Freedom's Slave Page 4

Like all the Marid and Djan in Arjinna, the grandmothers were starving—they had no choice but to risk their lives in the Ghaz, day in and day out. If they were lucky, an enterprising, kind Ifrit merchant would throw them enough coin in exchange for the goods. More likely, the Ifrit would steal what little the grandmothers had, threatening to turn them in to the next patrol that came by for selling stolen goods. It was a strange sight: these beautiful items, artifacts from another age, sitting in reed baskets in the mud, their shine worn off after passing from hand to hand. Vases from Earth, the images painted in blue ink by the skilled hands of infinitely patient artists. Mirrors in golden frames, the glass a view not of one’s face, but of anything in the past of their lives. Precious jewels, ancient books—all of it a treasure trove now that it was illegal to manifest anything, even food or clothing.

  This was Calar’s newest decree, all part of her war against the tavrai. It was obvious that this most recent law was an attempt to turn the jinn against the revolutionaries and quell any desire for an uprising. Because informants were rewarded with land and manifestation privileges, the entire realm was filled with spying neighbors and family members who turned on one another. Though the tavrai had taken to manifesting food and clothing and leaving it all over the countryside for people to find, many jinn refused to avail themselves of it, for fear they’d be caught and sent to Ithkar or worse—executed.

  It didn’t matter what the tavrai did anyway—they’d all be hanging from the palace gates soon enough. With Raif gone and Calar’s fear-mongering reaching new heights, the revolution was doomed. The best they could hope for at this point was to take down as many Ifrit as they could when they staged their last battle. This time, Shirin was all in. By her calculations, she had about twenty-four hours left to live.

  A faded poster clung to the wall of a bakery and Shirin stopped for a moment, staring at the face fashioned in bold black and white: Raif, staring off into an unseen future, his eyes resolute. She remembered when the artists started putting them up all over the city, long before the Aisouri had been killed. It had been their act of resistance in the hopes of adding to the revolution’s meager ranks. Raif had actually blushed when they came upon the first one. He’d reached up and tried to take it down, but Shirin had slapped his hand.

  I look a right ass, he’d said. This isn’t about me, it’s about all of us.

  Shirin had pulled him away. It gives the people hope, knowing you’re out there, fighting for them.

  What she’d wanted to say was that it gave her hope, gave her a reason to wake up in the morning, when the dreams were too real, the past too close. Now, everyone just assumed he was dead. With the portal closed, he might as well be. Shirin took one last look at the poster, then moved on. That was all she could do now—keep moving, keep fighting.

  Once again, Shirin saw the look in Raif’s eyes when he defended the salfit he’d traveled to Earth to find. A Djan’Urbi, in love with a Ghan Aisouri. How could he?

  She could still feel Raif’s lips against her own, the heat of him, battle lust and something else. Shirin walked faster through the mud that coated the alley. There wasn’t time for these pointless thoughts, this exercise in torture.

  To hell with them both, she thought, adjusting the heavy burlap sack she carried over her shoulder.

  Shirin smelled the Vein before she saw it. The downward slope of its cobblestoned lane acted as a gutter for the butcher stalls located along it, filling the air with the stench of death and decay. Shirin was well acquainted with the alley. In addition to being the home of the jinn black market, it was lined with harems and taverns, both of which continued to do a booming business despite the hard times. As such, they remained the best places for spreading information and finding new recruits for the tavrai. Jinn with thin faces and too much rouge leaned over the balconies that fronted the harems and called down to possible customers.

  “Hey, brother, I can grant you a wish for that loaf of bread.”

  “Sister! Come upstairs and share that bottle of savri with me. I’ll give you a good price.”

  That could have been me, she thought. If it hadn’t been for Dthar Djan’Urbi rescuing her all those years ago, Shirin didn’t know if she’d even be alive now.

  An emaciated jinni stepped out of the shadows gathering in a nearby alcove, his Djan eyes bright with fever. “Gaujuri, pretty girl? Forget your troubles, eh? Grant me a wish or two?” He smiled, his teeth yellow, rotting from the potent herb. The last thing Shirin needed was to get high. And granting wishes these days could land you in Ithkar faster than you could say screw the empress.

