Meanwhile the Gallan Empire’s easternmost regions were rebelling for independence. For freedom and the right to a country where the Gallan religion, and the hatred of First Beings that came with it, wasn’t imposed on them.
But if the Gallan did come again, we would need to be ready. Leyla’s creations had changed the world, and there was no going back.
Even Ahmed, who fiercely resisted doing anything that might remind his people of his father, had used Leyla’s Zungvox once more. To announce the election.
His father, and his father before him, all the way back to the first Sultan, had ruled without the people’s voice. He wanted to change that. He would let them decide if they wanted to allow him to stay as Sultan. He did not want to be a conqueror of his own country. He asked them to choose.
And so an election was held.
Nobody was surprised when Ahmed won. We had declared that anyone could put themselves forward as a contender for the throne. Several of the Sultan’s other sons had stepped up against Ahmed, along with one or two of the emirs. A dozen men against Ahmed in all. We spread the word around the whole country, sending out the men and women we trusted most to collect votes from every city, town and tiny village. In some places where they couldn’t read or write, they had to vote with objects instead of names. It was a strange collection that was brought back to Izman to be counted: names scrawled on paper by the hundreds next to bags of coloured stones and pieces of painted wood. But in the end it was easy to know the outcome. We were Demdji – after we counted, when we said that the most votes had been cast for Ahmed, it was true. We didn’t make mistakes.
Ahmed was elected the leader of Miraji for the next decade. Long enough to build the country he had promised, but not so long that power might corrupt him.
*
In the garden, men and women milled around in spectacularly coloured clothes. They were people whom Ahmed needed to support his rule now. Emirs and their wives and children, Rahim of Iliaz and Haytham of Tiamat among them, setting a good example for others to follow. Though we knew there were already mutters of dissent behind Ahmed’s back. Captains who were now serving under a general both younger and more female than any among them, who needed to be wooed into obedience. General Hamad had stepped down in favour of his daughter. He was growing older and had fought two great wars. Seen two Sultans die. One of whom he had betrayed. Ahmed was arranging for him to be paid a handsome retirement. He said that it was a rare privilege to retire instead of die on the battlefield. And it was time for a new generation to rule.
Shazad had started to change things already. One of the garrisons had been set aside for women, and it was filling up slowly. Many of the new female soldiers were rebels who had fought with us in the battle of Izman and decided not to go home. But a few were new recruits, trickling in from the city, a few even from Sara’s Hidden House. The captains would not accept their new general or their new recruits overnight. But they weren’t exactly being given a choice. The world was changing; they would have to change with it.
We had won the war, but we all knew there were still a thousand little fights like this waiting for us. But tonight, there were laughing voices drifting through the garden on the cooling night air, and there was good wine. And for a few hours, there was rest.
I lingered at the edge of the celebration, unnoticed in the shadows as I scanned the crowd, looking for Jin. But another brother found me first.
‘A different celebration than we had last year,’ Ahmed said, appearing at my elbow from inside the palace. At least I wasn’t the only one running late.
‘You could say that.’ Last Shihabian we had been in the Dev’s Valley. In hiding. Without a kingdom. Without a single real victory. Without so many deaths. Last Shihabian we had been surrounded by a whole lot of people who were now just dust in the desert.
Ahmed was wearing a black kurta with gold braiding. His hair was carefully combed back, making him seem older than his nineteen years. He looked every inch a ruler.
Since the election last month, he’d spent all day, every day locked in some meeting or other, untangling the country he’d won. I was in some of the meetings, but not all. Today Rahim and Ahmed had conferred to decide what to do with our traitor princess, who was still imprisoned in Iliaz. The rest of us had made ourselves scarce. No one wanted to be called on to take sides over whether to treat her like a sister or an enemy.
‘Any decision?’ I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I entirely wanted to know.
