The Blind Wish Read online

  “Of course not,” she said. “You passed, although I don’t think anyone would call that much of a horse.”

  I was drained. The exercise hadn’t taken much time, but it had sucked out whatever energy I’d had before I’d come in. I sank onto the nearest bench, which was across from where Taja sat.

  “It’s difficult to focus the mind when it’s under stress. It takes years of training to do it well. I sometimes have a hard time, and I’ve been training for nine years.”

  Nine years? “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four. I was fifteen when Melchior came to my house and told my mother I had to leave with him, right then and there.”

  “Did you ever get to see your family after he took you away?”

  “Sometimes. But some days, I was so tired that I’d sleep right here, on the ground. It was never the same again, at home. My mother and father hadn’t known I was a magus, even though I’d left hints that whole year for them to find. Even now, I don’t know if they just didn’t notice them or if they didn’t want to think about it.”

  “But why? Isn’t being a magus a good thing?”

  She gave me a lopsided grin. “Oh, it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you make it through the training. And if you do, how long you can last out there, with your dyad. We’re the first targets in every battle, you know. The caliph’s army knows about us. They can pick us out in minutes, so minutes are all we have to do our job.” A frown slipped over her lips. She must have been thinking of another magus who died recently, like Faisal.

  “What is our job?”

  She stood up in one swift, flowing movement. “We protect the Cavern and everyone in it. We hold up the shields. There’s more to it than that, but for now, I think we should find something to eat.” Then she went to the gate and leaned into the glass key, watching me with one eyebrow raised. All of the sadness in her face was gone, and by the time I got to the gate and we were making our way through the palace, I wasn’t sure it had been there in the first place.

  I WAS SITTING at the end of the pier, eating my midday meal and watching the Lake of Fire lap beneath my feet. I had come to be alone, to think through what I would do when I reached the palace. As a child, I had never been allowed to sit at the end of the pier all alone, and this was the first time I’d ever tried. It was daring, for me.

  Then I remembered how I had defied Faisal’s rules and transported to the surface just to see a princess I’d heard about. That had been daring. This was…I swallowed hard and pressed my hand against my chest. It ached in the hollow space between my breasts, and I could not tell if the pain came from missing Faisal or missing Kamal. Or was it something different altogether? Was I sad because of the twisted knot my grandfather had made? If it hadn’t been for him, the war might not have ever begun. But if it weren’t for the war, I might not have met Kamal.

  I sighed and took another bite of bread.

  “Excuse me,” someone said. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man gesturing at the boat tied to the pier. “I didn’t want to come up unannounced and surprise you.”

  “Oh, of course.” I shifted to the side so he could get to the rope. I tried not to watch him, but I couldn’t help it. He was interesting. His forehead was wide and creased with many lines, but the rest of his face was smooth. His hair was thick and combed straight down to his level eyebrows. His prominent nose matched the largeness of his eyes and lips, which were serious. He wore a black wool tunic that ended at clean, sandaled feet.

  When he finished untying the boat, he looked up at me. “I’m sorry I disturbed your thoughts.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. I mean, it’s fine. I wasn’t thinking about anything important anyway.”

  He frowned. “No one thinks of unimportant things at the end of this pier.”

  “What do you mean?” I shifted on the wooden planks.

  “This is a place of introspection.” The boat began to drift away and he tugged on the rope to keep it near. “It is for me, at any rate.”

  “Well, I was about to go anyway.” I stood and brushed the crumbs off my thighs. “I enjoyed meeting you.”

  “And I, you. I am Firuz, and I assume you’re Najwa, one of our half-humans.” I nodded, frowning. “I met your sister earlier. You two are quite…interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “We haven’t had identical twins in the Cavern since the time of Iblis. Everyone claims it’s because our human nature is dwindling, but I think it has more to do with the way the jinni tribes divided.” He tugged on the rope again.

  “What do you mean, divided? Aren’t we all here?”

  He nodded. “Possibly. But there was once a group of jinn who did not agree with the way things were, and there was a scramble for power. They lost and were exiled.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. “The Forgotten?”

  We had few stories in the Cavern, which was one of the reasons I loved studying humans—they had hundreds of them. But there was one story that had always fascinated me, and that was about the Forgotten. Long ago, sometime after Iblis had died but before we separated the jinn into trades like the Shaitan, the physicians, and the Eyes of Iblis, a group of powerful jinn tried to gain control over everyone in the Cavern. A fight ensued, and a small crowd of jinn, all magi, were exiled from the Cavern. After they left, the trades and marks began, and the Dyads were formed in the hope that no magi would ever try to steal control again.

  No one had ever told me what became of the Forgotten, and I’d intended to find out one day. So when Firuz mentioned them, my mind flooded with ideas, theories, and fears.

  He shrugged. “If they’re alive. They could be living in the sea for all we know. We haven’t heard a word about them since they left, but we keep our traditions. That is why we have a special word we use to enter the Cavern. We can’t have just any jinni popping in for a visit.” He smiled wistfully and then climbed into his boat. “It has been nice to meet you, Najwa. I’m sure we’ll speak again.”

  I nodded absent-mindedly. There were other jinn out there. Where had they gone? What were they doing at this very moment?

