Outside, the sandstorm had whipped the camp’s fear into chaos. Rebels were rushing to tie sheemas around their faces as others gathered supplies or tried to calm horses. Everybody knew what our evacuation plan was. But it was one thing knowing it, another trying to execute it in the dead of night with bullets tearing through the air.
I fought for better control. I tried to breathe as I rose onto my knees. The gunfire had come from above. That meant they were on the walls of the canyon. I shifted, pushing my hands outward, pushing my power towards them, creating a shield from the gunfire as best I could.
As the sand moved, I saw the first rebel’s body. Fresh red blood was spilling out of the bullet wound in his chest. I felt my control slip and grabbed at it again.
Shazad was on her feet, already giving orders as I kept the air raging around us, pulling the chaos into order.
‘Amani! We have to go!’ Shazad screamed over the roaring of sand, reaching for me.
‘I can cover your escape!’ I called back. ‘Get everyone else out!’
‘Not without you.’ Shazad shook her head. Her dark hair was already coming free from its braid, whipping into her face frantically. Behind her I could see people desperately saddling horses, some clambering onto the backs of the twins in the forms of giant Rocs.
‘Yes, without me!’ I screamed back. I wanted to tell her that I’d be fine. But Demdji promises weren’t safe to make. ‘Get everyone else to safety. Get Ahmed to safety. They need you with them, and you need me here.’
Shazad hesitated a moment. My friend was fighting it. But our general knew I was right. Half the camp would die without some kind of cover. And right now I was the only cover we had.
Shazad half turned. She glanced over her shoulder to where Ahmed was trying to calm the panic enough to get people away, then back to me. ‘If you don’t follow behind’ – she dropped down in front of me, clasping my shoulder for just a moment – ‘you’d better believe I’ll come after you.’
And then she was gone. I turned everything I had in me outwards. I emptied myself into the desert, a perfect cyclone shielding the edges of the camp, cutting our people’s escape off from the soldiers’ sight.
I didn’t know how long I held it. As long as I could, before my arms started to shake. I was distantly aware of the chaos around me. Of supplies being loaded, of horses being led to the entrance of the camp, of Izz and Maz shooting into the air under a hail of gunfire. Of shouting, far away.
But all I really knew was the desert. I was wholly part of the sandstorm until I thought I might scatter to dust and whip away with it. I was losing control. It wasn’t just my arms. My whole body was trembling with the effort. The sand was whipping through my hair instead of towards the enemy. I needed to let go. And if I had any shot of getting out, I needed to do it now.
I pushed myself to my feet. My legs buckled hard below me. Arms around my waist caught me before I could hit the ground.
‘I’ve got you,’ Jin said in my ear. ‘Let go; I’ve got you.’
A horse was rearing and kicking, panicking as the storm started to close in around us as my control wavered. ‘Why … are you … still here?’ I gasped out. ‘Shazad—’
My head was swimming with the effort of keeping a grip on the sand. If I let go, the sand would race in and bury this place, drowning anyone who hadn’t made it out yet. ‘She’s got most everyone else out.’ The solidness of Jin’s body was the only thing propping me up now.
‘Not you.’
‘Like hell I’d leave you behind to get yourself killed.’ His voice was low and sure in my ear as his body curled around mine. Protecting me as he urged the horse forward. He pushed me into the saddle, swinging himself up behind me. A gun went off nearby, too close for comfort. ‘Amani. Let go. I’ve got you, I promise. Trust me.’
So I let go.
Chapter 11
We rode like we were trying to beat the sunset to the horizon. The army was behind us. We had to get far enough into the mountains to outstrip them.
I slipped out of consciousness somewhere around leaving camp and slept away the few hours of darkness we had left. When I woke up, leaning against Jin, a new dawn was on us and we had an army in pursuit. The last of my power went into raising the desert behind us, creating as much of a shield as I could between the soldiers and our little party.
