Ifra could not stop thinking of Erris, trapped in the eerie Hall of Oak and Ash, nearly every moment. He wandered every inch of the palace and its grounds, searching for any underground entrances or secret passages where he might smuggle Erris out, and found nothing. He couldn’t ask any questions. He still hardly saw Violet, except briefly or distantly-passing in the hall, exchanging fleetingly desperate looks, or at the dinner table, next to Belin, picking at her food. He couldn’t even visit her at night; four ladies-in-waiting slept in an outer chamber, with her bedroom beyond, and he didn’t dare try and sneak past them.
For that matter, he saw little of Belin. Every day when Belin met with his council, he asked Ifra to stand guard, but he forbade him from standing near the door, so Ifra’s only sense of what was going on came from snatches of conversation he heard in the halls or at dinner. Ifra remembered how Luka had promised him the life of a hero when he returned from that awful mission to destroy Erris and kidnap Violet.
Instead, he was mute and isolated. His only interaction was that with the servants who changed his linens or brought him breakfast, or the passing glances of the court-intrigued, nervous ladies, frowning men. His silence seemed to make him more ominous, more suspicious.
One day, after Belin’s meeting with the council, he approached Ifra, looking cross. “Follow me, please. I need to speak with you.”
Belin led the way to a sitting room, a more sumptuous space than the room with the wood carvings-the walls were painted a luxurious creamy color, with a massive imported rug on the floor. Flowers obviously aided by magic grew from fussy painted china containers. Ifra’s own lamp sat atop the mantel.
“Please sit, jinn.”
This time, when Ifra sat, Belin took the chair across from him.
“A week from now, I am having a ball for Princess Violet. I have invited every lord from every corner of my kingdom. My purpose in this is to give the people what they so desperately want-a Tanharrow on the throne. She isn’t the impressive figure I hoped for, but she is a Tanharrow. We’ll see then if they really think ancient blood is all you need to rule, or if they’re hoping for something that doesn’t exist. But Tamin feels…”
Belin drummed his fingers on the table, frowning. “He feels we should also send a stern message to the people to quell any potential rebellion. We have a man in prison, one of our own, who led an uprising against the tax collectors and killed two men some months ago. We think he’s one of the leaders of a rebel group called the Green Hoods. Tamin wants to hold a public execution.”
Ifra couldn’t help the shudder that ran through him, and then the way every muscle in his body seemed to calcify. Don’t make me kill him, please… please… It wasn’t a command yet, but he was perhaps seconds away from that wish becoming a part of him. Ifra’s body would kill while the desires of his heart and soul would vanish until it was done.
Tamin, he mouthed, grasping at anything. Belin said Tamin wanted the execution, which must mean Belin himself was unsure.
Jinn weren’t supposed to persuade their masters, weren’t supposed to clutch their master’s arm and meet their eyes, but Ifra did those things. He mouthed words, made wheezing noises. He was starting to sweat.
Belin jerked back, looking disturbed. “Speak, then,” he said. “Speak softly.”
Ifra was so overwhelmed by the things he wanted to say that he was briefly rendered speechless. He had to be very, very careful.
“Master, I went to the stables the other day,” he finally said. “I met a girl who wears a carved bear around her neck.”
Belin looked so angry that Ifra made an effort not to flinch. “Why were you poking around there in the first place?”
“I’m trying to understand you,” Ifra said. “My life-no, not even just that-my choices are in your hands. And so I want to know what you will choose. I want to know what sort of person you are. What sort of king you will be. Compassionate? Cruel?”
Belin frowned at his hands, and then frowned more fiercely at Ifra. “What kind of trick are you trying to play now?”
“Nothing! Why do you always think I’m trying to trick you?”
“When I was in the city of the jinn, everyone warned me about your kind. If I managed to capture one, they would do anything to trick me into setting them free. Why should you be any different? If I were in your shoes, I’d do the same thing.”
“I do want to be free,” Ifra said. His heart was still beating fast, but he had a gut feeling that he needed to be honest to get through to Belin. “If I knew how to trick you into letting me go, I would, but I don’t. I’m seventeen years old-”
“Old enough,” Belin interjected. “My brothers and I were well versed in manipulation at a younger age than that.”
“Maybe it’s just not in my nature. I spent part of the year with a tutor who tried to train me in dealing with my masters… how to serve them, yes, but more importantly, how not to grow attached to anyone or anything. I understood, on a logical level, but I couldn’t feel it deep down, because I had people who loved me and I loved them, and I couldn’t not care.”
“Who do you love?” Belin asked. “I don’t even know where jinn come from.”
Ifra resisted answering. When he thought of his mother, his tutor, Arkat and Hami-all the people of his childhood-he felt anger at them, that they couldn’t have somehow protected him or prepared him for this. At the same time, he missed them so terribly. He didn’t want to tell Belin about the people he loved. Belin could have his magic and his strength, but not his memories. “Please,” he said. “Don’t force me to answer that. They’re so far away, it hurts to remember.”
Belin was looking at his hands again. “People must think I didn’t love my father, if they think I could kill him. Sometimes I was angry at him, but I would never kill him.” He looked at Ifra as if daring him to deny it.
“I believe you,” Ifra said.
“Never,” Belin repeated fiercely. “Why would I spend years of my life trying to bring him a treasure if I wanted him to die?”
