Rebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

  Nobody made smart decisions in the dark, Jin said. A stupid decision in the dark was how I’d wound up dressed as a boy in Deadshot. I’d make it all over again if I had to. It hadn’t even been a decision, really. And neither was this.

  I was up before I knew for sure what I was thinking of doing. In the light of the embers I started to pack supplies. Enough for a day’s walk across the desert.

  “Running away like a thief in the night?” My gun leapt into my hand. Shazad was still leaning against the blue furred beast that was Izz, but her eyes were open now, watching me. I didn’t know how long she’d been awake.

  “You planning on stopping me?” We both knew she could and that I wasn’t going to shoot. Still, I didn’t drop my gun right away, even clumsy as it was in my left hand. “He’s my brother, Shazad. It’s my responsibility. And I can warn them. Even if I can’t do anything else, I can—”

  “I don’t want to stop you.” Shazad pushed herself to sitting. “I’m just offended you didn’t ask me to come with you.”

  “Is that the smart thing to do, General?” But I could feel the fire taking light in me again. The one that’d been trampled by fear and Bahi’s loss. And I could see it in Shazad.

  “No,” Shazad admitted. She reached for her weapons and started buckling the scimitars over her shoulders. “The smart thing would be to let the Sultan wear himself out fighting his allies and hope that they catch on and kill him, leaving an empty throne for Ahmed.” She tightened the buckle on her second sword. “But Naguib recognized me. So I don’t have time to wait around for that. If we don’t stop him, he’ll send news to the Sultan—and my father, my mother, and my brother will all burn like Bahi. Then he will come for the rest of us. Besides”—she reached a hand for me and I clasped it, pulling her to her feet—“it’s the right thing to do.”

  I might be tangled with Jin. But with Shazad it was simpler. We were tied together.

  She turned to Jin now, sprawled by the fire, his hat pulled over his eyes. “I can tell you’re awake. Are you coming with us?”

  He sighed, tipping his hat backward. “Yeah, yeah. Just trying to get some sleep before going to near certain death.”

  “I think thieves in the night are meant to be quieter than this, you know,” Hala muttered from her side of the campfire. “What exactly is your plan to get us all killed, General?”

  “Simple. We get them to destroy each other.” We all stared at her, waiting. It seemed to take her a second to realize she was two steps ahead of the rest of us. “The Sultan might be aiming to drive out the Gallan, but he doesn’t want open war. That’s why he’s trying to blame Noorsham’s destruction on us. If the Gallan soldiers see Noorsham, see that he’s the Sultan’s weapon and not ours, then open war is what the Sultan will get. He’ll lose his alliance with the Gallan. And that leaves us with just the Sultan to usurp, not a whole foreign army after us, too. All we have to do is kill Noorsham before he kills them.”

  “Or us,” Hala pointed out. “So it’s five of us against two armies and an insane Demdji superweapon.”

  I looked around the circle of faces in the dark. At Shihabian two days ago—God, was it only two days?—I’d felt like an imposter. Like a part that didn’t quite fit in this rebellion, no matter how much I wanted to. Jin’s foolish Blue-Eyed Bandit who gave up the city without knowing what she was giving it up for. The Demdji without powers who couldn’t save anyone. But now, standing in this circle, I felt it, the thing that made them all stay and risk their lives. Being a link in the chain.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” I said.

  “There’s an old expression,” Shazad said. She might not want to be called General, but it was written all over her. She surveyed her small army: a shape-shifter, a gold-skinned girl, a foreign prince, and a blue-eyed bandit. “About fighting fire with fire. It never made much sense to me. But fighting fire with Demdji who don’t burn so easily, that might work.”

  twenty-seven

  Noorsham was impossible not to see first. Even from far away, I tracked his progress by the sun glinting off the brass helmet with the barrel of the rifle.

  It was only half a day’s walk from the railroad outpost to Fahali. We’d landed on the mountain just after dawn. It was close to noon now, the sun high over the scene. Every once in a while I could just make out Izz’s shadow dashing across the mountain face as he circled slowly. Waiting for his chance.

