Rebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

  “No,” Hala added, sounding bitter. “You might say Ahmed will win the Sultim trials but neglect to say that he will take the throne. For instance. And if you’d just left it alone, then he’d have been a great Sultan and ruled until he was old and gray.”

  The look on her face was the kind that only came from experience. I thought of all the stories I knew of men making foolish demands and wishes of Djinn that were granted to them in some misshapen way that robbed them of their happiness. The Gallan soldier hadn’t found us in the canyon. He’d been eaten alive instead. Bahi paused, like he was making sure I understood, before taking his hand away from my mouth.

  When I looked at Hala, she was staring at her feet. No wonder she hadn’t forgiven me for the red-haired Demdji. She’d been holding a grudge against herself for a year now. And just because she’d tried to cheat the universe into Ahmed becoming Sultan by saying that he would. “I reckon I would’ve done the same thing.”

  Hala treated me to an image of my hands catching fire, the agony of it searing through me before it vanished. Whatever sympathy I felt vaporized. “Yes, but you didn’t. I did. And if I hadn’t, we might never have needed a war and people might not have needed to die.”

  And without another word, Hala stormed off.

  Bahi clapped his hands together. “You know, I think now would be a great time for that break.”

  • • •

  DELILA AND I made our way slowly back into camp, through the preparations for Shihabian. Folks were stringing lanterns between the trees, and the whole of the camp was rich with the smell of roasting meats and cooking bread. Even when I’d dreamed of Izman, I’d never imagined a place like this. Everyone seemed to fit easily into their roles, working with one singular purpose: putting Ahmed on the throne. To make the rest of Miraji like this tiny part of the world.

  “How come Jin didn’t compete in the Sultim trials?” I asked, breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen between us since Hala’s outburst. “Tradition claims the twelve eldest princes are to compete.”

  “Ahmed is the fifth born, and Jin is sixth, so he had the right. If he’d come forward as another surviving son.” Which meant he’d chosen not to. That Ahmed had decided to step up and claim his chance at his birthright and Jin hadn’t. But then, the stories didn’t mention Jin at all. Not the disappearance of another son on the night that Ahmed and Delila’s mother was beaten to death, let alone his return.

  “Why are you asking me and not my brother?” Delila had been chewing on her thumbnail nervously. She pulled it out of her mouth self-consciously.

  Because I’m avoiding him. “Your brother has a bad habit of not telling me things straight.”

  “They fought about it,” she admitted finally. “Shazad said it would be a tactical advantage to have an ally in the trials to watch Ahmed’s back. Hala said no one would believe either one of them if we suddenly started claiming it was raining returned princes. Jin said no one would believe him because he didn’t look a thing like the Sultan. Bahi said it would distract from Ahmed’s impact. Then Shazad said the Holy Order had given him too much of a flair for dramatics. And they went on and on,” she said shyly. “But in the end, nobody’s ever been able to make Jin do something he didn’t want. And the truth was, he never wanted anything to do with Miraji.” She reached up, plucking an orange from a tree as we passed under, and started peeling it, avoiding looking me in the eye. “Ahmed fell in love with Miraji the moment he came back. Like a piece of his soul he’d almost forgotten had been returned to him, he said. When Ahmed decided to stay behind, Jin never understood why. I didn’t understand until I saw it myself. It just . . . feels like home. They fought when Ahmed decided to stay as well. Jin sailed away without him. He always figured that Ahmed would change his mind and go back out to sea. Then our mother, Lien—Jin’s mother really, but mine, too.” She looked uncomfortable, like she’d spent a long time fighting with that fact. “She died, and Jin and I came to Ahmed instead. It was only a few months before the Sultim trials. Jin had been waiting for Ahmed to change his mind, and in the meantime he’d built up this following in Izman. I thought Jin might break his nose when we finally tracked him down with the compass. Shazad broke Jin’s nose first.”

  Jin had told me a girl broke his nose and his brother set it. I’d just figured on some lover’s quarrel in a foreign port, not Shazad. Nice to know it wasn’t all lies, though.

