Traitor to the Throne Read online

  Full dark had almost fallen by now. The cells were lit only by a dim gloom. I could see the swing of lamplight on the staircase. Good, that’d be an advantage. I flattened myself to the blind spot at the bottom of the stairs. Imin followed my lead, doing the same on the other side.

  We waited, listening to the steps on the stairs getting louder. I counted four sets of boots, at least. Maybe five. We were outnumbered and they were armed, but they’d have to come single file, which meant numbers counted for nothing. Lamplight played across the walls as they descended. I had the element of surprise on my side. And, like Shazad always said, when you were fighting someone twice your size you had to make the first blow count. The blow they were never expecting in the first place. All the better if you could make it your last one, too.

  Across from me the little girl in green had shifted so she was right up against the bars, watching us, fascinated. I pressed my finger to my lips, trying to make her understand. The girl nodded. Good. She was young but she was a desert girl all the same. She knew how to survive.

  I moved the moment the first guard’s head came into view.

  One violent burst of sand knocked straight into his temple, sending him careening into the bars on the little girl’s cell. She staggered back as his skull cracked against the iron. Imin grabbed the soldier behind, hoisting him off the ground and slamming him to the wall. His startled face was the last thing I saw as his lamp hit the ground, shattering. Extinguishing. And I was as good as blind.

  A gunshot sounded, setting off a chorus of screams, inside the cells and out. Underneath I heard one voice shouting a prayer. I whispered a curse instead as I flattened myself to the wall. I was least likely to get hit by a stray bullet if I wasn’t out in the open. I had to think. They were as blind as we were. But they were armed and I had to figure they wouldn’t mind killing a prisoner with a stray bullet as much as I would. Another gunshot went off, and this time there was a cry that sounded more like pain than fear. My mind struggled to think through the sudden rising panic, as I strained to follow the sounds. It’d been a long time since I was alone in a fight. If Shazad were here she’d know a way out of this. I could fight back in the dark, but I was as likely to hit Imin or the little girl in green as an enemy. I needed light. Badly.

  And then, as if in answer to a prayer, the sun rose in the prison.

  Starbursts filled my eyes. I was still blinded, but this time by the sudden glare of light. I blinked wildly, trying to see through the sunspots.

  My vision cleared dangerously slowly, my panicked heartbeat reminding me that I was useless and blind and surrounded by armed enemies. My surroundings came into focus one little piece at a time. Two guards on the ground. Not moving. Three more rubbing their eyes, guns loose in their fingers. Imin pressed against the wall, bleeding from his shoulder. And inside the cell, the little girl in green, with a tiny sun, no bigger than a fist, cupped in her hands. Her face glowed in the pale light, casting strange shadows over her face from below that made her look a whole lot older. And I could see now that those huge eyes she’d been watching me with were as unnatural as mine or Imin’s. The colour of a dying ember.

  She was a Demdji.

  Chapter 4

  There’d be time to worry about my new Demdji ally later. For now I had to use the gift she was giving us. The guards’ guns were already rising towards me – a burst of sand knocked them out of their hands. One guard staggered back into Imin. Imin grabbed him, and with one sharp twist I heard a neck crack.

  A guard sprung at me, knife drawn. I split the sand in two, using half to knock his hand aside before he could get near, even as I turned the rest solid in my hand, forming it into a curved blade of sand. It cut clean across his throat, drawing blood. Imin grabbed a fallen gun. He might not be as good a shot as I was, but in a space this closely confined it’d be hard to miss. I ducked as Imin fired. More screams came from inside the cells, the sound of gunshots bouncing off the stone walls drowning them out.

  And then silence. I straightened. It was over. Imin and I were still alive. The guards weren’t.

  Mahdi stepped out of the cell, his lip curling up in faint judgment at the bodies as he took in the carnage. That was the thing about the intellectual types. They wanted to remake the world, but they seemed to think they could do it without any blood. I ignored him as I turned towards the cell holding the little Demdji girl in a green khalat. She was still cradling the tiny sun, staring at me with sombre red eyes. They were unsettlingly bright.

