And now I needed to get out.
I might’ve laughed at the irony of it if I didn’t think it’d hurt so much.
The world was starting to put itself back together as I took stock of the situation. I was weaker than I ought to be. And I could already feel my eyelids getting heavy again, wanting to return to sleep. I had to sit up. I pressed my elbows into the cold marble slab and tried to push myself up. Pain stabbed across my entire body at the movement. I hissed air through my teeth and the sheet that’d been covering me slithered away.
I grabbed at it, and pinpricks of pain screamed back at me across my arms. Then I caught sight of myself for the first time. Under the soft white sheet I was wrapped in bandages. They covered almost every part of my body. Wrists to shoulders. Around my chest and all the way down my back. Tentatively I reached down and grazed my fingers over my legs. My hand met cloth instead of skin. I looked like a doll sewn out of linen. Only dolls didn’t usually spot fresh blood like I was.
And here I’d been figuring nothing would be worse than waking up shackled on a ship.
I didn’t exactly like being proven wrong.
And as the pain of whatever was under the bandages subsided, I realised I was alone. That was a nice surprise. I spied a familiar blue khalat flung over a nearby chair. The one Shazad had given me before Imin’s wedding. I didn’t even know how many days it’d been since then.
Moving awkwardly with my sore muscles and bandaged limbs, I retrieved the stained fabric and pulled it on, fumbling with the tiny buttons that ran up the front. At least my hands seemed undamaged. Now I just wished I had a fistful of sand or a pistol to fill them. Hell, at this point I’d even take a knife. But I couldn’t see any weapons among the clutter of the room.
Gauzy pink curtains fluttered from a huge archway. I moved gingerly toward them. Wind that tasted of familiar desert heat rippled them as I passed out onto the balcony.
Izman sprawled out below me.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen. A flat, blue-tiled roof with a gushing fountain on it leaned close enough to its neighbour to whisper city secrets. Beyond that, yellow flowers tumbled down sun-baked walls that were competing for space in the shade of their neighbours. Purple canopies crowned another house, and a golden dome pressed against minarets that jutted up like spears challenging the sky.
Jin said once that I couldn’t understand how big Izman really was. If I ever saw him alive again, I might even be glad enough to admit that he’d been right.
It looked like a jumble of rooftops that went all the way to the end of the world. Only I knew that wasn’t right. Somewhere out there was the desert I’d come from. I reached for it with my mind. For the sand and grit. But I couldn’t feel anything. The desert had been ruthlessly polished out of here. I’d have to reach beyond the palace walls for that.
I gauged the distance between the top of the wall and the balcony.
I could probably make that jump on a good day. The throbbing pain in my body reminded me today was not a good day. But all it would take was one leap of faith, and I could be in the city. If I made it. If not, I would be a broken body in the garden below. Which still might be better than getting stuck here.
No. I was going to live to see Shazad again, like she’d asked me to promise. I was going to live to see Ahmed on the throne. And I was going to live to make Jin explain just why he thought he could kiss me after leaving me.
I’d have to go through the door. Only I wasn’t about to try to walk through it like I was a guest instead of a prisoner. There would be a guard outside, no doubt about it.
There were no weapons in the room, but there was a glass jar filled with dried flowers. I picked it up off its shelf and positioned myself with my back flat against the door. And then let it go. It shattered on the colourful tiles.
That ought to get someone’s attention.
I dropped to my knees, ignoring the screaming pain in my body, as I searched through the glass for the biggest shard. It had worked; I could hear footsteps through the door, someone coming to investigate. My hand closed around a piece of glass the size of my thumb, shattered to a sharp point. I curled my hand around it just tight enough not to draw blood, staying in my crouch, back flat to the wall by the door – ready for whoever came through. It had worked in Saramotai and I didn’t believe the Sultan’s guards were any brighter than Malik’s.
The door swung open. I stayed low, heart pounding. All I saw was a flash of pale grey fabric before I moved. I slashed towards the back of the knees. It sliced through thin linen, gouging straight for the soft flesh underneath.
Instead, the glass scraped noisily off something hard.
A wound gaped in the fabric of the trousers where my makeshift weapon had struck, revealing gleaming bronze joints underneath.
For a second all I could think of was Noorsham in the bronze armour designed to control him. Heavy words in his Last County accent echoing around inside a hollow shell. But the voice that came now was a different one.
‘Careful!’ It sounded familiar, although it wasn’t talking to me. I tipped my head back slowly, looking up at the man staring down at me dispassionately. ‘She’s armed.’