  “He figured the best we could hope for was for Ahmed not to get killed in the Sultim trials. And then we’d leave and Ahmed would stop fighting.” She gestured around herself at the camp. “He was wrong.”

  “So why does Jin stay?”

  “Jin has fought for Ahmed since they were boys. He’d throw a punch whenever anyone would call Ahmed a . . .” She stumbled over the translation of the Xichian word. “It means ‘dirty foreigner,’ I suppose. He’ll do the same now. I still don’t think he’s forgiven Ahmed for falling in love with something outside of our family, though. Well . . . it might be he’s starting to now.” That small shy smile was back on her face. I felt the back of my neck get hot.

  “It’s not . . .” I stumbled over the words. “Jin and I aren’t . . .”

  “If it were true,” Delila singsonged in a little girl’s voice, “you’d be able to say it.” She laughed as she spun away from me, jumping over a small campfire, leaving me even more confused.

  • • •

  IT WAS LATE afternoon, which meant Shazad would likely have finished training and be back in our tent. Or rather, her tent. I’d slept there the first night, too drained from the revelation of being a Demdji to put up much of a fight. And then I’d just stayed. She still hadn’t kicked me out, and there was a small pile of her clothes that she had loaned me piling up in a heap on the floor on my side, dividing me from her militarily clean side. It was almost like home.

  Stepping into the tent, I was greeted by a flying cloth bundle to the face.

  “Catch,” Shazad said too late. I picked it up off the floor. A bright swathe of gold cloth with deep red stitching unfurled between my fingers.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A rare occurrence for which it’s traditional to wear your finest clothes.” I realized Shazad was already dressed for Shihabian. It couldn’t be natural to be as pulled together as she was. Her dark hair was piled in tight waves against her head, golden pins catching the dimming light, a khalat—so green it made the trees look dull—draped across her.

  “I didn’t think to grab my finest clothes while running for my life.” I ran my hands across the fabric and imagined putting it on and turning into some phoenix creature from the stories, fire and gold.

  “Well, in this case, your friend’s finest clothes,” Shazad said.

  Friend. The simple word grabbed my attention. I’d been shedding friends since Tamid.

  Shazad must’ve caught my hesitation. “I have other khalats. If you don’t like it,” she added quickly, pushing a loose piece of hair back behind her ear like she was nervous, only that was impossible.

  “Is Imin back yet?” I asked. No matter what Delila said, I was nervous about the yellow-eyed Demdji in the Gallan camp.

  “No.” Shazad became serious. “Not yet. I’m giving her until the end of Shihabian, and then tomorrow we’re going to look for her.” To make sure she hadn’t wound up like the red-haired Demdji.

  “Who’s we?” I asked, starting to undress.

  “Me and Jin, and you if you want.”

  My hands faltered on my buttons, Delila’s words fresh in my mind. “I don’t think I’m meant to leave camp before I figure out my powers.” I didn’t sound that convincing even to myself, and Shazad made a disbelieving noise at the back of her throat.

  “However short our lives might turn out to be if this revolution fails, you can’t avoid him forever, you know.”

  “Want to watch me try anyway?”
<
br />   • • •

  THE HOLY TIME of Shihabian started when the sun vanished, a reminder of the night when the Destroyer of Worlds came and brought darkness with her. Last year Tamid had spun me in place until I was dizzy, and we both laughed until we had to hold each other up, tipsy-turvy from drink and dancing. We celebrated until midnight, when the whole world would turn black in memory of the first night. And then, when the stars and the moon came back, we prayed until dawn.

  But Dustwalk’s celebrations had nothing on those at the Rebel camp. Lanterns were strung between the trees so thick, I could barely see the branches for the light. Figs plucked straight from the trees, cakes so sweet my fingers stuck together. The air smelled of oil and incense and smoke and food and the desert and being alive in the desert.

