Hero at the Fall

by Alwyn Hamilton

  Either I died or we all did.

  *

  ‘All right, here’s what we do.’ A map of Izman was rolled out in front of Shazad. Rahim had taken over Bilal’s rooms, but there was no time to clear them out. So for now, Shazad’s room was our war room. ‘We can march from here to here in a day.’ She pointed to a spot on the map that she had marked, in the desert west of Izman. ‘That puts us out of sight and out of range of the city when night falls. We wait here for morning. At dawn, you two fly to the east.’ She pointed at me and Sam with the tip of her knife. ‘Get into the tunnels and to the machine. While you do that, our army marches under cover of one of Delila’s illusions towards the city. When the fire drops, the Sultan will be unprepared for us to storm the walls. We want to break through Ikket’s Gate first to get access to Wren Street before the army is fully mobilised.’ She pointed in turn at the streets of the city she had grown up in. ‘From there, we can take the western ramparts and have the upper ground. Trained soldiers should be on the front lines; the less trained should hang back in the artillery.’

  ‘No,’ Rahim disagreed. ‘We should mix as many of the untrained rabble among my soldiers as we can.’

  ‘That’s too risky. It will be harder for untrained men to hold a line. The Sultan’s soldiers will break through that much quicker.’

  ‘It’s better than if they break through the first line to find no second line of defence,’ Rahim argued, ‘our soldiers would be mowed down like wheat.’

  ‘So you want to throw untrained men and women in the middle of soldiers so that they can draw fire away from trained soldiers.’ Shazad didn’t raise her voice. It was a steady kind of anger.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But you know they’re more likely to die.’

  ‘They’re untrained – of course they’re more likely to die,’ Rahim said, every inch the commanding officer.

  ‘That’s enough.’ Ahmed held up his hand, stopping both of them. He looked at me. He wanted to hear what I thought. I’d seen the city. The destruction. I knew what we were facing.

  I still had Zaahir’s gift. I could decide this battle here and now if I gave it to Ahmed. It wouldn’t matter what we did, he would live. He would survive even if it were a massacre. But if I gave it to him, I couldn’t give it to Jin.

  ‘I reckon you should listen to Shazad,’ I said. ‘Don’t throw bodies in your father’s way to slow him down.’ They weren’t just bodies. They were the too-eager farmers’ sons and daughters, who had laughed when Shazad tossed them in the dust like war was a game. The people of the desert who came to us because we were offering better than they had, and all we were asking in return was that they lay down their lives.

  ‘We still need greater numbers.’ Rahim shook his head. ‘We might be able to win this fight if we’re very smart and very lucky. But I don’t like counting on luck.’

  ‘Well, lucky for us, I am very smart.’ It was Shazad’s turn to interrupt him this time. A flicker of a smile flitted over Sam’s face. He had been quiet since we’d seen the destruction outside the walls of Izman, but he was clearly enjoying Shazad and Rahim arguing.

  ‘What about the people in the city?’ I asked. I was thinking about the machine. About what disabling it would mean if it really did go up in flames. If a Djinni’s dying energy really had razed cities and armies in the past.

  ‘Amani’s right,’ Shazad said. ‘There are still rebels in the city, and others who are loyal to us.’ That hadn’t been what I’d meant, but the result was the same.

  ‘We can’t spread the word in Izman that we’re coming,’ Rahim said. ‘If we lose the element of surprise, my father can annihilate us before we even reach the walls.’

  ‘But if we can get them out, then they can fight,’ Jin said, understanding what Shazad was saying where Rahim didn’t.

  ‘Fine.’ Ahmed nodded. ‘Sam and Delila –’ he turned to the two of them – ‘take a small number down to the city with you and start evacuating.’ I knew why he’d picked them: Sam to get people through the tunnels and Delila to hide what they were doing. ‘Get as many people out as you can. Leave now.’

  I realised suddenly that this might be the last time we were all together like this. Some of us definitely weren’t going to survive the battle that was coming. We’d already lost so many to the war.

