Traitor to the Throne Page 6

  ‘If the Sultan knew about you, we’d already have heard,’ Ahmed said.

  ‘We need a new spy in the palace.’ Shazad drummed her fingers across the hilt of the sword at her side. ‘Maybe it’s time for me to return from my holy pilgrimage.’ As far as anyone in Izman knew, Shazad Al-Hamad, General Hamad’s devastatingly beautiful daughter, had come down with a bad bout of holiness. She’d retreated to the sacred site of Azhar, where the First Mortal was said to have been made, to pray in silence and meditate. ‘It’s nearly Auranzeb. It would be a good reason to go back.’

  ‘You get invited to Auranzeb?’ My ears perked up. Auranzeb was held every year on the anniversary of the Sultan’s coup for the Mirajin throne. A commemoration of the bloody night when he struck a bargain with the Gallan army and slaughtered his own father and half his brothers.

  Even down in Dustwalk, we’d heard stories about the celebrations. Of fountains full of water flecked with gold, dancers who leapt through fire as entertainment, and food made of sugar that was sculpted so fine the folk who made it went blind.

  ‘General’s daughter privileges.’ Shazad sounded bored already.

  ‘No.’ Ahmed cut across us quickly. ‘I can’t spare you. I might not be as good a strategist as you, but even I know you don’t send your best general into the fray as a spy if you can help it.’

  ‘And I’m so very dispensable?’ Hala asked from where she was still slumped on the ground, a tinge of sarcasm in her voice. Ahmed ignored her. It was impossible to respond to every sarcastic thing Hala said and still have time to do anything else with your day. I reached out a hand, offering to help her up. She ignored me, stretching to steal a half-peeled orange from the table instead.

  ‘We have to do something.’ Shazad smoothed her hands compulsively over the map that was rolled out on the table. It used to be a single clean, crisp sheet of paper showing Miraji. Now it was a dozen different pieces showing far corners of the country. Cities with the names of rebels stationed there scrawled and crossed out; other pieces of paper overlapping one another as the desert shifted in our hands. There was a fresh note next to Saramotai. ‘We can’t just hide out in this desert forever, Ahmed.’ I recognised the beginning of the same argument that Shazad and Ahmed had been having for months now. Shazad kept saying we needed to take the Rebellion to the capital if we wanted a shot at winning. Ahmed would say it was too risky, and Shazad would say nobody ever won a war on the defensive.

  Ahmed rubbed two fingers across a spot at his hairline as he started his reply. There was a small scar there, almost invisible now. I’d noticed he rubbed it like it still hurt, though, every time he sent one of us off to do something that might be our death. Like that scar was where he kept his conscience. I didn’t know how he’d gotten it. It was from the life Jin and Ahmed had before they came to Miraji.

  Jin had told me the stories behind some of his scars once. On one of those dark nights in the desert between camp and a mission. Right after he’d earned a wound that would make a new scar right below the tattoo of the sun on his chest. We were a long way from any Holy Father to patch us up. Which left me. In the dark of his tent my hand had travelled across his bare skin, finding new bumps and marks while he told me where they’d come from. A drunk sailor’s knife in a bar brawl in an Albish port. A broken bone on deck in a storm. Until my fingers found the one on his left shoulder, near the tattoo of the compass that was on the other side of his heart from the sun.

  ‘That one,’ he’d said, so close to me that his breath stirred the hair that had escaped from the hasty knot on my head, ‘was from this bullet I caught in the shoulder when a pain-in-the-ass girl who was pretending to be a boy ditched me in the middle of a riot.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing that pain-in-the-ass girl stitched you up, too,’ I’d joked, tracing his tattoo with my thumb.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jin’s mouth pull up in the smallest edge of a smile. ‘God, I knew I was in trouble even then. I was running for my life, bleeding on your floor, and all I could think about was kissing you and damn if we got caught.’

  I’d told him that would’ve been idiotic. And then he’d kissed me until we were both stupid from it.

  ‘What about Jin?’ It slipped out without my meaning it to, interrupting the argument that had been going through its usual steps while my head was in a tent in the middle of the sands.

