My eyes darted again to the others in this room before I spoke. ‘My offer is that if you help us rescue Rahim’ – Anwar, the soldier at Bilal’s side, snapped to attention at the mention of Rahim; the mere sound of his captain’s name seemed to straighten his spine – ‘and Ahmed, we will do our best to take the throne from the Sultan and make sure the ruler of this country isn’t someone who wants to kill you.’
Mention of Rahim didn’t seem to do as much to get Bilal’s attention as it had Anwar’s. I’d figured Bilal must be something close to a brother to him. That Bilal would care that Rahim was going to die if we didn’t rescue him.
But Bilal just spread his hands wide, indicating the man at his side in the Albish uniform. ‘Does it look to you as if I’m trying to hide my treason, Amani? What kind of ruler would I be if I wasn’t prepared to face the consequences of it?’
‘Maybe one who doesn’t care about consequences because he’s a dead man anyway.’ The words were out before I could decide whether or not I ought to say them. I could swear that I saw the Albish soldier’s eyebrows rise just a little at the unchecked words. But Bilal let out a sharp laugh that turned quickly into a cough. It racked painfully through his worn body, seeming to rattle his very bones. The servant stepped forward, but Bilal waved him off quickly, composing himself.
‘You think I’d throw our country to the dogs out of spite?’
My eyes flicked to the Albish captain to see whether he had any reaction to his army being called dogs. But his face was studied blankness again. ‘I think what you’re treating like an alliance looks a lot like an invasion.’
‘Invasions don’t usually come with an invitation.’ Bilal smoothed his hand over the table again, a tic he couldn’t seem to help, trying to hide his shaking hands. ‘Though I appreciate that with those two words sounding so similar, it might be confusing to simpler folk.’
I tried to ignore the flash of shame as his voice took on a mocking twinge of my thick accent on the last handful of words. Like I was stupid just because I didn’t talk like he did.
‘A breach was inevitable, Amani.’ Bilal’s words took on a patronising tone now. ‘The Sultan’s army at our western border is in shambles. The rumor is that General Hamad has gone missing and they are without leadership.’ General Hamad. That was Shazad’s father. Missing, he said. Not dead. Shazad’s father must have escaped the Sultan’s attempt to apprehend him after his daughter’s treason. ‘Without a decent line of defense, it was easy for my new friends to walk into the desert from Amonpour. Our ruler is struggling to hold onto this country, Amani. You really think he has the resources to come after me for my choice of allies?’ He sounded so smug, sitting up here in his fortress. But I had just come from Izman and I knew better than to underestimate the Sultan.
‘So, what about all those bodies buried in the dirt outside? That sure doesn’t look like an easy alliance to me.’
‘A run-in with a pack of Nightmares further down the mountain, not with my men. My new allies were not prepared, foreign as they are.’ Bilal looked at me like I was a child whose wild ideas he was entertaining for his own amusement. ‘Do you really want to debate with me on the difference between cooperation and invasion? Because I can promise you that my education in history, strategy and vocabulary was far more expensive than yours.’ It was like I was back in the palace, sitting across from the Sultan, unable to defend my Rebel Prince against his twisted logic. Shazad, who was better read, would have had some smart retort for him, or Ahmed, who was sure of his intentions, would have been able to stand his ground better than I could. I just stood, taking the blows of his words as he batted away my arguments effortlessly. ‘Captain Westcroft and his army are here at my invitation, because I do not intend to die.’
‘Lots of people wind up dead without meaning to, you know.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Albish captain brush a hand across his moustache quickly, as if he was hiding a smile.
‘Yes, well –’ Bilal’s shaking hand twitched – ‘as amusing as your sense of self-importance is, you don’t really think you were my last resort, do you?’ He waved an arm weakly around himself, at the chaos that dominated the rest of the room. ‘I have tried a thousand ways to stay alive already. This is just one more. See for yourself.’