  “I’m good, brother, thanks,” she said, shrugging off his dirty hand.

  The alley was crowded, the scent of unwashed bodies mixing with the ghastly perfume of slaughtered animals. All around her, jinn traded what they could for food, clothing, savri, candles.

  “Genuine Ghan Aisouri artifacts!” called a large Marid jinni.

  She stood behind a table that sagged from the weight of jade daggers, leather cloaks, and gryphon harnesses. The goods had been showing up ever since the Aisouri had been killed, brought into the markets by palace servants and Ifrit soldiers who’d raided the palace in those early, chaotic days of the new regime. More often than not they were fakes—cheap things that broke the minute you tried to use them. From the looks of this table, though, the Marid had the real deal. Which meant she had an Ifrit backer. Shirin hurried past. That would just make a bad day worse, being recognized by an enemy collaborator.

  She reached the Third Wish and ducked inside, searching for her contact in the half-light of the tavern. It was early, so only a few tables were occupied. Most of the drinkers were the drunks of the Ghaz and merchants conducting business over steaming bowls of watered-down goat stew, fragrant with coriander and cumin despite the little meat they contained. The Wish was one of the few places where all the castes mixed: rich, poor, Marid, Ifrit—it didn’t matter, so long as the savri kept coming. The bar had been started by jinn on the dark caravan who’d granted their human masters their third wish and had then been set free from the magic that bound them. There were a handful of them in Arjinna, free jinn who the Ghan Aisouri hadn’t known what to do with. For years they’d been running a brisk trade in the Ghaz as merchants and madams, drug dealers and black market mavens. The main room of the Wish had walls covered in fading swaths of velvet with shabby matching curtains that were drawn across private alcoves tucked away from the main floor, in dim corners. All kinds of things happened in those alcoves. Candles hovered in the air, the tallow evaporating rather than dripping. Long wooden tables occupied the center of the room, with smaller ones on the outer periphery.

  Shirin caught the eye of the bartender, a Djan with one golden eye, one emerald—a hagiz. She knew his story—the child of a slave who’d been taken by her overlord, with no choice but to bear his child. Yurik’s mixed parentage was unusual among the jinn. Though no one could prove it, most jinn feared that a child with mixed blood would have weaker chiann. The hagiz were pitied by most, but Yurik had done well for himself at the Wish and was indispensable to the revolution.

  He set down the goblets he’d been drying and inclined his head toward the stairway. Shirin nodded and made her way to the second floor, knowing Yurik would be close behind. She pushed open the door at the top of the stairs, letting herself into his familiar quarters. The single room was cozy and lived-in, the floor’s rough wood planks covered with thick rugs. A simple space, it contained little more than a bed, a small table with chairs, and a shelf filled with contraband items Yurik sold as needed: potions that changed jinn’s eyes in order to disguise their appearance, poisoned daggers, iron-tipped arrows—deadly and sickmaking. Iron was one of the few things that jinn could not withstand, and so the metal was a precious weapon smuggled in from Earth in the days when the portal was still open.

  Shirin heard his light tread on the stairs just before he joined her, a bottle of savri in hand.

  “Fancy seeing you he
re, love,” Yurik said, grinning.

  “Well, I was in the neighborhood.” Shirin returned his smile. Something about him lessened the weight on her heart, just a little. No matter how bad things were, that grin rarely left his face.

  “That bag wouldn’t, by any chance, have something to do with the raid on the Ifrit stores by the Infinite Lake, now would it?” he said as he uncorked the bottle of savri.

  “Fifty guns, fully loaded, with extra ammunition.”

  Human weapons such as these were impossible to manifest, as they required the jinn to produce steel. Because steel was derived from iron, the Ifrit could only get these weapons from Earth—attempting to manifest one could easily result in death. Since the closure of the portal, guns had become a rare, precious resource. They worked faster than magic and killed instantly if aimed with precision. The guns that were not made of steel were difficult for the jinn to copy or manifest, as the materials—plastic, carbon fiber—were unknown in the jinn realm. The few mages who would have been able to manifest them had been killed by the Ifrit in the first wave of purges.

