Freedom's Slave Read online

  Dedication

  For Brenda Bowen, honorary Ghan Aisouri

  Map

  Contents

  Dedication

  Map

  The Arjinnan Castes

  The Jinn Gods and Goddesses

  Epigraph

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Two Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part Three Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Pronunciation Guide

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Heather Demetrios

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Arjinnan Castes

  THE GHAN AISOURI: Once the highest caste and beloved of the gods. All but annihilated, the members of this female race have violet eyes and smoke. They are the only jinn who can access the power of all four elements: air, earth, water, and fire.

  THE SHAITAN: The Shaitan gain power from air and have golden eyes and smoke. They are scholars, mages, artists, and the overlords who once controlled the provinces.

  THE DJAN: The largest caste and the peasant serfs of Arjinna’s valleys. They have emerald eyes and smoke, and their power comes from earth—the sacred soil of Arjinnan land. They are manual laborers, denied education or advancement.

  THE MARID: Caretakers of the Arjinnan Sea and fishing folk, these serfs draw their power from water. Their eyes and smoke are blue. They are the peasants of the coast, as uneducated as the Djan and subjected to equally brutal labor.

  THE IFRIT: Long despised throughout the realm, the Ifrit have crimson eyes and smoke. Their power comes from fire, and they use its energy for dark magic. They are soldiers and sorcerers.

  The Jinn Gods and Goddesses

  GRATHALI: Goddess of air, worshipped by the Shaitan

  TIRGAN: God of earth, worshipped by the Djan

  LATHOR: Goddess of water, worshipped by the Marid

  RAVNIR: God of fire, worshipped by the Ifrit

  MORA: Goddess of death, worshipped by the Ash Crones of Ithkar

  Because the Ghan Aisouri can draw power from all four elements, they worship every god, though individual Aisouri have their favorites.

  Epigraph

  If you are the dreamer, I am what you dream.

  But when you want to wake, I am your wish.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke

  PART ONE

  Vi fazla ra’ahim.

  You are a sword, nothing more.

  —Tavrai mantra

  1

  BOTTLES.

  They were the only illumination in the pitch-black room. Hundreds of them, filled with jinn of every caste. Clear bottles, pulsing with the light of their prisoners’ magic. Emerald, sapphire, gold, ruby: the jinn energy swirled inside, trapped.

  They covered the shelves that had been carved into the lapis lazuli wall behind the throne, just one of many changes Calar had made to the palace. She had taken to calling them her court. When faced with a decision, Calar would smile, brilliant in her cold beauty, and say, Why don’t we ask my court? She’d caress a bottle or two, speak to the miserable jinni inside it. What do you think I should do?

  From where Kesmir now stood, hidden in the shadows, he could just make out the shape of the naked bodies stuffed into the vessels. A curved spine, head on knees, eyes closed in order to block out what was happening. It was a small miracle Calar had decided not to line the bottles with iron, the sickmaking element that would have killed most of the jinn by now. She claimed she was being merciful by allowing them to keep their chiaan, but Kesmir knew the truth: she liked seeing them in pain. Liked making them watch what she did from the throne. It was no fun if they were dead.

  Several bottles were so tiny, they could have rested in Kesmir’s palm. Others were grotesque—tall, but incredibly thin, so that the jinn inside had no choice but to stand with their arms raised above their heads. There were bottles that were so squat they resembled discs more than vessels, and the jinn inside these looked like contortionists, their limbs held at painful, impossible angles.

  They hadn’t noticed Kesmir yet. He couldn’t bear to see their accusing eyes. He might as well have put them in there himself. He’d often considered setting them free, but there was little good that would do. Calar would just kill them all, then find some horribly inventive way to punish her disobedient lover.

  It was already too late for the prisoners whose bottles no longer emanated light. The corpses inside were slowly decaying, their spirits finally free of the bottle’s confines. He’d tried to get Calar to take the dead jinn away, but she wouldn’t.

  They’re a message, she’d said, to anyone who dares to defy me.

  Just last night, Kesmir had been present when an Ifrit peasant begged Calar to spare his daughter’s life. Begged on his knees, forehead touching the mosaic floor in deference. Sweaty skin against tiles that curled into elegant geometric stars and vines. Kesmir had been standing in his usual spot: three steps to Calar’s left. The Royal Consort, His Wretchedness Kesmir Ifri’Lhas. Royal Whore, more like it, he thought.

  He faced the great hall as moonlight streamed through the latticework windows and climbed the carved pillars covered with ancient Kada scrollwork—prayers to the gods for the safekeeping of the Aisouri who were long dead. The high, vaulted ceilings were covered in mother-of-pearl mosaics made to look like the sky at dawn, when the Aisouri had once trained in their ancient martial art, Sha’a Rho. It was the most magnificent place Kes had ever been. Yet in the three years since taking up residence in the palace, Calar had turned it into a slaughterhouse. The throne room stank of dark magic, fear, and blood. The coming day would be no exception.

  “Why should I spare a traitor’s life?” Calar had said. She spoke in a wine-drenched drawl, more interested in the savri in her hand than the agonized father at her feet.

