Hero at the Fall

by Alwyn Hamilton

  Leyla’s already tormented expression shifted as she realised what she’d revealed to me. ‘No.’ I raised the gun and pointed at her. ‘Yes,’ she admitted quickly, amending the lie before I could fire again. ‘Yes.’

  The bullet struck the wall behind her, sending a spray of stone debris across her face. She was telling the truth, or else that bullet would’ve wound up in her shoulder. It was as if a weight that had been sitting on my chest since the moment we realised we were trapped had been lifted and I could breathe again. There was a way out. And I had someone who knew where it was at gunpoint. We were almost free.

  ‘How do we get out of the city, Leyla?’

  She had stopped crying. She considered me for a moment with those dark eyes under long lashes, rimmed in red from her tears. She ran a sleeve across her nose, sniffling like a little girl. There was almost nothing of her brother Rahim in her. Or the Sultan, for that matter. There was more in that face of her pale Gamanix mother – an inventor’s daughter from the same northern land that had made Jin’s and Ahmed’s compasses. Her features were more delicate than her brother’s or father’s, and though she was as dark as any Mirajin girl, it was obvious she hadn’t seen as much sun as a girl ought to have, trapped behind these walls. The harem had made her look soft and childish, where Rahim looked hardened by his years in the mountains. But that didn’t mean that was what they were: a hardened son and a gentle daughter. Rahim had looked broken by his sister’s betrayal of him in favour of their father, the man who cost their mother her life. And, in turn, Leyla had seemed to be sharpened by her loyalty to their father, those fine features turning cruel. I saw it now, that nastiness in the curl of her lip as she stared down the barrel of my gun and answered me. ‘There’s a gap in the barrier, by the northernmost gate, big enough for a person to slip through.’

  I fired, and the bullet hit her in the leg. She screamed again, doubling over in pain as the consequence of the lie made her bleed. Fresh anger bloomed in me, that she would start trying to trick me now that we were so close. ‘Now, why did you think that lie would work?’ I asked her.

  ‘Because you’re almost out of bullets.’

  She was right, I realised. Five shots. I’d taken five shots at her. Which meant this was my last one.

  And then I saw it above me: the shape of a giant Roc shooting back into the air from the ruins of the palace dome. Jin and Maz, leaving the inner sanctum of the palace, making a run for it. Meaning we were out of time. That was when I heard the sound of approaching footsteps and shouts far off in the harem. The guards were finally coming for the Sultan’s favourite daughter.

  We needed to get out.

  I aimed the gun at her. ‘Leyla, how do we get out of this city? Tell me the truth and this bullet will miss you. Lie and it’s going to bury itself in your skull.’

  Leyla was shaking a little as she stared me down. She was scared. She was a traitor to us, but I was the enemy to her. This was war, after all.

  ‘Why should I tell you if you’re just going to kill me anyway?’ she shot back at me. ‘That bullet might miss me, but there are other ways you could kill me. You could break my neck or choke me to death.’ A memory passed between us: Leyla gently inspecting the bruises on my neck after the Gallan ambassador had almost squeezed the life out of me. ‘Why would you leave me alive?’ She had a good point: she was a danger to us alive. And if she gave me this information, she was no more use to us. ‘I’d rather die than be a traitor to my father and my ruler. I’ll never tell you.’ I kept my finger on the trigger. But I didn’t squeeze. I’ll never tell you. I didn’t want to know if that was true. And if it was a lie, then I needed her without a bullet in her skull.

  Damn her.

  ‘You’re right.’ I pulled the hammer back on the gun. It made her flinch. Not as ready to die as she wanted us to think she was. ‘I can’t afford to leave you here alive.’ I holstered the pistol quickly, releasing the trigger, leaving the bullet in the chamber. I grabbed her, wrenching her to her feet. ‘Let’s go.’

  Izz was changing shape again, bursting into that of the enormous Roc. Leyla kicked and screamed, but she was small and I was stronger than her. I got her on to Izz’s back before she could start to fight and claw in earnest. We were in the air and out of range of their guns before the guards could even get close enough to shoot.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Well, that was useless.’ Hala slammed the door behind herself loudly.