  Shirin dropped the bag of weapons on the floor with a heavy clunk, then took a long, hearty swig from the bottle Yurik offered her.

  He grabbed a chair and turned it around, sitting with his arms resting on its back. “That’s my girl,” he said. “I can always tell how things are going with the resistance by how you drink your savri.”

  Shirin wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What does this tell you?” she said, holding up the bottle, emptied of nearly half its contents.

  His eyes twinkled—twinkled. “That we’re screwed to all hells.”

  “And yet you’re just as relaxed as ever. You are one twisted jinni, you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Takes one to know one, raiga.”

  Wolf. It was what the tavrai called Shirin—Raif’s raiga. Did Raif and Yurik see her that way, too—all bared teeth and snarls?

  Focus.

  “I need you to distribute these throughout the Ghaz today—can you do that?” she asked, gesturing to the bag.

  “To what end?”

  “You know to what end, Yurik,” she said quietly.

  She was tired of arguing with him about this. For weeks they’d been on the verge of a shouting match over the tavrai’s plan for one more last offensive. He called it suicide; she called it honor.

  Yurik stood and crossed the room, then tugged the bottle out of her hand. “I’ve been going over some maps. I found a route that—”

  “You’re still on about this mass exodus to Ithkar?” She shook her head. “There’s a reason the Ifrit wanted to get the hell out of there so badly.”

  “But they survived, didn’t they?” he said. “Don’t you think living on the other side of the Qaf is better than arming grandmothers and telling them to kill the first Ifrit they see?”

  Shirin rubbed her thumb over the jagged scar that cut into the skin around her wrist, a nervous habit she’d had since childhood. It was a constant reminder of what she’d survived, of why she could never give up this fight. The memory of that long-ago night was embedded deep inside her: the dagger she’d stolen from her overlord, biting down on a knotted sheet to keep from crying out as she sliced into the delicate skin just above her shackle. It was the only way she could imagine gaining her freedom—she’d rather lose her hands than spend one more minute on the overlord’s plantation. He’d tied her to his bed, a treat for later, but the ropes he’d used were too loose on her skin-and-bones body. Shirin lost consciousness when the blade hit her bone and her overlord found her there, bloodying his sheets, half dead. Foolish little whore, he’d said to her. You thought all you needed to do to get rid of me was to cut off your hands? He’d grabbed her injured arm, pressing her hand against the bulge in his pants. This hand belongs to me, he’d hissed. And I shall do with it as I please.

  She’d been nine summers old.

  “Shirin,” Yurik said, his voice gentle.

  He knew she’d gone somewhere he couldn’t follow. He knew how to bring her back. When she turned to him, his eyes were searching and he held out the bottle of savri again, the only medicine that ever helped her.

  Shirin grabbed the bottle and took another long swig. “What makes you think Calar would even allow us to take over Ifrit territory? It’s still theirs. I, for one, don’t want to fight over a useless patch of rock and fire. We don’t know Ithkar at all, never been there. We’d be sitting ducks when the army came after us. At least this way, we go out on our own terms.”

  “Our terms . . . or Raif’s?”

  She growled, frustrated. “This has nothing to do with him!”

  “Doesn’t it?” Yurik said softly. “This has Djan’Urbi’s stamp all over it. Go out in a blaze of glory, right?”

  There was no mistaking the feeling in his eyes—that hint of unearned jealousy. Shirin had never given Yurik a reason to think he was anything more than her friend. And yet what he wanted was plain as day, there if she wanted to see it.

  She didn’t.

  Shirin crossed to the soot-stained window and looked down on the street below, filled with indecision. She didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore.

  “I’ll never live up to your idea of me,” she said. “I’m not good or noble. Just a raiga, after all.”

  “You don’t care what anyone thinks—that’s what I like about you. You know that.”

  The compliment warmed her, but only because it was something Raif would have said—had said. It was part of why he’d chosen her as his second.