  I tracked the barrel of my gun along from Noorsham, through the soldiers. There were a few dozen of them. And there was Naguib.

  My finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Not even you can make that shot, Bandit.” Jin’s voice in my ear eased my finger off the trigger. “He’s still out of range.” As soon as my finger was away from the metal of the trigger, the terrifying, dizzying sensation of having an entire desert at my fingertips, ready to rip out of control, rushed back. My powers were still too much of a liability, Shazad had declared in the end. I didn’t know enough about what I was doing to be any kind of help as a Demdji just yet.

  I let out a long breath. Just as I did, Noorsham’s head swiveled, swinging up toward us. I could swear he looked straight at our hiding place. Next to me, Shazad sucked in a breath.

  He couldn’t see us, I reminded myself.

  Hala was making sure of that. She lay on the rock next to me, eyes closed. I could see the strain in her face that holding on to every soldier’s mind at once took. Fixing an illusion there so that all they saw when they looked to the cliffs above Fahali was an empty mountain.

  As Noorsham’s head tipped up I saw the flash of skin where the bronze mask didn’t quite meet the armor at his throat. It was a harder shot than a glass bottle in a pistol pit at the other end of the desert. I was just praying it wasn’t a shot I was going to have to take.

  The plan was simple. Use Hala’s illusions to draw Noorsham away from his little army and into revealing the Sultan’s treachery to the Gallan. Then kill Noorsham and run, leaving Naguib and General Dumas to face each other.

  Simple as saving an entire city of Mirajin and destroying a two-decade-old foreign treaty. Simple as murdering my brother. Killing Noorsham was the hard part. I was glad it belonged to Izz. I only had the gun in case he failed. In case I got a clear shot.

  General Dumas had said it himself. He had a long history of killing folks with royal blood. It just wouldn’t be the prince he’d thought.

  Without Noorsham, Naguib had nothing to face the Gallan army with, a small rabble of Miraji soldiers against the general’s troops. He would be killed, or captured. And one way or another, from the death of a Miraji prince or the betrayal of the Sultan, there would be war.

  I only had the gun in case I got the chance to kill my brother.

  No. I stopped that thought. Jin was right. Family and blood weren’t the same. I might not want to see Noorsham die, but this was a war. What I wanted didn’t matter.

  My heart pounded between my backbone and the rock I was flattened against as Naguib’s small army advanced toward Fahali.

  Next to me, Jin was frowning at something in his hand. Craning over, I realized he was holding the beat-up brass compass. The needle was swinging frantically. The way I’d only seen it do once, when the two were close together for the first time.

  “Why’s it doing that?” I whispered. The army was close now, close enough that anything louder might carry down the canyon.

  “It means Ahmed is on the move. Only there’s no reason Ahmed ought to know what we’re doing.”

  “Delila told him,” I realized aloud. She’d told me how she used to lie awake at night, trying to say out loud that Jin was alive. That he was safe. That he would be home soon. That it would only come out if it were the truth. We were in enough trouble that one of those wasn’t true. And Ahmed was coming to find us.

  “We have to get out of here before Ahmed can reach us.” Jin shoved th
e compass into his pocket. I had a sudden surge of resentment from nowhere. That he got to keep his brother alive while I was aiming a gun at mine.

  “Hala,” Shazad ordered. “Now.”

  “Oh, it’s that easy, is it?” Hala said sarcastically. But she sucked in a breath all the same and then twisted three dozen minds to see the same thing.

  We shared the illusion with all of Naguib’s men that the gates of the city were swinging open, letting out a dozen men in Gallan uniforms. All I could see was the tops of their uniform caps as I craned over the edge of the canyon and watched them ride toward Naguib’s army, their horses kicking up sand.

  They weren’t real. But they were enough to fool anyone who didn’t know. To confuse the real Gallan soldiers. Who I could now see climbing onto the city’s walls. Looking over the soldiers they thought were their allies, riding toward illusions.

