Rebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

  Yasmin stuck her tongue out at her grandmother’s retreating back before leaning toward me. “Old Daud is telling the story for your benefit, you know.” She lowered her voice. “It’s a warning for the hired muscle about the dangers that creep in the dark.” She waggled her fingers comically, which made the tin plate she was balancing on her knees almost tip over. She caught it before it could, rolling her eyes as she stuffed food in her mouth and talked around it. “The ones you’re supposed to be keeping us safe from. Though it’s been years since we saw a ghoul out here.” Same as Dustwalk, I thought. I’d last seen a Nightmare when I was eight years old. “It’s mortal men that cause the most trouble these days.”

  Isra raised her hand, threatening a slap from the other side of the fire. The caravan princess pulled a face but shut up for good, letting Old Daud lapse into the story.

  Everybody knew the story of the First Mortal. But Yasmin wasn’t wrong; Old Daud did seem to be giving me and Jin pointed looks as he told it. So I listened close as he told of a golden age when only First Beings roamed the earth. How, after time beyond counting had passed, the Destroyer of Worlds came from deep within the earth. She brought with her a huge black snake who swallowed the sun and turned the sky to endless night, and a thousand new creatures—the monsters she called children, but that First Beings named ghouls. And when the Destroyer of Worlds killed the first First Being, he exploded into the first star in the newly black sky. God had made the First Beings with endless life, so when they learned of death they were afraid. That was the dawn of the first war, and as First Beings fell, the night sky filled. The Djinn, the brightest of God’s First Beings, feared death so much, they came together and gathered earth and water and used the wind to mold a being and set it alive with a spark of fire. They made the First Mortal. To do what they feared most, but what needed to be done in any war: die.

  So the First Mortal took up steel, and with it he beheaded the huge snake who had swallowed God in his sun form. The sun was released from the monster’s throat and the endless night ended.

  The First Beings looked upon this mortal thing they had made and saw with awe that he wasn’t afraid of death. He dared to fight because his destiny was to die. And where the Destroyer of Worlds had created fear, the First Mortal had bravery to meet it. The immortals had never had a need for it before. But mortals did.

  So the First Beings made another mortal and another. They fashioned each in a duller image of an immortal thing—men instead of Djinn, horses instead of Buraqi, birds instead of Rocs. They worked until they had an army. And against the might of mortality, the Destroyer of Worlds finally fell. Her rule over the earth broke and the creatures she brought with her were left alone, stalking the desert night.

  The story ended, the air full of the silent spell Old Daud’s words had woven. Then the world rushed back in, the one the First Mortal had fought and died for, filled with idle camp chatter and the flicker of pipe smoke and Isra calling Yasmin away to scold her over the luridly bright khalat she’d just found among her other clothes.

  “I’ll take your watch,” I offered as Yasmin joined her grandmother with a roll of her eyes and the camp settled around us. I felt alive. Filled up by the desert. Lit on fire. “I don’t think I could sleep anyway.”

  “I’d rather stay up after that.” Jin offered me a drink across the empty space between us. “He’s got me half terrified I’m going to get eaten by a ghoul in my sleep.”

  “In Dustwalk they say that only happens to sinners.” I took a swig from the flask and passed it back.

  “And nonbelievers,” Jin said. “Like me.”

  “You don’t believe in God?”

  “I’ve been a lot of places,” Jin said. “And I’ve heard a lot of what people think is true. When everyone seems so very sure, it’s hard to figure anyone is right.”

  I’d never thought about whether I believed in God. I believed in the stories in the Holy Books the same way I believed in the stories of the First Mortal or Rebel Prince Ahmed. It never mattered to me if they were true. They had enough truth of greater ideas, of heroes and sacrifice and the things everybody wanted to be.

  “In Miraji you claim that God created the immortals, your Djinn, from fire, and they made the first mortals. In the Ionian Peninsula they say the immortals themselves are gods and they created us humans for their amusement. The Albish say that all things sprang straight from the river and from the trees, created by the heart of the world, immortal and mortal alike. The Gallan believe that First Beings and ghouls are no different—that they’re both tools of the Destroyer of Worlds—and that some different god than yours created mankind to destroy them and purify the earth.”

