Hero at the Fall

by Alwyn Hamilton

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Behind me I heard Fadi start to cry. I’d woken him up. I cast a glance over my shoulder. Sara gave me a reproachful look as she picked him up, bundling the baby out of the room.

  ‘I could’ve told you taking me was a mistake,’ Leyla gloated. She’d heard it, too, every word.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ I repeated, taking a threatening step towards her. But Leyla didn’t flinch.

  ‘A Zungvox.’ She sounded disgustingly pleased with herself. ‘Clever isn’t it? They use it in my mother’s land. I adapted it so that one could speak through my Abdals. I meant it to be used so that the Holy Father’s prayers could be heard all through the city, to quell those idiots worshipping the fire barrier like it was God’s work and not mine.’ She shifted awkwardly back towards the bed, making herself comfortable. ‘I guess my father found another use for it.’

  ‘He’s not a father who cares about getting his daughter back, you know.’ I tasted the spite on the words even as they spilled out. ‘He’s a ruler who just wants his inventor back.’

  ‘Well, at least my father cares if I live or die.’ Leyla brought her bound hands up to her face, pushing the hair out of her eyes defiantly. ‘Can you say the same?’

  I took another swift step towards her, and this time Leyla retreated against the headboard. I didn’t realise I was still holding the gun until Jin’s fingers brushed over the back of my hand. He had come up behind me, his broad hand closing gently over mine, his other arm circling my waist, pulling me back, away from her.

  ‘Don’t.’ He spoke quietly into my ear, so only I heard. ‘Let it go.’ I opened my fingers and released the gun into his grasp. As we turned away from Leyla, retreating from her prison, I realised I’d been clutching the gun so hard that the mark of the handle was imprinted in my palm.

  ‘I know you’re afraid of him,’ Leyla called out from behind me as I started to close the door between us. ‘And you should be.’ She raised her voice so I could still hear her from the other side of the wall. ‘When they die, it’s going to be your fault.’

  I ignored her. I didn’t need her to tell me that. I already knew it was.

  *

  I slammed as many things in the kitchen as I could before I found a half-stale loaf of bread. I started to tear off pieces. Sara had kicked us all out of the room while she dealt with the children we’d disturbed. Hala had gone to find the twins. They had been sleeping in the shapes of various animals since we got here – lizards and birds, for the most part. They were trying to take up as little room as possible when we had so little to spare, but it didn’t always make them the easiest to track down. And we needed them. We needed everyone if we were going to make a plan, since we didn’t have Shazad to do it for us any more.

  ‘We can’t turn her back over.’ I said what we’d all been thinking. ‘She’s the best shot we’re likely to get at finding a way out of this city.’

  ‘I know,’ Jin replied absently, running his hand along his jaw, his eyes fixed on me. ‘If you give Hala a few more days with her, we might be able to trick something out of her when her guard’s down. But—’

  ‘But we don’t have a few more days until the Sultan starts killing off girls,’ I completed. Jin was leaning against the door, arms crossed, like he could stand between me and the whole world.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ he said after a moment, ‘with Leyla. Even if it was stupid as hell, it’s still a chance to get out of here, and we’ve got to take all of those we can get.’

  ‘What if she really does keep her mouth shut?’ I lifted my head, looking at him straight on across the kitchen. ‘What do we do then?’

  We were tangling with a man who had armies and Djinni fire at his fingertips. And what was I? I was nobody. A girl with a gun from the end of the desert. To most people I didn’t even have a name. I was just the Blue-Eyed Bandit.

  I’d forgotten my place, after Imin’s execution, when I stood up and volunteered to lead us. I’d forgotten that I was no one in this fight and there were dozens of men and women in this rebellion who were born better than me. Raised better than me. Educated better than me.

  Shazad would have a strategy. Ahmed would wait until he was sure of what to do. Rahim had armies that would march for him. I was just taking random shots in the dark and hoping to hit something.

  ‘We figure it out,’ Jin said. ‘Like we always figure it out.’ It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was all we had. I felt suddenly restless. I started moving again. Opening and closing cupboards. Like one of them might have the answer. Or at least some coffee.

