Exquisite Captive (32 page)

Idiot. Of course.
The only reason the Ifrit had been able to stage a successful coup was because of the arms they’d gotten from Earth. And, Nalia realized, it was the Ghan Aisouri’s fault. By refusing to allow the other castes access to education, the Aisouri had rendered the entire serf population defenseless. It had been all too easy for the Ifrit to pick them off, one by one, and ship them to Earth in exchange for weapons.

Nalia walked away from him, her hands shaking. The room spun a little, as it had when Malek shoved her against the wall at the theater. She leaned against a concrete column that stood to one side of the room, her mind racing.

“You give the traders guns in exchange for jinn,” she whispered. “Then you sell the jinn to humans for money.” She turned around. “But how did you even know about us? How did you meet the traders?”

Sergei threw his cigarette on the floor and ground it under his foot. “The traders came to my family, long time ago. We are famous gun makers for more than one century. You know AK-47? My father helped Kalashnikov design this. Traders want guns—a lot. We want jinn. Everyone is happy, no?”

“Everyone but the jinn being kidnapped and sold like animals!”

Sergei made a motion with his hands, as though he were dusting crumbs off them. “That’s your problem, jinni-girl.”

Nalia curled her fists, and the fire in her burned, her dark side waking up. She wanted to kill him. Slowly. But she had too many questions and too much was at stake.

“Do you remember buying me, then selling me off to Malek?”

Sergei folded his arms across his chest. “Yes.”

“What did he pay for me?” she asked quietly.

“One billion dollars. And control of the American arms trade.”

Nalia’s eyes widened and Sergei smiled. “The price is, shall we say, more affordable now. There are many more slaves coming through the portal these days. After your little coup, we sometimes have a dozen or more a day. But before, jinn were rare. Extremely rare. Only a few were for sale each year.”

It was true that the dark caravan had grown. Before, most of the jinn on Earth were free expats who’d bribed their way out of Arjinna to escape their overlords or had been sent into exile by the Ghan Aisouri for minor crimes. But these days, it seemed like there were slaves everywhere, drinking their nights away until they were free of their masters.

Waiting, as she did, to grant their third wishes.

“The jinn trader guaranteed that you were especially talented,” Sergei said. “Which is why Malek paid so much.” He smiled and a gold tooth winked at her. “Should have kept you for myself, but I owe him big favor. Is bad business decision on my part.”

Sergei watched as Nalia turned away from him, gripping the golden cuffs on her wrists. She felt dirtier, knowing the price. She tried to think of what a human could buy for a billion dollars. Many, many useless things. Or one jinni. She thought of the guns her body had paid for. Guns that had killed thousands of jinn since they went though the portal.
How many more deaths will I have on my conscience?

She thought of the hundreds of jinn who’d been drugged, shoved into bottles, and sold like cattle. All so that the Ifrit could kill more innocent jinn and so that the humans, who saw the jinn as nothing more than elaborate cash registers and exotic playthings, would have their fill of wishes.

“You hate me, yes?” said Sergei.

Nalia looked up, into his dead eyes. “Yes.”

She was a kept thing, shackled to a master who would never let her go, locked in a cage of dreams.

This has to end.

He smiled. “Good. Hate keeps you alive. Makes you strong. Love? Is weakness. Your master is weak because he loves. You are strong because you hate. In the end, you are winner, jinni-girl.”

She didn’t want to think he was right, but maybe he was.
But Bashil. I love Bashil.
She wouldn’t give that up. But she’d hate her way to the gates of his prison, if that was the only way to free him. Nalia looked at this wishmaker who’d traded her body for green paper and black killing machines. She took her shame and balled it up like a useless piece of paper. She’d look at it again, later, but right now she had an opportunity to do something right.

For once.

Everything Sergei was saying about the slave trade made sense, but she had to be certain about the details if she was going to bring it down. Because sometime between the arms dealer telling her about the guns and what she’d cost, Nalia had decided that this was her fight.
Her
revolution.

This was what it meant for an empress to protect the realm and care for her subjects.

“How are the jinn slave traders getting through the portal?”

Sergei smiled, a predatory upturn of the mouth. “Jinni-girl. You don’t expect me to tell you
all
my secrets for free, do you?”

