The merchant just rolled her eyes. She turned and walked away without another word, her dark robes flaring behind her. Mazen wished he could join her. She wasn’t free, exactly, not anymore, but she had been before his father found her. Free to roam the desert and live as she wished, without the weight of a kingdom on her shoulders.
“Such a pleasant personality she has,” Omar said. He gestured for Mazen to follow.
She has a better personality than you, at least, Mazen thought.
He followed Omar through one of the open-air corridors, up a stairwell, and to a simple wooden door. He knew even before entering that it was a storage room, for a piece of parchment listing the inventory inside was pinned to the door. Before Mazen could ask what they were doing there, Omar pulled him inside.
The room was full of cleaning supplies and shoddy, dusty furniture. Two servants sat at a table, playing shatranj. They looked up at Omar’s entrance and hurriedly vacated the area on his command. Once they left, Omar slid into one of the chairs and smiled. “This will do perfectly for some peace and quiet.”
“Is there a reason we’re having this conversation here?”
“I needed a room, and this was the closest one not filled with your spying servants.”
Mazen crept to the window ledge and positioned himself on the sill. Just in case I need to call for someone to rescue me, he thought. But the corridor outside was empty at this time of day. Knowing Omar, he had planned for even this.
“You remember the favor you promised me, Mazen?” Omar’s eyes glittered as he reached into the satchel at his belt and withdrew some golden object. “I have found a way for you to repay me.” He tossed the object to him.
Mazen leaned forward barely in time to catch it before it dropped to the floor. He stared at the thing in his hands. It was a golden bangle: a gaudy thing with glittering jewels. “A gift? You shouldn’t have, Omar.” He tried a smile, hoping it would mask his confusion.
“Oh, but I have.” Omar reached into the satchel again and withdrew—the same bangle.
Mazen eyed the replica warily. “I thought you found jewelry distasteful.”
Omar snorted. “Not so much distasteful as inconvenient.” He slid one of his blades from his belt and held it out to Mazen. “Feed one of the gems on the bracelet your blood.” Instinctively, Mazen flinched away. Omar just waved the knife at him. “I assure you there’s a good reason.”
“Well then, enlighten me. I’m not going to cut myself for some unknown reason.”
Omar set the knife down on the table with a sigh. “Fine. You want an explanation?” He held out the second bangle. “Put this on.”
“But I—”
“Just do it, Mazen.”
He caught the bangle when Omar tossed it to him. After a beat of hesitation, he clasped it onto his left wrist. The sensation that followed was one of the strangest he’d experienced: he felt unbalanced and dizzy, as if the center of him had shifted. His body felt too cold, too big. He had the inexplicable urge to scrub at his skin until it flaked off. He blinked, and his vision sharpened, the details of the room becoming more vivid.
“What just happened?” He froze at the sound of his voice. Because it wasn’t his voice. The timbre was too low, the words too heavy on his tongue.
“Omar, what—” Mazen stopped abruptly. He’d caught sight of his appearance in a mirror wedged into a corner of the room. He looked away. Then back again. The image remained unchanged.
Omar bin Malik stared back at him, eyes wide with shock.
Mazen touched his face—now his brother’s face—and gasped. He said nothing at first, just stared with dawning comprehension at his changed reflection. Then the panic came, sharp and wild, and he pried the bangle from his wrist and threw it on the cushions.
When he again looked in the mirror, he was back in his own body. He brushed his hands over his face with a groan. Omar had the audacity to chuckle.
“Your melodramatic responses never fail to amuse.”
Mazen looked up sharply. “What was that? Magic? Are these a pair of relics?” He remembered the Midnight Merchant’s bag of relics. “Did you steal these from the merchant?”
Omar clicked his tongue. “I only steal things I cannot get through other means. The merchant is not the only one who collects magical items.”
Mazen knew this. His father had a small collection of relics that had been “donated” to him by the hunters and nomads who roamed the desert. He paid good gold for them, of course, but the real reason anyone surrendered relics to him was because they feared him finding out they possessed them. It was not a common problem; relics were rare, after all.