  “Wait!” I called out to him. He had begun to row away, but he paused and looked at me expectantly. “How do you know all this?”

  “I am interested in knowing everything. It’s a habit.” He gripped the oars and bowed his head at me. “I will be seeing you again soon, I hope.” Then he pulled his hands to his chest and the boat skimmed over the water.

  I stood for a long time, watching him row across the lake and listening to the water lap against the pier. I had a feeling he knew more about the Forgotten than he was willing to share.

  THE AFTERNOONS WERE reserved for practice, Taja told me, so after the meal, I made my way back to the magi-only corner of the Cavern and tried to focus my mind. I settled down on one of the benches, this time facing the palace instead of the wall, and closed my eyes.

  A magus was in complete control of her mind, Taja said. I had to be physically strong also, but most of all, I needed to be able to make wishes that were exact. No more vagueness or imperfections. No more impulsive flashes of power. I needed focus and a quiet mind.

  Rahela would have laughed if she’d heard Taja telling me I needed to develop a quiet mind. She had been trying to tame me since the day I began to crawl out of the tent. Nothing anyone had tried had worked. I was busy, and I thought of too many things at once. How would I ever be able to focus when the world around me was so distracting?

  At that thought, I opened my eyes and looked up. One of the minarets loomed over the practice area, and one of its windows faced this side of the Cavern. I squinted and saw that the window was open, and someone was standing there, looking down.

  I flushed, realizing that whoever it was had been watching me. I looked away, and then back up again. This time, I dared the person to keep watching. Maybe, I hoped, he or she would go away and leave me alone.

  Then I saw who it was. Yashar.
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br />   I felt two things at once: relief, because he was well enough to stand on his own, and frustration, because now that I knew his room was right above the training area, I’d never be able to focus.

  I waved before I remembered he wouldn’t be able to see me.

  “Yashar! It’s Zayele. I’m down here!” He didn’t move. “If you can hear me, wave your arm!” I waited. He lifted his arm as though he was going to wave it, but then he shut the window.

  I knew he had heard me. He must have, because I’d heard the latch click shut.

  I held my face in my hands. I had only wanted to help. Didn’t he understand?

  Hurt that he had shut me out, I went to the table and picked up a fresh lump of clay. Then I went to the open area, used the words Taja had taught me, and made the jar of hornets spin around me. Just the hornets for now, she’d told me.

  I practiced the rest of the afternoon and suffered half a dozen attacks from the hornets. By the time I left the palace, I had welts all over my hands and had nearly bit through my lip.

  I was going to find a way to get to Yashar. I just didn’t know how I was going to do it yet.

  MY FIRST BREATH back in Baghdad was heavy with jasmine. It was dusk, and the blossoms had released their scent, calling for moths and anything else that flittered in the dark.

  I had transported straight into Kamal’s private garden. It had three stone walls dividing it from the other private gardens, and a curtain that separated it from his bedroom. I froze beside the lemon tree and listened for any noises, any implication that there might be someone inside.

  When I heard nothing, I slipped across the paving stones to the curtain hanging heavy and dry along the latticed doorway.

  There was no need yet to wish myself invisible. That wish only worked once in an hour or so, and I needed to conserve it. Besides, no one was there. I had hoped Kamal would be in his room so I could catch a glimpse of him, but the only creature in the room was his yellow cat, Hamza. He lifted his eyelids just long enough to see who had entered, then closed them and curled tighter into a ball on Kamal’s bed.

  A moonbeam cut across the floor, and I walked along the edge of it. It divided my slipper into two colors—blue-gray and charcoal—and I had the feeling I was walking between more than moonlight and shadows.

  When I reached the inner door, I pressed my palm into the carved frame, feeling the ridges beneath my fingertips. I was all in shadow now, with nothing to light my way. Somewhere else in the palace, Kamal would be in the bright, clear light of a lamp. There was nothing about him that had to lurk in the dark; he didn’t have to slink down corridors, hiding from sight.

  I swallowed and whispered, “Shahtabi.” The moment the invisibility wish passed through me, I pulled open the door and slipped into the corridor, where I stood for a moment, blinking away the brightness of a flame that stared me down from the other side.

  As soon as I could see clearly, I pattered down the corridor. I checked the harem and the laboratory, but neither Kamal nor Ibrahim was there. Finally, I found a guard of six men posted outside the dining hall. Half of them still had dirt encrusted in the edges of their armor. They had to belong to Ibrahim.

  They guarded the entrance to the dining hall, but the door itself was wide open. The smells—of roasted lamb, saffron rice, and minted cucumber—wafted through the opening, and I sucked them in. The food in the Cavern was fine, but this was something else. I rushed between the guards, happy that I was invisible, and stopped at the first set of malachite pillars that held up the plaster-and-gold ceiling. There in the very center of the dining hall were two long, low tables surrounded by dozens of pillows. Each table was laid out with platters of steaming food. A peacock wandered the hall freely, as though he too belonged with these glittering, posturing men.

