Hero at the Fall (Rebel of the Sands #3)(97)

I shielded my eyes as I felt my way down the stairs. I thought I could hear voices calling out to me – the other Djinn I had imprisoned here. But I couldn’t make them out from one another over the whirring of the machine. I had to get close enough to it. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I could scarcely see any more – the light was too bright. Even when I closed my eyes it seemed to burn.

I scrambled for my sheema, loose around my neck. It came free easily in my hands. I wrapped it around my head, covering my eyes twice, until the light didn’t burn against my eyelids, knotting it at the back of my head. I extended one hand in front of me. Moving forwards slowly, carefully. Trying to find my way blind.

The whirring grew louder as I got closer, until I was close enough that I heard the swish of one of the blades of the great machine next to my skin. I drew back, dropping to my knees, feeling my way along the ground until I found the metal of the circle below my fingertips.

I pressed my fingertips to the ground.

I felt the jagged glass of the ring, still on my hand, scrape against the stone floor. Useless now. I remembered the rush of relief and hope and joy that had flooded me last night, when I thought that I would get to live. I’d been so certain that I’d get to see more than one last dawn when I’d gone to Jin. Would he ever forgive me for going and dying on him after I’d told him that I wouldn’t do that to him?

I should have known better. We both should have. This was a war. If you didn’t die in one fight, there was always another one that might get you. Zaahir’s gift had saved my life and Sam’s long enough for us to get to the next fight. For Sam to die in that one, to save me. So that I could die in the one after that.

That was what we did. Survive one fight to get to the next. Over and over again until you didn’t survive. And all that you could hope for when dying was that some people wouldn’t have to see another fight. That eventually, somewhere, this country would find peace.

I couldn’t wait. Every second I waited, others were out there losing this fight against the Abdals. I had to do it now. I said the words in a rush, before I could lose my nerve. The same ones I had used to free Zaahir. I shouted them over the drone of the machine, my voice rising in angry defiance until I reached the last word, until I reached Fereshteh’s name.

And then the whole world turned to light.

Even through my blindfold I could see the blazing white of immortal fire, and I could feel pressure all around my body. Heat on my skin. A scream in my ears.

Then, the light vanished in a blink.

The heat went with it.

Left behind was a kaleidoscope of colors that I could see even behind my blindfold. I scrambled to untie it. To see whatever it was that had stopped Fereshteh’s freed soul from incinerating me.

As I pulled it away, I started to make out colours in the glare. Like pillars of blue, red, gold and a dozen other hues around the too-violent fire that had once been Fereshteh. I saw shapeless figures of flame encircling the machine. Standing around it. Caging it. Shielding me from it. Shielding the whole city from it.

*

I realised suddenly that I was lying on my back and opening my eyes. The rushing sound in my ears was gone. Above me, dust was dancing in the air through the sunlight. I could taste metal.

I pushed myself, shaking, on to my elbows. The light in the vaults was different now – not blinding white any more. It was the familiar buttery colour of early morning sun.

The motes floating through the morning light – it was what was left of the machine. It hadn’t just shattered. It was like the metal had turned back into dust of the mountain it was mined from.

There was nothing left of Fereshteh either. His soul had fled the prison Leyla made for it. And maybe tonight it would inhabit the sky, along with every other dead Djinn from the First War.

The pillars of coloured fire that had encircled the machine were gone, too. Where they had been now stood a circle of Djinn in the shape of men.

They had saved me.

They stood in somber silence with bowed heads, my father, Bahadur, among them. The ground beneath their feet was scorched black. I expected them to vanish, the way Zaahir had at Sazi. Instead, one of them turned his head towards me, blazing gold eyes catching me in his sights.

‘So,’ he said in an ancient voice, ‘Zaahir has sent an assassin after us.’

As one, they turned towards me, and suddenly I was caught under a dozen immortal gazes.

‘I’m not—’ Speaking was a struggle; I’d hit the ground hard, and my lungs felt raw. ‘I’m not an assassin.’

‘And yet you bring weapons here,’ one of them said. He didn’t move, but I felt the air stir under my hand, lifting it as if some invisible grip were guiding it. And I realised they were all staring at the now-useless ring that Zaahir had given me.

‘We made that weapon for Zaahir –’ it was my father who spoke now – ‘when we imprisoned him below the mountain. We gave him a promise of freedom if he would repent for what he did.’

‘But we gave him a second path to freedom, too, should he want it,’ another one of the Djinn stepped in. ‘We gave him that ring so he could choose his own death if he wished to. If, in a moment of desperation, he should wish to escape, all he needed to do was break the ring and he would be released from life.’

In one perfectly clear moment, I understood. This had been what Zaahir intended all along. To use me to exact revenge over those who had imprisoned him. To kill them in the same way they had given him to kill himself. He had given me a weapon that could end an immortal and then sent me into their midst.