‘Are you saying you want to put Ahmed on the throne?’ It seemed Shira was dead wrong about him having designs on being the new Sultan.

‘I’m saying I want my father off the throne and I can help you. On one condition. I want you and your rebellion to get my sister out of the palace.’

‘Leyla?’ Little round-faced Leyla who made toys for the children in the harem and who reminded me of my littlest cousins even though she had a decade on them. ‘Why? She’s as safe here as anywhere else and she told me herself it could be a lot worse.’

‘If I’m right, she’s in danger.’

I thought of Shira, asking me for Leyla’s secrets, watching her out of the corner of her eye, ready to take down any threats to her child before they could do the same to her. But somehow I didn’t think that was what Rahim meant. Men weren’t usually aware of the politics of women.

‘What kind of danger?’

He didn’t answer the question. ‘You’re a Demdji. I’ve seen you do your little trick every day in my father’s war meetings. So, am I telling the truth?’

‘Yes.’ It came out easily.

‘Am I trying to trick you?’

I tried yes again, but it wouldn’t come out. ‘No.’

‘Can you trust me?’

I don’t trust anybody in here. ‘Yes.’ But I wasn’t giving up that easily. ‘But I want to know why. A lot of folk don’t get along with their fathers.’ I’d learned that first-hand the day before in the vaults. ‘Doesn’t mean most want them dead.’

‘Fathers don’t usually send their children away to die when they’re twelve years old, either.’ Rahim said it so matter-of-factly it surprised me. ‘Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t have much of a point of comparison.’ Rahim started walking again and this time I moved with him.

‘How’d you get sent away?’ I kept pace with him. ‘Seems like half the harem would kill for a chance at escape.’ Me included.

Rahim didn’t answer right away and when he did he picked his words carefully, deciding what to tell me and what to keep from me. ‘I tried to crack Kadir’s skull open with my bare hands.’ I hadn’t been expecting that answer.

‘And how’d that work out for you?’ I asked.

Rahim caught my eye out of the corner of his. ‘That’s what you ask me? Not why?’

‘I’ve met Kadir, I can guess why.’

‘I wanted to take something from my father the same way he did from me. Women vanish out of the harem every day. Most children just have to accept when their mothers vanish without a word. I wasn’t prepared to be one of them.’ I remembered how calm Leyla had seemed when she told me that her mother had been taken away from her. She shared a mother with Rahim. I had to imagine he hadn’t been quite as placid as his sister. ‘It took three soldiers to pull me off Kadir. His nose is still crooked, you’ll notice.’

He scratched the bridge of his own perfectly straight nose, hiding a laugh. It was the Sultan’s nose, I realised. That was what made him look like Ahmed.

‘So how come you’re not dead?’ I asked.

‘It looks bad for the Sultan to kill his own sons. Especially after he already had so much of his family’s blood on his hands. So my father decided to send me away to war to die quietly, or at least somewhere he wouldn’t hear. My father underestimated me.’

‘You became the commander instead.’

‘The youngest ever. And the best.’ He wasn’t bragging, I realised. He sounded like Shazad. Easily certain that he was right. ‘Now, will you get my sister out?’

I shouldn’t be doing this. It ought to be Ahmed or Shazad or even Jin here negotiating with Rahim. This wasn’t a job for the Blue-Eyed Bandit. But right now I was the only one here. ‘That depends what you’ve got.’

‘How about an army?’ That wasn’t a bad opening offer. ‘The Emir of Iliaz is due to arrive for Auranzeb. He has as little love for the Sultan as I do and the fighting force of Iliaz nearly matches the rest of Miraji’s combined. A word from me and that army can be your Rebel Prince’s.’ We’d arrived.

The Sultan looked up as we entered. ‘Ah, Rahim, I see you managed to get Amani all the way here without her running off.’ It was a gentle barb. ‘Congratulations. No mean feat, it would seem.’

It would take one word. Just one to his father now, telling him that I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. And just like that, everything would be over. He could betray me before we’d even made an alliance.

But he didn’t. Rahim stepped aside, letting me in the room ahead of him, like a gentleman. As I passed he said in a low voice, ‘I can get your rebellion an army. Tell me I’m lying.’

I didn’t say anything as I took my place behind the Sultan. I could only speak the truth.

Chapter 28

‘You know, where I come from, there’s an ancient expression, passed down from parents to children.’ Sam spread his hands like he was seeing it written out in big letters floating in front of him. ‘“Don’t ally with people who have tried to kill you.”’

‘You just made that up.’ Shazad leaned back against the wall that she and Sam had just walked through. She was the only person I knew who wouldn’t be even a tiny bit ruffled by being pulled through a wall by a man we only barely trusted.