  Ahmed shook his head, knuckles still resting against his forehead. ‘No word.’

  ‘And you don’t think it’s worth sending someone after him like we did for Sayyida?’ It was out before I could check the anger in my words.

  ‘So, you are angry about Jin.’ Ahmed sounded tired.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a war.’ It would be petty of me to be mad about Ahmed sending Jin away while my life hung in the balance. I supposed I was petty, then.

  ‘We are.’ Somehow his calm made it that much worse. From the corner of my eye I caught one of Shazad’s looks. Only this one was traded with Hala instead of me, too quick for me to read. Hala shoved the last piece of the orange into her mouth, finally getting to her feet, stepping away so she was clear of me.

  ‘That wasn’t an answer,’ Ahmed said to me. ‘You think I was wrong for sending Jin to spy on the Xichian? When foreigners warring with my father are the only thing keeping him at bay?’

  ‘Well it doesn’t seem like it matters any more.’ I snapped. ‘The Sultan is back on our territory anyway, judging by all those dead soldiers we left in Saramotai.’ Damn, I hadn’t meant to say that. I tried a different track. ‘I just think there might’ve been another way.’ That didn’t come out right, either. Even if I had been thinking it for months.

  Ahmed linked his hands on top of his head. The gesture was so much like Jin it made me even angrier. ‘You don’t think I should’ve sent my brother out for the good of the country for your sake?’

  ‘I think you could’ve waited to send him away.’ My temper broke, and suddenly I was shouting. Shazad drew forward like she was going to stop me from saying something I might regret. ‘At least until I woke up from being shot for your rebellion.’

  I’d never seen Ahmed’s temper flare before. But I knew I’d pushed too far even before his voice rose. ‘He asked to go, Amani.’

  The words were simple enough, but it took me a heartbeat to understand them all the same. Shazad and Hala had both gone still, watching the exchange.

  ‘I didn’t send him away.’ Ahmed’s voice wasn’t raised any more but it hadn’t lost any of its strength. ‘He asked me for something that would take him away from here and from you. I tried to talk him out of it, but I love my brother enough that I didn’t want him to have to watch you die, either. And I have spent the last two months lying to protect you, but I don’t have time to keep you from acting out some misguided defiance against me because you think it’s my fault he’s gone.’

  Hurt and anger warred inside me and I didn’t know which one I wanted to pay attention to first. I wanted to call him a liar but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Everything he was saying sounded true. Truer than Ahmed sending Jin away with no care for either of us. Truer than Jin going against his will. I had almost died and Jin was going to let me do it alone.

  ‘Amani—’ Ahmed knew me as well as anyone. He knew my instinct was to run. And I knew it, too. I could feel the itch building in my legs. He went from ruler to friend again, reaching for me. Trying to stop me. But I was already out of his reach, pushing out of the stifling dark of the pavilion and into the mockingly bright sun of the oasis.

  Chapter 8

  Last time I’d seen Jin had been a few heartbeats before I was shot in the stomach.

  We were in Iliaz, the key to the middle mountains. So long as Iliaz was in the Sultan’s hands, there was no easy way into eastern Miraji. Meaning there was no way to take Izman, and with it the throne.

  It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission.

  But it turned out we weren’t the only enemies of the S
ultan to figure out that winning Iliaz could mean winning Miraji. Iliaz was under siege from both the Albish and the Gamanix armies. I didn’t know where either of those countries were, but Jin pointed out the flags on their tents as we lay flat on the mountaintop looking over their camps. And it turned out the young prince who was leading the army in Iliaz was a damn sight better as a commander than his brother Naguib had been.

  He was holding his own in the mountain fortress against two armies at once, with minimal losses. Even Shazad was impressed. But she thought she could find a way through the siege all the same.

  That was, give or take, how we wound up in the middle of a skirmish between the Emir of Iliaz’s first command and two foreign armies. And the Iliaz first command was a whole lot bigger than any of us had expected.