Jin and I weren’t alone. About a dozen stragglers from camp who hadn’t managed to get out with the twins or Shazad’s first wave of riders were with us. Some of them were riding double on the last of our horses. I couldn’t make out their faces as we raced across the burning sands. And I didn’t know who had gotten away with Ahmed and Shazad or if whoever was with us could ride well enough to keep up. They didn’t really have a choice right now.
My arm was a constant shooting pain up my side that got worse every time I checked behind. It took everything in me to keep it up and keep the pain from shattering my focus.
Finally I couldn’t hold on any longer, and neither could the horses. If we hadn’t outrun them by now, we would have to stand and fight. I dropped the shield behind us. Jin seemed to feel the tension flee my body. He wheeled the panting beast around, gun drawn, checking behind us for pursuers. My vision blurred from the sheer relief of not using my power any more. I shielded my eyes against the last of the desert sun. We were all perfectly still as we scanned the horizon for any sign of movement. But there was nothing behind us but open sand. We’d lost them.
‘We can pitch camp here,’ Jin commanded, his voice reverberating through his chest, into my back. He was hoarse with thirst.
‘We’re not safe,’ I started to argue.
‘We’re never safe,’ Jin said, so only I heard.
‘We’ve got no cover, and the horses—’
‘The horses aren’t going to make it any farther without a rest and we can’t outrun them on foot,’ Jin said in my ear. ‘And we can’t outrun them without you, either. We’ll post a watch, move again if there’s even a cloud of dust on the horizon.’
He slipped off our horse and started giving orders to pitch tents and go through the supplies people had grabbed as we evacuated. He uncapped something at his side and took a swig before passing it to me.
I brought the water skin to my mouth and with shaking hands sipped slowly, cradling my injured shoulder close to my body. There were a dozen of us, give or take. That meant a whole lot of missing faces who were now just bodies in the sand if they hadn’t gotten away with Ahmed and Shazad. I was the only Demdji among us. Hopefully that meant Hala and Delila were together, and between them, they could hide even a big group of moving rebels. And Shazad would get them all to safety. I had to trust they’d be waiting for us.
My aunt, Safiyah, was among those who’d escaped with us, as were two of the other women from Saramotai. I supposed it was hard to follow an escape plan when you didn’t know it. Safiyah was helping dole out food. A few other familiar faces were dotted around. Relief eased my heart a little.
There’d be no fire tonight. It left us vulnerable to Nightmares or Skinwalkers but we were a lot more vulnerable if we lit a beacon to the Sultan’s army. We’d just have to ring the camp in whatever iron we had and hope for the best.
Everyone was ravaged from the escape. Some were already stuffing bread into their mouths and simply collapsing as the sun sank low. We’d need to set a watch, and divvy up the supplies among the horses and pitch the tents. And there were a thousand and one other things to think of. But my head was spinning and I couldn’t think of them.
I downed the water until my head steadied. We wouldn’t have to make it last that long anyhow. By now I knew our part of the desert. We were a three-day ride from the port city of Ghasab, but at the pace we’d set, riding all night and through the day, we’d be there by sunset tomorrow. From there we could resupply and rejoin with everyone at the meeting point in the mountains. Well, everyone who’d gotten away.
I stowed the water away and gingerly tried to slide off the h
orse, testing my weight on my tender right arm as I braced myself against the saddle. It surrendered instantly, buckling me towards the sand in a messy heap.
‘You’re hurt.’ Jin reached down toward where I was sprawled. I ignored his hand and pulled myself up with my good arm, using the stirrup. The horse was so tired it barely protested.
‘I’ll survive.’ I tried to hold my arm as normal as I could as I turned away from him. ‘I always have.’
‘Amani!’ He raised his voice as I walked away, loud enough so a few of the rebels glanced our way, before quickly getting back to work. Everyone knew enough to stay out of it. ‘I watched you walk across an entire desert. I’ve memorised the way you move. And right now you’re moving like you’ve dislocated your shoulder. You need to let me take a look at it.’
