Tawaddud picks out a couple on the train, a slight woman gesturing animatedly at her partner, talking about a new jinn jar for their servant. Under her breath, she whispers the Secret Name of Al-Musawwir, the Fashioner of Forms, duplicating her own shape and that of Sumanguru in the athar, overlaying them on the couple. Then she waits, and sure enough, when the couple gets off at the next stop, two of the jinni follow them, leaving the third one lingering behind. After a few moments, it darts away too.
‘Smooth,’ Sumanguru says.
The only Sirr fragment not completely built up, the Uzeda Shard is covered in scaffoldings and plastic sheets, a sign of ongoing construction projects to repair the damage of a great wildcode infection two years ago. Tawaddud remembers the great structures that suddenly sprang into being, a wildcode thing brought from the desert by a contaminated soul train, a tree of sapphire climbing up the shard. It grew so fast you could see it, a whirlpool of wild jinni around it in the athar.
As they get closer to the dark skeleton in the horizon, her heart beats faster. Duny. Duny. I am doing the right thing. Father must know the truth. She thinks about the long nights of guilt, of the feeling that something was wrong. Maybe it was her all along. She wanted me to feel small so I would stay out of her way.
She squeezes the Sobornost mind-bullet in her pocket. It will emulate a part of your brain, the part the fragment will enter, Sumanguru said. It’s like a jinn jar, except that he can’t get out. Such a small thing, cool metal, the size of her fingertip.
She tries to think about Kafur’s calm voice, how he took her in after the City of the Dead. He is going to help. It is going to be all right. Kafur taught her that everything heals.
There are great differences in altitude here, sudden sharp drops beneath the elevated tram rails and yawning vertical alleys that go up to the Shard. She looks down at the Great Northern Station where the infection started. The long low halls and arcs still bear the marks of the battle the muhtasibs and Repentants fought to contain the infection, scarred ribs of metal and glass.
Even if it takes a while for the scars to disappear.
They get off at the last stop, squeezing past wirers and workmen returning from late shifts at the sites. Tawaddud leads them down a winding stairway into the lower levels. There are no signs of Repentants, and the athar here is so sparse and broken that it would be difficult for the jinni to track them anyway. Duny must be seething with rage somewhere.
There are glowing signs in the arches that appear as they enter the remains of the Northern Station. The rattle of trams above makes it difficult to speak. There is a smell of ozone everywhere, and the air tastes thick. An old soul train tunnel opens before them suddenly like the pupil of a giant eye.
Inside, the ground is uneven, and Tawaddud almost cuts herself on the diamond rail. In the distance, there are rumblings and mutterings. The Banu Sasan whisper that the wildcode creature was not completely defeated, that its children still live in the ruins.
‘When you mentioned palaces,’ Sumanguru says, ‘this is not exactly what I had in mind.’
‘Ssh,’ Tawaddud says. Ahead, there is a glowing sign on the wall, a simple circle, with two dots for eyes. A face. Tawaddud speaks the Name Kafur taught her, long ago, and a door opens, revealing a long corridor dimly lit with red light, echoing with distant music and whispers.
Tawaddud gives Sumanguru a white mask and puts one over her own face.
‘Welcome to the Palace of Stories.’
The Palace has changed, as it always does. It is a labyrinth of dimly lit passages that suddenly expand into rooms when you turn a corner.
There is a room with huge white walls on which shadows dance even if there is no apparent source of light, spiky-haired, long-limbed blots of ink that flee when Tawaddud tries to touch them. Another huge hall is criss-crossed by copper wires and hums with static electricity, making her feel heavy as if before a thunderstorm, her hair standing up, crackling. There is a gallery with walls of dark velvet, with thousands of candles burning in the ceiling, upside down, following the gestures of a man wearing a black suit and white gloves and a ballet dancer’s skirt, a slow dance of light and flame. The athar is thick with jinni weaving illusions.
A delicate woman with boyish dark hair, with a red mask instead of white, approaches them and gives a slight bow.
‘You look like you have never been to the Palace before,’ she tells Sumanguru. ‘How may we serve you? What is your pleasure? Bodies for jinni, stories for flesh.’ She looks the Sobornost gogol up and down, one hand on her hip, stroking her lips with a finger. ‘Lord Shoulders here could enjoy cinema, perhaps, or detective stories. As for you—’ She blinks. ‘Tawaddud?’
‘Emina.’ Tawaddud smiles beneath her mask. ‘I am here to see Kafur.’
Emina grabs her arm and pulls her through a velvet curtain, to a small bare-walled chamber.
‘You have some nerve to come here, you little bitch,’ she hisses.
‘Emina, I—’
‘When the Repentants came for you, we had to run and hide. I went to the City of the Dead. I was a ghul for a while. Do you know what that’s like? Of course not, Miss Tawaddud who came to play at being an embodiment slave, until the fun was over and it was time to go back to Daddy.’ She throws her hands into the air in disgust.
‘And who is this? A new plaything? He smells of Sobornost. We have masrurs here, you know. But why would you care about that, living in your palace now?’
‘It wasn’t like that. Please listen to me.’
Emina takes a sobbing breath. ‘Of course it was. Silly girl. Go away now. Shoo.’ She wipes her eyes and waves towards the corridor.
‘Emina, please. I need Kafur’s help. I’m looking for the Axolotl. I have sobors, I can pay—’
Emina looks at her sideways. ‘So. The Axolotl. Finally. Tired of the limp-dicked mutalibun lords, eh?’ She crosses her arms. ‘Tell me, is it another game of pretend, or something more?’
Tears well up in Tawaddud’s eyes.
‘It is something more,’ she whispers. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve.
Emina looks at her for a moment. Then she gives her a hug.
‘There, there, Tawa, it’s all right. You look terrible. Don’t make it worse. Aunt Emina will sort it out. I will take you to Kafur, and if that silly man does not help you, he’ll answer to me.’
She pats Tawaddud’s back. ‘The Axolotl has been here, but not for a while. They say he has been running with the masrurs, attacking soul trains, fighting Sobornost.’ She gives Sumanguru a dark look. ‘You should be careful of the company you keep.’
‘Emina, I’m . . . I’m sorry about what happened. I did not want to cause trouble for anybody. This was a good place for me. Please tell Zuweyla and Marjana and Ghanim and everybody that—’
Emina’s eyes sparkle. ‘Don’t you worry about that. You just needed a spanking, that’s all. We all want the story of the jinn prince, and if you found yours, all the better. Now come on - let’s go find Kafur.’ She frowns. ‘He has changed a bit since you last saw him.’
Kafur receives them in a cavernous space, sitting cross-legged on the floor under a railway arch – they must be somewhere below the Station. Kafur wears a familiar long-sleeved, hooded robe, but is more crooked and twisted than Tawaddud remembers. His face is hidden behind a red mask. He is flanked by the two jinn thought-forms in forbidden female shapes, one with naked flesh of glittering, silvery snake scales, the other a slender sculpture of ice.