Traitor to the Throne

by Alwyn Hamilton

  ‘We caught her in the mountains,’ Hossam crowed. ‘She tried to ambush us when we were on our way back from trading for the guns.’ Two of the other men with us dropped bags that were heavy with weapons on the ground proudly, as if to show off that I hadn’t gotten in their way. The guns weren’t of Mirajin make. Amonpourian. Stupid-looking things. Ornate and carved, made by hand instead of machine, and charged at twice what they were worth because someone had gone to the trouble of making them pretty. It didn’t matter how pretty something was, it’d kill you just as dead. That, I’d learned from Shazad.

  ‘Just her?’ the man with the serious eyes asked. ‘On her own?’ His gaze flicked to me. Like he might be able to suss out the truth just from looking at me. Whether a girl of seventeen would really think she could take on a half dozen grown men with nothing but a handful of bullets and think she could win. Whether the famous Blue-Eyed Bandit could really be that stupid.

  I preferred ‘reckless’.

  But I kept my mouth shut. The more I talked, the more likely I was to say something that’d backfire on me. Stay silent, look sullen, try not to get yourself killed.

  If all else fails, just stick with that last one.

  ‘Are you really the Blue-Eyed Bandit?’ Ikar blurted out, making everyone’s head turn. He’d scrambled down from his watchpost on the wall to come gawk at me with the rest. He leaned forward eagerly across the barrel of his gun. If it went off now it’d take both his hands and part of his face with it. ‘Is it true what they say about you?’

  Stay silent. Look sullen. Try not to get yourself killed. ‘Depends what they’re saying, I suppose.’ Damn it. That didn’t last so long. ‘And you shouldn’t hold your gun like that.’

  Ikar shifted his grip absently, never taking his eyes off me. ‘They say that you can shoot a man’s eye out fifty feet away in the pitch dark. That you walked through a hail of bullets in Iliaz, and walked out with the Sultan’s secret war plans.’ I remembered Iliaz going a little differently. It ended with a bullet in me, for one. ‘That you seduced one of the Emir of Jalaz’s wives while they were visiting Izman.’ Now, that was a new one. I’d heard the one about seducing the emir himself. But maybe the emir’s wife liked women, too. Or maybe the story had twisted in the telling, since half the tales of the Blue-Eyed Bandit seemed to make out I was a man these days. I’d stopped wearing wraps to pretend I was a boy, but apparently I’d need to fill out a little more to convince some people that the bandit was a girl.

  ‘You killed a hundred Gallan soldiers at Fahali,’ he pushed on, his words tripping over each other, undeterred by my silence. ‘And I heard you escaped from Malal on the back of a giant blue Roc, and flooded the prayer house behind you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ I interjected as Ikar finally paused for breath, his eyes the size of two louzi pieces with excitement.

  He sagged, disappointed. He was just a kid, as eager to believe all the stories as I had been when I was his age. Though he looked younger than I ever remembered being. He shouldn’t be here holding a gun like this. But then, this was what the desert did to us. It made us dreamers with weapons. I ran my tongue along my teeth. ‘And the prayer house in Malal was an accident … mostly.’

  A whisper went through the crowd. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t send a little thrill down my spine. And lying was a sin.

  It’d been close to half a year since I’d stood in Fahali with Ahmed, Jin, Shazad, Hala, and the twins, Izz and Maz. Us against two armies and Noorsham, a Demdji turned into a weapon by the Sultan; a Demdji who also happened to be my brother.

  Us against impossible odds and a devastatingly powerful Demdji. But we’d survived. And from there the story of the battle of Fahali had travelled across the desert faster even than the story of the Sultim trials had. I’d heard it told a dozen times by folk who didn’t know the Rebellion was listening. Our exploits got greater and less plausible with every telling but the tale always ended the same way, with a sense that, while the storyteller might be done, the story wasn’t. One way or another, the desert wasn’t going to be the same after the battle of Fahali.

  The legend of the Blue-Eyed Bandit had grown along with the tale of Fahali, until I was a story that I didn’t wholly recognise. It claimed that the Blue-Eyed Bandit was a thief instead of a rebel. That I tricked my way into people’s beds to get information for my Prince. That I’d killed my own brother on the battlefield. I hated that one the most. Maybe because there’d been a moment, finger on the trigger, where it was almost true. And I had let him escape. Which was almost as bad. He was out there somewhere with all of that power. And, unlike me, he didn’t have any other Demdji to help him.

