‘A warning would have been nice.’ I extract my hand from his.
‘Please continue,’ the Keeper interjects. ‘I’d love to see the aži serpents and zar demons sink their fangs into a novice brat like you.’
I shrink against the marble columns. ‘Zar? But these are archives.’
‘Archives now, but millennia ago, long before even Adam and Nuh, this was a jinn-kingdom’s abode,’ he corrects. ‘Beasts have festered for millions of years, guarding ancient relics tucked into tombs, finding homes in obscure niches.’ As if to prove his point, a hiss emits from below. ‘Knowledge in our language holds thousands of meanings, notmade for human comprehension, and forever lost in script. Nothing is translated without losing its original meaning. We are the Veiled;our knowledge remains Veiled. You read our texts with unfasted eyes, and we guard them. Bones are a simple price to pay.’
With that kind warning, the parî wanders off to hunt for the other manuscripts, Cemil trailing him. Beside me, No-Name leans the slit of her nose to the pages, giddily. She’s changed her appearance into a younger version of Uma, as if preferring it.
‘I’ve never seen so much parchment,’ she says. A scroll catches our eyes, embossed with a triangular seal. I feed the shelf a bone and pull out the faded paper, the material woven through with silk threads. The parchments illustrate cuneiforms of the monoglot Jazatah tribes, magicians who worshipped jinn and magick.
After flipping through the leathery pages, at the halfway mark, I find pictograms demonstrating monks in meditative states. It’s a text for the monastery – Qabl sageism is how they meditate through the Veil to the world of jinn.
The Keeper returns to me, admonishing, ‘Tongue-fasting begins soon, hurry and go.’ He pauses when he spies the text I’m holding, and for the first time, his eyes flicker with unease. ‘Those sageism scrolls are too advanced.’
‘What are they?’
‘A Za’skar monk travelled to the Mist Mountains and convened with ancient jinn. Those jinn had eavesdropped on Heavenly matters, copying forbidden knowledge. Later, when angels were sent down to teach magick as a test to mankind, the Jazatah learnt and added more to these texts. You’ve no need for it.’
‘I think I found the fifth annal,’ Cemil interrupts and the Keeper turns away. I tuck the scroll into my satchel.
18
With the texts secured, I order No-Name to change at my whim to become the things I love and fear, so I do not time-blank.
In the beginning, she shifts into Uma, gazing out the window. Later, she changes into the emperor and manifests objects such as tending to a cage of courtly cranes. But for some reason, she is most effective when she manifests into my parents’ corpses. The gore is a steady reminder of my purpose: to climb the enemy’s ranks and destroy them. To earn my way home.
No-Name follows me as I study the manuscripts in Little Paradise, hanging upside down in the citrus trees, an old habit from the Azadnian capital.
‘In the first Jinn Wars, the Dawjad clans united with which tribes against the Jazatah?’ No-Name tests me from the annals.
‘T-the Arsduq tribes?’ My memory fails me miserably.
‘No. Which tribes?’ No-Name repeats. Her face flickers between the emperor’s features and her own unremarkable face before she shoves me off the branch. ‘You failed his test.’
‘I am aware.’ I rub my shoulder. ‘This cannot work unless you change into his corpse. I need to remember.’
She pauses. Her features pinch into the emperor’s long face, those ebony eyes, that jaw as sharp as a shamshir. But blood trickles down her torso too, the wounds that caused him to die forming welts on her limbs, stealing my breath. She grips my jaw hard, prodding my memories, making my head spin, and suddenly, I’m on my hands and knees, dry-heaving.
I have willed myself to hide the details of how he died; to not dwell on the memory because I know if I had simply obeyed him –if I had simplystayed– he would be alive. Now his wounds taunt me; his depthless eyes stare with potent disappointment. I do not question this, for I find that I like the pain: its honesty, its simplicity, the way I can control it.
‘What were the tribes?’ No-Name demands again in his eerie voice as she walks to the fountains, peering out at the city with a black gaze.
‘The southern Izuri lands belonged to Hunjin tribes under the banner of the Heavenly Crane,’ I answer, my gaze focused on his corpse.
After that, the days stack like fired brick against brick; as No-Name reflects my parents’ gruesome forms, I memorise manuscripts from the Easkaria school correctly.
No one else experiences periods of blankness, of confusion, of gaps in time. The reminder is blunt – these tests are difficult because ofmymistakes,myunreliable memory. It is my fault, so it ismyresponsibility to prepare better. If my head forgets things, then, like people, it can be bent into submission. An old, familiar routine.
With it, I attend the Easkaria, applying myself vigorously despite languishing at the bottom. To the surprise of the scholars, I improve. Sajamistani history, philosophy, strategy, logic – everything is recited until I become a walking paragon of Sajamistan myself.
In cartography, we memorise and map the empire’s terrain. In alchemy, we master rudimentary methods to create naphtha-throwers and distillate with sulphur and charcoal. In mathematics, the teacher is determined to make proficient artillerists out of promising wartime mathematicians. She teaches field problems concerning the flight of projectiles, the arithmetic of cannon devices, or the direction of moving objects and their velocity, but I find myself confused. In battle, would I have time to solve triangles?
Later, I learn these techniques save a squadron, for any good tactician worries themselves with logistics in advance, winning the war of systematisation.
Time smears: the week the autumn equinox arrives and the windy season of sandstorms infiltrates the scholarly city. Our tunics are replaced with thicker wool; in the eves, the chill forces us to round the shawls across our chests. The loving desert wraps us in her unwanted embraces; wind funnels and flings sand into every crevice of our hovels, fingers, scalps and breasts. I let her break me as I break my body.
No-Name tricks me with reassurances in my ear:
