As it turned out, rumors were running freer than the pumps in Fahali. The Camel’s Knees weren’t the only caravan to turn up lips cracked and gasping out news of Dassama. The city’s supplies were stretched thin under the weight of the extra people, caravans and soldiers alike. Water was being rationed, and half the wells and pumps were closed. But not the one in the barracks.
“I’ll be nearby if you get in trouble. Just stay in sight.” He nodded above at a rooftop with a decent overview of the barracks—decent enough that a good shot might be able to hit a soldier on the inside. I was the better shot. But he was right: I also made the better girl. Which meant I was counting on Jin to cover me.
It was a short walk to the army barracks, but the streets were busy in the cool just before dusk. I kept my eyes low as I fought my way through the crowds in the last of the setting sun. I’d near forgotten what it felt like to be a girl in Miraji. I was inconspicuous, but not the way I’d been as a boy. Not because I was the same as everyone else. Because I didn’t matter.
Nobody in Miraji had ever thought enough of a girl to imagine I might be a spy.
The barracks were four long, low buildings painted in white around a dusty square. Besides the prison there’d be sleeping quarters, kitchens, storage, and the stables. That’s what Jin had told me, at least. All I had to do was figure out which one was the prison and get back out.
I tried to look like I was keeping my eyes on my feet as I walked through the dusty yard. There were soldiers practicing with guns and various targets. One of the Gallan soldiers had a gun with a sharp end like I’d never seen before. He fired at a cloth figure of a man before ramming forward, driving the sharp tip through the dummy’s stomach.
In the middle of the square was the water pump with three Gallan soldiers stationed at it, taking coin from anyone who wanted to use it. A line of women holding pails on their hips snaked out from the pump. They all kept their eyes low, like they were trying not to be noticed by all the armed men around them. I didn’t have a bucket. I just had to hope nobody noticed, or there’d be more questions than I was fit to answer.
The girl at the front of the line was about my age and dressed in a dusty pink khalat. A small child was hanging off the hem, sucking her fist. The girl in pink’s hands were empty of coin, but she was begging, her eyes red from crying. I heard a sliver of her conversation as I passed. Her family, they were thirsty, she was saying. Thirsty and poor. She couldn’t pay the new tax on water, but she was begging for their pity. The soldier’s eyes swept her with the same look the parched women were given the water pump.
Two Gallan soldiers leaned in and said something to each other in their ugly foreign language. Then one of them with pale eyes like mine and unnaturally yellow hair gestured to the girl to follow him. The girl knelt down and pried the child from her khalat, handing her the bucket. I was too far away now but I guessed she was telling the little girl to stay put. The little girl took a staggering step to follow all the same, but one of the other women in line grabbed her, holding her back. Even holding the child, she spat at the girl in pink.
“Foreigner’s whore!” she called, loud enough for me to hear. The girl in pink shrank away.
I thought of my mother. Anger spurred me toward them before I could think better of it. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t even have a weapon, but I’d figure that out on the way.
I was five steps behind them when two figures I recognized emerged from a doorway, making me stop short. Commander Naguib was wearing a golden Mirajin uniform with twice as many buttons as when I’d seen him in Dustwalk the first time. He looked like he was trying to stand straight enough to make it fit him right. The Gallan next to him, on the other hand, seemed like he was born in his uniform. He was old enough to have been Naguib’s father, and a head taller. Red tassels hung off his uniform, but instead of making him look like a cushion, they reminded me of scars. The soldier dropped the crying girl’s arm and snapped into a salute of his commanding officer. “General Dumas, sir.”
So this was the Gallan general. The one whose name they spoke like it carried the weight of the law. Who’d moved half an army here to hunt the Rebel Prince. Who’d had a whole desert town razed as a testing site for a weapon to conquer the world.
I might be inconspicuous as a woman, but Naguib was bound to recognize me. I turned away quickly, eyes searching for an escape. There was a doorway to my right. Holy words were etched into the wood in a deep scrawl. That could only mean one thing: a prayer house. The Gallan did not worship the same god, Jin had told me that. The door came open under my hand and I plunged through blindly, slamming the door behind me.
The sound of praying greeted me, mingled with sobbing.
The last of the day’s light was trickling in between the lattice of the windows. It was uneven where the wood had rotted away. Where the light hit the floor I could see that the tiles had been smashed to dust. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I realized the praying was coming from a girl, sprawled on her knees, her hands shackled to the wall. Her face was pressed to the ground, hidden behind matted hair that looked almost red-tinted in the dying sunlight. Like dye. Or blood.
Something else shifted in the gloom. And then a golden army uniform stepped into the light. I pulled back, toward the door, but it was too late. He’d seen me.
“Here to pray?” the soldier asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. Something rattled on his wrists. More chains. This wasn’t a prayer house after all, not anymore at least. It was part of the prison. “We don’t have a Holy Father, but you’re welcome to join us all the same.”