  Sometimes, late at night, after the rest of the camp had gone to sleep, I’d say out loud that he was alive. Just to know whether it was true or not. So far I could say it without hesitation. But I was scared that there would come a day when I wouldn’t be able to any more. That would mean it was a lie, and my brother had died, alone and scared, somewhere in this merciless, war-torn desert.

  ‘If she’s as dangerous as they say, we ought to kill her,’ someone called from the crowd. It was a man with a bright yellow military sash across his chest that looked like it’d been stitched back together from scraps. I noticed a few were wearing those. These must be the newly appointed guard of Saramotai, since they’d gone and killed the real guard. He was holding a gun. It was pointed at my stomach. Stomach wounds were no good. They killed you slowly.

  ‘But if she’s the Blue-Eyed Bandit, she’s with the Rebel Prince.’ Someone else spoke up. ‘Doesn’t that mean she’s on our side?’ Now, that was the million-fouza question.

  ‘Funny way to treat someone on your side.’ I shifted my bound hands pointedly. A murmur went through the crowd. That was good; it meant they weren’t as united as they looked from the outside of their impenetrable wall. ‘So if we’re all friends here, how about you untie me and we can talk?’

  ‘Nice try, Bandit.’ Hossam gripped me tighter. ‘We’re not giving you a chance to get your hands on a gun. I’ve heard the stories of how you killed a dozen men with a single bullet.’ I was pretty sure that wasn’t possible. Besides, I didn’t need a gun to take down a dozen men.

  It was almost funny. They’d used rope to tie me. Not iron. If ever there was iron touching my skin, I was as human as they were. So long as there wasn’t, I could raise the desert against them. Which meant I could do more damage with my hands tied than I ever could with a gun in them. But damage wasn’t the plan.

  ‘Malik should decide what we do with the Bandit anyway.’ The serious-eyed man rubbed his hand over his chin nervously as he mentioned their self-appointed leader.

  ‘I do have a name, you know,’ I offered.

  ‘Malik isn’t back yet,’ the same one who’d been pointing the gun at me snapped. He seemed like the tense sort. ‘She could do anything before he gets back.’

  ‘It’s Amani. My name, that is.’ No one was listening. ‘In case you were wondering.’ This arguing might go on for a while. Ruling by committee never went quick. It barely ever worked at all.

  ‘Then lock her away until Malik gets here,’ a voice from somewhere in the back of the crowd called.

  ‘He’s right,’ another voice called from the other side, another face I couldn’t see. ‘Throw her in jail where she can’t make any trouble.’

  A ripple of agreement spread through the crowd. Finally the man with sad eyes jerked his head in a sharp nod.

  The crowd parted hastily as Hossam started to pull me through. Only they didn’t move very far. Everyone wanted to get a look at the Blue-Eyed Bandit. They stared and jostled for space as I was pulled past them. I knew exactly what they were seeing. A girl younger than some of their daughters, with a split lip and dark hair stuck to her face by blood and sweat. Legends were never what you expected when you saw them up close. I was no exception. The only thing that made me any different from every other skinny, dark-skinned desert girl w
as eyes that burned a brighter blue than the midday sky. Like the hottest part of a fire.

  ‘Are you one of them?’ It was a new voice, rising shrill above the din of the crowd. A woman with a yellow sheema shoved to the front. The cloth was stitched with flowers that almost matched my eyes. There was a desperate urgency in her face that made me nervous. There was something about the way she said them. Like she might mean Demdji.

  Even folk who knew about Demdji couldn’t usually pick me out as one. We children of Djinn and mortal women looked more human than most folk reckoned. Hell, I’d even fooled myself for near seventeen years. Mostly I didn’t look unnatural, just half-foreign.

  My eyes were what gave me away, but only if you knew what you were looking for. And it seemed like this woman did.

  ‘Hossam.’ The woman staggered to keep up as he dragged me through the streets. ‘If she’s one of them, she’s worth just as much as my Ranaa. We could trade her instead. We could—’

  But Hossam shoved her aside, letting her be swallowed back into the crowd as he dragged me deeper into the city.