‘I can give you something for the pain,’ Safiyah interrupted, brushing sand off her fingers. Almost everyone knew enough to stay out of it.
‘She doesn’t need something for the pain,’ Jin said evenly. He was talking to Safiyah, but his eyes never left me. ‘She needs someone to pop her arm back in its socket before we have to saw it off.’
That made me stop.
I turned back to face him. He had unwrapped his sheema and wound it around his neck and I could see his face clearly. Jin had always been good at bluffing. A faint smile reappeared, like he could read what I was thinking more easily than I could. That smile always meant trouble. ‘Willing to chance it, Bandit?’
I was almost sure he was lying. But I wasn’t more sure than I was fond of having two working arms.
‘Fine.’ I extended my arm to him as far as I could, like a kid holding out a wounded animal she’d found in the desert. Jin didn’t take it. Instead he put a hand on my back. The familiar thrill rushed up my spine. My body didn’t seem to know I was angry at him. He led me into the small blue tent I claimed when we were on the move. Someone had pitched it for me. He let the tent flap fall shut behind us, sealing us in privacy.
The tent was too low to stand in. I stooped stubbornly until Jin pulled me to the ground to sit across from him. Night was descending fast around us, but there was still just enough light to see by. Outside I could hear the shuffle of the camp as it got ready for a night in the desert.
‘I need to see it.’ His voice was gentle now that we were alone. It took me a second to understand what he meant.
‘Fine,’ I said again, avoiding his gaze.
Very carefully, he put one hand on my upper arm and slid the other one under my khalat at the collar. His fingers were warm and familiar. Once he would’ve made a joke about getting his hands under my clothes. But now a silent tension hung between us – until I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘Trust me.’ Jin wasn’t looking me in the face, though he was so close to me it was almost the only place he could look. ‘I had to learn on the Black Seagull, before this all started.’ This. I knew he meant the Rebellion. I almost laughed. It was such a small word to mean all of us and everything we’d done and everything we still had left to do. ‘A lot of sailors got hurt getting tangled up in ropes.’
He did something that sent a stab of pain through my side. I hissed through my teeth.
‘Sorry.’
‘You goddamn should be.’ Pain sharpened my tongue. ‘This happened when you shoved me, you know.’
‘You’re right,’ Jin deadpanned, fingers still prodding gently at me. ‘I should’ve let you get shot; that’s so much easier to recover from.’
‘And what would you know about that?’ We were running for our lives. This wasn’t the right time to be picking a fight, not in the middle of a war. But I hadn’t been the one to bring it up. ‘You weren’t around when I did.’
‘You’d rather I’d stayed to watch you die?’ Jin’s jaw was tight.
‘I didn’t die.’
‘But you might have.’
‘And you might’ve died off spying on the Xichian!’ Silence dropped between us. But we didn’t move. Neither of us pulled away or forward. Jin’s fingers still explored my tender shoulder.
He finally spoke again. ‘It’s dislocated. But not broken.’ He was just above me now, so all I could see was his mouth and the shadow of stubble along his jaw. My shoulder braced between his two hands. ‘This part is going to hurt like hell. You ready?’
‘Well, when you put it that way, how could I say no?’ That slight curve to his mouth that always made me feel like we were in this together appeared. ‘I’m ready.’
‘All right.’ He shifted so we were face-to-face. ‘I’m going to pop your shoulder back in on three.’ I gritted my teeth and prepared myself. ‘One …’
I took a deep breath.
‘Two …’
Before I could tense in anticipation of ‘three’, Jin wrenched my arm out and up.
Pain stabbed from my elbow to my shoulder and tumbled out of my mouth violently. ‘Son of a bitch!’ Another curse ripped out after it in Xichian, then one in Jarpoorian that Jin had taught me while we crossed the desert, the pain drawing out every insult in every language that I knew. I was halfway through a colourful curse in Gallan when Jin kissed me.