  Immortals could be killed by iron. Same as ghouls. But the notion of murdering a Djinni made everything in me rebel. The relationship between humans and immortals was complicated. There were a thousand stories about mortals tricking Djinn, finding their true names and using the names to trap them. But immortals were forces of nature. Creatures of God. As ancient as the world itself. And our short lives were nothing compared to their endless ones. Killing immortals was what the Destroyer of Worlds did. Humanity was created to save them.

  “Is that what the Gallan are using our guns for?”

  “Mostly they use them against other humans these days,” he said. “They wiped out the First Beings in their country long ago. They’re working on everywhere else now.”

  “Like Xicha.” My eyes drifted to the open shirt collar where his tattoo was. I didn’t realize until then that there’d been a part of me that was still angry at him for blowing up the factory in Dustwalk. Whether or not it hurt the Gallan, it crippled the whole of the Last County, too. And, sure, there were plenty of folks there who didn’t deserve any better than starving to death. But there were also folks like Tamid who’d never learned to hate that place the way he should’ve. And my cousin Olia, who every once in a while caught my gaze behind Farrah’s back and rolled her eyes with me. And my little cousin Nasima, who still hadn’t caught on that she was supposed to be ashamed to be born a girl. Those people didn’t deserve to starve.

  Then again, Jin’s country didn’t deserve to get invaded the way Miraji had been.

  Jin pulled up his collar. “The Gallan have been kept at bay for a thousand years now by their neighbors. When it used to be magic against swords, it was a fair fight. But the Gallan are armed with guns now, and magic is bleeding out of everywhere, no matter what you believe in.”

  “So what do you believe?” I asked.

  “I believe money and guns get you a lot further in a war than magic these days.”

  “If that was true you’d be living rich in some city with a soft bed and five wives. Not blowing up factories in the dead end of nowhere, Xichian boy.”

  “Five wives?” He snorted into his flask. “I’m not sure I could keep up with that many.” I didn’t say anything. I’d figured out with Jin that if I gave him long enough usually he’d give me the truth. “I always figured the land creates its First Beings the way it creates its mortals. In the green forests and fields of the West, their magic grows from deep soil. In the frozen North it crawls and claws out of the ice. And here it burns from the sand. The world makes things for each place. Fish for the sea, Rocs for the mountain skies, and girls with sun in their skin and perfect aim for a desert that doesn’t let weakness live.” I’d never had anyone describe me like that before. His gaze flicked away too fast for me to fall into it. “Of course, my brother would tell you that the First Beings are all just manifestations on earth of one Creator God. That’s what the new philosophers are saying.”

  “You’ve got a brother?” As soon as I said it I saw on his face that it was a slip. He hadn’t meant to tell me that. But he couldn’t take it back. “Where is he?”

  Jin stood, brushing sand off his hands. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer to cover my watch after all.”

&n
bsp; thirteen

  The desert was changeless. For six weeks there was only sand and blue skies. The blisters on my feet turned bloody just in time for fresh ones. The restlessness I’d shoved into the bottom of my gut my whole life wasn’t staying down so easy. I was on my way to Izman and I’d never felt more awake in my life.

  At night, while the rest of the camp slept, I’d shed my sheema and breathe and sit some of Jin’s watch with him until I was worn out enough to sleep before mine. He taught me words from other languages he’d learned sailing. After the first month I could threaten a man and insult his mother in Xichian, Albish, and Gallan. He showed me how he’d broken Dahmad’s wrist in the wrestling pit, a move he’d learned from a Jarpoorian sailor in an Albish port. I asked him about his broken nose once. He told me a Mirajin girl had hit him, and his brother had set it for him. He did that sometimes, mention his brother, like he was forgetting to guard himself with me. But he talked freely about most everything else. He told me about the places he’d been, the foreign shores he’d sailed to and stories of all the things he’d done, until I was itching to see the Golden Palaces of Amonpour and feel the rock of a ship below my feet. The stories of Izman had belonged to my mother. But the world was a lot bigger than my mother ever told me. And it occurred to me once or twice that I could go anywhere in it.

