Page 56 of The Wishless Ones
My son has died.So what Jafar had heard from the caravan leader was true, then. But what did she mean bythe prince must live on? Were they not one and the same?
“Why?” Rohan asked.
“Life as a queen means making endless promises. One such vow was to the kingdom of Hulum. Our lands are similar and our armies a good match. Being equally matched, however, tends to result in a great many deaths for both sides.”
The Sultana faced the city.
“To avoid that, we deemed it appropriate to unite our kingdoms.”
Rohan didn’t know how that was possible.
She glanced at him, searching for something, and sighed when she didn’t find it. “Through marriage.”
Rohan didn’t know much about politics, but he knew that kingdoms united by matrimony rarely resulted in happy marriages. Most parties carried on with partners they preferred over their spouses, their unions restricted to writing.
“But how can the prince live on?” Rohan asked. Jafar would know the answer, but he wasn’t here right now.
The Sultana laughed, as if he was hopeless, as if his question was the funniest thing in the world.
“Why did you leave your home?” she asked suddenly.
“Our father died,” Rohan said softly.I killed him with a wish.“In a fire. Jafar said there was nothing left for us.”
“In a fire,” the Sultana mused. “How did you know he was dead?”
It was an odd question to ask when Rohan held a duckling in his hands that was most assuredly dead. “Because Jafar said so.”
He didn’t let Rohan verify it, nor did Rohan ever check himself.
The Sultanahmmed.
Rohan’s fingers were shriveling from the water and the duckling’s soaked feathers. He wouldn’t even need a shovel to bury so small a creature.
“Can you tell me where the graveyard is?” he asked.
She studied him again, and it took everything in Rohan not to squirm under her scrutiny.
“I can take you there,” she said, finally, and began walking toward the veranda. Rohan petted one last duckling before joining her.
“Do you know what you have that your brother does not?” she asked, and part of Rohan thought this entire conversation felt orchestrated, like when Baba would bring both Rohan and Jafar into a room and begin a conversation, furtively dictating the direction it took.
Still, Rohan could not imagine. His brother had—and was—everything. Smart, charismatic, clever, fearless. Surely the Sultana could see that.
“The illusion of compassion,” she told him.
Jafar spent much of the day reading in the House of Wisdom and tinkering in the laboratory and parsing through all that he’d learned. More than the rubies was at stake now. He was no longer reading simply to learn—he needed to arm himself with all that he could. He had taken the Sultana’s words to mean that he had to do better. Between him and Rohan, one of them would be crowned prince at the end of this.
If she wanted a ruthless prince, she would have one.
A prince. Jafar couldn’t quite believe this was his reality now.
He heard the doors open multiple times, both he and Iago tensing every time, wondering if it was Rohan. Did he still want the genie lamp, or had he abandoned all notion of salvaging their past in favor of the Sultana’s promised future?
At dinner, Jafar still didn’t feel like seeing Rohan’s face, so he gathered a plate of food—for himself and Iago, which was why it took them a bit longer to get out of that dining hall—and disappeared into his room, locking it tight.
“Tell me you’re not considering becoming her prince replacement,” Iago said, hopping off his shoulder to sit on the bed. He took one look at Jafar’s face and squawked. “You are! What happened to getting the rubies and getting out of here?”
“I still want them,” Jafar said, biting into an olive.