  I’d been half dozing in the windowsill, but Hala’s rage was enough to jolt me awake.

  We’d shoved Leyla into the room I’d been sharing with Hala. In stories, princesses stolen from their father got hidden away in towers in the desert or palaces above the clouds. But all we had was a room with a half-decent lock in the Hidden House. And we barely had that. Most of the Rebellion had been captured with Ahmed, but there were still enough of us left that we didn’t all fit into the Hidden House along with the women and children who already claimed it as home. We had everyone stacked three or four to a room, sleeping on makeshift pillow beds or straight on the floor. Even more folks slept on the roof, under the fiery sky that kept it from ever being properly dark, shielding their eyes from it as best they could. Which meant our precious prisoner had more space to herself than anyone else in this house.

  Hala and I had moved our meagre collection of belongings to the neighbouring bedroom, which belonged to Sara and her child. Fadi, Shira’s son, now slept in there as well since Sara had taken up care of him. It seemed natural, since she was the only one of us who actually knew what she was doing with a baby. Although I’d seen Jin soothe him once or twice when Sara was asleep. It was all a temporary solution though. He wasn’t Sara’s or Jin’s or even mine. He was an orphan now, and when this war was over I’d have to find somewhere he belonged. If we won this war. If we didn’t …

  Now, in our new shared room, I was sitting on the windowsill and Jin was on the floor next to it, head tipped back against the wall below me. My hand had dropped to the crown of his head as I dozed, like I needed to make sure he was still there. Both of us were awake now, watching Hala tiredly. We were all exhausted from this morning’s invasion of the palace and the unexpected princess kidnapping.

  Sara sat in the corner, one hand rocking the cradle she’d dug out for Fadi. As it swung back and forth, I could just see his dash of blue hair in between the blankets. Another Demdji. Another child who would die if this country fell to the Gallan who waited outside our gates. In the room’s only bed, Sara’s small son stirred just a little, uneasy in his sleep, his fist stuck in his mouth. It was evening, still light out, and the sunlight streaming through the lattice pattern of the window next to me drew shadowy patterns across his face. Shazad had said once that the little boy’s father was Bahi, her oldest friend, who had died at the hand of my brother, Noorsham. I hadn’t known Bahi long, but even I could see the resemblance. The unruly dark curls and the soft open expression that had made me trust Bahi when I still wasn’t even sure I could learn to trust Jin again, now worn by a little boy who would never know his father because of this war.

  We kept losing people. And not just our people. People who belonged to others. People whose lives we’d had no right to lay down for them.

  ‘Weren’t you supposed to come back with papers?’ Hala slumped against the door heavily, her anger fading, like a puppet whose strings had just been snipped, finally releasing her from some great show. The skin below her eyes was dark from lack of sleep, and she seemed thinner than she once had. ‘Or some sort of map that says, Secret doorway through the barricade here, maybe? Instead you bring me back a princess who already led her father to us once.’ She dropped, her back sliding slowly down the door until she was sitting on the ground. ‘Next time I’d appreciate a better gift after all my efforts to get you into the palace. I’m very partial to rubies, for instance. Sapphires are also acceptable.’

  ‘I grabbed everything I could.’ Jin stretched out his shoulders, bumping against my leg a
s he did so. ‘I guess there’s a separate office for maps of secret doorways. They probably keep the sapphires in there, too.’

  The documents Jin had found in the Sultan’s desk weren’t exactly full of good news. There was the intelligence that the Gallan army was coming our way. I didn’t need a piece of paper to warn me of that now that they were camped on our doorstep. But there was also intelligence saying that they were a first wave and reinforcements would come a few weeks after, which would explain why the Sultan was waiting to deploy the Abdals against the foreigners. He was holding off until he could annihilate them all at once. There were some notes on sending extra troops to the south, where things were starting to fall into ungoverned chaos, people in those territories seeming uncertain of whether they were still under the influence of the now-defunct Rebellion or whether they were still subject to the throne.