  I splintered her lock with a burst of sand. ‘You’re—’ I started as I dragged the door open, but the little girl was already on her feet, shoving past me out of her cell towards the other end of the prison.

  ‘Samira!’ she called. She got close to the bars, but didn’t touch them. She knew enough to stay away from iron. More than I had when I was her age. I leaned against the stone wall. I was starting to feel the exhaustion creeping in on me now that the fighting was done.

  ‘Ranaa!’ Another girl pushed her way to the front of the cell, kneeling on the floor so she was eye level with the young Demdji. She looked like she’d been beautiful before prison got to her. Now she just looked tired. Dark eyes sunk into a drawn face. I checked her over quickly for any sign of a Demdji mark but she looked as human as they came. She was probably of an age with me. Not old enough to be the girl’s mother. A sister maybe? She reached through the bars, resting a hand against the little girl’s face. ‘Are you all right?’

  The young Demdji, Ranaa, turned to me, her mouth already twisting into an angry pout. ‘Let her out.’ It was an order, not a request. And from someone who was used to giving them, too.

  ‘No one ever taught you to say please, kid?’ It slipped out, even though this wasn’t the place to start teaching manners. And I probably wasn’t the person to, either.

  Ranaa stared me down. That probably worked on most folk. I was used to Demdji and even I found those red eyes unsettling. I remembered some stories saying that Adil the conqueror was so evil his eyes burned red. She was used to getting what she wanted with those eyes. But I wasn’t all that used to doing what I was told. I twirled the sand around my fingers, waiting.

  ‘Let her out, please,’ she tried, before stomping one bare foot. ‘Now.’

  I pushed away from the wall with a sigh. At least I’d tried. ‘Move back.’ I could give orders, too.

  The second the lock shattered, Ranaa fell forward, flinging her small arms around the older girl’s neck, still carefully holding the ball of light in one hand as the other one clutched the dirty fabric of her khalat. I could see into the rest of the cell from the glow of the tiny sun in her hand. The cramped space was stuffed with prisoners, so close together they didn’t have room to lie down, a dozen women piled on top of each other. They were already scrambling to their feet, collapsing out of the cell with relief, gasping for freedom, leaving Imin and Mahdi to try to get them in some sort of order.

  They were all girls or women. The remaining cells were no different, I realised, glancing around at the cautious, anxious faces pressing out of the gloom against the bars, wary of us but tentatively hoping for rescue. Mahdi and Imin had found a set of keys on one of the dead men and were busying themselves freeing the rest of the captives. I supposed that was easier than shattering the locks. Prisoners spilled from one cell after another, sometimes rushing to embrace someone else, sometimes just staggering out, looking like skittish animals.

  ‘The men?’ I asked Samira as she disentangled herself from Ranaa, figuring I already knew the answer.

  ‘They were more dangerous.’ Samira said, ‘At least that’s what Malik said when he—’ She cut herself off, shutting her eyes like she could stop herself from seeing them die at the hand of the man who’d usurped power in her city. ‘And they were less valuable.’

  It took me a moment to understand the significant gaze she gave me over Ranaa’s head. Then it sunk in. The women who were staggering out of the cells were young. There were a lot of
rumours lately about slavers taking advantage of the war. Kidnapping girls from our half of the desert and selling them to soldiers stationed far from their wives, or to rich men in Izman. And then there was the matter of a Demdji’s value …

  ‘Ranaa.’ I riffled through my mind. I’d heard that name once already today. The woman wearing the sheema stitched with blue flowers, I realised. The one who’d wanted to know if I was a Demdji. Now I understood why she recognised me. ‘Your mother is worried about you.’

  The little girl gave me a disdainful once-over, her face still pressed into Samira’s chest. ‘Then why didn’t she come and get me out?’