Ifra felt unsure of what to do next. What did he really know of Belin’s relationship with his father or brothers, or even royal families in general? It seemed terribly competitive, and if Luka was the kind of man who could imprison Erris… Well, he was ruthless indeed. It would be hard to be the son of a man like that, trying to please him and live up to his expectations on one hand… and perhaps knowing, deep down, that it was wrong all the while.
“Why did you go to such lengths to be king?” he finally asked. “Why didn’t you allow Tamin to have the throne?”
“Why should Tamin have the throne? I brought home the greatest treasure.”
“Yet he thinks he deserves it, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, and that’s why I wanted to prove him wrong.”
“And you did.”
“Yes… I did.” Belin said it without satisfaction.
Ifra suppressed an urge to push his hair from his eyes. He felt as if the slightest wrong movement could sent Belin off. “What will you do now, master? What will you accomplish, as king?”
“You keep prodding at me. What is it you want me to do, jinn?”
Back to this again. Ifra was beginning to suspect Belin didn’t trust anyone, or else why would he ask Ifra’s opinion one moment and accuse him of having his own agenda the next? If he trusted someone, he would be talking to that person instead. “I’m trying to help you. I think you know your father was a flawed man, and Tamin would be just as risky. Why do you think this man in your prisons took up a rebel cause? Why do you think your country is full of people wishing for the return of the Tanharrows? It is in your power to be a great ruler, Belin.”
Ifra had his doubts that this was true, but he had been advised to always flatter his master. He continued, “The trees in the Hall of Oak and Ash”-Belin’s head shot up at the mention, and Ifra stammered-“they-they lend wisdom to the ruler of the fairies, don’t they? Maybe you should let them advise you. Not me. Not Tamin, but the ancient trees.”
“Certainly not Tamin,” Belin snapped. He was on his feet again. “But the trees don’t talk to me. Just like the rest of this world, they’re waiting for a Tanharrow.” He motioned to the door. “I’ve heard enough from you. You’re no help at all. Be silent again, and go away.”
Ifra stood up slowly, feeling as if he’d been struck. He could try so hard to talk to Belin, make an attempt to understand and help him, and Belin could dismiss him with a word. As if he had no feelings at all.
I wish I had no feelings.
Every few days, exhaustion overwhelmed Ifra and he managed to fall asleep. The tall bed and thick mattress were too soft for his taste-he’d grown up sleeping on the ground, and that was where he slept now; on the floor with a blanket wrapped around him. He quite liked the pillows, however, and when he felt the pillow being jerked away from him in the dead of night, he instinctively clutched it before even wondering why his pillow would be jerked away.
Violet! Violet was staring at him, frowning, and when she saw he was awake, she said, “You’re finally in your room. I keep coming in here and you’re never here.”
Why? he tried to say-at times he still forgot he couldn’t speak-and sounded like he was choking on a fish bone instead.
“Oh, Ifra, I never see you anymore and it’s awful! I didn’t think it would be like this. In fact, I don’t even see Belin. I thought I would have to order you around and everyone would think I was silly, and I’d surprise them all after Belin married me. Instead, they treat me like a child and it’s even worse than Celestina because at least she liked me some. They don’t like me at all. That woman who came and found you when we first came? Wista? She’s so awful, and I can’t even do anything about it. The other day I found a beetle and slipped it down her dress when she wasn’t looking and she didn’t even scream, she just shook it out and put it outside. What can you do with a woman like that?”
Ifra made a sympathetic face. He wasn’t sure if she could even see much of him in the dark. The moon was just a crescent out the window.
“Oh, it’s just awful. I didn’t think it was possible to hate anyone as much as I hate Belin, and… one of the ladies told me that the night I marry Belin, I’ll have to lie with him. She told me what it means, and I will never, ever do that. I would rather die.”
Ifra suspected Belin wouldn’t press her into consummating the marriage. He didn’t seem to find her attractive in the least. But he couldn’t calm Violet down and tell her to behave herself in the court, just long enough… He couldn’t tell her Erris was trapped under the throne. He couldn’t even tell her to go back to bed and stop prowling around at night looking for him-heavens, how many times had she given her attendants the slip, and how long until they noticed?
So many things he wished he could tell her. Perhaps, most of all that feeling that he was losing himself, becoming a silent symbol of Belin’s own lost self. The nights he had spent traveling with Violet felt so far away.
He reached for her hair, that long soft hair that flowed freely across her shoulders now, smoothing his hands along her head, trying to comfort her and himself at once.
She was, as always, a girl of many frivolous words but decisive physical action, smoothing her hands down the V of his chest bared by his shirt, clutching his collar, melting her lips into his.
Her kisses made him feel free, at least for that moment.
After the kiss was over, she curled against him, pressing her forehead to his collarbone like she wanted to hide away inside his skin. When he put an arm around her, she started to cry, but she choked it back quickly, as if ashamed.
“I know you can’t cry right now, Ifra,” she whispered. “I won’t cry either.” She took a deep breath. “Some people are saying Belin poisoned King Luka.”
Ifra shook his head.
“What would happen if one of his brothers took the throne instead? They’re already married! What would happen to us?”
She knew he couldn’t answer, so she didn’t ask any more questions. He let her stay with him for a long time, running his fingers through the fine strands of her hair, feeling her heart beat, before he forced her back to bed. He didn’t get any more sleep that night, but he felt a little stronger in the morning nonetheless.