not listening. Not to him, anyway.