  ‘Ranaa,’ Samira hissed reproachfully. I guessed I wasn’t the only one who’d tried to teach the little Demdji manners. Samira had steadied herself against the door of the cell. I reached down a hand for her, helping her to her feet from where she was kneeling. Ranaa still clung to the edge of her dirty khalat, making it that much harder for Samira to move, weak as she was. ‘Forgive her,’ Samira said to me. She had a finely cut accent that reminded me of Shazad’s, though it was a whole lot gentler. ‘She doesn’t often have cause to speak to strangers.’ The last was followed with a pointed look at the little girl.

  ‘Your sister?’ I asked.

  ‘After a sort.’ Samira rested one hand on the younger girl’s head. ‘My father is’ – she hesitated – ‘was the Emir of Saramotai. He’s dead now.’ Her voice was flat and matter of fact, hiding the hurt underneath. I knew what it was like to watch a parent die. ‘Her mother was a servant in my father’s household. When Ranaa was born looking … different, her mother begged my father to hide her from the Gallan.’ Samira searched my face. Usually I could pass for human, even with my blue eyes. But there were a few people who were more than a little familiar with Demdji who could spot me, like Jin had. ‘You would understand why, I expect.’

  I’d been lucky. I’d survived the Gallan for sixteen years without being recognised for what I was because I could pass for human. Ranaa would never be able to. And to the Gallan anything that wasn’t human was a monster. A Demdji was no different from a Skinwalker or a Nightmare to them. Ranaa with her red eyes would be dead as soon as they caught sight of her.

  Samira ran her fingers gently through the little girl’s hair, a soothing motion that spoke of too many nights coaxing a scared little girl to sleep. ‘We took her in and hid her. After she started doing … this’ – Samira’s fingers danced over the light in Ranaa’s hands – ‘my father said she must be Princess Hawa resurrected.’

  The story of Princess Hawa was one of my favorites growing up. It was from the very early days of humanity, back when the Destroyer of Worlds was still walking the earth. Hawa was the daughter of the first Sultan of Izman. Princess Hawa’s voice was so beautiful that it brought anyone who heard it to their knees. It was her singing that brought a Skinwalker to her, disguised in the shape of one of her servants. He stole her eyes straight from her head. Princess Hawa screamed and the hero Attallah came to save her before the Skinwalker could take her tongue, too. He tricked the ghoul and won her eyes back for her. And when Hawa’s sight was restored to her and she saw Attallah for the first time her heart stopped in her breast. What Hawa felt was so new and strange that she thought she was dying. Hawa sent Attallah away because of how much it pained her to look upon him. But after he was gone, her heart only hurt more. They were the first mortals to ever fall in love, the stories said.

  One day, news reached Hawa in Izman that a great city across the desert was besieged by ghouls and that Attallah was fighting there. The city tried to build new defences each day, but every night the ghouls came along and tore them down, forcing the city to start again at dawn, when the ghouls retreated. On hearing that Attallah was almost certainly doomed, Hawa walked out into the desert beyond Izman and cried such agonised tears that a Buraqi, the immortal horses made of sand and wind, took pity on her and came to her aid. She rode the Buraqi across the sand, singing so brightly that the sun came into the sky as she rushed to Attallah’s side. When she reached Saramotai she held the sun in the sky, and the ghouls at bay, for a hundred days, long enough for the people of Saramotai to build their great, impenetrable walls, working day and night until they were safe. When the work was finally done, she released the sun and, safe behind the walls of the great city, she married her love, Attallah.

  Hawa stood watch on those walls as Attallah rode back out into battle each night and returned to her at dawn. For a hundred more nights Attallah went beyond the gates to defend the city. He was untouchable in battle. No ghoul’s claw could so much as scratch him. She stood vigil every night until, on the hundred and first night of her watch, a stray arrow from the battle reached the walls and struck Princess Hawa down.

  When Attallah saw her fall from the walls, his heart stopped from grief. The defences that had guarded him so well for a hundred nights fell away and the ghouls overwhelmed him, tearing his heart from his chest. But in the moment that they both died, the sun bloomed in the dead of night one last time. The ghouls could not fight in the sun. Instead they burned, and the city was saved with Hawa’s and Attallah’s last breath. The people of the city named it in her honour: Saramotai. It meant ‘the princess’s death’ in the first language.