  Naguib leaned forward and said something to his weapon. Noorsham dismounted and started walking out to meet the Gallan soldiers. A safe enough distance that he wouldn’t burn up his own side with the enemy.

  Almost there. Another step. He raised his hands. Almost. Almost.

  The heat struck like a physical blow. I could feel it, even perched above the illusion. I swayed back; everyone else did, too. The first thing I saw was the sand turning black at his feet. The second thing was the illusion of the Gallan soldiers screaming. Screaming like Bahi had screamed. Screams planted in Naguib’s army’s mind by Hala. Even as she filled the air with the smell of burning.

  Noorsham advanced.

  A few more steps. My heart hammered.

  His hands were raised, like he was blessing them.

  And another step.

  The heat swept across the sand and hit the walls of the city. Hit the real Gallan soldiers. Suddenly the screams turned real. The smell of burning snagged the corner of Hala’s attention. Not long, but enough. Enough for the illusion to waver.

  One of the soldiers called something out, pointing straight at us, as our invisibility slipped. Guns swiveled toward us. I rolled away from the edge of the canyon a moment before the first bullet clipped the stone. I was on my feet, pistol back up.

  High above, Izz screeched. The illusion vanished altogether, a second before Izz crashed down from the sky into Noorsham. The small bronze figure slammed into the ground as Izz transformed into a giant ape. I turned my head away. I didn’t want to see Izz’s fist crunch through copper and skull.

  “Izz!” Hala’s cry drew my eyes back.

  Noorsham was rising to his feet. Izz was still on the sand, turned back to a boy. For a second I though he was dead, and then he rolled. My own skin stung at the sight of the angry red burn mark across his neck.

  Noorsham raised his hand over Izz’s head.

  I shouted his name.

  It was drowned out by another screech. A huge brown Roc with a blue tuft of feathers on his head crested the canyon.

  Maz. And Ahmed riding on his back.

  Maz dove straight for his brother. Noorsham was already raising his other hand toward him. The tips of his wings caught fire. No!

  I was on my feet in a second, teetering at the edge of the drop from our mountain perch. Noorsham was in my sights now, and my finger was on the trigger.

  The bullet hit him square in the breastplate. Noorsham stumbled back. His head reared up. Even this far away I could see his eyes, spots of blue behind the mask. He saw me.

  He raised his hands like he was reaching out to a long-lost friend.

  The blow of the heat carried me off my feet.

  twenty-eight

  Sand was under my back and I was staring at the sky. The same color as my eyes, as Noorsham’s eyes. He’d knocked me clean off the face of the mountain.

  It was a twenty-foot drop. I ought to be dead. But I remembered sand surging up to catch me, just as I lost consciousness for a moment.

  I dragged myself to my elbows, my whole body protesting. I could see Jin and Shazad craning over above me. Jin moved forward as if to jump off after me, but Ahmed pulled him away from the wall of the canyon as a bullet struck. Ahmed and Maz had landed safely. Why weren’t they running? Why weren’t they flying away? Were the twins too injured?

  Another bullet hit near my elbow.

  I rolled on instinct. My fingers scrambled for my own gun. I must’ve dropped it when I fell.

  Naguib’s small army was moving up the mountain, toward our rabble.

  It wouldn’t be a fair fight even without Demdji, but they had Noorsham. I could see him now. It would be a clear shot if I had a gun. But I didn’t.

  I shifted my sore fingers. The red sheema was still tied around my right hand like a brace. I unknotted it quickly, wrapping it around my neck. I felt the sand shift around me in response to my every move. I had no idea what I was doing. I’d spent the last sixteen years as the girl with the gun, not a Demdji. I saw what Hala did, creating new worlds in people’s minds. Delila bending reality. Noorsham turning the world to fire.

  Like it was second nature.

  A gun felt like second nature to me; this didn’t. But this was raw power that was part of me, not something I’d learned. Something ancient in me that tugged toward the sand. My father’s bloodline that stretched back to a time before death.

  Across the sands, my eyes met Noorsham’s. He was extending one blazing hand toward my friends. He was going to burn them all alive.