  “I need to get back to the forest.” She turned to Yurik. “Will you do it?” she asked, gesturing to the guns in the bag.

  “When have I ever not done something you wanted, Shir?” Yurik said, his voice laced with bitterness.

  “Yurik . . .”

  She heard everything he wasn’t saying, but she refused to listen. He was her only friend—she wouldn’t take him as her lover. Not because she didn’t care for him, but because she knew she’d close her eyes and pretend he was Raif. He deserved more than that. Much more.

  Yurik waited a moment, his hope a palpable thing in that tense silence. Then his lip curled as he threw open the door. He turned, one hand gripping the knob, his eyes sadder than she’d ever seen them.

  “You make one hell of a beautiful martyr, Shirin Djan’Khar.”

  Shirin headed east, toward the tavrai headquarters in the Forest of Sighs. She took the long way through the forest, wending her way past overgrown sugarberry bushes that perfumed the air with their soft, sweet scent and elder pines that vaulted toward the sky, their thick trunks covered in moss. As she moved deeper into the forest, Shirin looked for markers cut into the wood of the pines, careful to stick to the path. To veer from it would be folly. Though the forest was selective about who was allowed inside it, little protection was given to its guests once they passed through the invisible barrier that acted as wall, gate, and weapon all in one. Thus far, the forest had refused to let the Ifrit inside, as though it instinctively knew Calar’s soldiers meant only harm. The inability of the Ifrit to enter the forest was the only miracle Shirin had witnessed in her young life, aside from the Djan’Urbi family’s unbinding magic.

  The forest was at the heart of the ancient story of Jandessa and Rahim, the doomed lovers from different castes. Long ago, Jandessa had sought refuge in the forest, fleeing her Shaitan family after her father murdered Jandessa’s Djan lover. It was said that before her time, the forest had been open to all. But the gods had heard her cries for solitude and barred all but those seeking protection from entering the forest. Thus, the forest gifted the tavrai asylum and denied entrance to those who would do them harm. The protection of this fearsome landscape was what had allowed the tavrai to avoid engaging in full-scale battles with the Ifrit. Instead, they worked at slowly wearing their enemies down through small attacks and raids.

  Still, the forest itself could do plenty harm. Deep holes lurked beneath the brush, hidin
g snakes whose venom wiped away every memory from the victim’s mind, and carnivorous plants that craved jinn flesh. None of this particularly bothered Shirin. She’d learned long ago how to appease the pines, so as not to receive a whipping from their branches. She recognized the sour scent the snakes gave off and knew where all the pools of quicksand lay.

  Shirin was halfway back to camp when she stopped on the forest path, gutted. Just before her stood a widr, a swath of its bark missing and replaced with Raif’s determined handwriting, a skill he hadn’t acquired until he was ten summers old. He was one of the few tavrai who could write. SHEEREN + RAF WAZ HEER.

  She reached out and traced the letters with her fingertips, the ache for him traveling up her arm, into her heart, a suffocating thing that had held power over her for nine long years. She closed her eyes. She would not cry, she would not—

  “Godsdamn you, Raif Djan’Urbi,” she whispered.

  Raif.

  Raif.

  Her first thought, when she opened her eyes in the morning. Her last when she closed them at night.

  She’d tried to erase the feel of his lips against hers—that one kiss she’d given him just before he’d left for Earth. A kiss nine years in the making, a kiss he’d returned, surprised at first, then soft and warm. His callused hands on her cheeks, his body pressing hers against a wall. It was impossible to blot that memory from her mind—or the one that had cemented her feelings for him, so long ago.

  Shirin has been free for six months. The wounds that bracelet her wrists have healed into scars, only one of her body’s many reminders of those years on the overlord’s plantation. She sits in the shadows, outside the firelight where the free jinn dance.

  It is the harvest festival and she can only tell that Raif is across from her by the way he holds his body, bony shoulders thrown back, so sure of his place in this world of the tavrai. He wears a dragon mask, of course—he loves dragons. She has chosen that of a wolf—teeth in a snarl, fur white as snow. Yet somehow he knows it’s her behind that ferocious face.