“Sergei,” she said, her voice slowing as though she were explaining something to a child, “I can’t manifest another jinni like me. First of all, wishing for more jinn is against the rules. Second, it’s impos—”

“
Impossible
—yes, I know.
Blah, blah, blah.
But I’m not wishing for jinni. Give me wish I wanted first time: immortality.”

She could do it. Granting the wish would involve forging the contract Malek would receive after the granting, but she had the power to make that happen.

Pro: Sergei had information that could end the slave trade.

Con: She’d be inflicting someone like Sergei on Earth for the rest of time.

Nalia glanced out the window. The shadows were lengthening and she wanted to get to Jordif’s to see what Zanari and Raif had found out about the sleeping pills. Haran was getting closer. There was no time.

“A jinni on Earth is letting the traders through,” she said, “and putting them in touch with human slave buyers—you and whoever else buys—right? At least tell me that much”

Sergei gave her a long look. “Yes.”

It didn’t make sense—what was in it for him or her?

“Who?”

But as soon as she asked the question, Nalia realized she already knew. There was really only one jinni who could get away with it for so long.

“A trade, jinni-girl,” Sergei said. “You give me immortality and I give you information about this traitor. Is business deal.”

“That’s not enough,” she said. “Immortality in exchange for some dark caravan gossip? I don’t think so.”

Even if Sergei confirmed her suspicions, the trade would continue—he’d still be offering weapons in exchange for jinn.

Sergei’s eyes glimmered. “What’s your price, jinni-girl?”

Nalia took a breath—a plan had been forming in her mind, sketchy and uncertain at first, but quickly becoming more real every second. It made her die a little inside to think she would be making a deal with the human who had trafficked her, but she had no choice. And maybe, if she survived what was coming, she could find a way to punish him. Forever.

“If you promise to stop selling arms to jinn traders
and
stop selling my people to human clients or buy them for yourself, I will grant you immortality.”

Sergei snorted. “And what else you give me for all of this?”

“That’s it. One wish. Take it or leave it, Sergei, but make a choice because, either way, I don’t have time to waste.”

Sergei watched her for a moment. “Is bullshit,” he said. “I give so much for one wish?”

“I’ll be giving you the rest of time to get even more rich and powerful than you are already. Which, by the way, makes me sick. I think it’s a fair trade.”

Sergei raised his eyebrows, then slowly nodded. “So you can really do it. You must be the little
czarina
I’ve been hearing so much about.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her stomach clenched.

“My traders hear some rumors from your realm, about a jinni who was supposed to die. ‘Dark caravan gossip,’ as you say. Maybe there is big reward for whoever finds her.”

Nalia took a step back, her hands sparking
chiaan
. She didn’t want to kill him, but she would if she had to.

Sergei looked at her hands and shook his head. “No, no, you misunderstand me,
czarina
. Enough problems in Russia for me to worry about. I just want my wish, yes? Is reward enough for me.”

What did it matter if he knew who she was? Haran did already. The secret was out.

“So do we have a deal?” she asked. “An end to buying or selling jinn on the dark caravan in exchange for immortality?”

“You do not wish to know name of traitor jinni? I thought that was why you bitch at me in first place.”

“I know who it is.”

Jordif was the only jinni who had access to the portal at all times. The only jinni powerful enough on Earth to pull off such a massive operation. He knew nearly every jinni on the planet, and they all owed him favors. She was guessing more than a few had looked the other way, or accepted bribes to keep his secret. But that wasn’t going to help him now.

It was quiet for a long moment. Sergei seemed to be weighing her words on an invisible scale.

“One more thing,” she said. “I’m building a promise into this wish. You can’t tell Malek or anyone else that I granted it. If you do, you will die.”

“How can I die if I’m immortal?”

“If you speak of it, then the next breath you take will be your last. I’m putting that in the contract.” He scowled and she raised her hands. “I’m just protecting my interests.”

Malek’s words felt strange in her mouth—how many times had he said that in order to justify some horrible action?

