The Fire Wish (11 page)

The woman clucked at me, and I looked up to see she expected me to bow my head at a man sitting on a cushion in the corner, half in shadow. I hadn’t seen him, and his sudden appearance, like that of the jinni girl in my window, made me jump. His wizened bronze face was like an etched pot, round and cut and full of heaviness.

“I’m glad to see you haven’t disappeared,” he said. He motioned for me to sit beside him, but the woman sat on that cushion. I was left with a thin mat of woven grass. I shifted on it and waited for them to say something.

“She was outside by the fountain, rubbing her feet!” the woman said.

The man pulled at his graying goatee. “Laira, did Najwa tell you she was marked today?” This man thought I was Najwa too. Couldn’t they tell I was human?

“Yes,” she said. “I had expected a warning before that happened, Faisal.”

“There was a development today, and we did not have time to forewarn you.”

“What sort of development?” she snapped.

“I can’t say, and neither can Najwa, but thank you for finding her. You may go now. I’ll send Najwa along in a little while.”

Laira’s face colored and she shook her head. “Don’t tell me what to do, my dear brother. You promised me when—when she was born—that you would not tell me how to raise her.”

This man was Najwa’s uncle?

Faisal reached for the pot of tea before him and poured himself a cup. “Najwa and I have some Corps business to attend to.”

“This late in the evening?” She stood up and pulled me off my mat. “I’m sure it can be taken care of in the morning. Come, Najwa.”

“Laira.” His voice had an edge. “I need to speak to Najwa now. Alone. If you wish, you can wait outside.” He sounded like my father when he was drawing out the details of a trade. Or telling me what I was not allowed to do.

Laira huffed, but she nodded and let go of me. Then she whipped her skirts and fled the room. When I turned around, I found Faisal watching me. His eyes were aflame.

“Where did you go?” he asked. “I know you went up there, Najwa. I can smell the earth on you.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” I said. I tried to smile, but couldn’t manage it.

He sighed and looked down at his cup of tea. “You know better than to lie to me, Najwa.” He had gotten very quiet. When he looked up, I saw that there was fire simmering in his round cheeks, just below the skin. Real, liquid fire. “What is the first rule of the Corps?”

“Honesty?” My heart was thumping against my rib cage.

“You cannot go to the surface without permission.” He stood up slowly, and I backed against the wall. He was going to kill me. “I never thought I’d be this disappointed in you.”

“I’m sorry. I—” I didn’t know what to say. What would she have said? I had only known her for a second. How was I supposed to know what to do? I bowed my head, trying to look as apologetic as possible. “I’m sorry, but nothing happened. I won’t do it again.”

“Shards, Najwa. What if you had been
touched
?” His anger fizzled, leaving him a tired, empty old man. He sank back onto his cushion. I would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t just yelled at me. And if he hadn’t been a jinni.

“Well, I wasn’t touched.” At least that part was true. For me.

“Did you go back to the palace?”

“The palace? No.” She had been in the palace? The Baghdad palace?

“Then you must have gone to see the girl from Zab.” My face flushed, and there was no denying now that I knew something about that.

“The princess?”

“She wasn’t any of your business, but you took matters into your own hands. So tell me, then, what did you see?” His voice brightened, like he wanted to hear how an old friend was doing. But he wasn’t any friend of mine.

Something was going on, but Najwa wasn’t supposed to know. And so that was why she’d come to my barge. Not because of some Will of Allah. Not because I’d prayed for help. She’d been curious.

“The girl was getting ready for her arrival in Baghdad.”

“Did she have her hair braided and her hands hennaed?” My jaw dropped, and I looked at my palms. “Don’t think I didn’t notice, Najwa. I’m not Master of the Corps for nothing.”

I had been holding my breath until he called me Najwa again. “Yes! I mean, I’m sorry. I was so interested in the henna that I had to try it. That’s why I was gone so long.”

“Get some rest. I have something for you to do tomorrow.” Then he waved me away, and I bolted out of the room.

THICK CLOUDS GATHERED in the sky, and within a few minutes, they fell like a soggy veil. Water pounded the deck and bounced up knee-high. A strip of wood at the base of the door prevented the water from seeping into the cabin, but I reached through the window and let it land on my hennaed palm. It was pure, cold, and real. Rain.

“Don’t get the dress wet,” Rahela said. The rain was sliding down my wrist, so I pulled my hand back. I kept my face as close to the window as I could without getting wet. Rahela put aside her loom to fold up the gowns we’d left strewn about the cabin.

I dried my hand and helped her, tucking everything into the trunks, but it was unnecessary. The water stayed outside. It ran off the sides of the barge and into the Tigris.

“It’s beautiful. It’s falling all over, into the river,” I said while I shut the second trunk.

Rahela huffed. “You haven’t seen rain before?”

I shook my head. “In the Cavern, all the fresh water comes
from one of the cracks in the walls. It falls into a canal, winds through the city, then goes into the lake.” I thought for a moment. “We don’t have clouds.”

She set the loom so it straddled her lap, then passed the shuttle through. “It sounds nicer than I’d thought, but I’m not sure I could live in a rock.”

“It doesn’t feel small. Or at least, it didn’t before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I came up here,” I said. She chose a different color, and sent that through the warp. The fabric she was weaving was geometric, but she had started adding a bird. “There’s so much air here. And the sky doesn’t end.”

The rain had brought a dampening chill, and I shivered. I’d never been this cold before. Had the rain seeped into my bones and drawn out the fire within?

Rahela put down her loom and rummaged in a trunk, then tossed me a blanket.

“Don’t let yourself become ill. The prince wouldn’t want a sniffling jinni in his bed.”

I pulled the blanket over my shoulders and turned away, not wanting to show how red my cheeks had gotten. She went back to her birds, and I watched the dripping world outside melting into the river.