  I was fiercely conscious of the way the silk and muslin of my borrowed khalat felt on my skin. The golden cloth draped and clung like nothing I’d ever owned. I’d cinched it at the waist. Shazad’s figure was better filled out than mine, but I wasn’t going to be mistaken for a boy in this, especially not when she opened the top three clasps at my throat. I’d put up a bit of a fight, but Shazad was a better born fighter than I was, and in the end I had to let her loose on me. I’d figured she’d try and fail to turn me into something as bright and polished as she was. Instead, when she’d held up the mirror, a wild thing stared back.

  My hair was twisted and half-bound, coming apart in waves that kissed the edge of my jaw and my neck like I’d been caught in a sandstorm. She’d painted my lips red enough that I imagined I could taste blood. My eyes were so dark around the blue that I feared for anyone caught in their crosshairs.

  I looked like something that belonged in a revolution.

  The pair of us drifted from one fire to another, people catching us to talk, sweeping me up in camp chatter as easily as Shazad. I ate honey cakes and washed them down with sweet wine. I spotted Jin across the campfire, playing some game or other with his sister and laughing as he lost.

  There was a pair of cats by a fire. One blue, the other gray with a blue tuft on its head. I knelt down to scratch the blue one absently, and instead of a cat I found my hand on the stomach of a very naked, very blue boy.

  “Happy Shihabian, General.” The boy saluted Shazad, who barely bothered to look down as she stepped over him. I tried to keep my eyes on his face and off any other part of him.

  “Izz,” Shazad replied, nodding to the blue-skinned boy, “meet Amani. Amani, meet the twins. Or one of them. They just got back from doing a supply run for us this morning.”

  I flushed and looked away, catching Shazad looking too damn amused. The other cat turned into a boy, too. He was identical to Izz, but his skin was dark. Only his hair was the same pale blue as his brother’s skin.

  “And this is Maz.” Shazad gestured.

  Maz grinned. “The one and only.”

  I glanced from him to his twin. “Who taught you to count?”

  The twins beamed at me. “So you’re the new Demdji,” Izz said, standing to inspect me with no mind to how bare he was. “We wanted to meet you.”

  “We were wondering if you might be our sister,” Maz said. “On account of your eyes.” He gestured to his hair, an unnatural blue, a few shades off from my eyes. If we’d both inherited it from our Djinn fathers, it might be that we shared one. The realization that I might suddenly have a brother after seventeen years unsettled me.

  “I’ve always wanted a sister,” Izz said brightly. “Have you met Imin? She and Hala had the same Djinni father, you know. Their mothers lived on the same street in Izman.” So I was responsible for Hala’s golden-eyed sister risking her life in the Gallan camp. It seemed I couldn’t stop doing things to make her hate me.

  “Amani’s not our sister, though.” Maz looked faintly disappointed as he said it. “Or else we wouldn’t be able to say that she’s not our sister.”

  “Still!” Izz said, perking up. “You might be able to change your shape like us. That would be just as good.”

  “Do you want a drink?” Shazad blessedly pulled me away from the naked twins.

  The dancing started soon after. I’d never danced properly at Shihabian before. Not with Tamid’s injured leg. I couldn’t stand to leave him out. But my body loosened soon enough and was weaving through the sparks from the fire, from one partner to the next. As drink flowed more freely and people got sloppier, we spun more wildly. I careened round Shazad dancing with Bahi, and a pair of hands belonging to my next partner grabbed me, spinning me around to face him.

  I was chest to chest with Jin. We both stopped, letting the dancing go on around us. I could feel the warmth of his hands through the delicate fabric of the khalat. After weeks of my being a boy around him, everything that made me a girl was in his hands. His eyes traveled over me slowly, resting for just a second on the red sheema tied around my waist. It was the one he’d given to me. All the way back in Sazi. “You look like you were born out of fire.”

  “Jin—” I started. I never finished. Midnight dropped like a cloak over the sky like it always did on Shihabian. One moment there were fires and lanterns and stars and moonlight, and then there was just blackness.

