Rebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

  But not Jin, who belonged to some other country. Who didn’t belong to this desert at all—at least not enough to die with it. Or whatever stupid thing he was trying to do. Who didn’t deserve to get left behind by a desert girl for her own life.

  Like Tamid had. Like Noorsham.

  “You can go to civilization or go to hell, for all I care.” And it felt like the sand was stretching around my feet until that was all there was in the world, until Izman crept farther and farther away. “I’m not leaving him for dead.”

  sixteen

  I pulled the knife out of Jin’s belt. There was mercy and then there was a coward’s escape, and the cowards had walked on. I pressed the knife against the wound and black venom oozed out across the blade. I wiped it on my shirt before laying it back against his skin. I did it again and again until my neck burned from the sun and more blood oozed out than black.

  “Jin!” I slapped him hard across the face. His eyes squeezed shut tighter, so I hit him again. This time his eyes opened. “Jin!” I grabbed both his shoulders. “Don’t you dare fall back asleep.”

  His eyes cracked open just far enough to see me. “Where . . .” he started weakly.

  “They walked on.” I sat back. We needed to follow the Camel’s Knees’ tracks to civilization. Find help. Some medicine.

  “And you’re still here?” Jin squinted at me, then started to laugh halfheartedly. “Either I’m dreaming or I’m dead.”

  I had to keep him talking. “Dream about me often?”

  “Dreams. Nightmares. Not sure.” Jin’s hand reached up like he wanted to check if I really was an illusion. I grabbed it as it grazed my jaw and swung it round my shoulder.

  “Come on, dream yourself to your feet.” I braced my shoulder under his arm and heaved him up.

  Jin said something to me in Xichian and then laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Oh, well—he might not be lucid, but he was upright. And when I put one foot in front of the other, he followed.

  We’d been walking for a little while when the babbling started. Words in other languages. Names I didn’t know. One I did. Sakhr. Our old joke churned out by his mind made sick with the venom. I tried to convince him not to talk, but he was too far gone in some delusion. And so long as I kept him walking, I didn’t have it in me to worry about anything else.

  The sun was straight above us when I realized we weren’t following the caravan’s tracks in the sand anymore. I spun around, confused. Had we gotten off course? Had they blown away already? The sun had risen to our right this morning. I wasn’t sure if we were still headed north—or anywhere at all.

  “We’re lost.”

  Jin was sitting with his head between his knees. He struggled to pull something that glinted in the sun from his pocket. The broken compass.

  “Here.” He pressed the compass into my hand. “We’re not lost.”

  He was delirious if he thought a faulty compass would do us any good. Something inside me was cracking. At this rate, we were both going to die. In the desert, lost meant dead. If the things in the dark didn’t get you, the sun did.

  “Jin.” I dropped down next to him, trying to keep him awake. “Jin, this compass doesn’t point north. If we follow it, where is it going to take us?”

  I could tell Jin was struggling to stay lucid, his body fighting against the Nightmare venom. “To help. We’re not far.”

  “Not far from what?” I pushed. But Jin’s only answer was something in Xichian I didn’t understand. He was done making sense. I sagged onto the sand, holding the compass. The arrow pointed straight west now. Into the Dev’s Valley. In the haze of the desert heat I could see the place the sand ended: a sheer drop down a cliff face. What the hell; it didn’t matter what direction we died in.

  It was a hell of a lot harder than it looked getting down into the canyon than it had looked from the top. And it’d looked impossible from there. Jin could still walk, but he leaned more heavily on me with every step.

  I had a mean slice on my arm from skidding on some loose rocks near the top of the valley. One cracked rib from where I’d slammed into a rock nearer the bottom. There were a few others in between that I hadn’t had time to worry about yet. The rest of my body was just a dull ache under Jin’s weight.

  At least there was water at the bottom.

  The Dev’s Valley ran like a wound deep into the skin of the desert, a shallow river like an exposed vein at the bottom. I sat Jin down as I plunged my hands into the water and scrubbed blood before sticking my face in, too, and gulping as fast as I could.