  I didn’t remember much from that fight. Blasts of gunpowder sparking the night air from both sides, cries in tongues I didn’t know, and blood dashing across the dusty rocks. Shazad a whirlwind of steel cutting our way out of the fight, me with the desert at my fingertips, Jin levelling his gun at Mirajin and foreigner alike. A scrape of bullet grazing my arm, untethering my power with just one iron kiss. Seeing the knife that was about to go through Jin’s back a heartbeat before he saw it. A heartbeat that mattered in keeping him alive. Grabbing the pistol off my belt.

  I stepped out of my cover and straight into the line of fire. The man with the knife went down with one pull of my trigger. Only there was another gun behind him, aimed at me by a dark-haired Mirajin soldier with a steady hand. His bullet tore straight through me. Like I wasn’t Djinni fire and desert sand at all. Just flesh and blood.

  Everything I knew about what happened next were things I was told after I woke up. Jin had grabbed me as I’d fallen, cutting three men down between us as he went.

  I was bleeding so badly it looked like half my life was already on my clothes by the time he got to me. Shazad carved a path out of the last of the fray with a few swings of her swords and they got me onto Izz’s back; he was shaped as a giant Roc, come to rescue us. Only there was no time to get me all the way back to our camp. I would have died first. They stopped at the first town they saw with a prayer house. It was on the Sultan’s side of the country. Enemy ground. Izz, back in his human shape, made the Holy Father swear he would heal me, not harm me, then repeated it to make sure it was true before they handed me over. Shazad dragged Jin away when he tried to make the Holy Father work with a gun to his head.

  The Holy Father didn’t try to kill me, though I heard I came pretty close to dying once or twice all on my own. The bullet had just missed about three different ways of killing me. I’d only barely stopped bleeding by the time they had to move me again. The Holy Father warned them against it but Izz had been spotted. They got me back to camp as quickly as they could and handed me over to our Holy Father.

  It turned out it was being a Demdji that’d saved me. I’d burned away any chance of infection, quick and hot, all on my own. So the only thing the Holy Father had to worry about was the bleeding.

  Near a week had passed the next time I opened my eyes, fighting my way out of a haze of drugs that’d been forced down me along with water. Shazad was asleep next to me. That was how I knew I must’ve been close to death. The sick tent had been Bahi’s territory. She hadn’t set foot in it since he’d died. Not even when she’d gotten hurt herself, the one time I’d ever seen a sword get past her guard. I’d stitched the thin slice across her arm instead.

  She woke instantly as soon as I shifted, her eyes flying open, going for a weapon that wasn’t there before focusing on me. ‘Well, look who’s back from the dead.’

  *

  Shazad found me in one of the pools of water that had been designated for washing. Dark cloths hung between the trees on all sides to shield it from view of the camp. It was shallow enough that I could sit in it and be covered up to my shoulders, and clear enough that I could see my toes at the bottom. The bottom of the pool was scattered with white and black pebbles smoothed by the water. I pushed them around the bottom with my toes. I’d been in here long enough that I’d scrubbed the dust out of my hair, and it had already dried in strange wild waves, curling around the edges of my scalp, like it had a habit of doing.

  I was carefully using sand to scrub away the flecks of blood that were still clinging to the wound at my collarbone from Saramotai. I’d thought about going to the Holy Father for stitches but I figured he had enough on his hands with the refugee women. Including the one who had called me by my mother’s name. I didn’t know if she’d have woken up yet, but if she had, that was another reason to steer clear of the sick tent.

  Shazad had stripped the desert off herself, too. She was wearing a white-and-yellow khalat that reminded me of the uniform of Miraji. It made her desert skin look all that much darker against the paleness of the linen. She had a bundle tucked under one arm.

  ‘Jin has as much flight in him as he has fight, you know,’ Shazad said. ‘That’s how Ahmed wound up alone in Izman in the first place.’ I knew the story. When Ahmed had chosen to stay in the country where he was born, Jin had decided to move on, staying on the ship they’d been working on. He’d come back a few months later with Delila, after his mother died. ‘He did it at the Sultim trials, too.’ She shucked off her shoes. ‘Vanished the night before and came back with a black eye and cracked rib he never explained to any of us.’

  ‘He got in a brawl in a bar with a soldier about a girl.’