  No matter that the Buraqi were fewer and the Djinn didn’t live alongside men anymore, no matter how many factories rose up filled with iron and smoke: this was magic that didn’t fade. It lived in the memory of the world itself. The first true dark, when matches wouldn’t strike, tinder wouldn’t catch, and stars hid. Jin’s hands slipped away from me, and I felt even his presence fade. I couldn’t follow him. Not in this kind of dark. All of us stood completely still where we’d stopped. Waiting for the light to come back.

  A fire flared to my right. The stars were blinking back to life one by one. Still, no one spoke. The hours up to midnight were for festivities; now was a time for prayers and memories. My eyes darted around for Jin as the crowd shifted me toward the single fire like moths.

  The storyteller was a young woman. She stood on a raised stone by the fire, Demdji gathered all around her, facing the rest of the camp.

  “The world was created in light,” the storyteller began, the traditional opening. Every story might be different, but it always began with the same words. “And then came the night. The Destroyer of Worlds came from the dark that existed only in the places the sun couldn’t touch.”

  I spotted the back of Jin’s head as he escaped the crowd. I followed, weaving my way through the people dropping into prayer, walking until the noise and light and illusions and laughter were far away and the edge of the desert opened.

  “Blue-Eyed Bandit.” I jumped at Jin’s voice. I could just make him out now in the returning starlight.

  He took a swig from the bottle dangling from his fingers, and for a wild second I thought he might be drinking up the courage to really face me this time.

  “Want a drink?” He held out the bottle. “There was this girl once I knew from the Last County who could hold her drink even when I wound up head down on the table.”

  He meant at the Drunk Djinni, by the gutted-out mines of Sazi, when I was just the girl with the gun who could hold her drink and he was just a foreigner who couldn’t hold the drugs I slipped in his. Instead of a Demdji and a prince. When I was still so certain of everything and he started lying to me.

  “Then again,” Jin said, taking another swig, “that girl didn’t walk away from stories halfway through either.”

  In that moment, I did turn to fire. My hand sent the bottle flying to the ground, the sand guzzling the spilled liquor as it rolled. I realized I’d been expecting him to stop me, catch my arm before I could hit him.

  “Stories and lies.” I found my voice and swallowed whatever else was snaking up my throat lest it come through as tears. “I’m not so fond of them as I used to be. But you know by now, all your lies to get me here were wasted. Haven’t you heard what they’re saying?
That I’m the only Demdji in the world without powers?” He struggled through his drunken haze to focus on me. “Did you ever think about telling me what I was?”

  All at once Jin filled my senses, the smell of liquor and heat and the sight of the distant planes of his face, of the tattoos just visible through his shirt.

  “You want to talk about this? Now?”

  “Why not?” I spread my arms wide, daring him. “Why don’t you tell me what the plan was? If things had been different in Dassama, were you going to truss me up like a prisoner and drag me here? Or did you have different lies all ready?”

  “I didn’t make you come here.” Jin’s eyes bored into mine, but I wasn’t backing down. He said I had traitor eyes. Let him see the betrayal there. Let him drown in it. “I didn’t trick you and I didn’t ask you to.”

  “What else was I meant to do? Leave you to die?”

  “You might’ve.”

  “I wouldn’t have.”

  “The truth is I had no idea what I was doing when it came to you, Amani. I tried to leave you in Dustwalk because I didn’t want to drag you into my brother's war. I came back for you because I didn’t want to see you die at the hands of my other brother. But either way, I was bound to wind up doing one or the other. Just depended on which one.” His hand came up like he was going to reach for me but dropped to his side instead. “I was glad in Sazi when I saw you’d gone because it meant you’d escaped on your own path, and I was glad when you took the compass because it gave me a reason to go after you. And yes, I lied to keep you out of Izman because I was afraid someone would know what you were and you’d get snapped up and sold to the Sultan. And I steered you toward Dassama figuring there was a chance I might be able to deliver you to the sea and get you out of this country before it killed you.” His face was so close now. I remembered what he said once, crossing the desert, that the sea was the color of my eyes.