A few steps took me to the table where the servant had tossed the letter that acknowledged Bilal’s treason. I could barely see the table itself under the chaos. ‘I have tested and used and searched for every single piece of Mirajin sorcery to save me. Without any result. It is time to move away from desert magic.’ My fingers danced across the papers and scribbled, half-mad notes. There were pages violently ripped out of books, the torn edges painted with bright-pigmented flowers and gold-leaf animals. ‘The Albish know how to heal with water and earth instead of fire and words. You’ve already seen what they are capable of in battle.’ So he was trading our country to foreigners for a chance at a cure.
A page on the corner of the table caught my attention. The whole thing was taken up by a drawing of a mountain, a single grey peak that stretched up from the bottom of the page, and invaded the sky. Except this mountain was hollow, and inside it was a man with crimson skin, like shifting fire, and chains around his arms. In bright gilded letters the words inscribed below him glinted at me: The man below the mountain.
I ran my finger along the jagged edge of the paper, where it had been torn out of a book. I had seen this image before, though never this finely done. There was a pale illustration in cheap water paints in one of Tamid’s books back in Dustwalk. In his, the man was an angry, violent shade of purple, and he had huge, sharp teeth that protruded from his mouth in a snarl. Not a man but a monster. But otherwise, the image was the same, down to the particular peaks on the mountain.
‘This is a story they used to tell to scare us back home,’ I said, pulling out the page from the pile. I was six years old and being scolded by Tamid’s mother. Be good, or the monster in the mountain will get you. He eats naughty children alive, you know. ‘They told us there was a monster who had done such a great wrong to the Djinn that he’d been locked under a mountain for all eternity. That he survived by eating children who disobeyed their parents.’
Bilal shook his head. ‘Trust them to get it wrong all the way south.’ He said south like it was an insult. ‘Not a monster, just a man. And he didn’t wrong the Djinn; they wronged him. They stole his true love. Like many Djinn steal good men’s wives.’ His eyes danced across me pointedly. ‘But this man, unlike the others, dared to take vengeance on them. Or he tried. The Djinn put him in chains and locked him below the mountain until he repented. But if any man freed him early, that man would be granted his heart’s greatest desire.’
So that was why Bilal had this. Another way out of death – a wish granted by some impossibly immortal man below the mountain. ‘You shouldn’t trust stories,’ I said. But I was still holding the page. I’d never seen the picture like this. He didn’t look like a monster, but not quite like a man either. He looked like a creature made of fire. ‘They’re never true all the way through.’ It reminded me of the game we used to play as children, where one child whispered a sentence into the ear of another, who whispered it on and on, until the last child spoke aloud some distorted version of the original. Only I didn’t know which one was the copy. The man or the monster.
‘Is it just a story, though?’ Bilal was watching me intently. ‘Because I sent a dozen soldiers down south to find this man below the mountain, and they didn’t come back. And I don’t think it was make-believe that killed them.’
No, it was probably Skinwalkers, or a foreign army, or the Sultan’s army, or hungry Mirajin people, or any other number of things they could have encountered on their fool’s errand.
I put the page down reluctantly. ‘There’s no such thing as just a story.’
Another coughing fit seized Bilal, doubling him over, and this time he didn’t have the strength to wave away the servant who stepped forward. The coughing
didn’t abate. The servant and the soldier helped Bilal to his feet, supporting him through a door that led to the more private areas of his chambers.
His coughs echoed noisily back down the hallway long after the door had closed behind him, leaving me alone in the room with the fox-haired Albish captain.
I dropped down heavily into the seat that Bilal had indicated I ought to take, at his other side, across from the captain. I picked up a stuffed vine leaf and shoved it in my mouth. ‘So,’ I addressed the captain in Mirajin around the mouthful of food. I hadn’t been raised finely – that much Bilal had been good enough to remind me of – so there was no point acting like I had been. ‘Are you really going to cure him? Or is this some story you’re peddling to get a foothold in my country?’ The captain watched me for a moment, the studied blankness slipping before reappearing. But I wasn’t in the mood to play games. ‘I know you can understand me,’ I said. ‘And if you want to pretend you can’t, I’ve got my own translator I can bring in here. But be warned, he’s more annoying than me.’
