26 - Jafar
J afar could not sleep. The sheets were a tangle around his legs, and he’d memorized every pattern in the detailed ceiling above him in the hours since he’d crawled into bed. In the long list Jafar had to describe his brother, rival was never a word he thought he’d choose. Rohan had abysmal confidence on a good day, but he had somehow known Jafar wouldn’t call him out. He had exploited him. He had used him and made him feel lesser, inferior.
Rohan had behaved exactly as Baba would have.
“That’s enough with this moping,” Iago quipped, hopping onto the cushions.
“Because you told me so?” Jafar asked, and he had. Iago had warned Jafar when he was still locked in the broom closet, when he’d first held the ripped remains of his scholarship.
He braced himself for Iago’s gloating.
“For someone who was plotting how to steal a pair of mind-controlling rubies from the Sultana of Maghriz’s pocket, you crumble fast,” Iago said instead.
Jafar didn’t want to hear it. There was so much else about their meeting with the Sultana that gnawed at him, namely the fact that she hadn’t asked for the secret itself. It was all too much, and he couldn’t stand to be in the presence of Iago or Rohan, stark reminders of Baba, stark reminders of everything that had gone wrong. He threw off the sheets and retied his loose trousers, not bothering with a shirt before pulling on his robes and leaving their rooms.
The halls were dark, the palace still asleep. Even now, it struck Jafar as peculiar that the Sultana had arrived to the dungeons so quickly, with her royal vizier at that. As if she’d plotted the entire event—from disclosing knowledge of the prisoner to gathering them all for a meeting.
Jafar’s brain hurt. His shoulder felt bare without Iago. In the middle of the hall before one of the trellised windows, he sank to the floor with his back to the wall. His fingernails were rimmed in blood where he couldn’t scrub it away. The life had drained out of him, leaving nothing but weak limbs and a mind too numb to think.
“Hello, ink boy.”
Jafar looked up, quickly shifting his hands from the light. He didn’t have an explanation for how the lovely cadence of her voice made him feel. “Are you spying on me, moon girl?”
She laughed, and he could have sworn the hall brightened. Her existence was sorcery, and Jafar was thoroughly under her spell.
He could see her gown now, a deep blush that was almost purple, black filigree forming thick, stiff cuffs around her wrists. When his gaze returned to hers, it was to find her studying him just as diligently, and he remembered that his chest was bare and his robes only covered so much. A hint of red colored her cheeks. Jafar swallowed and saw her gaze follow the bob of his throat.
She chewed the inside of her lip and glanced down the hall. “You’re a great deal sadder than the last time I saw you.”
“My melancholy ebbs and flows with the tides,” Jafar said, his own voice a little hoarse.
“So poetic,” the girl drawled. “Let’s do another trade.”
He liked this game. He liked her , even more than he did the first time. Jafar thought about it for a moment.
“I have been known to go too far,” he said, rubbing at his blood-crusted nails with discretion.
“His melancholy is at its peak, everyone,” she mock-announced. “Come now, get up! Life is too short to obsess over any one thing.”
She reached for his hands and hauled him up, her face coming dangerously close to his chest. Wisps of her hair brushed his skin and his breath caught. It made something slither up his veins and put his lungs in a vise before she let go as if his skin were coal.
Her gaze swept to the floor, the first instance of reserve he’d seen in her. Her chest heaved just as heavily as he felt his own did. When she crossed her arms, he noticed how she slid her hands up them, as if she too had felt that unexpected slither.
“I—” Her voice cracked.
She cleared her throat with a sheepish smile. It made her look younger, softened the harshness of her features that Jafar hadn’t noticed at first. Had she, too, lived a lifetime in her youth? Did she know what it was like to be subjected to subordination when she didn’t deserve it?
“My turn,” she said in a voice like gossamer, a little thinner but just as silky. A little unnerved, and it was because of him. It was as intoxicating as when he’d made the prisoner bleed.
