Page 10 of The Wishless Ones
Jafar had been waiting for his scholarship for more reasons than one. Acceptance into the House of Wisdom would have been a way to squeeze distance between himself and his father. That desire for space was what eventually led to him feeling some sort of twisted enjoyment whenever he was locked in that broom closet, wasn’t it?
An entire realm separated him and Baba now.
Armed men marched past their dilapidated hideout. The village’s governing caliph was just, and his guards were always quick to respond. If they were here, both Baba’s supposed cohorts and enemies might not be far behind.
The village of Ghurub was small and insignificant, lost in the crossroads between several kingdoms, but that was where an advantage was to be had. And their father, despite his numerous decisions gone wrong, had known it. He had been establishing trade routes and carving out a place for Ghurub on the map of the world. He had stepped on toes and created one too many foes—even his own allies respected him about as much as soldiers respected a heartless general.
Jafar wasn’t about to face them.
Rohan sniffled. “Baba—”
“Shh,” Jafar hissed.
But Rohan didn’t care about the platoon of guards. He didn’t even care for the snot running down his face. He never had. Jafar understood that he was hurting and grieving, but he really could have been more presentable.
“He could be hurt, Jafar. He could be—”
“Dead?” Jafar asked flatly, and Rohan flinched.
“He’s probably nice and crispy,” Iago added.
Jafar shot him a look.
“What?” Iago asked. “I thought we didn’t like him. I certainly didn’t.” He shuddered and lifted a wing in a way that was very much like a man waving an arm in dismissal. “All those stale crackers.”
But the words made Rohan look more appalled than sad, which Jafar considered a triumph. It meant he wasn’t spiraling.
The flames soon died down. Embers shone like diamonds in the rough, taunting him. Everything that he was had been reduced to a pile of ash and crumbled stone.
No one could have survived that fire. If not for the broom closet, neither Jafar nor Rohan would have survived, either. Jafar could already hear the cries of alarm and hushed whispers from the rubble where they hid now, paces from the remains of their house. Like a feather slowly drifting to the ground, the truth settled in him with finality.
Their father, one of the city’s most prosperous merchants, was dead.
“... the sons died, too? What a shame,” a guard was saying, shaking his head as he passed. Jafar watched from a hole in the wall, breath held. “Came from nothing and back to nothing they go.”
Rohan straightened. Iago perked up, too. “We’re not—”
Jafar slapped a hand over his brother’s mouth and yanked the parrot back with a hand around his scrawny neck.
“What’s gotten into you?” Iago asked, as if he knew Jafar. Then again, hedid. Jafar was the one who knew nothing about this relationship.
“What is wrong with you?” Rohan echoed, slowly teetering toward hysterics. “Why are we even hiding? You’re acting likewekilled him! You’re acting like the man that’s—that you say isdeadisn’t our father! Our blood!”
Jafar bit back a snort, because if what Iago had said about the scholarship was true,Rohanhad acted like Jafar wasn’t his blood. They weren’t too different. Iago opened his mouth, and Jafar knew he was thinking the same. He silenced him with a look.
Because Rohan was still his brother.
“I’m sorry,” Jafar said, and he truly was. He wiped away Rohan’s tears with the edge of his sleeve and bent closer to him. “I know that he was our father. I know that he was all we had. But when a powerful man like that winds up dead, his enemies come looking, and I won’t risk our getting hurt. I will always put you first.”
He could tell Rohan was trying not to cry again, and Jafar wanted to shake him. Rohan was seventeen years old, not four.
“He has a point, you know,” Iago said, crossing his wings. Jafar was starting to like having the parrot on his side.
“There’s nothing left for us here, Rohan,” Jafar continued. He tried dusting off his clothes, but it was futile. The sand and dust in this little hovel had sat undisturbed long enough to be eager for something new upon which to cling. “Nothing. Not Mama or Baba, not our belongings, not our home.”
Nor did they have anyone else. They were at that age when no one wanted anything to do with them, oftentimes not even their father.
“Baba’s business,” Rohan said, grasping at straws for whatever reason. “We can’t just throw away all his work.”