‘Yes, well.’ The captain cleared his throat. Even with those few words I could tell his Mirajin was near perfect, tinged with even less of an accent than Sam’s. ‘I hope you’ll forgive the attempt at deception. It was not for your benefit. I learned your language in the first Mirajin war, two decades past, when we regrettably lost this country to your current Sultan and his Gallan allies.’ The captain picked up a pitcher and started to pour wine into a clear glass. ‘And my wife makes sure we use Mirajin at home, of course, for the children’s sake. They should speak both their parents’ languages.’ He extended the glass of wine out for me. ‘Do have some; it really is very good.’
I took a sip of the wine. He wasn’t wrong. It really was very good. And I was thirsty. ‘And this is your second stab at taking the desert is it?’ I asked. ‘After you lost the first time? That’s why you’re using Bilal, and pretending you can save him?’
‘We’ll certainly do our best to cure him.’ He stepped neatly around my question. ‘Our druid is trying to draw the sickness out of his blood. Though it may be in his bones now, in which case … But it is not my intention to let an ally die for no good reason. Though, as you say, sometimes intentions mean very little when death comes to the door.’
‘So, what is your intention?’ I asked.
The captain didn’t answer right away, pouring himself a glass of wine to match mine, buying himself time to think. ‘Miss Amani,’ he said finally, in a very proper tone of voice that didn’t sound like he was going to answer my question straight. ‘I heard with great interest what you said to good Lord Bilal. But – and I hope you won’t mind me putting this so indelicately – according to our intelligence, the Rebel Prince is dead.’ Ah, damn. I hadn’t exactly meant him to know that part. But it was too late now.
‘Well, your intelligence isn’t all that intelligent then.’
The captain turned his laugh into a polite cough. ‘If our intelligence is indeed flawed … do you truly believe your Rebel Prince can win the throne?’
That was the question, wasn’t it? Did I believe that Ahmed was capable of something his father reasoned he wasn’t? Did I believe that he could be the ruler this country needed, both for his people and against our enemies? When all logic said that a regime change now would doom the desert? But belief was a funny thing, foreign to logic. ‘If I didn’t believe that, it would be an awfully strange thing for me to risk my life trying to save him.’
‘I see.’ Captain Westcroft contemplated. ‘And am I right in understanding you need assistance to rescue him?’ I watched him warily, not sure exactly what he was getting at, but I nodded.
‘You asked me our intentions.’ Captain Westcroft sighed. ‘I don’t know how much you know about the history of Albis, Miss Amani, but we have a mutual enemy.’
‘The Gallan Empire.’ The same enemy that was sitting at the gates of Izman.
‘Yes. We have held off a Gallan invasion for a thousand years because ours is a country founded on magic. I expect you better than anyone understand what Gallan occupation means for … those whose ancestry is not entirely mortal.’ I understood exactly. It meant death for Demdji, for anyone and anything they considered touched by a First Being. It meant our country being bled dry of labour to fuel their crusade against other countries who used magic, and towns like Dustwalk being wrung out for all their worth. It meant soldiers running amok and lawless, killing and raping in my country and turning it into part of their hideous empire.
‘Many fled your country in fear of the Gallan twenty years ago, my wife among them. She and others, they came to us because they knew we were a country that has held fast against the enemy for centuries. When the Gallan army first marched on Albis a thousand years ago, carrying their swords and bows, our first queen raised the very land against them.’ He puffed out air through his moustache. ‘When Gallandie sent an armada against us, our queen swept the ships from the sea with one hand. But blood thins, magic fades and technology advances. That was why our Queen Hilda came to your Sultan so readily to make an alliance during Auranzeb. And he killed her.’
I remembered the night of Auranzeb, the foreign leaders burning at the hands of Abdals, a declaration of independence from all these enemies clamouring at our borders, offering friendship and hiding manacles behind their backs.