“This doesn’t end the trade, you know,” Sergei said. “Different players, same game. There are always others who can make money from suffering. Is best money-making opportunity in the world. People like your jinni traitor—they eat up this kind of despair. It fills the belly. Is warm like vodka. And if the slave trade ends, I would not care so much, jinni-girl. Trust me, your Ifrit, as you call them, are good clients—but they’ll never be as good as Earth’s. Humans love their guns. As long as there’s fear, poverty, and hatred, I will have good business.”

“Without your guns, it’ll be harder for the Ifrit to sell Arjinnans. That’s all that matters to me right now.” Nalia stepped toward him. “Now are we doing this, or what?”

Sergei reached out his hand. “Is deal.”

Nalia shook in the way that she’d seen Malek do hundreds of times, one firm shake. Sergei’s hand was large and surprisingly soft, as though he left all his dirty work to underlings in leather coats and black sunglasses. She hated touching him, but she’d had to do a lot of things over the past few years that she hadn’t liked. This was for her people. It was one of many ways she hoped to make amends for the coup. It wouldn’t end the trade, but taking Sergei out of it would slow things down considerably. Still, she was looking forward to the day when she would no longer have to grovel at the feet of human men who had power over her.

Sergei checked the large, expensive-looking watch on his wrist. “I need to be in Paris in twelve hours.”

How many lives could she save if she granted him the wish the way she wanted to: give him the immortality he’d wished for, but with a twist? She’d turn him to stone. Carve him out of granite and let him spend the whole of his earthly existence standing in the middle of this loft. Humans thought stone was dead, but they were wrong, of course. You can’t draw power from a dead thing, and some of her strongest
chiaan
came out of stone. It would be so satisfying, to work the magic, then open her eyes to see a permanent howl of dismay on Sergei’s ugly face.

“I can see you scheming, jinni-girl. I’m not one of your virgin clients, I know I have to be specific. So put this in your contract: I wish to live forever, to be immortal, as myself, Sergei Federov: a human, a Russian, a
Titan
.”

She’d read the human myths—the titans were, ironically, stone gods, the first of the human gods. But she couldn’t make a man a god. Nobody could.

“Let’s leave the Titan part out, shall we?”

Sergei gave her an indulgent smile. “All right, jinni-girl.”

“Oh . . . there’s one other thing you’ll need to do in order for me to grant this.”

“More?”

“A slight detail I might have forgotten to mention. What I’m about to give you is called Draega’s Amulet. I can’t grant it unless you give up the thing you love most in the world,” she said.

“Very funny, jinni-girl.”

Nalia pointed to her face. “Do I look like I’m being funny?”

“Not so much, no.” Sergei lit another cigarette and took a long drag. “This changes things.”

“Not to me. The price of my services is what we agreed to. But the gods need a little kickback—you’re Russian, you know what that’s all about. Think of it as a tax.” She cocked her head to the side, watching Sergei fume. “Don’t tell me you don’t love
anything
?”

Sergei started yelling at her in Russian—unfortunately, she understood every word. She hated living up to the stereotype of the trickster jinni, but she didn’t really have a choice. If she’d told Sergei about the cost of the amulet right away, she never would have gotten him to agree to her terms.

“Da,”
he finally said. For just a moment, she saw a flicker of sorrow in his emotionless eyes. Just the tiniest bit of regret.

Nalia shivered. The gods would accept anything as tribute—she hoped it wasn’t a
person
that Sergei loved most in the world. She’d seen it happen before. When Nalia first learned to create the amulet, her tutor had brought in a Shaitan who had traded holdings in his estate just to set up his meeting with Nalia. When she told him the cost of immortality, the overlord had spent several long minutes in anguished, silent prayer. Then he’d agreed to her price. As soon as he made his silent promise to the gods his daughter, who had accompanied him, dropped to the floor.

“You’ll need to remove your shirt,” she said.

“Oh, jinni-girl, I don’t think Malek will be liking that.”

Nalia gave him a loaded look, then pulled the contract out of her back pocket, tapped it once, and handed it to Sergei. She’d create the fake one for Malek after she granted Sergei his wish. He looked it over and then held out his hand—he knew the drill. Nalia took her dagger out of her boot and whispered a word of power over it so that he wouldn’t become paralyzed by the Aisouri blade. Then she sliced through his thick skin. Sergei pressed the drop of blood on his finger against the paper, then handed her a business card with a number written on the back of it.