“You must have the strength of a jinn in that puny body,” Aisha said.
Junaid looked up sharply. “That is not a joke to be made in our line of work.”
She raised a brow. “And Samar calls me touchy.” She followed the thief to the door, eyeing the scant display of relics in passing. Weapons, jewelry, clothing—it was mystifying, how many shapes a relic could take.
“You could borrow one.” Junaid gestured to the display. “For your next fight.”
Aisha thought of the black blood staining the prince’s hand. She had never trusted jinn magic; now she trusted it even less.
“No.” She rested her hand on the hilt of one of her blades. “I don’t need them.”
Junaid shrugged his pointy shoulders. “Suit yourself.” He pushed open the door. Paused on the threshold. “I’ll look forward to toasting your loyalty when you return to Madinne.”
Aisha scoffed. “Loyalty isn’t loyalty if it’s contingent on a reward.”
Again, Junaid smiled the dead man’s grin. “Wise words, bint Louas. Wise words.”
She waited for his footsteps to fade down the hall before she followed him downstairs. The thief doubtless had his own exit—it would be impossible to slip that gigantic bag through such narrow cracks.
Aisha, on the other hand, felt unburdened. Their journey hadn’t been a smooth one so far, but they were making progress, and that was the important thing.
Just as Aisha did not mourn the past, she also did not overthink the future. Right now, there was only the present. And in the present, she was one step closer to being done with this hellish journey. But first—she needed a horse.
35
LOULIE
The morning after the fight in the diwan, Loulie woke with a heavy heart. Her dread only worsened when, after blinking sunlight out of her eyes, she found herself lying in one of the wali’s guest rooms, no Qadir in sight. At first, she was irritated at him for having disappeared. But then she remembered she had been the one to walk away.
She had confronted him. He had apologized. What else was there to do but accept his apology and move on? Qadir had saved her life, had given her the magic to protect herself. Their bond was stronger than this fight. And yet she still felt broken. Still felt hurt.
Loulie sighed as she turned to her preparations for the day. She bathed in one of the wali’s private bath chambers, donned her merchant robes and bag, outlined her eyes in kohl, and then set out to meet with Ahmed.
The guards led her into the courtyard, past the diwan, and up to a landscape of ponds and crisscrossing bridges. The wali stood on the longest bridge, a beautiful wooden construct with rails that curved and spiraled like eddies. The bridge hung above a pond: flowered cacti surrounded the water, and golden daisies and marigolds grew between the smooth stones edging their way out of the pond’s surface. Sissoo trees loomed above them, speckling the silver water with shards of sunlight.
Ahmed stared at all of this blankly. He turned only when the guards announced her presence. And then, as he always did, he forced a smile onto his face. It was the most halfhearted smile she’d ever seen on him, made even less convincing by the dark circles under his eyes. She noticed he was garbed entirely in white: the color of prayer.
“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite guest. How goes the morning, Midnight Merchant?”
“Mundane.” She despised the world for continuing on like normal, even though Ahmed’s life was falling apart.
Ahmed sighed. “Indeed.” He waved a hand at the guards. “You may leave us.” The command took the guards as far as the next bridge. Ahmed chuckled without humor at her confusion. “They are wary of me, and for good reason.” She realized it was the truth. The guards weren’t securing the area; they were securing Ahmed. She could feel their eyes from a distance.
Her stomach sank. “But why? What happened last night wasn’t your fault.”
She had been in his chambers last night when he explained what had happened. He had, without knowing why, been carrying the collar around while preparing for his meeting. He’d been in the jinn-made forest when it started speaking to him. Before he’d known what he was doing, he’d clasped it around his neck and become a prisoner in his own mind.
It was the stuff of nightmares. Loulie knew; she had nearly fallen under the same spell.
Ahmed smiled. A sad, stiff smile. “Unfortunately, it’s difficult to blame murder on a very formless, very dead jinn.”
Not if that jinn may be the legendary Queen of Dunes.