I thought I was ready for whatever I was facing here. I was dead wrong. Because in the doorway, with a new slice in his clothes, carefully parted hair stuck to his forehead, was Tamid.
The world tilted out from under me even as a guard in uniform stepped around him, weapon drawn. He grabbed me, ripping my meagre glass weapon out of my hand. It was already stained red from where I had opened my palm with it, gripping it in shock.
I didn’t even feel it. I didn’t even fight as the guard wrenched me back to the middle of the room, forcing me against the cold marble slab where I’d woken up.
I twisted in his grasp. Not to escape. But because I couldn’t stand to lose sight of Tamid.
Tamid who I’d grown up with. Tamid who, after my mother died, had been the only person in all of Dustwalk I’d cared about. Tamid who’d been my only friend for years. Who I’d last seen bleeding out in the sand while I rode away on the back of a Buraqi with Jin.
You’re dead. The words shot from my brain to my mouth and stopped short. The untruth couldn’t get any farther. Because he wasn’t dead. He was alive and stubbornly collecting the broken glass from the floor. Like he didn’t even know me. Only the slight furrow between his brows betrayed that he was focusing far too hard for such a simple task. Avoiding looking at me at all costs.
He wasn’t using a crutch, I realised. Last time I’d seen Tamid, Prince Naguib had put a bullet straight through his twisted knee when I wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted. I’d seen Tamid fall to his side, screaming. My fault. I’d seen men take lesser injuries than that and lose a leg, but here he was standing on two. I heard a small click as he moved, metal on metal, like the repeating system in a revolver. Through his torn trouser leg I saw what looked like a joint made out of brass. My heart lurched. One flesh-and-blood leg and one metallic leg.
‘What should I do with her?’ the soldier asked.
‘Tie it down to the table.’ Tamid picked up the last piece of glass. He’d called me it. Like I was less than a friend he’d chosen to turn into an enemy. Like I was less than human.
The soldier’s hands pressed painfully into my bandaged skin as he tried to hold me. I cried out without meaning to. The noise startled Tamid into looking at me.
‘Don’t—’ he started, drawing the guard’s attention. I saw my opening.
Make the first hit count.
I slammed my head forward. My skull connected with his, sending a crack of pain through my head. ‘Son of a bitch!’ I cursed, as the soldier stumbled back, clutching his forehead. I rolled off the table and made for the door. But I was too slow – the soldier was already grabbing the front of my khalat, raising his fist, angling for my face. I turned away like Shazad had taught me, aiming to catch the fist with my shoulder.
The blow never came.
Wei
ghty silence fell over the room.
I looked up. A man was holding back the soldier’s fist. For a sliver of a second I thought it was Ahmed. Sunlight still danced blearily across my vision after days in darkness, edging his profile with gold. Dark hair with the hint of a curl in it fell over a proud desert-dark brow. Sharp, determined dark eyes smudged with a sleepless night. Only his mouth was different. Set in a steady, sure line, it didn’t wear the soft uncertain question that sometimes hovered on Ahmed’s.
But he was cast from the same mould. Or rather, Ahmed was cast from the mould of this man. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sons tended to take after their fathers.
‘You should know when you have been bested, soldier,’ the Sultan said, keeping hold of his fist.
The soldier’s hand unwound itself from the front of my shirt quickly. I pulled back, out of reach. And just like that, all of the Sultan’s attention turned on me.
I’d never figured the Sultan would look so much like my prince. I’d imagined him like every faded colour drawing in the storybooks about cruel rulers who were overturned by clever heroes. Fat and old and greedy, and dressed in clothes that cost enough coin to feed a family for a year. I ought to have known better. If I’d learned anything from being the Blue-Eyed Bandit, it was that stories and the truth were rarely the same thing.
The Sultan had been the same age Ahmed was now when he took the throne. Ahmed and Jin were both born barely a year into his rule. I was decent enough at arithmetic to know that meant the man in front of me now hadn’t seen four decades yet.
‘You’ve brought me a fighter.’ He wasn’t speaking to me. I noticed a fourth figure, hovering in the door. My aunt. Anger flooded out all my common sense. I moved again, lunging at her on instinct. I knew I wouldn’t make it far, but the Sultan caught me before I’d gotten a step, hands on my shoulders. ‘Stop,’ he ordered. ‘You’ll do yourself more harm than you will to her.’ He was right. The sudden motion had made my head light. My strength was draining out of me, even if the will to fight wasn’t. I sagged in his grip.