For one stupid moment I could’ve sworn the words came from Tamid. I stumbled back to a hundred dusty days kneeling side by side with Tamid, saying holy words. Then I found my footing in the present, where Tamid was dead. It was just the accent, I realized. It was tainted with something that sounded like the Last County. But there was something else familiar about it, something that wasn’t quite Dustwalk but that I knew all the same. Finally his face caught the light, with its unnaturally pale eyes, and the memory came fully formed.
“I know you,” I said. From the other side of the desert, in my uncle’s shop, when Jin hid below the counter and Commander Naguib stepped inside. This desert is full of sin. The smart-talking scrawny kid with eyes like mine who’d flanked his commander.
“And I know you.” He frowned as he dropped his hands, the manacles rattling over the sound of the girl’s praying. His sallow face twisted in thought before he hit on it. “You’re the girl from the shop.”
“So is this where smart-talking your commander lands you?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.
“No.” His accent seemed to get thicker from talking to me, and I heard my own dropping back into the Last County lilt. “I’m just special.”
“You’ve got a mighty fine opinion of yourself.” The girl’s praying got louder. “And what about her?”
“She’s special, too,” the soldier said.
I supposed they must’ve made Commander Naguib angier than most to warrant being locked away here instead of with the rest of the criminals. “And where would you two be if you weren’t special?” I asked.
The young soldier looked straight through me. “You wouldn’t be trying to find the prison, now would you?”
I ran my tongue over my dry lips nervously. I shouldn’t trust him. He was a soldier. But he was a prisoner, too. And that ought to mean we were on the same side. Or at least that we had the same enemy.
“If I helped you get out of here, would you tell me where it is?” I touched the manacles on his hands. His wrists felt feverish. I’d promised Jin I wouldn’t do anything stupid. But if we were getting the caravan out, we might as well get everyone else out, too. Jin could pick a lock. He’d told me that in the desert. One of those times he’d started to talk about something he’d learned along with his brother before cutting himself off.
&nbs
p; “And where would I go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. We were both an awfully long way from home. “Wherever you wanted.”
A gunshot from outside made me jump. Then everything went quiet again. Everything but the girl’s praying.
“Amani.” My name in the young soldier’s mouth caught me off guard. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“How do you know that?”
“Your cousin talked about you a whole lot. The pretty one with the dark hair.” Shira, selling me out on the train. Who they must’ve brought along to find me and, through me, Jin.
“What happened to her?” I asked. She’d tried to get me killed. I shouldn’t care. “Is she alive?”
“She wasn’t as useful as she made herself out to be to the commander. Though maybe it was more that you weren’t where you ought to be. She got left with the Sultan in Izman.” The Sultan had once beaten a woman he’d loved to death. What’d happen to a girl who meant nothing to anyone in Izman?
“I’m Noorsham,” he said. “Since you didn’t ask and all.” And what would happen to this poor scrawny kid from the end of the desert with too smart a mouth to be a soldier?
Voices came from the other side of the door. The girl’s praying doubled. I stood up sharply.
“You ought to hide,” Noorsham said, his blue eyes locked on mine seriously.
Heart pounding, I rushed away from the lamplight. There was no light at the back of the huge prayer-house-turned-prison. I pressed myself into the shadows just as the door opened. Naguib and General Dumas entered. Jin had said he didn’t believe in fate until he met me, and I was starting to think he was right. The only thing between me and getting caught was a thin veil of darkness and Noorsham not selling me out.
But Naguib and General Dumas paid no mind to Noorsham. They stopped in front of the praying girl instead.
“This is her?” General Dumas’s Mirajin was cleaner than the soldier’s who’d arrested the Camel’s Knees, like it’d been worn smooth by years of practice. His eyes flicked to Noorsham, “And this one?”
“Just a soldier who cannot obey a simple order,” Naguib said. Even I knew disobeying a direct order meant execution in the army. If I didn’t get Noorsham out, he’d be dead at dawn.
“Disobedient soldiers are a failing of their commander,” General Dumas said. Naguib’s jaw twitched. “It means they do not respect you.” The general drew his gun. The girl’s head was still pressed to the ground. General Dumas grabbed her hair, yanking her up. Her prayer turned to a scream of pain.
“Please,” she begged. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Unlock her fetters,” the Gallan general ordered. Naguib bristled at the command, but the general either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Naguib did as he’d been told, turning the lock on the girl’s manacles.
The moment the manacles dropped away something happened to the girl. The features in her face started shifting. Her chin changed to a longer point, her nose flattened itself, her eyes pushed further back into her head before dropping again. She was frantically going from one face to another, like she was shuffling through a deck, trying to find the right card to play to save herself. Was she a Skinwalker? She sure as hell wasn’t human.
The general watched with disinterest before he finally pressed the gun to her forehead. Her shape-changing stopped instantly, and she was frozen as a girl with round cheeks and a high brow, her hair still wrapped painfully around the Gallan general’s fist.
I felt helpless. Standing in the dark, invisible, as someone else was about to die in front of me. The same way I had when Tamid was held across from me, a gun to his leg.