  I whipped my hands up, pouring every scrap of my energy and focus through them and into my newfound power. The sand roared up like a wall. It sliced behind Noorsham, cutting between him and the rest of Naguib’s men. Between him and my people.

  Exhilaration surged through me. I’d done it. My whole body was shaking. Sweat from the effort was streaking my face. My throat tasted like rising bile. Noorsham was right: I was like him. This was the sort of power that could level cities. That I couldn’t control. That could slip away too easily and take revenge against a whole backward Last County town. That could fill the sea with sand out of spite.

  I heaved the sand up higher, splitting Noorsham and me off from the army once and for all. We were on one side and Naguib and the rebels were on the other.

  Now it was an even fight.

  Noorsham raised his hands, and the ground at my feet blackened. I staggered backward. Beyond the wall of sand I heard a gunshot and a cry. I prayed that bullet had found one of Naguib’s men.

  Noorsham turned at the sound. Heat surged off him, striking the churning wall of sand. I flung my arms up, squeezing my eyes shut even as the sand turned to glass, peppering my arms, my scalp, my legs. When I looked up, my arms were bloody.

  “Amani.” Noorsham’s voice sounded from deep inside the brass armor. “Why are you fighting me? It’s not you I’m after. It’s them.” He spread his arms expansively, encompassing the Gallan soldiers and the rebellion.

  “Them, and an entire city of your own people.”

  I had to lead him away from them. I took a staggering step backward, dragging the sandstorm wall with me, forcing Noorsham forward. Drawing him away from the fight. This came down to the two of us.

  This was Demdji business. We took care of our own.

  I felt searing pain across my leg where a bullet grazed my calf. I screamed as I dropped to my knees.

  Just the touch of iron was enough.

  My grip on the sand loosened. The storm separating us from the fight fell. I held my breath, trying to control it, but I’d lost it.

  I could see the fight now. Rebels against Naguib’s army. Half of Naguib’s men were fighting invisible opponents, ones that existed only in their minds thanks to Hala. The twins shifted from one shape to another, huge leathery beasts to small birds, talons digging into a man’s eyes. Shazad was fighting two men at once, her swords spinning in a blur that turned from steel to red in one motion. Jin and Ahmed were back-to-back,
moving in sync as if they had spent their whole lives doing it. And I supposed they had.

  They were holding their own. But Noorsham was already turning toward them, ready to level the battlefield. I reached for my power again. The barrel of a gun against my neck drew me up short. The kiss of iron turning me into a human again.

  “You will put your hands on your head.” I recognized General Dumas’s heavily accented voice without having to look up.

  I did as I was told for once in my life.

  It was a matter of moments before I was surrounded by two dozen Gallan soldiers, armed and armored. Ready for battle.

  My eyes were fixed on Noorsham. He was standing perfectly still a few paces away. His back was still blessedly turned to the battle raging between his army and my mismatched group of Demdji and rebels. His head was cocked like a curious bird as he watched me with the Gallan.

  General Dumas walked a slow circle around me, the barrel of the pistol dragged along my head, never leaving my skin, until it was pointed squarely at my forehead. Until he was blocking my view of the fight. And of Noorsham.

  He ripped the sheema from my neck and handed it to someone else. They tied it around my eyes. Blindfolding me.

  The last thing I saw before the world disappeared was the general raising his gun to kill me.

  I closed my eyes.

  twenty-nine

  A scream came instead of a gunshot.

  I felt the cold metal of the gun leave my forehead. I grabbed the moment, flinging myself to one side in the sand. I ripped the sheema off my eyes as I moved. The sight that awaited me was horrifying and glorious all at once.

  General Dumas was burning. Burning the way Bahi had. As he dropped to his knees I saw Noorsham behind him, one hand raised, like a Holy Father in the middle of a blessing. The Gallan soldiers turned their guns on him. Shots went off. Most bullets missed harmlessly, badly aimed in the frantic shooting. One or two hit his breastplate, leaving a dent but nothing more.