  I gathered a handful of water. “Jin.” His head was tipped back, eyes squeezed shut against something he didn’t want to see, except it was inside his head. “Jin.” I pressed the water to his mouth and forced him to drink.

  I sat back with my legs in the water and pulled out the compass. I’d managed not to smash it, at least. It pointed straight into the dusty canyon maze, but it didn’t say how far I had to go, and Jin wasn’t in any kind of state to tell me. Only one way to find out.

  I was just lugging Jin back to his feet when I heard it, echoing through the canyon walls: the sound of hoofbeats on stone. Someone was coming out of the canyon. I hesitated for only a second before heading for cover. We moved painfully slowly, Jin’s weight pressing down on my spine. I half led, half dragged him into the dusty maze. I could hear the hoofbeats getting louder with every step. We were going too slowly. We needed to get to cover before whoever it was spotted us. We reached the mouth of one of the paths into the canyon just as a soldier in Gallan blue emerged from another.

  My whole body rebelled against the sight of him as I remembered the Gallan in Fahali. The general with his gun to the girl’s head. But there was nothing I could do now except watch with bated breath from our place hidden in the shadows of the canyon, while the soldier dismounted, dropping to his knees to drink.

  “Amani—” Jin had finally opened his eyes. They were clear for a moment. “He can’t find us, if they do—”

  I clapped my hand over his mouth as the soldier raised his head, looking in our direction. “He won’t find us,” I promised, quietly as I could.

  We waited in silence while the soldier finished at the river before he mounted again. From the top of his horse, he pulled out something hanging around his neck that shined silver and pressed one end of it to his mouth. A sharp whistle blast echoed off the canyon walls. He waited while it went silent. And then another one answered. When that went silent, a third answered.

  A search party. For us, or for something else. “They’re not going to find us,” I repeated, so quiet I wasn’t sure if it was for Jin or if it was a prayer. “They won’t find us.”

  • • •

  WE’D BEEN WALKING a few hours when I needed to rest. I leaned against the rock face, letting Jin slide to the ground, trying to catch my breath. We’d had to double back twice already when the path dead ended. I clutched the compass to my chest. I was still following the needle, but I had to get my head to stop spinning. And every step brought more chance the next one would lead me to the Gallan soldiers.

  The sun was getting low when I ran into another dead end. Except none of the other dead ends had looked like this.

  The wall of the canyon was painted bright—almost violent—colors, climbing one on top of another, from the dusty ground all the way up to where I couldn’t see anymore: A girl with yellow hair turning into an animal. An immense red Djinni raging against roiling water. A blue-skinned man surrounded by demons. A battle that might be able to split the earth open right where we stood and leave a mark the size of this valley. And wedged between a dancing girl with snakes for hair and a demon brandishing a severed head was a painted door. I checked the compass; sure enough, it pointed stright ahead.

  I was raised on stories of Djinn and their world, of secret palaces in the clouds, homes that could be su
mmoned from the sand. Doors to their kingdoms that could only be opened by whispering a secret word into the lock.

  I traced the line of the door with my finger. Solid stone by the looks of it. Solid stone until the right password was whispered to it. Like in the stories.

  Or else I was a deluded girl with a bad habit of putting too much stock in the stories my mother told me.

  “Jin.” I shook his shoulders. My voice was scratchy with thirst. “Jin, wake up. I need you to wake up. I need the password.”

  “Lost?” I jumped at the voice. The Gallan soldier, the one we’d seen, was standing a few feet away, leaning on the other side of the valley in the shade, looking smug.

  I might’ve been afraid if I wasn’t already so desperate. “How did you find us?” My voice sounded scratchy.

  “On your feet, before I have to shoot you,” he commanded, but I didn’t see a gun. And he was speaking perfect Mirajin.

  Something was wrong here.

  “Why don’t you come make me?” He was hovering in the shadows. Then I noticed the fresh blood smeared along his jawline. “Or are you afraid of daylight, Skinwalker?”