But Ahmed just shook his head gravely. ‘We’re still at odds. Executing Leyla is what my father would have done. Shazad says we should make an example of her. Rahim wants me to spare her any grave punishment, of course. Though she hasn’t so much as spoken to him since …’ He trailed off and ran his thumb along the rim of the glass. ‘He brought more news of her from Iliaz. She’s carrying a child.’
Bilal’s, I realised. I wouldn’t put it past Leyla to have planned this, too. As a way to keep herself alive. She had to guess that Ahmed would struggle to deprive a child of its mother, no matter what her crimes. Not after the Sultan had taken Ahmed and Delila’s mother from them.
‘I don’t know.’ Ahmed sighed, casting his gaze over the party as we lingered on the outskirts for a few moments longer. The light and noise lapped out of the party, just barely brushing at us, inviting us in. ‘I don’t think there’s any possible victory against her. I’m beginning to understand my father better after his death. Making choices that he would be hated for because the alternative was worse.’
‘You’re not like your father,’ I replied, leaning against the cool stone palace wall. But he wasn’t wrong. If he killed Leyla, some would call him cruel and some would call him just. If he imprisoned her, some would call him weak and some would call him kind.
‘What would you do?’ Ahmed asked, catching me off guard.
‘To Leyla?’ I asked. ‘There’s a whole lot of things I can think of, but I hear you’re supposed to be nice to pregnant girls.’
Ahmed smiled, but he didn’t give way either. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ He tapped the golden medallion around my neck. ‘I gave you the post of advisor for a reason. I want you to advise me.’
‘I’d exile her.’ It slipped out before I could think. But as soon as I’d said it I knew I meant it. Enough people had died in this war. Too many. And all to build this: a better place. A new dawn. A new desert. ‘Send her to Albis,’ I said, the idea getting clearer in my mind. ‘Or back to her mother’s homeland in Gamanix. Just make it clear that she can’t ever set foot in the desert again. Send the message to everyone that the worst punishment for treason isn’t death, it’s living somewhere other than the great country that you will build. It’s what I’d be most afraid of, having to leave my home.’ Ahmed regarded me, a faint smile playing over his mouth. ‘What?’ I asked defensively.
‘Nothing. Just … it would have been an unbelievable waste to us all if you had spent your life stuck in that town at the end of the desert.’ He offered me his arm. It was time for us to wade into Shihabian.
‘Don’t worry.’ I looped my arm through his, like I’d seen Shazad do at polite occasions. ‘Even if I was still stuck there, I would’ve voted for you.’
We walked into the celebration together.
Full dark came at midnight, as it always did. Snuffing out the fire. The moon. The stars. For just that moment, it was like being dead all over again in those vaults. Total darkness. And then Jin’s hand found mine. Reminding me that we were alive. That we were just a flicker of flame in a very long night. But we were here now.
Maybe Jin was right, down in the vaults on the day of the battle for Izman. Maybe there was nothing after this life. Maybe he and I would just be dust, forever searching for each other in the wind. But that wouldn’t be all we were. We would be stories long after we were gone. Imperfect, inaccurate stories. Stories that could never even come close to reality.
I had already started to hear the tale of ho
w Jin and I were saved from death by the grace of the Djinn, who were so moved by our great love that they fed us flames until our bodies reignited.
Later, the stories would say that the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the Foreign Prince would fight many more battles for their country. And their adventures would be recounted to children around campfires at night. And the stories would say that when death finally came for them again, at the end of very long lives, it would claim them together, side by side, in a desert they had fought for.
But they would never tell that the Foreign Prince kept his promise to the Blue-Eyed Bandit and taught her how to swim. The stories would forget the small moments that she would remember: the way his fingers felt on her spine when he lifted her against him in the water of the baths in what used to be the harem. That it always made him smile when he kissed her and she tasted of salt. That she fought to learn for his sake, even though she felt like a flame being doused in water. The stories would only tell of the day the Blue-Eyed Bandit was on a ship in a storm and how she leaped from the deck as it sank and swam her way to the shore. And that from there she sent a wave of sand to save the sinking ship. But no storyteller would ever think to wonder how a girl from the desert learned to swim.