  The streets of Saramotai were as narrow as they were ancient, forcing the crowd to thin and then dissipate as we moved. Walls pressed close around us in the lengthening shadows, tight enough in some places that my shoulders touched on both sides. We passed between two brightly painted houses with their doors blown in. Gunpowder marks on walls. Boarded-up entryways and windows. There were more and more marks of war the further we walked. A city where the fighting had come from inside, instead of beyond the walls. I supposed that was called a rebellion.

  The smell of rotting flesh came before I saw the bodies.

  We passed under a narrow arch half covered by a carpet drying in the sun. The tassels brushed my neck as I ducked under. When I looked back up, I saw two dozen bodies swinging by their necks. They were strung together across the great exterior wall like lanterns.

  Lanterns who’d had their eyes picked out by vultures.

  It was hard to tell if they’d been old or young or pretty or scarred. But they’d all been wealthy. The birds hadn’t gotten to the kurtas stitched with richly dyed thread or the delicate muslin sleeves of their khalats. I almost gagged at the smell. Death and desert heat made quick work of bodies.

  The sun was setting behind me. Which meant that when sunrise came the bodies would blaze with light.

  A new dawn. A new desert.

  Chapter 3

  The prison almost smelled worse than the corpses.

  Hossam shoved me down the steps that led underground into the jail cells. I had time to glimpse a long line of iron-barred cells facing each other across a narrow hallway before Hossam pushed me inside one. My shoulder hit the ground hard. Damn, that was going to bruise.

  I didn’t try to get back up. I lay with my head against the cool stone floor as Hossam locked the jail cell behind me. The clang of iron on iron set my teeth on edge. I still didn’t move as the footsteps faded up the stairs. I waited three full breaths before struggling to my feet using my bound hands and elbows.

  There was one small window at the top of my cell that gave just enough light that I wasn’t fumbling around in the dark. Through the iron bars I could see into the cell across from mine. A girl no older than ten was curled up in the corner, shivering in a pale green khalat that had gone grubby, watching me with huge eyes.

  I leaned my face into the bars of the cell. The cold iron bit deep into the Demdji part of me.

  ‘Imin?’ I called down the prison. ‘Mahdi?’ I waited with bated breath as only silence answered. Then all the way at the other end of the prison I saw the edge of a face appear, pressed against the bars, fingers curling around the iron desperately.

  ‘Amani?’ a voice called back. It sounded cracked with thirst, but an annoyingly nasal, imperious note remained. The one I’d gotten to know over the last few months since Mahdi and a few others from the intellectual set in Izman had made the trek out of the city and to our camp. ‘Is that you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s me.’ My shoulders sagged in relief. They were still alive. I wasn’t too late. ‘I’m here to rescue you.’

  ‘Shame about you getting captured, too, then, isn’t it?’

  I bit my tongue. It figured I could count on Mahdi to still be rude to me even from the inside of a jail cell. I didn’t think a whole lot of Mahdi or any of the rest of the weedy city boys who’d come to the heart of the Rebellion so late. After we’d already spilled so much blood to claim half the desert. But still, these were the men who’d supported Ahmed when he first came to Izman. The ones he’d traded philosophies with, and first started to fan the spark of rebellion with. Besides, if I let everyone I found annoying die, we’d be mighty thin on allies.

  ‘Well’ – I put on my sweetest voice – ‘how else was I meant to get through the gates after you bungled your mission so badly that they put the entire city on lockdown?’

  I was met with a satisfyingly sullen silence from the other end of the prison. It would be hard for even Mahdi to argue that he hadn’t failed from the wrong side of a prison door. Still, I could gloat later. Now the last of the daylight was starting to retreat, I was going to have to move quickly. I stepped away from the iron bars. Rubbing my fingers together, I tried to work some blood back into my hands.

  The sand that had stuck between them when I’d pretended to trip at the gates shifted in anticipation. It was in the folds of my clothes, too – in my hair, against the sweat of my skin. That was the beauty of the desert. It got into everything, right down to your soul.

  Jin said that to me once.