  But as I looked from them to Ahmed to Jin to everyone else around the table, I suddenly knew exactly who was most likely to die: the one of us who was least afraid. The one who needed to be saved the most.

  When we were finished, everyone dispersed, leaving just me and Shazad behind.

  ‘You should tell him, you know,’ she said when we were alone. I didn’t need to ask what she meant. She wanted me to tell Jin what I was walking into under that city: possible death.

  We’d made a habit of saving each other, Shazad and I, of having each other’s back. Except I couldn’t watch her back on the battlefield this time. And she couldn’t save me from my fate.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, leaning towards her, looping my arm around her shoulders. I leaned my head against hers and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek. Like a gesture between sisters when one of them was headed away from home for a little while.

  Except we weren’t sisters. We’d chosen each other. And now that I’d given her that kiss from Zaahir, and the promise of a life longer than this battle, she wouldn’t be coming anywhere with me. ‘I probably should.’

  Chapter 34

  The Young Princes

  Once, there were two princes who did not live like princes. Instead of a palace, they lived in three small rooms in a city far away from their father, the Sultan. Instead of fine clothes, they wore castoffs from other children that their mother sewed to fit them. Instead of fine, spiced meats, they ate plain soups and bread.

  And instead of food being plentiful, it was running out quickly. Their mother had no money, and soon she could no longer feed the children more than once a day.

  One day, the two young princes were especially hungry. They had scarcely slept for their infant sister crying in the night. That evening they sat at the table. The first young prince watched his mother cook, and he saw her pull out only two bowls instead of three, since she knew there wasn’t enough for two hungry children and a hungry mother.

  Seeing this made the first young prince angry, because she was his mother – his true mother. His brother’s mother was long dead in another country. And when the first prince looked across the table into his brother’s bowl, he saw that his brother had got a spoonful more of rice.

  The first prince saw this as a great injustice, and he said things that no brother ought to say to another. That it wasn’t fair that one brother should get more food at the cost of another. That he wasn’t even his mother’s true son or his own true brother. That if anyone went hungry, it should be the other prince. That it was his fault that they were here and starving anyway. That they should send him away on one of the many boats in the harbour, back to the desert where they came from, and let someone else feed him.

  The prince had never seen his mother grow so angry as she did at those words. She told her son that she was never to hear him talk like that again. That they were a family and that he should never be looking into his brother’s bowl to see if he had more, but only ever to make sure he had enough. And in punishment, she sent her son to bed without food.

  The young prince raged. He decided that he had had enough. If his brother would not leave, he would. He was halfway through packing up his pitiful collection of belongings when his brother returned to the small room they shared. He turned out his pockets on to the bed, revealing that they were full of rice.

  The second prince, feeling sorry that his brother had not eaten dinner, snuck every mouthful of his own into his pockets to bring to his brother later. The first prince was astonished to see that his brother was ready to go hungry himself and give everything he had to another – and to one who had wished him away only moments before.r />
  It was in that moment that the first prince understood the goodness of his brother. That the second prince had a kinder, more selfless heart than the first prince could ever hope for. And he vowed that though he might never be as good as his brother, he would do all he could to protect him.

  It was many years later that the girl known as the Blue-Eyed Bandit came to him, far from that table in the little home where they had grown up. And she asked him what he believed happened after death.

  And he understood what it was that she meant to do.

  He wanted to rage. To rage that his brother would get her life and that the Foreign Prince would be deprived of her in turn.

  But he had made a vow on that day long ago.

  And he would keep it.

  Chapter 35

  Jin did what he did best when I told him: he left me before I could leave him, joining Sam and Delila in the advance party headed towards Izman. He claimed to Ahmed that someone needed to take care of their little sister. I was grateful that he didn’t tell our prince the truth. If Ahmed knew he was sending me to die by disabling that machine, he would try to save me. That’s what he did, after all. He tried to save people.

  That’s what I was doing, too.