  ‘Huh.’ Shazad considered that, rolling up her shalvar. She sat at the edge of the pool, dipping her feet in to cool off. The sounds of the camp drifted around us on the slight breeze. Birdsong mingling with indistinct voices. ‘All right, we’re low on time. So I’m going to hurry this up. You’re going to ask me if I knew he’d asked to leave. And I’m going to tell you that I didn’t. And you’re going to believe me because I’ve never lied to you before. Which is half the reason you like me so much.’

  Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. ‘What’s the other half, if you’re so clever?’

  ‘That you’d be constantly undressed if it wasn’t for me.’ The bundle under her arm unfurled into a khalat I’d seen at the bottom of her trunk of clothes before. It was the colour of the sky in the last moments before it turned to full desert night and dotted with what looked like tiny stars. I realised as it clinked in Shazad’s hands that it wasn’t stitching. They were gold beads. I hadn’t exactly arrived at the Rebellion with enough clothing to fight a war, but Shazad had enough for the two of us. Even if nothing of hers ever fit me exactly right. But this was by far the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen her pull out of that chest of clothes.

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ I asked, dragging myself through the water to lean on the edge of the pool next to her.

  ‘Navid has somehow convinced Imin to marry him.’

  I sucked in a breath so fast I inhaled some of the water and started coughing. Shazad slapped me on the back a few times.

  Navid had been totally taken with Imin from the moment he arrived at the camp. It didn’t seem to matter what shape Imin wore; Navid could spy the object of his affections across the camp without hesitating. He had very drunkenly declared his love on equinox a few months back, in front of the entire camp. I remembered grabbing Shazad’s arm, bracing myself for the inevitable mockery and rejection from Imin. For some baffling reason it never came. Baffling, because Imin treated everyone but Hala with the sort of disdain that came only from true hurt. The kind the Rebellion had saved the Demdji from in the first place.

  Imin had glanced around at all the staring faces with sardonic yellow eyes before asking us why we didn’t have anything more interesting to stare at. Then Imin slipped a hand into Navid’s, pulling him away from the firelight and our stunned silence.

  ‘You have to attend,’ Shazad said as I recovered from my attempt to breathe in water, ‘and you have to be dressed to do it. Imin has already stolen three khalats from me for the occasion, because, and I quote, “no
ne of my own clothes fit at the moment.”’

  I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘Did you point out that Imin’s a shape-shifter and can make anything fit?’

  ‘You know I did.’ Shazad pulled an annoyed face. ‘It went down about as well as you would expect and now I’m down three more khalats.’

  ‘You’re going to run out of clothes at this rate.’

  ‘And when that day comes I will lead a mission to Imin’s tent to reclaim the spoils. But for now I managed to save this.’ She gestured at the white linen clinging to her perfectly. ‘And this. And I know where to reclaim this one from because you sleep four feet away from me.’

  I ran my finger and thumb along the hem of the khalat she held out to me, my hand already dry in the unforgiving sun. I remembered something she’d told me once, on one of those dark nights when neither of us could sleep, and we stayed awake talking until we ran out of words or out of night. When she’d told her parents she was throwing her lot in with Ahmed, her father gave her those swords to fight the Rebellion with. Her mother gave her that khalat.

  ‘That’s the khalat you’re supposed to wear into Izman. When we win this war.’ If we win.

  ‘We’re still a long way from Izman,’ Shazad said as if she’d heard the if I didn’t voice. ‘Might as well not let it rot at the bottom of my trunk. You can wear it if you swear to me you won’t get blood on it.’

  ‘It’s dangerous to ask a Demdji to make a promise,’ I said. Promises were like truth-telling. They would come true. Just not in the way you might expect.

  ‘It’s a wedding, Amani.’ Shazad reached a hand down to help me out of the water. ‘Even you aren’t that good at getting into trouble.’

  *

  In Dustwalk, marriages happened fast. Most girls just dug out their best khalats, worn thin from years of sisters and mothers handing them down, and draped their sheemas over their heads to hide their faces in that uncertain time between engagement and marriage, lest a ghoul or Djinni notice a woman who belonged to no one, no longer a daughter but not yet a wife, either, and try to claim her for his own.