“My mother is a weaver,” I said. When she looked surprised, I added, “She is always making something, planning something. She would have loved what you’re making.”

“I didn’t know jinn needed to weave their clothes.” She paused. “I don’t think I ever thought about it. Can’t you wish your own clothes into being?”

“We can’t wish nothing into something. In weaving, my mother knows what it will look like when it’s finished. Mostly. Then she sometimes adds things with a wish or two.”

She brushed her fingertips across the part she had finished. “I wouldn’t add anything to this. Every line is real; every part of this is mine. And though it won’t be perfect, neither am I.” She looked at me, almost daring me to argue. She didn’t know I rarely argued, and the result was that we both stayed quiet.

The rain stopped a few minutes later, without any warning. A wide band of blue swept across the expanse of the sky, pushing away the clouds. The sun, a ball of clean fire, shone along the riverbank and dripped off the shrubs. Each drop of water glittered as it fell into the Tigris. They were quick, disappearing diamonds. Nothing at home gleamed like that, and the more I watched, the more a strange sensation spread through my chest. I was stricken by the beauty of a wet, sparkling world beneath a sun-filled sky.

In the distance, between the sky and the retreating clouds, a rainbow arched in the air. How could that be? There were no prisms large enough to cause such a thing. Then I realized what it was. It was the world—the wet air and shimmering light—that set the rainbow across the sky. They didn’t need crystals here.

Rahela had come to the window and looked in the other direction. I was about to point out the rainbow when she took in a sharp breath. Along the curve of the river, two sandstone pillars held up a giant cerulean gate. A wall on each side braced the pillars, keeping the city inside safe from the wind and sand. Beneath the newborn sky, the gate gleamed.

“Is that the gate into Baghdad?” I asked.

“It must be,” she whispered. She clutched the window frame with her fingers.

A knot began to twist in my stomach. I tried to ignore it, but it throbbed and tightened into something almost painful. Finally, the first barge reached the gate, and a man called out to a guard posted atop one of the pillars.

“Hashim, Vizier of Baghdad!” the man called out. “Returning from Zab!”

The
vizier
? He was in that barge?

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Rahela. “You’d think you were afraid of pretending to be human. Like it might not work out for you.”

“I didn’t know the vizier was traveling with Zayele,” I whispered.

“I might have forgotten to mention that, but yes. He chose Zayele personally.”

“Do you think he will be able to tell?”

She shook her head. “Your disguise is almost perfect. Just stop looking like a trapped rabbit.”

I nodded and watched the gate slide into the stones, allowing the first barge to slip into the city. Carved silver birds of prey, kestrels, topped each pillar along the wall, facing outward like guardians. Their eyes were yellow topaz, sharp and observant. Our barge slid forward and entered the gate. I pressed my face against the window and watched the gate pass by above. It was all blue tiles and metal teeth.

It had been beautiful from afar, but close up, I couldn’t
forget what entering the city meant. This wasn’t pretend. If I didn’t convince everyone that I was Zayele, I would be killed. Or enslaved, like the jinn long ago.

Inside, the river flowed past buildings so tall they blocked out the sun and cast a charcoal stripe of shadow into our cabin. The river cut through a series of plaster and yellow-brick buildings until another gate, this one green and gold, hung over the water. No one shouted to the guard this time, and the gate slid up just before the vizier’s barge approached.

Finer buildings flanked the river on the other side of the green-and-gold gate. Cut-glass mosaics and gilded calligraphy decorated the doors so that the river sparkled, even through the shadow. Another gate lay ahead, but to the right of us stood a wall topped with gold spires, and beside the wall was a stone landing just the right length for three barges.

Rahela mumbled something.

“What did you say?”

“They say there’s a city ringing an inner city. We’re in the inner city now, I think. And on the other side of that wall is the caliph’s palace.” Her fingers trembled against the edge of the window.

The barge stopped, and someone tied it to the landing while our guard hopped off the prow. He ran to the gate that led into the caliph’s domain. Above the blue gate sat a gold kestrel, sparkling in open sunlight. Its beak opened toward the sky, as if it were calling out to its metal brothers decorating the rim of the city’s outer wall.

Rahela left the window. “We’re not covered!”

I backed away from the window, deeper into the cabin’s shadows, because outside, a throng of people lined the walk between the river and the blue gate. Some held banners of colored cloth, while others were shouting out the vizier’s name and that of the caliph.

Rahela lifted the lid of one of the trunks and sifted through the folded silks. She pulled out a sheer peridot-hued veil and handed it to me. “This will match.” I set the veil on my head. Then she handed me a beaded headpiece. I studied the colored stones threaded onto the thin wires, then set it over the veil. It was heavy as a blanket, with all the weight pulling at my hair and pressing in my ears.

I was in a cage of beads and cloth.

“Can’t you still see me?” I asked.

“Yes, but you’re covered enough.” She paused. A tight, forced smile appeared on her face. “You’re as beautiful as Zayele would have been.”

She placed a veil over her face and then sat beside me on the bed, straight-backed and silent.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Her face was still but strained. “Wait for them to let us out.”

Footsteps clicked on the stones and then clomped onto the deck. Someone was coming to open the door. What if they knew right away that I wasn’t human? What if they only needed one look? I was not a princess. I was not a human girl, and I was not sure I could act like one.

My hands began to shake, and Rahela gripped one of them. “Ready yourself,” she whispered. “If you let on what you are,
they’ll kill you. Or worse.” Her gaze was straight ahead, clear of doubt or fear. If she could pretend I was Zayele, then maybe so could I.

A man in a dark turban, with a long gray beard, appeared on the other side of the window.

“Princess Zayele,” he said, “welcome to Baghdad.”