  The change on his face was instantaneous. It became a person’s face without any humanity in it. The Skinwalker bared its sharp teeth in the soldier’s face—the face belonging to its last kill, I realized. I watched in horror as it sauntered over until it was at the very edge of the shadows cast by the canyon walls. “Well, it would have been nice to feed on you now.” Its tongue flicked out, long and black between sharp teeth. “I am starving. Even after eating that foreigner’s flesh. And you look so tasty. But I suppose I can wait a few hours.”

  “You can wait until you’re dead. I’ll be gone by night.” I slung Jin’s arm back over my aching shoulder. If there was one thing that could keep me going, it was a Skinwalker.

  “And where will you go, blue-eyed girl?” The Skinwalker had a hungry smile. “You’re trapped.” My eyes flicked back the way I’d come. In the time I’d been sitting, the sun had crept along the side just enough to cast the opening of the valley into shadow.

  Jin and I were standing in the last patch of safe sunlight.

  • • •

  “OPEN.” I BANGED my hand against the door. “Unlock. Let me in.” The rock surface of the painted door wouldn’t budge. I didn’t figure the password would be obvious, but I wasn’t going to die for not trying.

  “I think I’ll keep you alive for a while.” The Skinwalker was pacing back and forth along the shadow border. “That way, you can watch me eat your flesh with those pretty eyes and I’ll listen to you scream.” The Skinwalker grinned with the dead Gallan soldier’s mouth, only it was full of fangs. It wanted my attention. It was practically on top of me now, the shadows so close I had to pull my elbow against my stomach. The light would burn it. But it could be patient with the light shrinking every second.

  I was running out of time.

  I sagged against the stone. We were going to die here. We’d escaped Dustwalk, jumped off a train, crossed a desert, and survived Fahali and the Nightmares, and now this was where my story came to an end. In a dusty canyon at the hands of a hungry ghoul.

  Stories. The memory flickered tiredly in my mind.

  Sakhr.

  Jin had gotten the name wrong. The name of the Djinni used to summon help, to open doors into his kingdom. And then he’d gotten it wrong again. He’d said it as he rambled incoherently from the Nightmare venom in the desert.

  I leaned in close to the door. I felt stupid, but there was no one to see me except a Skinwalker who wanted to eat me whole, and I didn’t care much what it thought. I pressed my mouth to the painted keyhole and whispered the name. “Sakhr.” And I held my breath.

  Nothing happened. The last of my hope fled as I sagged back against the door.

  The sun betrayed me in a flash. One second we were in the last of the light, the next the shade touched me. The Skinwalker’s hand came with it. Long talons scraped across my arm, blood blossoming in five long trails across my skin.

  Its teeth went for my neck. I remembered what Jin had taught me: I didn’t try to break free. I bore my weight into the monster. Its teeth scraped through flesh and blood, tearing my shoulder open. Agony tore through my whole body as we toppled to the ground together.

  I shoved it off me and stumbled back into the painted wall. My blood smeared across the shape of a girl riding a leopard. Of all the unimportant things to notice before dying.

  The rattling shriek of stone grating against stone filled my ears. In an open stone archway where the painted door had been stood the most polished-looking girl I’d ever seen. Like she was born pretty, but she’d been scrubbed and groomed until she was as close to perfect as any living thing could get. Her face was all desert planes and dunes, but her dark eyes weren’t soft. Strands of black hair caught in her eyelashes as she stared the scene down. Her eyebrows raised as she saw Jin, unconscious in the sand next to me. Her eyes went to the Skinwalker next. She reached behind her and a pair of scimitars hissed as she drew them across her body. “You have blood on your claws.” The Skinwalker sprang for her.

  She didn’t move like Jin, or like any of the soldiers I’d ever seen. She moved like a storm someone had given steel to. She sidestepped the ghoul like it was nothing, her right sword slicing across its arm. The monster snarled and rounded on her just in time to get her left sword straight through its stomach and her right sword through the neck. The eyes in the stolen face went wide. For a second my heart swelled—it looked so human. Then its fanged mouth fell open.