He didn’t know what compelled him to hold her gaze. “Yes.”
She dipped her head again, flooding him with warmth and something brazen and thrilling. When her gaze went coy and her smile turned shy, it made his heart feel too big for his body. It made him forget about everything else.
He saw the ripple down her throat when she swallowed. He wondered what it would be like to brush his fingers along the slender column of her neck.
“I’ve been known to give in too easily,” she said.
That surprised him, for she wore confidence like the heady jasmine of her perfume. “You don’t seem the type.”
“Are you referring to my boisterous personality?” she asked, pushing out a hip.
The warmth that was spreading through Jafar suddenly gathered and pooled low.
She gave him a half smile. “I’ve got to make up for it somehow.”
“What—”
“Ah,” she reprimanded. “No more questions. We have our agreement, remember? Why else did I refrain from asking about your excursion earlier? Pity, too. I wanted to meet your friend, but it was too dark to see him.”
Jafar did not want her to meet his friend , his brother, his nemesis. She sauntered past, veering closer to him despite the wide expanse of the hall. Her skirts brushed his legs, and he bit back a shiver, watching as she pulled a key from her pocket. He didn’t know how she managed to make something as dull as a key heat every ounce of his blood, but she did. And judging from the way her eyes darkened, she knew it.
“A key of your own,” Jafar drawled.
“Because I’m here on my own,” she replied coyly. “My first time, really.”
But a key meant she was trustworthy enough to be given one. Jafar and Rohan didn’t have keys to their rooms. Who was she, and why was she here alone?
She winked. “Until next time, melancholy boy.”
Jafar bowed with a flourish. “Until then, boisterous girl.”
Perhaps it was because of her voice, or her touch, or the fact that she was something Rohan did not and would never have, but when she left him, he did not feel particularly like moping anymore. He smiled at the guards, nodded his way to the House of Wisdom’s laboratory, and busied his hands.
Just before noon, Jafar climbed to the palace’s rooftop terrace and wrapped his fingers around the banister until the sharp edges cut into his skin. He inhaled the sun-soaked desert air.
He could see much of the capital city from here. Dunes churned on the horizon, but the city was rife with people treading to and fro, stirring sand as they bartered and traveled and went about their day.
“Can I tell you what I think?” Iago asked, hopping along the banister. The wind ruffled the tuft of feathers on his head.
“I abhor when a question is preceded by permission to ask a question,” Jafar drawled. The high of his moment with the girl was fading, spiraling him back to Rohan and the prisoner and all that had transpired the night before.
Iago tilted his head. “We’re really leaning into the brooding here. I like it.”
Jafar rolled his eyes. He hadn’t seen Rohan all morning, though that was in part because Jafar had avoided any opportunity to see him.
Iago shrugged. “We need to find your rubies and skedaddle as fast as we can. Hey, will you stop moping? It’s not your fault.”
Wasn’t it?
“Oi, we’ve got company,” Iago whispered.
“For a boy who always has something to say, your silence last night was deafening.”
Jafar stilled.
He gripped the iron railing, sand clinging to his damp palms. The Sultana stepped beside him, her ebony overcloak and heavy shawl rustling in the breeze. Jafar refused to acknowledge her statement, and so they watched the city in silence, voices riding the dry breeze to their ears. He held his breath. The scent of her perfume transported him back to last night in that receiving room, the walls pressing as close as the broom closet’s, the eyes of her men boring holes into him.
“I know it was you,” she said at last.
Iago squawked. Jafar looked at her, surprised and a little wary. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Harun, the royal vizier, standing at a distance, his sapphire robes vivid. He looked less like he was there to protect her than to supervise.
“I knew the moment I saw you by the door,” the Sultana said. “You are an extraordinary boy.”
A man, his father would yell at him. You are no longer a boy. His surprise careened into anger when she smiled. If she knew, had known , why had she not confronted Rohan then and there? Why had she allowed him to boast and garner the praise and pride of her closest circle?