  Jin had been gone three days when a lookout reported there was an army making its way up the western side of the mountain. Not from Izman. From our side of the desert.

  Rahim moved into action immediately, preparing his men to fight. They were used to this, to skirmishes in the mountains, though none of us had been expecting that we would need to defend ourselves before reaching Izman.

  But as we stood watching from the walls in the early dawn air, over the crest of the hill below, a banner bobbed into view. Not one stitched with the Sultan’s colours. Instead, we saw Ahmed’s golden sun. A few moments later, the first figure came into view, and I realised that I knew her.

  It was Samira, the daughter of the Emir of Saramotai. Or she had been until someone had overturned her father and killed him. We’d left her ruling her father’s city. Clearly the role suited her.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ I ordered Rahim and his men, who were poised with their guns on the wall. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  I rushed into the courtyard, and I was out of the gates before anyone could stop me, Ahmed and Shazad close behind.

  When she was near enough to be heard, Samira ducked her head in a quick nod to Ahmed as she reached the wall. ‘Your Exalted Highness, we heard you have need of men to fight. And women. I have a hundred with me who don’t want to sit behind our walls and wait for our enemies.’

  ‘One hundred,’ Shazad said under her breath, standing next to me. ‘That’s a good start.’ And then, speaking louder, she asked, ‘How did you know where we were?’

  ‘General Hamad,’ Samira said simply. I felt Shazad tense beside me.

  ‘My father?’ she said, and for just a second she sounded like a little girl again.

  Samira nodded. ‘News that the Rebel Prince can’t be killed because he is protected by the Djinn reached even us in the west. And then the general rode through with news that if anyone truly wanted to defend their country, this was their last chance.’ She smiled at our startled faces. ‘Now, are you going to let us in, or do we have to storm your walls? I have to say, they don’t look like much next to ours.’

  Saramotai wasn’t the last city to join us. A bigger party arrived from Fahali two days later, sent into action by the general as well. The port city of Ghasab joined us a day after that. And more kept trickling in from small desert and mountain towns, where the news had spread. Ahmed was alive. The Rebel Prince had come back from the dead to free the country from foreign rule. Sometimes they came in large groups, sometimes one by one, to pledge themselves to his cause. Until we couldn’t wait any more. We were out of time to train new recruits. Out of time to get more weapons. We needed to march. Before the Sultan marched on Iliaz, and we lost the element of surprise.

  ‘How many in all?’ Ahmed asked that night, before we descended the mountain.

  Shazad and Rahim traded a look. ‘Enough,’ Shazad said.

  ‘Enough for what?’ I asked.

  ‘A fair fight,’ Rahim said.

  ‘Our father isn’t going to give us a fair fight, though, is he?’ Ahmed said.

  ‘No,’ Rahim replied. ‘I doubt he is.’

  *

  We had marched up the mountain with three hundred men and women. We marched down with close to a thousand. We made our way from Iliaz into the desert flats around the great city of Izman. We marched together to war.

  The sun was just beginning to set when we reached the campsite where Sam, Jin, Delila and the rabble they had managed to get out of the city waited for us, just out of sight of Izman, covered by Delila’s illusion. There were a few hundred of them. I recognised our rebels and some other allies, but many more were strangers. I was all too conscious of how many people were left in the city if the whole thing went up in flames.

  We pitched camp alongside them.

  I didn’t see Jin among the crowd. I desperately wanted to go looking for him, but that would be selfish when we were trying to let each other go. When only he really had to let me go. And I’d spent a lot of time learning not to be so damn selfish.

  He didn’t come looking for me either.

  As night fell, I was summoned to see Ahmed and Shazad for a few last instructions before we went into battle.

  This would all end tomorrow.

  That thought hung over our army. By next sunset, either we would all be dead or Ahmed would be sitting on the throne.

  Before I could enter Ahmed’s tent, the flap of his pavilion was flung open violently, blinding me for just a second as a blaze of light spilled into the darkness. I shielded my eyes instinctively, but I could still see through the gaps in my fingers.