Any more words I might have had died cataclysmically the second his mouth found mine. My thoughts fell to ruins right behind.
I’d almost forgotten what being kissed by Jin was like.
God, did he ever know how to kiss me.
He kissed me like it was the first time and the last time. Like we were both going to burn alive from it. And I folded into him like I didn’t care. The Rebellion might be falling apart around us, the whole desert even, but for now we were both still alive and we were together, and the anger between us had turned into a different fire that drew us both into the middle of it until I wasn’t sure which one of us was consuming the other one.
He pulled away with sudden, gut-wrenching speed, breaking us apart as quickly as we’d come together. My own ragged breathing filled the silence that followed. It was full dark now. All I could make out was the rise and fall of his shoulders and the paleness of his white shirt.
‘Why did you do that?’ It came out in a low breath. I was close enough that I saw the rise and fall of his throat when he swallowed. I had the sudden urge to rest my mouth there and taste whether his breath was as unsteady and as uncertain as mine.
But when Jin spoke, his voice was as steady as a rock. ‘To distract you. How’s the pain?’
I realised that the screaming pain in my arm had gone silent as the rest of my body came alive in answer to Jin’s kiss. He was right; it didn’t hurt half as bad as it had when he’d twisted it back into place.
He picked something up off the ground – my red sheema, I realised. It must’ve slipped off. Jin touched my arm again, but this time his hand was just flesh and blood on my elbow, not fire invading my skin. He tied the sheema around my arm and looped it over my neck like a sling, tying it behind my neck in one firm knot before pushing himself to his feet. ‘Besides …’ His voice was light, like it was all a joke and we were just two strangers flirting with each other before parting ways again. Not two people who were as tangled as we were. Who had crossed the desert together. Who had faced death together over and over. ‘Who could resist a mouth like that?’
He stole another kiss from me so whip quick that he was gone before I even fully felt it.
I sat in the dark long after he went, not rising even when I heard the sounds of a hastily thrown together meal being eaten outside. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. I felt raw. Burned out. Scorched earth. I distantly remembered that phrase – Shazad had taught it to me. It was something to do with war strategy. I wasn’t sure if Jin and I were at war or not.
I listened to the camp settle around me as everything ran through my head. Everything we had gone through. Everything left ahead of us. Everything that he wouldn’t say. The more silence fell over the camp, the more noise my anger made.
We were both as stubborn as hell, but one of u
s was going to have to crack eventually.
I was on my feet before I could think about it, tearing away the tent flap. The camp had gone completely silent now, everyone settled into their tents except whoever had been set to keep watch. I strode across the camp. I knew Jin’s tent on sight, red and patched on one side and set up straight across from mine. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do – shout at him or kiss him or something else entirely.
I’d decide when I saw him.
I was almost there – two paces from his tent – when something clamped over my mouth, hard. Panic spiked in my chest as a cloth covered my face like a gag, smelling sickly sweet, like spilled liquor.
Instinct took over. I drove my elbow backwards. A scream of pain tore through my injured shoulder. A mistake. My mouth opened in a gasp. I inhaled and the smell invaded my mouth, clinging to my tongue, my throat, all the way down to my lungs.
I was being poisoned.
The effects were instant. My legs buckled and the world tilted sideways.
The Sultan’s army had found us.
Why hadn’t we had warning? I could’ve done something. I could’ve raised the desert. I could’ve stopped them. Now I could barely fight. I thrashed helplessly, my fingers clawing at the hand on my mouth. I twisted to the side, struggling to throw my weight downwards. Mostly knowing it was already too late. As I fell I saw two bodies slumped in the sand, not moving.
The watch, already dead.
I needed to warn the others. The world was fading. I was slipping away. I was going to die. Jin. I needed to give him a chance to escape. To save the others.
I opened my mouth to scream a warning. The darkness swallowed it with me.
Chapter 12
I woke up being violently sick. Vomit splattered next to me across the wooden floor, by a bucket. I grabbed it before the second heave came.
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