  I brushed aside that memory as I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and pulled the sand away from my skin – every grain, every particle answering my call and tugging away from me until it hung in careful suspension in the air.

  When I opened my eyes I was surrounded by a haze of sand that glowed golden in the last of the late afternoon sun streaming into the cell.

  In the cell across from mine, the little girl in the green khalat straightened a little, leaning out of the gloom to get a closer look.

  I sucked in a breath and the sand gathered together into a shape like a whip. I moved my tied hands away from my body as far as I could, shifting the sand with the motion. None of the other Demdji seemed to understand why I needed to move when I used my power. Hala said it made me look like some Izmani market charlatan of the lowest order. But she’d been born with her power at her fingertips. Where I came from, a weapon needed a hand to use it.

  The sand slashed between my wrists like a blade, severing the rope. My arms snapped free.

  Now I could do some real damage.

  I grabbed hold of the sand and slashed my arm downwards in one clean arc, like the blow of a sword. The sand went with it, smashing into the lock of the cell with all the power of a whole desert storm gathered into one blow.

  The lock shattered with a satisfying crack. And just like that, I was free.

  The little girl in green stared as I kicked the door open, careful not to touch the iron as I gathered the sand back into my fist.

  ‘So.’ I sauntered down the length of the hallway, tugging away at what was left of the severed rope on my wrists. The rope came away from my right hand easily, leaving a red welt behind. I worked at the knot on my left hand as I came to a stop outside the cell that held Mahdi. ‘How’re those diplomatic negotiations going for you?’ The last of the rope on my hands slithered away to the floor.

  Mahdi looked sour. ‘Are you here to mock us or to rescue us?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason I can’t do both.’ I leaned my elbows into the cell door and propped my chin on my fist. ‘Remind me again how you told Shazad you didn’t need us to come with you, because women just couldn’t be taken seriously in political negotiations?’

  ‘Actually’ – a voice piped up from the back of the cell – ‘I think what he said was that you and Shazad would be “unnecessary distractions”.’

  Imin moved t
o the door so I could see him clearly. I didn’t recognise his face but I’d know those sardonic yellow eyes anywhere. Our Demdji shape-shifter. Last time I’d seen Imin, leaving camp, she’d been wearing a petite female shape in oversized men’s clothes – to lighten the load for the horse. It was a familiar body I’d seen her wear more than once now. Though it was just one in an infinite deck of human shapes Imin could wear: boy, girl, man, or woman. I was used to Imin’s ever-changing face by now. It meant that some days she was a small girl with big eyes being dwarfed by the horse she was riding, or a fighter with the strength to lift someone off the ground with one hand. Other days he was a skinny scholar, looking annoyed but harmless in the back of a cell in Saramotai. But boy or girl, man or woman, those startling gold eyes never changed.

  ‘That’s right.’ I turned back to Mahdi. ‘Maybe I’d forgotten, on account of how amazed I was that she didn’t knock all your teeth in then and there.’

  ‘Are you done?’ Mahdi looked like he’d bitten into a pickled lemon. ‘Or are you going to waste more time that we could be using to escape?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all right.’ I stepped back, reaching out a hand. The sand answered, gathering itself into my fist. I pulled back my hand, feeling the power build in my chest, holding it for a moment before I smashed the sand down. The lock exploded.

  ‘Finally.’ Mahdi sounded exasperated, like I was a servant who’d just taken an unreasonably long time to bring him his food. He tried to shove past me, but I stuck my arm out, stopping him.

  ‘What—’ he started, outrage already rising. I clapped my hand over his mouth, shutting him up, as I listened. I saw the change in his face the moment he heard it, too. Footsteps on the staircase. The guards had heard us.

  ‘You had to be so loud?’ he whispered as I removed my hand.

  ‘You know, next time I may not bother saving you.’ I shoved him back into his cell, my mind already rushing ahead to how I was going to get us out of there alive. Imin pushed past Mahdi, stepping out of the cell. I didn’t stop him. I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. He was already shifting as he went, shedding the harmless scholar’s body until he was two heads taller than me and twice as wide. I wouldn’t want to meet this shape of Imin’s in a dark alley. He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably inside his shirt, now tight across his body. A seam split at the shoulder.