  ‘You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping much,’ Jin said behind me.

  I slammed another cupboard. ‘Have you been?’

  I meant it as a challenge. But the question somehow felt more dangerous than it should have. We’d been separated by everyone else for the last month, in a house too crowded to ever find privacy. It was only then that I realised Jin and I were alone for the first time in as long as I could remember.

  And now here he was asking me about sleeping. Because we’d been sleeping separately. Which put into my head thoughts of sleeping … not separately. Which was ridiculous. We were both trapped in the middle of something bigger than what was between us. So all-consuming it didn’t leave a whole lot of room for each other. But still, we’d been inching closer and closer to something more lately. Towards unknown waters – or unknown to me. And I knew that of the two of us, I was the one keeping us docked.

  ‘No,’ Jin replied even as I stilled. He seemed to read what I was thinking and suddenly it was as if the kitchen had been emptied of air and I couldn’t breathe for wanting to reach out for him. ‘I haven’t been.’

  I moved first but he was quicker. It took only a few steps for him to reach me, backing me up against the table. But he stopped just before we touched. I didn’t move either. I could tell he was being careful with me. Everything felt more fragile lately. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth from him even in the kitchen. I tilted my head back, finding the corner of his mouth with mine. Jin’s hands had dropped to my waist, something solid to hang on to. His hands curled around the dusty shirt I hadn’t had a chance to change out of, tugging it up just enough so that I felt his thumb graze over skin, sending a trail of heat behind it. He hadn’t shaved today, and I found myself grazing my lips over the stubble at his jaw. The coarseness sent a shiver through my body.

  Jin let out a breath that sounded like surrender a second before his arms went fully around me, lifting me to sit on the table as if I were light as anything. My shirt bunched under his arms, riding most of the way up my spine, his hands following my skin further up, grazing the bottom of my shoulder blades, making me shiver all over again.

  ‘You need to shave.’ I broke away from him, breathless, rubbing one hand along his jaw. We were face to face like this, with me sitting and him standing. Eye to eye. But it was hard for me to look him straight on – it was too much, and if I did, everything I’d been holding back for weeks would rush into my blood and burn me alive from the inside. I might as well try to stare into the midday sun.

  Jin grinned wryly against my hand on his jaw. ‘Later,’ he said, before claiming another kiss from me.

  Without thinking I wrapped my legs around his middle, pulling him closer.

  ‘And here I thought the rumours that Sara was running a brothel out of here were supposed to be false.’ The bitterness in Hala’s voice split Jin and me apart.

  ‘I’m no expert, but I figure doors in brothels have locks. So people have to knock,’ I retorted. Jin hadn’t let me go, and with his back to Hala I was the only one who could see the smile that danced over his face before he stepped away, leaving me to get my feet back on solid ground.

  She was leaning in the doorway, flanked by the twins. They were wrapped in robes, their blue and black tousled hair sticking up at strange angles, but grinning at the spectacle all the same.

  ‘Is this you two coming up
with a plan?’ Hala asked, rolling her eyes and pushing into the kitchen.

  ‘I have a plan.’ I could feel my face still flushed with heat as I straightened my shirt. ‘We don’t return Leyla, we save the girls instead.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Izz chimed in cheerfully.

  ‘Great plan,’ Maz chorused. ‘I love that plan.’

  ‘Yes, wonderful, what else could we possibly need other than a vague statement.’ Hala looked annoyed. ‘That’s not a plan; it’s barely an idea. Besides, what makes you think we can save anyone else when you couldn’t even save Imin?’ That blow was meant to sting and it did, but I wasn’t going to stand here and argue with Hala. She couldn’t be argued with lately; all she did was spit back the grief over losing Imin like poison.

  ‘That’s why you’re here,’ I said, turning towards everyone. ‘To hash out the details.’ Night had fallen outside, and the only light in the kitchen was from the embers of the fire that cast everyone in a half-light, making them look like they were only half there. I needed to draw them back. ‘Now do you want to help, or do you want to just let them die?’