  Then there was the little fact that the Sultan knew that Bilal, Emir of Iliaz, had offered to betray him for us. Which could only mean trouble for Bilal. Although our exalted ruler didn’t seem to know that Bilal was dying, or that the young emir’s price for changing sides had been marriage to one of Ahmed’s Demdji. Which wasn’t a price we were going to pay, since none of us belonged to Ahmed. So we’d planned to take control of Bilal’s army another way, by having Rahim usurp him, counting on the loyalty of the soldiers of Iliaz who he used to command. But Rahim was imprisoned along with Ahmed now. We needed them both back if we were going to take that army.

  And then there was the note that sent my blood cold. A quickly dashed-off missive, dated the same day that the Rebellion was ambushed. It was an order to send soldiers after Shazad’s father, General Hamad. He had been stationed on our westernmost border, staving off invasion via our neighbouring country of Amonpour as this war raged on. With his daughter revealed as a traitor, he was to be executed for her crimes. Word had been sent before the city was locked down, a man’s life ended in a few scribbled lines, while we were trapped in the city with no way to warn him. Shazad would find a way to save her father if she was here. To warn him. But she wasn’t. I couldn’t get to either of them. And now her father was going to die. A man who had risked his life passing information to us. Who had helped soldiers who showed signs of turning against the Sultan find their way to us. Who had even helped some of his soldiers’ wives into the Hidden House when men in his command proved to be poor husbands. He had worked quietly against the Sultan while trying to keep his family safe, and now I was going to get them all killed.

  ‘I gather somewhere in all this chatter is the bad news that you haven’t been able to get Leyla to talk?’ I returned my attention to Hala as I unfolded myself from the windowsill. It was nearing sunset, and I’d been watching the people of Izman rush back and forth on the streets, completing their errands in a hurry before the curfew forced them back into their homes. At sunset, the Abdals would flood the streets to enforce the citywide curfew that was still in place.

  Hala scraped her pale gold nails through her dark hair. ‘It’s a lot more difficult to trick someone when they know what you can do.’ The idea had been simple: Hala would slip into Leyla’s mind and fool her into telling us the information that we needed. Hala was good at that. She had deceived my aunt into thinking I was my mother when we needed her to cooperate with slicing the iron out of my skin. And today she had conned an entire city. But Leyla was not some unsuspecting bystander. She knew what a Demdji could do. ‘And I will remind you that I wouldn’t have to trick anyone if you’d brought back answers instead of more questions.’

  Silence dropped like a stone. I knew what Ahmed would’ve done in the old days. Gather everyone to hear what we all reckoned we should do, listen to good counsel, figure out a plan. But nowadays this was everyone. Imin was dead. Ahmed, Shazad and Delila were gone. Rahim, our newest ally, was captured with them. And now even Sam was … missing. The twins were asleep somewhere. And all that left was me, Jin and Hala. Two tired Demdji and one reluctant prince: that was all we had left. An awfully small, sad collection compared to the lot of us that used to gather in Ahmed’s pavilion back in the oasis.

  And then a voice boomed from outside, shattering the heavy silence.

  ‘Hear me now, my subjects.’

  Sudden terror bloomed in my chest. I would know the Sultan’s voice from a single word. I would know it if I heard it in my ear in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the world. I knew that voice better than I knew even Jin’s. And right now there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was his voice coming from immediately below our window. He had found us.

  We – I – had taken his daughter and I’d led him straight to us, and now we were done for. He would execute Jin on the stage, another rogue son to be rid of. And he would enslave us Demdji. And the rest of the Rebellion would die in some desert prison with no rescue ever coming for them.

  For a second I was rooted. All the blood had rushed out of my body and I was just a shell of fear. Almost as if I was standing outside myself, I looked around the room, seeing equally frozen expressions on every other face.

  Jin moved first, drawing his gun as he pressed himself into the space next to the window. I moved to follow him as the blood returned to my body, drawing my own weapon as I plastered myself to the wall, glancing outside. I prepared to see the Sultan standing below our window, shouting up at us. Like Bashir the Brave from the legends, calling up to Rahat the Beautiful when she was locked in the Djinni’s tower.