  She was toying with him. Kesmir had already seen what Calar had done to the jinni’s daughter—this false hope she was dangling before him was nothing more than the amusement of a bored tyrant. He shuddered and Calar’s eyes flicked to his. He gave her a small smile, the cruel one they used in their games. Only he didn’t want to play the games anymore. She returned the smile and Kesmir relaxed. She hadn’t noticed his revulsion. Gods, when had that happened—revulsion? Not so long ago his sole purpose in life had been to love her, and love her well.

  “Not a traitor, My Empress. No,” the jinni had said. “A silly child in love. The boy’s a Djan, yes,
but not a tavrai. I swear it. My daughter is a good Ifrit.”

  “What would you tell your daughter right now, if she could hear you?” Calar had said, her voice going soft.

  This, Kesmir knew, was her favorite part.

  The Ifrit began to cry. “I . . . I’d tell her I love her and that I will find a . . . a good Ifrit boy for her. No more Djan. A . . . a soldier from My Empress’s army, perhaps.”

  Calar smiled, false benevolence. She gestured to one of the bottles behind her. Inside, an Ifrit girl’s mouth was open in a silent scream, palms against the glass. Her face was bruised, lips swollen and bleeding. Like the other jinn in the bottles, she was naked. The bottle was just big enough for her to sit on her knees, her arms covering her breasts, a useless attempt at modesty. Her eyes were full of terror and shame.

  The old jinni looked past Calar. Even now, Kesmir could still hear that father’s precise howl of pain. It echoed in his heart and would not let him sleep that night. Not that he would have, anyway.

  A sound from a far corner of the room brought Kesmir out of the memory. His hand went to the hilt of his scimitar, waiting. A figure in a dark cloak strode toward him, wearing a wooden mask that disguised the jinni’s features—a peasant mask from the harvest celebrations, this one depicting a fox. Necessary precautions when you were trying to overthrow an empress who could read minds.

  “I heard a phoenix cry tonight,” the jinni said. A male this time.

  Kesmir drew closer, his hand still gripping his scimitar. “I’m surprised it still has tears,” he answered, voice soft.

  It was a different jinni each time, but the same code. Kesmir suspected the jinni behind the mask was a Shaitan—he had the soft cadence of the jinn aristocracy, the perfect diction only the wealthy could afford to have.

  “We’ve found someone who can help you,” the jinni said.

  “There are many jinn who offer to ‘help’ me.”

  The jinni slowly lifted his index finger to the side of his mask and gently tapped twice near his temple. “This kind of help, General,” he said.

  Impossible. It was too much to hope for. And, yet, what this jinni presumed to offer was what Kesmir’s whole plan hinged on: the first step on the path to wresting Arjinna away from his lover was for Kes to control his own mind, build a wall between his thoughts and her own. It would be pointless for Kesmir to overthrow Calar until he knew how to keep her in the dark, to protect his mind from being ravaged until he begged for death. Reading his mind was a pastime of hers. It used to be a way for Calar to be closer to him, but not anymore. Her mind was a weapon pointed at him as often as not. He couldn’t influence her anymore, couldn’t hope that her tyranny was just a phase. If he didn’t depose her, someone else would. And, unlike him, they would kill her. Fool that he was, Kesmir still had hope that once she no longer had power, Calar would return to herself, to the girl she’d been when she rescued him long ago.

  “Calar killed every Aisouri trainer during the coup. There is no one left with that knowledge.” Disappointment tinged Kesmir’s voice—he couldn’t hide the desolation of yet another hope dashed.

  Anyone who knew how to protect the mind had been burned in the massive cauldron that now sat before the palace.

  “That is what you were supposed to think,” the jinni said evenly. He took off his mask, revealing a gaunt face with too-large golden eyes and a mess of burn scars covering nearly every inch of his skin. Even so, Kesmir recognized him.

  “You’re dead,” he said, taking an involuntary step back. “I saw Calar set you on fire, saw her kick you off the cliff.”

  “My daughter is the last living Ghan Aisouri,” Baron Ajwar Shai’Dzar said. His eyes glimmered in the wan light of the bottles. “Did you really think there was no one who wanted to keep me alive long enough for me to see my child on the throne your imposter empress has claimed?”

  “Your daughter is barred from Arjinna. The portal—”

  “The gods will find a way,” Ajwar said. “She is their eyes, their voice, their sword in the darkness.”

  Before Kesmir could say another word, the baron pressed a golden whistle into Kesmir’s hand. “Blow this from the top of Mount Zhiqui when the sun rises.”

  Without another word, Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh’s father evanesced. Golden smoke swirled around him and then he was gone, leaving behind nothing but wisps of honeyed evanescence and the whistle in Kesmir’s palm.

  He’d seen such whistles on the Aisouri, when Kesmir and the others had fastened the ropes around the dead royals’ necks before hanging them from the palace gate, where they remained to this day.

  It was how they’d summoned their gryphons.