Every story of the rule of Prince Ahmed would speak of his goodness and the prosperity he brought to his country. They wouldn’t ever know of the long nights burning oil making difficult decisions, the days that the Blue-Eyed Bandit would storm out of his chambers because she thought he was making a mistake. Or the nights he would spend sleepless, worrying the same thing.
Everyone would know that when he stepped down from the throne after ten years, the country elected another prince, one of his half brothers who had grown up in the harem. Then, the storytellers would drop their voice as they recounted what came next: though this man shared blood with the Rebel Prince, he could not have been more different from his brother. And it was not long before he tried to seize power for himself and began taking the lives of those who disagreed with him. And soon he declared that he would rule not just for a decade but for his whole life, just as his father had.
But – the storyteller’s voice would rise now – one night as the usurper prince sat gloating at his victory in his palace, a knock came at his chamber door. When he opened it, he found the Beautiful General standing there. He was shocked, for he had sent an assassin for her and believed her to be dead. But the assassin had failed; the general had killed him instead. And when she discovered what was happening, she marched her army through the night and took the city back as he slept. And she had done it without firing a single shot or even drawing her blade. But she drew it now, as she stepped into his chambers and ended his tyranny.
That was a story that every girl who signed her conscription papers to the join the Mirajin army certainly heard as a child.
But no one would know that on the eve of that bloodless battle for Izman, eight people would gather together for the first time in many years. And they would remember every time they had done this before, when they were younger. The Foreign Prince would ask, Didn’t we already win this war? And his brother would wonder out loud if they might always be fighting for freedom against men who desired power. And then the Beautiful General would clap her hands together and say, Okay, here’s the plan. And the Blue-Eyed Bandit would laugh because she hadn’t heard that in a long time.
The stories would only tell that a new election followed the dethroning of the usurper. And it was the Beautiful General who was chosen to rule the desert next. She became the first Sultana elected in Miraji, and she would defend her country for another ten glorious years.
And when she stepped down, the boy known as the Demdji Prince would be chosen by the people to rule. He was the adopted son of the Rebel Prince, though by blood he belonged to the blessed Sultima. Some stories even said that he shared blood with the Blue-Eyed Bandit, too. Though most said that was an absurd fabricaton. But they all agreed that his rule had been prophesied even before he was born, and that his great lineage meant he was destined to be a great ruler.
But the Blue-Eyed Bandit, who remembered where he and the Blessed Sultima had both come from, knew that the Demdji Prince had not been made great by his bloodline. He was kind because the Rebel Prince would pick up his son and soothe him when he fell and scraped his knees instead of chastising him for weakness. And the Foreign Prince taught his young Demdji nephew that he didn’t need to share blood with anyone to call them family. The Blue-Eyed Bandit herself would teach him how to shoot and when to think instead of pulling a trigger. And the legendary commander of Iliaz would show him how to sit a horse and remind the young prince that soldiers were owed respect, not just orders. The Demdji princess and the legendary Demdji twins would be the first to help him understand, when he was very young, the powers his father had left him. The Beautiful General would teach him to strategise instead of fight his way through a problem. And those near him would know the truth that the stories didn’t tell, that he was a great ruler because he was the best parts of all the men and women who raised him.
And no stories would ever tell how one day, when the Demdji Prince was still a child, the Blue-Eyed Bandit would find herself far in the south, sitting on a stone warmed by the sun, next to a Holy Man who had only one leg. Both of them watching the young prince play in the same dust they had grown up in, with cousins who shared his blood but who would never really understand what his life was like in a palace far away. When the boy’s grandmother picked him up, the Holy Man said that he reckoned this would have made the Blessed Sultima happy if she could have seen it.