  I wondered if it was a Djinni’s idea of a joke to give his daughter, born in Hawa’s city, the same gift that she had.

  But Hawa was human. Or at least that was what the story said. I’d never wondered about it before. Folks in old stories sometimes just had powers that came from nowhere. Or maybe Hawa was one of us, and centuries of retellings had buried the fact that Hawa was a Demdji and not a true princess. After all, retellings of the Sultim trials made gentle, pretty Delila out to be a hideous beast with horns growing out of her head. And some stories of the Blue-Eyed Bandit left out the small matter that I was a girl.

  ‘After Fahali we thought it would be safe for her.’ Samira pulled Ranaa closer to her. ‘Turns out even if they don’t want to destroy her, some folk want her for other things.’ It was stupid superstition that a piece of a Demdji could cure all ills. Hala, our golden-skinned Demdji, Imin’s sister, carried a reminder of that every day: two of her fingers had been cut off and sold. Probably to cure some rich man’s troubled stomach. ‘The rumour is even the Sultan is after a Demdji.’

  ‘We know about that,’ I cut her off, sharper than I meant to. I’d been more worried about the Sultan tracking Noorsham down than anything else after we’d heard that rumour. I’d figured the chances there was another Demdji out there who could match my brother’s pure destructive power seemed mighty slim. Even I couldn’t raze a city the way Noorsham had. Still, we’d been careful the last few months not to let word spread that the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the Demdji who summoned desert storms were one and the same. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t ever going to let the Sultan take me alive. But now I considered the tiny sun in Ranaa’s hands. It was harmless enough, cupped in her palms like that. It might not be so harmless multiplied a hundredfold. The Sultan’s chances were looking better now.

  ‘Your rebellion has kept him out of this side of the desert so far,’ Samira said. ‘How long do you think you can keep him out?’

  As long as it took. I’d be damned before I’d let the Sultan do to any other Demdji what he’d done to Noorsham. Ranaa might be a cloistered brat who’d developed a big head from being told her whole life she was the reincarnation of a legendary princess. But she was a Demdji. And we took care of our own.

  ‘I can get her to safety.’ I couldn’t leave her here. Not when there was a chance they might find her and I might find myself staring over the barrel of a gun at her next. ‘Out of the city.’

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you,’ Ranaa argued. We both ignored her.

  ‘Prince Ahmed wants to make this country safe for Demdji, but until then, I know where she can be protected.’

  Samira hesitated a moment. ‘Can I come with her?’

  My shoulders eased in r
elief. ‘That depends. Can you walk?’

  Imin helped Samira, keeping her standing upright as she limped towards the stairs, Ranaa still clinging to her. I was about to turn away when Ranaa’s light grazed the far wall. The cell wasn’t quite empty. A woman in a pale yellow khalat was still curled in the corner, not moving.

  For a second I thought she was dead, weakened by days in the dark cramped prison. Then her back rose and fell, just slightly. She was still breathing. I crouched down and laid a hand on the bare skin of her arm. It was hotter than it ought to be down here away from the sun. She was sick with fever. My touch started her awake, and wide wild eyes flew open. She gaped at me through a dirty curtain of hair, in panic. Blood and muck caked it against her cheek, and her lips were cracked with thirst. ‘Can you stand?’ I asked. She didn’t answer, just stared at me with huge dark eyes. She looked worse than anyone else I’d seen stumble out of these cells. She could barely stay awake, let alone make a run for it.

  ‘Imin!’ I called. ‘I need some help here. Can you—’

  ‘Zahia?’ The name was whispered almost as a prayer, rasping out of a throat that sounded bone-dry, a second before her head lolled backwards and she lapsed back into feverish sleep.

  I stilled. Every part of me. I wondered if this was what Hawa felt when her heart stopped in her chest.

  Suddenly I wasn’t the Blue-Eyed Bandit. I wasn’t a rebel giving orders. I wasn’t even a Demdji. I was a girl from Dustwalk again. Because that was the last place I had heard anyone say my mother’s name.