  I knew Jin from his outline alone. He was a dark silhouette against the light streaming from Ahmed’s tent. Caught, frozen, holding the tent flap open. The glare hid his expression from me. What I did see was his free hand twitch out towards me. As if to grab me and stop me. To hold me back from what I had to do.

  And then his fingers curled inwards. Fighting the want. Fighting the need to stop me. The reaching turned into a fist that dropped to his side. He let the tent flap fall, plunging us both into darkness, as he walked past without touching me.

  I didn’t turn around as he went, as I listened to his footsteps fade in the sand. I waited until I couldn’t feel him at my back before I pushed open the flap to Ahmed’s tent.

  Preparations were ringing around the sands when I stepped outside. Rahim was running his soldiers and our rabble through drills. No one was going to get much sleep with a battle on the horizon, and Izman was an imposing inky-black silhouette against the stars in the distance. It loomed large next to our small tents that dotted the sands, a behemoth facing a scattering of scarabs. Like the Destroyer of Worlds’ huge monster in the old stories, the great snake who had been slain by the First Hero. In the stories, it was always the monster who lost. But I knew better than anyone that stories and truth weren’t the same thing. Shazad could talk numbers all she liked, but we were awfully bold to think we were going to win – a rabble of half-trained, barely armed rebels against the might of the Sultan and his unstoppable Abdal army.

  The city had seemed to get bigger as the sky darkened, like it was growing into the night itself, shadowed edges blurring into the sky until it was blotting out even the stars, pulling me to it with its long shadow.

  ‘There will be a great deal of death here tomorrow.’

  The voice slithered unexpectedly out of the darkness, making me turn around sharply. There was a man standing a few paces behind me. I could only see an outline of him against the light from the tents, but I could tell he was wearing one of the uniforms of Iliaz. One of ours, then. I relaxed.

  I hadn’t realised how far I’d strayed until I looked back. I was halfway between my people and my enemy’s city, on the edge of strayin
g outside the bounds of Delila’s illusion. Now I saw it laid out below me, colourful tents dotted across the sands, lit up by the campfires and oil lamps. From here it looked like thousands of lanterns littering the desert, screaming defiance against the encroaching night.

  ‘Did Rahim send you to fetch me back?’ I asked the soldier. There was no other reason he’d be this far out from camp as well.

  The silhouetted man seemed unnaturally still. ‘No, he didn’t send me. No man commands me any more.’

  It was a strange answer given in a strange accent. And it was strange that he had been able to sneak up on me, too. I drew back a cautious step, glancing behind him to see if I might be able to dodge around him, outrun him back to the tents. That was when I noticed he hadn’t left any footprints in the sand. And I let out a breath. Not strange, then. Just not human.

  ‘Zaahir,’ I greeted the Djinni.

  ‘Daughter of Bahadur.’ I still couldn’t see his face in the darkness. It was unsettling. ‘It seems you’ve discarded another chance to save your prince.’

  ‘I didn’t discard anything. I just gave it to someone else.’ If the Sin Maker’s gift was real, Shazad was now untouchable in battle. ‘Someone who needs it.’

  He shook his head, like some mockery of a disappointed human expression he had seen and was doing a bad imitation of now. A sorrowful gesture without any real sorrow. ‘You wouldn’t kill a prince. You wouldn’t kiss a prince. What am I to do with you, daughter of Bahadur?’

  ‘I think you’ve done enough.’

  He ignored me. ‘Luckily, I have one more gift for you.’

  ‘I don’t want any more of your gifts, Zaahir.’ I was tired. Too tired to argue with him, to try to outsmart him in whatever game he was playing with me this time.

  ‘Trust me, you want this one, daughter of Bahadur.’ He pulled a ring off his finger and offered it to me. I didn’t reach out for it. This tasted of a trick. I just wasn’t sure what the trick was yet. ‘Take it,’ Zaahir urged. ‘I made a promise that I am bound to keep: to give you what you want.’