The tales would be imperfect; the legends would be incomplete. And each and every one of us standing in the garden that night would take an entire universe of stories with us when we died, the accounts of every small moment that did not seem grand enough to storytellers, which would disappear in smoke when our bodies were burned.
But even if the desert forgot a thousand and one of our stories, it was enough that they would tell of us at all. That long after our deaths, men and women sitting around a fire would hear that once, long ago, before we were all just stories, we lived.
Ahead of us, in the garden, a fire flickered to life.
And the storyteller began.
Acknowledgements
First, to my parents. I could write a million books and thank them at the back of every one and it still wouldn’t come close to being enough thanks for the last three decades. You’re still the best parents any girl could ask for.
I will always be grateful to Molly Ker Hawn, who goes above and beyond what it means to be an agent. I am beyond lucky to benefit from her passion for books every day. Amani wouldn’t be where she is without her.
To my editors Kendra Levin and Alice Swan. I would have given up, lain down on the floor and stayed there a dozen times over if it wasn’t for them. I am completely indebted to them for their patience, their energy and their belief, especially when I had run out of all three. Thank you for helping me get to the finish line.
My thanks to Ken Wright, Leah Thaxton and Stephen Page for being so supportive of me and this trilogy over the past three years. It means the world.
Thank you a thousand times to my publicists extraordinaire, Elyse Marshall and Hannah Love, who are both filled with boundless energy and optimism and enthusiasm and make everything look effortless even though I know how hard they work.
I am grateful to the whole of the teams across both sides of the ponds who helped root the devil out of the details: Maggie Rosenthal, Krista Ahlberg, Natasha Brown and Susila Baybars. And for taking a sloppy looking Word document and making it into a real, and very good looking book, my thanks go to Theresa Evangelista, Emma Eldridge and Kate Renner.
For getting the book out there I owe thanks to the whole of the marketing, social media and publicity teams across both countries. Bri Lockhart, Leah Schiano, Kaitlin Kneafsey, Emily Romero, Rachel Cone-Gorham, Anna Jarzab, Madison Killen, Erin Berger, Lisa Kelly, Mia Garc
ia, Christina Colangelo, Kara Brammer, Erin Toller, Briana Woods-Conklin, Lily Arango, Megan Stitt, Carmela Iaria, Venessa Carson, Kathryn Bhirud, Alexis Watts, Rachel Wease, Rachel Lodi, Sarah Lough and Niriksha Bharadia.
And for getting the book to shelves my thanks goes to the whole of the sales teams. Including, but certainly not limited to, Biff Donovan, Sheila Hennessy, Colleen Conway, Doni Kay, David Woodhouse, Clare Stern, Kim Lund, Miles Poynton and Sam Brown and the Faber reps.
I am so very grateful to the whole of the Bent Agency and all their co-agents for putting the story of Amani and the rebellion on shelves across the globe. And to all my foreign publishers for bringing these books into your respective countries.
I live in terror while doing acknowledgements that I will forget people in my life who have helped. So friends, colleagues, countrymen, please be assured, I still think you’re awesome.
But in particular I want to thank Amelia Hodgson. She has read more than one draft of this book when she didn’t have to, and given up entire days of her weekend to help me troubleshoot it in great detail. If you liked the scene with ships sailing across sand, that was her suggestion.
Michella Domenici, who is the best book cheerleader anyone could want.
Anne Murphy, who is the sort of person who knows exactly how to head a stressful time at the pass with a small gesture that always makes a big difference.
Sophie Cass, who has the misfortune of working around the corner from my publisher, and will drop everything and buy a girl hot chocolate in a time of publishing need.
Meredith Sykes, who finished this book and immediately sent me a tear stained selfie, which arrived just in time to pull me out of a particularly bad dark night of the soul.
Justine Caillaud, who has been my creative partner in mischief since we were six months old and is the best at reminding me not to feel bad about how much creativity takes from us.
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