And if she’d never even asked for the secret in the end, what was the point, besides pitting Rohan and Jafar against each other? Almost…
Almost as if she wanted to test them.
Jafar knew manipulation when he saw it. He had experience with it, after all. He just couldn’t understand what the Sultana stood to gain. He swept his gaze to the palace courtyard below, jaw clenching at the sight of his brother. The terrace overlooked the gardens, where Rohan idled by the rectangular reflecting pool in its center, playing with a host of baby ducklings, yellow and bright.
He cupped the youngest one in his palms.
“If you knew,” Jafar started, turning his attention back to her, “then why—”
“This is no place for those who cede to others,” the Sultana said. She sounded disappointed.
She was the one who had brought them to this place . All he’d wanted were those rubies.
“Rohan is my brother, not my competition,” Jafar countered.
“Competition! Competition!” Iago squawked.
“The parrot has the right idea,” she said with a wry smile. “I’ve lived long, Jafar, and encountered enough people to have learned them. Men share greed, not blood. Do you think he was unaware of the penalty for lying?”
Jafar swallowed. No, Rohan was not unaware. Just as he was aware that Jafar would do anything for him.
Let go, said the girl in his mind, but she was wrong—some obsessions couldn’t be helped. Some transgressions could not be forgiven.
“I do not wish to discuss my brother,” Jafar said, surprised by how cold his voice was.
He wanted to know how being the better person and not outing his brother for lying still earned him nothing. A thought resurfaced, one that had been born in the shadows of the locked broom closet: What point was there in being good if he could not reap the benefit of it?
“Nor do I,” the Sultana replied.
Jafar looked back down at Rohan, the turquoise depths of the pool complementing his robes. The duckling was squirming in his palms. Men share greed. Jafar wondered if that was why his brother had claimed the discovery as his own. He wondered if, beneath his bright, daffodil smiles, his brother had a little bit of the devil in him.
“The two of you remind me of my son,” she said, seemingly unaware of the turmoil inside him. “Much of the palace agrees, as well. Those who have seen you in passing.”
“Well, since you haven’t told anyone he’s dead, maybe one of us can take his place,” Jafar said, callously disregarding her pain as she did his. Showing her that her son could be replaced, just as Rohan had taken Jafar’s place.
The Sultana recoiled as if he had slapped her.
Jafar froze.
And the world slowed as he realized: That was it.
That was why she’d taken them from the House of Wisdom, why she regarded them with far more attention than two bedouin boys from a far-off village deserved, and why her palace staff were so few. The Maghrizi, like most kingdoms and tribes of the desert, weren’t keen on portraits, so it was unlikely anyone would even notice.
Jafar almost laughed at her. She had planned this all along—ever since she’d pocketed those rubies and seen him behind her. That was why she had been testing them.
Which meant—
“The prisoner,” Jafar breathed, his chest tightening with the realization. “He wasn’t really a prisoner.”
The Sultana neither denied nor affirmed his words, but her silence was confirmation enough. She looked impressed when she met his eyes, as if she had hoped to carry on the ruse a little longer. He’d lost a piece of himself inside that dungeon, and for what? He had hurt a man, made him suffer, bleed . Because of a twisted test ?
And yet, the only person he was angry at, livid at, was Rohan. His brother, still loitering by that pool, playing with the smallest of the ducklings in the water as if nothing were awry.
“The prisoner is fine, by the way. Despite how well you did,” the Sultana said, finally.
Well. She was commending the level of damage he’d dealt.
Jafar kept staring at the duckling, even as it began to squirm and struggle, his rage rising with the babe’s thrashing as he imagined the Sultana in its place.
And then it stopped.
A stillness fell over the gardens, and down below, when Rohan opened his palms, the duckling was dead.
“But you must know,” the Sultana continued, “that one cannot afford to be second best.”