  Instead, on the street below us was an Abdal in all its gleaming bronze glory, staring straight ahead with its sightless eyes. The Sultan’s mechanical soldiers, lit with Djinni fire.

  ‘I speak to you now not as your ruler but as a father.’ The Sultan’s voice was coming from the Abdal. The machine was speaking, although its metal lips never moved. ‘A father to you, my people, and to my innocent daughter, your princess Leyla. Who has been kidnapped from the very heart of the palace by dangerous radicals acting in the name of the dead traitor prince.’ He didn’t say Ahmed’s name, stripping him of all identity except that of traitor.

  The Sultan’s voice was louder than any normal man’s ought to be. As I craned my neck to peer down the street I could see another Abdal on the corner, the same voice presumably speaking out of it. People still on the streets were pressed against the walls as if they could retreat into them, taking in every word that was being spoken …

  This was not just happening here. My guess was that the Sultan had dispersed his mechanical soldiers across the city to stand in every neighbourhood and speak this same message. Our exalted ruler was talking to thousands of people in his city at once with one voice we all had to heed.

  ‘How is he doing that?’ I hissed under my breath. I wasn’t sure whether the Abdals could hear us or not.

  Jin’s gaze was fixed on the street. He looked grim, the lattice window casting strange patterns on his face. He shook his head.

  ‘Some of you will understand the grief of losing a child.’ The Sultan’s voice echoed out of the machine. Across the room I caught Hala’s gaze just as she rolled her eyes so far back in her head I thought she might lose them there. ‘If you stood in my place now,’ the machine went on, ‘there is nothing any of you would not do that was within your power to retrieve your own daughters.’ The unspoken words seemed to echo just as loudly as those that spilled from the Abdals’ unmoving lips: and there is nothing that is not within my power. ‘Any person who retrieves my daughter from these radicals and returns her to me will be rewarded with their weight in gold.’ My finger, which had been tightly wound around the trigger, eased a little. Bribes of gold were nothing new. There was no one in the Rebellion who would betray us for the Sultan’s money. If this was all he had to offer his people …

  ‘But,’ the voice spoke again, stopping the creeping relief in its tracks, ‘for every dawn that my daughter has not been returned to the palace, another man’s daughter will die.’

  The ground tilted below me so suddenly that for a moment
I had to squeeze my eyes shut and lean back against the wall to keep myself steady. But the words didn’t stop coming from outside. And with my eyes shut it sounded like the Sultan was speaking within my own mind.

  ‘I have forgiven you, my people who allied yourselves with my traitor son. Your crimes were put aside with his death. A new dawn – a fresh start for traitors …’ The voice trailed off mockingly as it turned Ahmed’s words against us. ‘But do not mistake my forgiveness for ignorance. I know which of you turned your backs on me for the false promises of those renegades. And it is within my power to take your daughters’ lives in exchange for the absence of mine.’

  It wasn’t a lie or a bluff. The Sultan was a man of his word. I didn’t know what I had imagined would happen as a consequence of kidnapping Leyla. I hadn’t really thought much about it in that moment of diving down into the harem. I’d been reckless. Like I always was. And this time Shazad wasn’t here to sweep up behind me. Or Ahmed to take the consequences of it.

  ‘My message is simple. Return my daughter or yours will start dying tomorrow at sunrise,’ the Sultan’s voice finished below us. ‘The choice is yours.’

  A long moment of silence stretched out from the streets. I opened my eyes. Below us the Abdals stood still, sightless and pitiless, as if they were waiting for their message to sink in. And then the machine below our window took a step, and I heard the crash of a dozen more metallic feet against stone, as the Abdals began to march in perfectly timed step. Returning to the palace to wait for the city’s reply.

  I pushed away from the wall, as the sound of thousands of mechanical feet echoed through the streets. I was still gripping the gun as I moved across the room. I didn’t have to shove Hala aside; she knew exactly where I was going. She stepped away from the door that led to Leyla.

  I slammed the door open. Our princess had moved as close to the window as she could with her hands chained to the frame of the bed. Her head snapped around as I entered.