They came for an alliance. The Sultan gave them death. I had considered everyone that night enemies of Miraji. But I supposed some were more enemies than others.
‘There are terrible rumours, since Queen Hilda’s death, that the new young queen, her daughter, cannot even light a fire without falling into a dead faint.’
‘And your enemy has matches,’ I said.
‘Precisely. Put magic against swords and magic wins every time. Magic against guns, we stand a fighting chance. But a mortal queen against the might of the Gallan, well …’ He smiled faintly. ‘She has been left with very little choice but to ally or to fall. Young Queen Elinore is crafting a treaty with Gallandie, a marriage alliance with one of their own young princes. If it is ratified, we will fight alongside our oldest enemies against your Sultan. We are waiting here, poised for instructions before we join them.’
I understood suddenly. The notes scribbled in the papers Jin had found in the Sultan’s office – he was waiting until the whole might of our enemies was gathered outside our walls. ‘You’re the reinforcements that the Gallan are waiting for in Izman.’
‘Yes.’ The captain looked faintly embarrassed. ‘There is more of their army coming, too, from Gallandie itself, headed for your northern shores.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘Your city will be surrounded.’
And they might all be annihilated for it. They had no idea what kind of force the Sultan could turn against them. Then again, even the Sultan might not be expecting two ancient enemies to join against him. The Albish magic, with the Gallan’s numbers, might stand a chance at fighting the Abdals.
One way or another, this would be a massacre. And it might be the end of Miraji before we even had a chance to take the throne for Ahmed. We would be a conquered country in the Gallan Empire.
‘However,’ the captain said, stepping into my churning thoughts carefully, ‘before your Rebel Prince was executed, it was made known to some that Queen Hilda might be prepared to offer her support to the Rebel Prince in his bid for the throne.’ Captain Westcroft toyed with one of the gold buttons on his sleeve. ‘If you were amenable, I could send word back to Albis today to find out if the offer of alliance still stands with young Queen Elinore. If perhaps she might prefer it to getting into bed with our enemies. So to speak. We would have word back by tomorrow, I expect.’ That didn’t make any kind of sense to me. Albis was oceans away, far beyond the horizon. They really must have magic that I didn’t wholly understand.
‘So, for an alliance you’d be willing to help us rescue Ahmed?’ He was offering me what we had come to Bilal for: an army. But I hesitated.
I remembered sitting across
from the Sultan at the palace, over a duck I’d killed. He was chastising me, saying that the world was not so simple as the Rebellion would like to make it out to be. That Miraji was a country that couldn’t stand on its own. That it would be conquered if it did not ally. He had been toying with me then. But that didn’t mean he was wrong. To help us win our country, they wanted our country. And it wasn’t my country to give away.
But if we didn’t manage to rescue Ahmed, if I left the Albish to ally with the Gallan, it would never be his country either.
Before I could answer, a shout came from outside. There was a commotion in the hall where I’d left the boys and our traitor princess. I was on my feet in a second, the foreign captain close behind me. I wrenched the door open just in time to see an Albish soldier with pale brown curls take a swing at Sam, two of his compatriots looking on.
Amazingly, Sam managed to look sheepish while being punched in the face.
Sam hit the ground bleeding from his nose even as Captain Westcroft barked something that sounded like an order in Albish. The two other soldiers snapped to attention, but the one who’d hit Sam either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He moved as if to hit him again. I stepped to stop him, but Jin was closer. Faster than I could see, he had the soldier by the front of his uniform and slammed him back into the opposite wall. He said something to him in rapid-fire Albish. It sounded like a threat but the other boy didn’t take a swing at Jin. Possibly because Jin stood a head taller than him.
Only then did the soldier seem to notice his captain. He straightened quickly, even though he was wedged against a wall, and did his best to smooth down a uniform that was still twisted in Jin’s fists.
The captain said something in Albish that I could only guess was, What the hell is going on here? I wanted to know the same thing. Jin finally let the soldier go and reached down a hand to help up Sam, who was still lying on the floor, looking stunned.
Hero at the Fall Page 11