  Kesmir’s eyes settled on the throne. The Ghan Aisouri dais had been replaced by one made of pure volcanic rock, a massive thing with hard edges and evil spirals that spilled around it like a demon’s halo. Its smooth surface reflected the light of the bottles, and Calar’s dark energy hung about it like a shroud.

  His mind drifted to his daughter, wondering what the gods had planned for her, this child of luckless love.

  Calar wouldn’t understand what Kes was doing, but it didn’t matter. She’d left him with no choice. The jinni who’d taken him in after he’d lost everything, who had shown him tenderness and a loyal, fierce love that brought down a kingdom, was still inside her, lurking in some forgotten corner of Calar’s heart. But if he didn’t act quickly, the best parts of Calar would be gone, stamped out by her increasing dependence on dark magic and her obsessive need to kill Nalia, whether or not the portal was closed.

  Kesmir was trying to overthrow the jinni he’d once loved more than anything in the worlds not because he wanted to destroy Calar, but because it was the only way to save her.

  2

  BLOOD AND ASH AND DARKNESS, FOR HOURS ON END.

  Raif was nothing more than a scimitar that slashed through the endless night, a hoarse voice that directed the jinn around him.

  The Eye of Iblis was a corner of the universe the gods had forgotten about, a black hole. Impossible to escape. Here was nowhere, a void so vast, so incomprehensible, that it was as if he’d been flung into deep space. By his calculations, they’d been traveling across it for over a month, using his sister’s voiqhif to guide them toward Arjinna. They’d fought the whole way through, but today’s battle with the ghouls was the worst by far. Not only were there more of the monsters than usual, the army was on its last reserves of chiaan. The Eye had nothing for them to replenish their energy with. If they didn’t get to Arjinna soon, they’d be stranded here forever—or at least until they died of hunger, thirst, ghouls. The supplies they’d brought with them were running out, but Zanari promised they were close to home, a day or two away at most. Home. Gods, it’d been a long time since he’d seen Arjinna.

  The only light on the battlefield came from multicolored streaks of chiaan as the jinn grappled with monsters twice their size. The circular formation protecting Nalia and Zanari—the empress and her seer—had long since been breached as more and more ghouls descended. The lamps the Brass Army had carried were now mangled bits of glass and metal that littered the floor of the Eye.

  Raif ducked as a stream of violet chiaan hit the chest of the ghoul running at him. He turned and Nalia grinned at him, her hands burning with Ghan Aisouri magic. Behind her, the Brass Army and the ghouls they fought made a terrifying tableau.

  “Show-off,” he said, laughing despite the death surrounding him. The terror, the blood on his hands, the chiaan pumping through him—this was where Raif belonged. In the fight, a whisper away from death.

  “Come on. Tell me watching me kill ghouls isn’t sexy,” she said. Battle pillow talk, charged with adrenaline, with the knowledge that everything could end at any moment.

  In answer, Raif pulled Nalia to him, his lips crushing hers. The battle disappeared, and it was just the jinni he loved more than anything and her chiaan that filled him with liquid light. After far too little time, he stepped away, though gods
knew that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  There was a shout behind them and he pulled Nalia to the ground as Tazlim barreled past, golden lasers shooting from his fingertips. The commander of Nalia’s army was a remarkably well-trained warrior for a jinni who’d just been rescued from a bottle he’d been trapped inside for thousands of years. Nalia’s army. How quickly Raif had gone from antiroyalist tavrai to nearly bending the knee.

  “Keep killing these ghouls and there’s more where that came from,” he murmured against Nalia’s lips.

  Her eyes gleamed, wicked and lovely. “Promise?”

  “I always keep my promises.”

  She stood, eyeing the battlefield around them, the sight of her causing something fierce and primal and terrifying to rise up in his chest.

  He grabbed her hand. “Hey.”

  Nalia glanced back at him, eyebrows raised, but before he could say anything, there was a roar and Nalia whirled around, launching herself at a ghoul that towered over them, the monster outlined by the chiaan of the fighting around them. Its needle-sharp teeth gnashed at the air, moving toward her neck, saliva and blood dripping from its gaping mouth, but before Raif could move to help Nalia, the creature froze. Nalia pushed it to the ground with one hand, pulling her Ghan Aisouri dagger out with the other. Paralyzed by the spelled blade, the creature could do nothing but watch as Nalia speared its heart. She stood, wiping the blood on her leather pants as she turned to Raif.

  “Better keep that promise, Djan’Urbi,” she said. She winked before throwing herself back into the chaos.

  Raif would remember this moment every night for months and months to come—that wink, the way it made him feel like a boy in his first blush of manhood. Nalia, his Nalia, who disappeared into the Eye without a trace, taking his heart and every bit of hope inside him with her.

  3

  KES WAITED UNTIL THE INKY DARKNESS OF THE ROOM he shared with Calar turned gray in the coming dawn before he slipped out of the bed’s warmth. The small form that slept between them sighed and turned over, throwing her little arm over the pillow her young father had just vacated. She slept the kind of deep sleep granted only to children who had yet to be weighed down with cares. Kes leaned down and kissed his daughter’s forehead, casting one more glance at Calar sleeping beside her as he straightened up. He hated leaving them alone together.