  Nobody wanted to see anyone else die.

  We put together something that was about halfway between a vague idea and a real plan with a few hours left to go until sunrise. A few precious hours in which we agreed we all ought to try to get some sleep. The Hidden House was quiet when we left the kitchen. Hala and I retreated to Sara’s room through darkened hallways while the boys went the other way.

  We were about midway up the many flights of stairs when I noticed light flooding from under one door: Tamid, reading late into the night.

  My old friend wasn’t a true rebel. He just had nowhere else to go after Leyla betrayed us. He’d claimed a whole room to himself, which most thought was petty when space was so valuable. But I’d allowed it because he had a job to do, burning oil between dusk and dawn as he searched for the words to free Fereshteh’s energy and disable the Sultan’s machine. And I’d allowed it because I didn’t need to give him more reasons to despise me.

  I paused on the landing that headed towards his room. Hala stopped climbing when she realised I wasn’t beside her any more. She gave me a withering look from three steps above me. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you,’ she told me, not for the first time. I knew that. Hala had revelled in telling me that, since he did want to talk to her.

  Tamid and I hadn’t spoken in weeks, and I’d steered clear of his room. But this was different. This wasn’t about what either of us wanted. It was about what we needed to do.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ I said to Hala by way of dismissal.

  She looked like she might say something else for a moment, then she threw her hands up above her head as if to say she couldn’t help it if I was going to do something stupid, and she left me.

  When I couldn’t hear her footsteps, I rapped gently at the door. ‘Come in,’ Tamid’s voice said sharply from the other side, seeming unsurprised by a visitor in the middle of the night. Still, when I pushed the door open, I could see all over his face that he hadn’t expected me.

  He’d probably thought the knock was Hala bringing him more books to study. The collection she’d already acquired for him was strewn around the room. I could barely see the floor under stacks of open tomes piled one on top of another, or discarded in frustration in a corner. The books were lifted from libraries at the university or from the vaults of prayer houses. Hala’s Demdji gift meant she could walk out of any building in Izman with a pile of books in her arms without drawing so much as a glance her way. And she’d been putting it to good use, with minimal complaining. I reckoned she just liked being kept busy. Or she half enjoyed the possibility that she was walking into peril. It distracted her from her grief.

  Against all odds, Hala and Tamid seemed to get along decently enough. Maybe because they were both angry at me – Tamid for dragging him into this rebellion, Hala because I couldn’t save Imin. I knew they’d been talking about me behind my back. How else would Hala know he didn’t want to see me?

  Tamid looked back down at the book sprawled open on the desk in front of him. He was sitting at an uncomfortable-looking angle, his amputated leg propped on a stool. His fake leg was leaning up against a wall, not even in reach. He’d been using crutches instead. The beautifully engineered bronze leg that Leyla had made for him was lost when we escaped the Sultan. After our exalted ruler had taken it off him, revealing the device Leyla had hidden inside to guide her father to our hiding place. His new leg was a simple piece of wood, measured and cut to the right length to fit into the gap where his articulated bronze leg had been, designed to be attached by a crude system of leather straps. It was far from as sophisticated as Leyla’s. But then it had the advantage that it couldn’t be used to sell us out to our enemy. I’d call that an even trade.

  I glanced down at a book cast aside on the corner of the desk. It was open to an illuminated picture of the fall of Abbadon, in all its glory of flames and tumbling stones. ‘Any luck?’ I asked, trailing a finger absently along the outline of the flames consuming the city.

  ‘It’s not about luck,’ Tamid said sharply. ‘If I had any of that, I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ I said. Tamid had been scouring the books for weeks now, looking for the words we needed to free the Djinn.

  Words in the first language, which existed before lies were invented. And a Demdji tongue that couldn’t tell a lie.

  It was a powerful combination: with the right words in the first language, a Demdji like me could make anything happen. By just saying it like it was the truth, I could make money fall from thin air, or topple kings, or raise the dead.

  But the first language was fragmented and lost. So I would settle for the words to disable the machine and stop our army from being burned alive. Once we had an army.