  I knew we were getting close to the end of the desert the first time I saw something other than sand dunes on the horizons.

  “It’s called the Dev’s Valley,” Jin told me as the camp settled down. We were on the outskirts of it. “It’s a mess of mountains and canyons all the way down the western Mirajin border. They say it was carved into the land during the war against the Destroyer of Worlds. Before mankind.”

  “That’s one hell of a battle.” We were probably a two-day walk away. Two days wasn’t so long. I looked up into the night. The sand rolled out in an endless ripple, turned blue by the starlight, so it was almost hard to tell where it met the sky except for the wild burst of stars overhead. “We’ve been walking for near two months now. The stars have moved.”

  “A captain on one of the ships I worked on used to be able to travel by the stars.”

  “But you need a broken compass.” As always when I mentioned the compass, I got nothing from him except for the slightest twitch of his lip.

  “You want me to take your watch?” I asked. It was a pattern we’d fallen into since the first night.

  “You’re unnatural.” Jin ran his hands over his face. “This desert is enough to drain any man.”

  “Well, I’m not a man,” I said. “And I was just trying to be nice, so—”

  “No, wait.” Jin’s fingers laced with mine too quick to react, pulling me down to sit next to him. It sent a stupid wild jolt through me before he let me go just as fast. “I’m sorry, I’m just sick to death of the sand everywhere.”

  “I’m plenty used to it, I suppose.” I stared out across the dunes. They looked like they went on forever, but the horizon felt closer with the mountains. “It gets deep into your soul after a while.”

  “It’s in your skin, too.” He reached out a hand, and before I could think, his palm was flat against my cheek, warm and a little bit rough. His thumb traced the length of my cheekbone. A cascade of sand went in its wake, falling away from skin where it was stuck and leaving a strange burning shiver behind.

  “Amani.” He didn’t take his hand away from my face. “You’re going to have to be careful when we get to Dassama. The city has been an encampment for Gallan soldiers for years now. It’s got almost as many of them as it does Mirajin people in its walls.”

  “When am I not careful?” I tried for lightness, but in truth I was all too aware of his hand on my face.

  “You’re never careful,” Jin said wryly, his thumb tracing rough patterns on my cheek, his eyes following it. Like he was memorizing it. “Hell, right now if anyone from the caravan happened to look over, your cover would be blown.” His hand ran along my jawline. I could feel his touch on my face leaving my breathing ragged.

  “I’d say you’re the one not being careful just now.” He seemed to catch himself. His hand dropped away quickly. A cold ache spread out behind it. “Besides,” I said, “you’ll be with me. How much trouble can Atiyah possibly get into if she’s got Sahkr?” Atiyah and Ziyah was a great love story. Atiyah and Sahkr was just our joke.

  He didn’t laugh. I’d gotten to know what silence meant from Jin. He was hiding something from me. Suddenly, how soon we’d be going our separate ways crept up on me. My aunt Safiyah might be blood, but Jin I knew. And I didn’t want to leave him. He made the world bigger. I wanted to go to the countries he’d been to. And more than anything I wanted him to ask me to go with him. But we were running out of time together.

  In the early light of morning, the mountains looked even closer. My stomach twisted in anticipation. The excitement of nearing Dassama, the end of the desert and the first civilization we’d seen in weeks, crept into the caravan as the day wore on. The normal stoic trudging through the sand turned restless. The younger kids dashed up and down the line of camels, already trying to talk anyone who would listen out of a few louzi so that they’d be able to buy themselves treats when we got to Dassama. Men and women were starting to pine loudly for a glass of something cool. Isra was berating Parviz loudly about the provisions. How it’d almost not been enough this time. How we were going to have to resupply as soon as we got into town. Yasmin was keeping her young cousins going with a game she called When I Get to the City.