  Kamal sat centered at one table, between half of the men from the Court of Honor. Ibrahim sat in the middle of the opposite table, flanked by his officers and a few men in the court robes. Several women of the harem had seated themselves throughout, covered in veils and dresses that hid their legs. One of the women, with soft hands and a chartreuse veil, sat a little too close to Kamal, but he did not seem to notice. He and the rest of the men at his table sat pensive, watching the men at the other table with guarded interest. The soldiers exploded in laughter and jeering, elbowing each other the way people did when they had shared both horror and honor.

  Quickly, I pressed the eye mark on my right hand. The Corps needed to analyze who was sitting with whom, and how the two groups of men were divided.

  I walked over to the potted palm behind Kamal and crouched behind it, just in case my wish wore off. He took a bite of the lamb, wiped his fingers, and nodded at his brother.

  “It’s good to have you back,” he said, raising his voice so he’d be heard at the other table. “When you were gone, I had to eat all of this myself.”

  Ibrahim took a sip from his cup and blinked at Kamal from over the brim. Then he set the cup on the table, slowly and deliberately, and leaned onto one elbow. “I see the extra meat made you soft.”

  “And the lack of it made you hard,” Kamal said.

  Ibrahim shrugged. “I consider that a good trait in a man. Take Toqto’a, for example.” He pointed at a man at the end of his table with a braid as long as a woman’s. A scar ran across the bridge of his nose, and his eyes were deep-set and black as oil. The man bowed his head at Kamal, but did not smile. “He is as hard as a man can be. In fact, he is one of my strongest and most reliable soldiers. I allow him to eat at my table even though he’s just a sword for hire.”

  I pressed my mark, making sure the Corps would get a good look at this man. He was oddly different from the other humans. He wore a leather tunic embroidered in an alphabet I couldn’t identify, and his dirty skin was more golden than olive. I had never seen a human like him before, and I could not place his origin. Someone in the Cavern must know where he was from.

  “I didn’t know we hired soldiers,” Kamal said.

  Ibrahim took a long drink before answering him. “We don’t, but I do. Toqto’a knows much about fighting from horseback, and he has been teaching my officers, who will in turn teach their men. Soon, our army will be invincible.” He glanced sidelong at Toqto’a. “Though our soldiers don’t eat as much.”

  Toqto’a lifted a rib and saluted Ibrahim. “It is my pleasure to eat all that your kingdom can provide.”

  Several men at both tables laughed at this, and the tension eased.

  “Toqto’a, if you don’t mind,” Kamal said, “where are you from, originally?”

  “Far to the east, past the mountains.”

  “I didn’t realize we had an agreement with the king there.” Kamal smiled.

  “I am…on my own.”

  Ibrahim growled. “He’s the best horseman I’ve ever seen, and he has saved my life more than once. Now, let’s talk about that jinni of yours. Your little pet.”

  “Don’t ever call Najwa that again.”

  My skin was crawling, and it took me a second to recognize that the sensation was coming from the waning of the invisibility wish. Quickly, I tiptoed out of the dining hall and made my way toward Kamal’s room. I shut the door behind me just as the invisibility faded.

  Hamza looked up from the bed and meowed.

  “You’re the pet, not me.” The cat’s ear twitched.

  I went out to the garden and slumped onto the bench. The scent of jasmine had thickened in the air, and so had the stars in the sky. My chest ached just as it had in the Cavern, and I knew why. Kamal was so close, but I could not talk to him. I had to stand beneath the stars alone, and without him there to tell me their names, they were nothing but twinkling dots in the sky, as numerous and nameless as diamonds.

  IT WAS LATER that night when Atish showed up at the door again. Najwa was still gone, Rahela was out looking for something in the market, and I was alone.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked. He stayed in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. �
�What?”

  “You need to see Yashar, and I’m going to help you. Come on, before I change my mind.” His words came out in a rush, like one of his fireballs. He pulled me out of the house into the light of one of the wishlamps.

  “Thank you.” I picked up his hands in mine and looked at them. They were larger and more golden than mine, but they fit. “I’m not going to leave him there, though. I am going to take him far, far away.”

  “Then we need to get going.” His voice sounded strange, and I looked up just in time to see a blush receding from his cheeks.

  I told him where I’d seen Yashar, and he told me how we were going to get into Iblis’s Palace, past the guards, and up the minaret.

  —

  The palace was a different place at night. With the wishlamps dimmed throughout the Cavern, the top half of the palace disappeared into biting shadows. Yashar’s minaret was somewhere in the darkness, lost to the night, but I was not going to let the darkness make me afraid.

  We hid in the bushes until we were certain no one was out front, and then turned ourselves invisible. I held Atish’s hand so I wouldn’t lose him, and then pressed my hand against the glass square.

  It didn’t open the gate.

  “Maybe it only works during the day,” I said.

  “I think it’s because we said ‘Shahtabi’ too soon.”

  “What are we going to do now?” I didn’t know how long the wish would last, and we couldn’t afford to spend all our time waiting for someone to open the door.

  “We’re going to climb over.” He picked me up by the waist and lifted me up against the gate. I grabbed the top, scrambling to get a footing. Then he shoved, and I almost fell over the top. I grabbed the cold iron and helped myself down.

  “How are you going to get over?” I asked.