  She yanked the blades out, black with ghoul blood. The thing slumped to the ground, dead.

  “You must be the one who said the password,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to answer.

  I had a second to realize I’d lost a lot of blood before everything went dark.

  seventeen

  I came awake staring at stars.

  I squeezed my eyes shut again and then reopened them. The stars were stitched into the tent above me, yellow cloth constellations in the lamplight. I moved to prop myself up and my arm rebelled in pain, making my head spin. I felt like death. Which was a privilege of being alive, at least.

  It took a second for my head to steady. My arm was bandaged from wrist to shoulder. The bandages smelled of honey and something I didn’t recognize.

  Next to me Jin was lying still under a heavy blanket pulled up to his elbows. His bare chest was slick with sweat. Fresh bandages were wrapped around him, so I couldn’t see the wound anymore. But his chest was rising and falling with shallow breathing, and that was enough to make my own breathing ease. He was alive. We were both alive. The rush of relief that followed was enough to lift me onto my elbows to get a proper look around.

  In the corner sat a stranger. A boy about Jin’s age, with a round face, arms crossed over his chest, curly black hair falling into his eyes as his chin flopped forward in sleep.

  I sat up slowly, careful not to wake him. The fact that I was bandaged and not bound and gagged seemed like a good sign. But just because they’d fixed me up didn’t mean I ought to trust them—whoever they were.

  My shirt had been replaced, but my sheema was still tied around my middle, and between it and my body was the compass. My heart raced in relief as I pulled it out.

  My eyes dropped to a small pile of bottles and bandages in the corner, and among them, a knife that looked like it was for medicine. There was dried blood on it. I snatched it up. I needed to find out where I was. And I wasn’t going unarmed.

  The sleeping boy was an easy guard to slip. Sunlight hit my face violently through the tent flap, blinding me the second I pushed outside.

  Somebody had painted the world while I slept.

  I’d thought green was the color of dusty scrub that fought its way up between stones—not this color that boasted its existence, unaf
raid, to the desert. Behind me the huge dusty gold of the cliff face loomed over the camp, but the sand surrendered quickly enough as it crept away from the walls. We were overlooking an oasis, a burst of color and life, scattered with people. At a glance I guessed it was about the size of Dustwalk, a hundred or so souls. Only comparing this place to Dustwalk was like comparing a Buraqi to a donkey. And at the center of it all rose a gold-and-red tower that was high enough to scratch the blue off the sky.

  My legs decided to walk instead of surrendering me to the ground at the last second. I held the compass close to my body with one hand; the other one clutched the knife. I didn’t know how much use it’d be. I was light-headed, either from loss of blood or from the overwhelming strangeness of this place. My legs moved half on their own. In a few steps, the burning sand turned cool as I stepped into the shade of the oasis.

  I passed below trees hanging heavy with oranges and pomegranates and some fruits I didn’t even recognize. They sprang up everywhere, around pools so clear and deep, I felt if I got close enough I might see the beating heart of the earth in them.

  The compass needle pointed straight through the oasis. Tents of every color were scattered among the trees, propped against trunks for support or hanging from tree branches.

  And the people. Everybody I saw was dressed in colors that looked like they’d been born back when the world was new. A few folks were gathered around a pool, washing clothes and chattering; they didn’t look up when I passed. The girl who had killed the Skinwalker was leading a half dozen men and women with wooden blades through what looked like army drills. I almost stepped on two boys, younger than me by the looks of it, who were tinkering with something that looked like a bomb. They both looked up at me.

  “You’re going to want to go the long way around,” one of them said.

  “We’d rather only blow our own hands off.” As the other one spoke, I realized it wasn’t a boy at all. She was a girl, hair cropped close to her skull, and so skinny she’d have to stand up twice to cast a shadow, but a girl all the same. Neither of them seemed to have even a bit of worry about me being a stranger. Maybe having a magic door just saved you a whole lot of suspicion. I took the long, long way around to be safe, even if I wasn’t sure where I was headed.