The stories would never tell that after the Sultan fell, as we crossed the city, we were reminded of the cost of war with every single body. That as I pushed my way through the streets, I found Samir, a bullet through his chest. A kid from Dustwalk, like me, who’d joined us in Sazi. It didn’t matter how well we had trained him. War took lives and changed the ones that were left behind.
The stories would remember that Izz survived his fall at the Sultan’s hands but not that his mangled, burned wing would turn to a mangled arm that would never fully heal, no matter what shape he took. He had a limp when he was on all fours, and his wing flapped hopelessly when he tried the shape of a bird. Maz stopped shifting into creatures that could fly altogether, because he didn’t want to go somewhere his brother couldn’t follow.
I remembered how thick the air was with the smoke from funeral pyres that night. We burned as many bodies as we could. And we burned four empty pyres, too.
The first one was for Sam. There was nothing left of him to burn, though we tore up the tiles of the palace looking all the same. But it was only ashes and collapsed Abdal bodies down there. If I hadn’t known better I might’ve thought he’d just slipped away through a wall after all, run off to some other adventure. Captain Westcroft told me that in Albis they believed that when you died and were buried, your body blossomed into a tree or a field of flowers. A new life. So we covered Sam’s funeral pyre in flowers, cut from the vines in the harem. The same kind Sam had plucked the first night I met him.
We set a ring on Hala’s empty pyre, gold for our lost golden girl.
For our Demdji of a thousand faces, we used one of Shazad’s khalats that Imin had liked to borrow.
A crown for Shira, our dead Sultima.
Bodies long lost because they died in the war, not this battle. Other ones. But we finally had the time to mourn them now that it was over.
*
We burned the Sultan, too, and his sons stood next to the pyre as they ought to do. Even if they were the reason he was dead. But that was the way. We were mortal. Sons were always meant to replace their fathers.
The pyres burned until the moon wasn’t visible through the smoke.
I remembered finally collapsing into a bed that was familiar because I had slept in it when I was a prisoner of the harem. I didn’t know where else to go in the huge empty palace we had conquered. I woke to the noise of the pillow moving under a new weight as Jin came and lay down. I shifted just enough to let his arms curl around me and pull me to him.
‘No men allowed in the harem,’ I remembered mumbling half-asleep into his shoulder as he tried to get comfortable. When he laughed, I felt it through my whole body, and the joy at still being alive swelled so quickly through me all at once that I thought I might shatter.
‘I think they make an exception for princes,’ he said into my ear before kissing me.
I remembered noticing that we were both still wearing our weapons and wondering how long it would take for the fight to really leave us, even now that we had won.
But the stories were not made from our memories; those were of interest only to us. The stories were made to tell a tale people wanted to hear. And people wanted to know that we had won and all was well.
Ahmed became a legend across the desert within days: the Resurrected Prince, come back from the dead to save the city. The whole country. The stories said that he had burned the foreign invaders in his path before taking on his father.
But it was the Sultan who had done that. Who had dispelled our would-be occupiers. He had helped us and made Miraji safe from foreign rule. The massacre of the Gallan was the only reason we were able to seize the city at sunset without risk of losing it at dawn.
But stories liked things to be simple. The Sultan was the villain. We were the heroes. And we had given the people of Miraji a new prince, kinder than his father. A new desert, free of occupation. A new dawn.
*
I struggled to clasp the sun-shaped medallion around my neck as I walked, fumbling awkwardly with the chain for a few moments before I finally had to stop moving.
I was late.
I leaned against a mosaic of some swans that stretched the length of this hallway through the palace, facing a line of arches that opened on to a placid-looking pond as I fumbled with the tiny hook at the back.
I’d never owned a piece of jewellery before, and I would’ve happily carried on that way if Ahmed hadn’t given me this medallion. It marked me as one of the new Sultan’s advisors on the temporary council he had formed to untangle the business of making a new country. It was symbolic, which was exactly why I was supposed to wear it.
I tilted my head forwards, making the hair Shazad had so artfully arranged fall over my face. It had grown out since it had been shorn in the palace all those months back. It was long enough now to snag in the clasp of the necklace if I didn’t take care. Long enough that I could’ve put it up, but Shazad hadn’t allowed that. Instead she’d run her hands through my dark locks a few times with that knack she had, and a hint of oil on her fingers, until they looked artfully dishevelled to her satisfaction. She’d done my make-up, too, smudging dark kohl hastily around the eyes and red across my mouth so that it matched the khalat I was wearing, which was the colour of a sunrise. Red like the dawn, but edged in gold braiding twisted into the shape of the skyline of Izman along the hem. I looked like I’d come fresh from battle. Which I realised, as she left, was the whole idea. Shazad looked slick and sleek – a leader, a general. I was playing the part of the Blue-Eyed Bandit, roguish and not entirely fit for polite company. We were all half-character now, for the rest of our lives, any time we appeared in public. It was a fair price to pay for victory.
Finally the clasp closed with a satisfying snick. I tossed my hair back over my shoulders and ran as fast as I could without losing my shoes, heading to the gardens.
The Shihabian celebrations had begun at dusk. Here and throughout the city, the night was made bright by lanterns. Lit with oil this time, not stolen Djinni fire. There had been talk, though, of replicating what Leyla did without needing to murder First Beings. Of having light without fire. Of making some more Abdals who could defend us if we needed. We were still at war with Gallandie, after all. Though I guessed it would be a long time before they rallied together and came for our country again. There was talk that their empire in the north was crumbling. The marriage alliance and peace with Albis had failed. They were a falling empire surrounded by enemies. Including us. And Albis. Ahmed had forged a tentative peace with the Queen of Albis. Fighting for a different peace than his father had forged with the Gallan. One where we still ruled ourselves. We had allies now. Not occupiers.
Meanwhile the Gallan Empire’s easternmost regions were rebelling for independence. For freedom and the right to a country where the Gallan religion, and the hatred of First Beings that came with it, wasn’t imposed on them.
But if the Gallan did come again, we would need to be ready. Leyla’s creations had changed the world, and there was no going back.
Even Ahmed, who fiercely resisted doing anything that might remind his people of his father, had used Leyla’s Zungvox once more. To announce the election.
His father, and his father before him, all the way back to the first Sultan, had ruled without the people’s voice. He wanted to change that. He would let them decide if they wanted to allow him to stay as Sultan. He did not want to be a conqueror of his own country. He asked them to choose.