  We’d had the shape of a plan before the ambush and the execution and the city being locked down around us: to get Rahim to Iliaz and take control of men that were once his. They were still loyal to him as their one-time commander.

  And then, once we had them, we could get me inside the palace to disable the machine and deactivate the army of Abdals. And from there we had a real chance of taking on the Sultan’s army, and taking the throne. One mortal army against another.

  Except, for the plan to work, we needed the right words in the first language. And judging by the ever-growing library in Tamid’s room we were no closer to finding them than we’d been a month ago. I wondered whether those words might’ve been lost forever. It seemed very human that we’d have managed to hang on to the words to capture a Djinni and compel it to do our bidding, but not the ones we’d need to return the Djinni’s freedom. It was as shortsighted as we usually were as a species. But all we could do was search.

  ‘You’re not here to ask me about that.’ Tamid rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘What do you want, Amani?’

  ‘We’ve got a prisoner.’ I ought to choose my words carefully here, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for subtlety. ‘It’s Leyla.’ Tamid winced at the name of the princess. We’d both been fooled by her, both been betrayed. We’d thought she was an innocent, helpless girl stuck in the harem. But she’d meant something more to Tamid once. And Leyla had used that relationship to get Tamid out of the palace with her and lead her father straight to us. She might’ve taken a whole lot of people from me, but I was far from the only person she’d hurt.

  ‘Because bringing Leyla to a rebel hideout worked out so well for you the last time?’ Tamid asked, sharper than he needed to.

  ‘I know,’ I said. I felt suddenly exhausted, like I wanted to slump down, but there was nowhere to sit among the books, so I just leaned against the door. ‘But she knows things. Things we need to know.’

  ‘Unless she knows the right words to free a Djinni from their bonds, I’m not interested,’ Tamid said.

  ‘She doesn’t have those,’ I said. ‘But she might have a way to get us the hell out of this city.’ Tami
d finally looked at me, interest sparked. ‘But she’s not talking. Leastways not to me. Any chance you think she’d talk to you?’

  ‘Doubtful,’ Tamid scoffed, too quick to make me believe he had even given it any consideration.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you if we weren’t desperate. But the Sultan is going to start killing people if we don’t give her back to him, and we need a way out. Can you at least try before telling me it won’t work?’ I tried to draw his gaze back to me, but he’d returned to his books, angry at me all over again. ‘Tamid.’ I heard the desperation creeping into my own voice. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Tamid scowled at the book. ‘Because everything is always about you. Everything in my life has been about you since you came into it. I’m here because of you. Leyla used me to get to you. Even this –’ he waved at his books – ‘is about you.’

  Tamid’s sudden outburst left silence in its wake. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true. That it wasn’t fair. That if his life in Dustwalk had been about me, that was his fault, not mine. Then again, I’d been the one who’d always wanted to drag him out with me into the great, wide world. He’d been the one who’d tried to hold me back there. In the end, I’d pulled stronger. But Leyla – that was something he couldn’t lay at my door. ‘Am I wrong? –’ I tried to keep the accusation out of my voice, lest I sound like a wife jealous of a husband’s lover –‘or did she make you that leg before I ever came around? If you want to be a martyr, Tamid, I can’t stop you, but don’t let other people die who haven’t gotten to make a choice.’

  Tamid stared at the page for a long moment. ‘I’ll talk to her. But I have a condition.’

  Name it. But I didn’t say that. ‘What is it?’

  ‘If she does have a way out of this city, I’m coming with you. I don’t want any part of this. This rebellion, or this suicide mission of a rescue you think you’re going to go on. I never did. I just want to go home.’ Home. Back to Dustwalk. ‘I never wanted to leave in the first place.’ I’d never understood what made him want to stay there. All he’d ever hoped for was to train as a Holy Father and take over the prayer house in Dustwalk one day. But I’d give just about anything not to have to go back to Dustwalk with him. It felt like a trap still waiting for me at the end of the desert. Like if I returned to the place I was born, the town might close its iron jaws around me and never let me go again.