  “When I get to the city, I’m going to pull off my feet and get new ones that aren’t so sore.” Little Fahim drooped dramatically, letting his arms swing like a rag doll’s.

  “When I get there,” his sister chimed in, pulling him up by the scruff of his shirt, “I’m going to eat a hundred yazdi cakes.”

  “One hundred!” Yasmin faked wide-eyed surprise. “How will you have room after eating a hundred dates and a hundred chickens?” She rattled off the list of foods the little girl had already promised to eat. I tried to stop my own stomach from growling in answer.

  “What about you, Alidad?” Yasmin asked, trying to draw me into their game. “What are you going to do when we get to Dassama?”

  Truth be told, all I wanted was to wash for so long that the dust from my skin would turn the baths to a miniature version of the Sand Sea. Only I couldn’t do that without throwing away my secret.

  But more than Dassama, Izman was preying on my mind as we got closer to the end of the desert.

  My mother had talked about going to find her sister in Izman so often that it was like a prayer in our household, when my father wasn’t there. But I didn’t even know if I wanted it anymore. I didn’t know if I’d ever wanted it or if my mother had just been wanting it enough for the two of us to keep us going all those years.

  Hell, my aunt Safiya could be as bad as Aunt Farrah, and even if she wasn’t, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to turn myself over to anyone else who could claim a right to my life.

  And I’d never see Jin again.

  My eyes were latched to Jin’s back up ahead when I realized that the front of the caravan train had come to a stop.

  “What’s happening?” Yasmin put her hand on Fahim’s head, keeping him from going any farther.

  A mutter ran back through the caravan train as folks raised their heads, straining to see up front, shielding their eyes against the dying sunset. They wanted to see, but a caravan ran on orders. Except for me.

  I broke into a run for the front of the caravan, which had reached the top of a dune. Parviz was standing above me, Jin next to him, his sheema pulled down, as I climbed my way up the sand. The camels had dropped to their knees to rest, not understanding why we were stopping.

  I broke over the top of the high dune next to them. At first I couldn’t grasp it, either.

  Where Dassama ought to have been
, we were standing over ruins. Old, half-crumbled walls caught the setting sun, the last light casting shadows across them and stretching out across the sand. Then I realized they weren’t shadows.

  My mouth went dry.

  “How,” Jin said very carefully as I stepped up beside him, “does sand burn?”

  • • •

  THE CLOSER WE got, the worse it looked. Where the stone wasn’t blackened, it had crumbled to ash. In places the sand itself was black or burned hard. We didn’t speak as we drifted through what was left of the narrow streets and charred houses. This wasn’t a fire. Fire was something that some folks survived, that you ran from and put out, smothered in sand.

  Jin was the first to say what we were both thinking, too low for the rest of the caravan to hear. “No bodies.”

  “Bodies burn easier than stone.” I kicked a rock, and what was left of it disintegrated. “No fire would catch like this unless the whole place was soaked in oil.”

  “A bomb,” Jin said. It wasn’t a question, but that didn’t mean he was right.

  “The pattern for it is wrong,” I said.

  Jin looked at me sideways. “How do you know that?”

  “Come on, Xichian boy.” I forced lightness. The wind dragging at my sheema tasted like ash and made me want to gag. “You telling me you never set off gunpowder when you were a kid just to blow things up?”

  Jin snorted. “We didn’t all grow up near a weapons factory.”

  I shrugged. “When a bomb goes off, it’s always got a center. Here the buildings are burned on every side.” Like something had crashed down from above and flooded the city with fire. Familiarity whispered in my ear, though I didn’t know why. I rounded a ruined corner and pulled up short.

  “And a bomb doesn’t spare prayer houses, either.”

  In the middle of the destruction, a huge domed building was the only thing left whole in the city. Its walls were still a fresh gleaming white, the scorch marks stopping just short of it.