The prayer for the dead echoed loudly off the walls. It reached its crescendo as she called out for forgiveness of her sins. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then a gunshot. I felt it down to my gut.
The praying stopped abruptly. I bit down on my thumb, trying not to scream.
“You will have her body burned.” The general’s voice swirled out of the dark. “And tell any who asks we have taken her prisoner.”
When I opened my eyes again she was slumped on the ground, motionless, blood pooling around her ruined forehead. Noorsham had drawn away against a wall, as far as his chains would go, and was staring at the body, too.
“Why?” Naguib said. His voice was flat for once—it had lost that clipped edge. “She’s already dead. What’s the point in pretending?”
“It is one of the games we play, young prince. Your father and I.” The Gallan general holstered his pistol. “I was there, the night of the coup, you know. The night your father took the throne. I was only a young soldier then. But I stood behind my general as your father made an agreement with him, and I know what was said better than most. Even my king, perhaps. I know that in public, the Sultan agreed to our authority, but he did not agree for us to strip your country of its sinful demon worship you call religion. But I also know what went unspoken but understood.”
Naguib took a breath like he was going to respond, but the general barreled on, seeming to gather momentum as he spoke.
“My mother, too, lay with a demon, much as your father’s wife did—the mother of that rebel son he cannot seem to control. My mother gave birth to this squalling and green creature instead of a baby. My father did as he should do. He had my mother bound in iron and thrown into the sea to drown. The baby he gave to me to deal with. It looked like it came from the ground. So I returned it to the ground. It was still screaming when I shoveled dirt over it.”
I saw Naguib’s throat constrict, as if he were swallowing his reply.
“When that demon child was born in the Sultan’s palace, I admired your father for taking it upon himself to kill his wife by his own hand, following Gallan law. I remember thinking we had made the right choice in this man who saw eye-to-eye with Gallan values, though not all of your country agreed. And so, to keep the peasants quiet, we pretend these children of demons will be tolerated, and quietly, they are handed over to us and forgotten about. But your city guard tried to hide this prisoner from us and deliver her to you instead.”
“The city guard is unused to such a large Gallan presence here. They do not know your ways.” Naguib sounded like a kid quibbling with a parent.
“This desert is wavering,” the Gallan general ignored him. “Your rebel brother’s foothold is getting stronger. And Dassama is a great loss to us.”
“He’s not my brother,” Naguib spat. “My father has rejected him.”
“You are a greater insult to him as a brother than he is to you,” General Dumas snapped. “Rumor in Izman is that your father speaks often of how he wishes his faithful sons were as strong and clever as his dissident one. Do you think I do not know that you scorned him by coming here on your demon-breed sand horses?”
Sand horses. He meant Buraqi. My heart jumped.
One Buraqi was all it had taken to distract Dustwalk enough for Jin to slip out and blow up the factory. If there was more than one, that could be one hell of a distraction.
“There is no law—” Naguib began.
“No, just the games we play,” General Dumas interrupted him. He took a step forward, and Naguib faltered back. “I earned my first rank because I killed three of your uncles the night of your father’s coup—men who had supported the sinful ways of magic and demons like your grandfather. I am very good at disposing of princes. I am here to find and kill your brother, but I decide who my enemies are, young prince.”
“My father—”
“Your father has more sons than there are hours in the day. I wonder whether he would even notice you were gone?”
General Dumas turned on his heel and walked away. Naguib lingered, and he and Noorsham both watched the general go. When his steps had faded. Naguib spoke again, to Noorsham, too low for me to hear. And then Naguib was gone, too.
I leaned against the wall for a long time, shaking, the last of the light fading around us.
“Amani?” Noorsham called into the dark. I didn’t have much time. Jin would try to come after me soon.
“Noorsham.” I stepped out from the shadows. I could just make him out in the lamplight leaking through the cracks of the door from the yard outside. He looked scared. “Tell me where the prison and the stables are, and I’ll get you out of this.”
• • •
I WONDERED IF Jin could see me on my rooftop perch from his. It was dark now, and even the light of a full moon wasn’t enough to make out a single form plastered on a roof above the barracks with a gun. He’d told me not to do anything stupid. But it was damned stupid of them to leave a window open in the stables. And I’d be damned stupid if I didn’t take advantage of it.
I gripped the edge of the roof and eased myself off slowly, my foot looking for purchase on the windowsill. More than once, I’d climbed in and out of Tamid’s window with a bruised-up back to trade him one of my hoarded books for some of his pain pills. I could hang on to the edge of the roof the same way I used to hang off Tamid’s window ledge and do just fine. Or at least have about the same chance of cracking my skull open as I did then.
The window was barely wide enough for a body. I had to slide through it like I was trying to thread a needle with a piece of wool. Stone scraped across my hips.
I took a breath and let go.
For one wild second all I could see was the stars and all I could think of was the foolishness of immortal things who’d never seen death and so didn’t know to fear it.
Rebel of the Sands Page 13