‘Good,’ the Sultan praised me gently, like I was an animal who’d done a trick. ‘Now let’s take a look at you.’ He reached for my face. I recoiled on instinct, but I had nowhere to go. I’d been here before – on a dark night in Dustwalk and with Commander Naguib, another son of the Sultan’s. I’d had the bruises he gave me across my cheek for weeks.
But the Sultan cupped my chin gently. He’d been a fighter when he’d taken the throne. They said he’d killed half his brothers that day himself. Two decades didn’t seem to have made him any weaker. His fingers were calloused from use. For hunting. For war. For killing Ahmed and Delila’s mother. But they were terribly gentle peeling my matted hair away from my face so he could see me clearer.
‘Blue eyes,’ he said, without taking his hands away. ‘Unusual for a Mirajin girl.’
My heart caught in my chest. What had my aunt and Tamid told him? That I’d come from the Rebellion? Would he believe them? Had the stories of the Blue-Eyed Bandit reached as high as the Sultan? ‘Your aunt has told me all about you, Amani.’
‘She’s a liar.’ It spilled out, fast and angry. ‘Whatever she’s told you, she can’t be trusted.’
‘So you’re saying you’re not a Demdji, as she claims? Or are you just accusing her of being faithless to her own flesh and blood?’
‘Don’t bother, Amani,’ my aunt interjected. ‘You might have everyone else in Dustwalk fooled, but your mother confided in me.’ I understood the heavy look she was giving me over the Sultan’s shoulder. She’d told him we’d come straight from Dustwalk. She was a liar. Not on my account, but she’d lied all the same. She hadn’t told him about the Rebellion. And she was warning me with those veiled words. It would be bad for both of us if the Sultan found out where I’d really come from. He’d have questions for her, no doubt. Besides, I was valuable as a Demdji, not as a rebel.
‘She wouldn’t be the first, you know,’ the Sultan said to me. ‘To bring me a false Demdji. I’ve already had plenty of fathers and mothers travel from little towns at the end of my country just like yours, bringing me daughters with their hair dipped in saffron to make it look yellow, or their skin painted blue, thinking I would not know the difference.’
He ran his hand across my cheekbone. There was a wound there; I could feel the dull throb of it under his thumb. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten it. His eyes travelled between me and my aunt. ‘You despise this woman. And I don’t blame you. Do you go to prayers?’ I kept my eyes on him, although I could feel Tamid watching me, tucked against the wall, like he could become part of it. Last time I’d truly attended prayers had been in Dustwalk and he’d been beside me, trying to make me be quiet as I shifted restlessly. ‘The Holy Books tell us worse than traitors are those who betray their own flesh and blood. Aunts who sell their nieces. Sons who rebel against their fathers.’ I tensed. ‘So, I will strike a deal with you. The same one I have struck with all the false Demdji who’ve come before you. If you can tell me that you are not the daughter of a Djinni, I will release you, with as much gold as you can carry, and your aunt will be punished in a way of your choosing. If you need any inspiration, the girl whose father dyed her skin chose to have him strung up by his toes until all his blood rushed into his brain and killed him.’ He tapped my cheek, like we were sharing a joke. ‘All you have to do is say six little words: I am not a Djinni’s daughter, and you can have your freedom. Or stay silent and your aunt will walk away with all that gold.’
It was a damn good offer. Freedom and revenge. Only I’d have to lie for it.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. I focused on his mouth as the words formed, that one part of him that didn’t look like Ahmed.
I couldn’t lie, but I could be deceitful. I’d done it before. I’d dodged my way out of plenty of things without speaking a single word that wasn’t true.
‘I didn’t know my father.’ Tamid will vouch for me. But I didn’t want to bring him into this just now if I didn’t have to. The Sultan gave no sign that he knew that anything connected me and Tamid. Tamid could’ve told the Sultan that he knew me as more than a Demdji. He knew me as the girl who’d gotten a bullet put through his knee and ridden off with the Rebellion. But if he hadn’t already, I wasn’t about to be the one to sell us out. ‘My mother never said a word about him to me, and the whole of Dustwalk figured he was a Gallan soldier—’
The Sultan pressed his fingers to my lips, cutting me off sharply. He was leaning in so close now he filled my whole world. There was something unsettlingly familiar about him – more than just the face he shared with Ahmed. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
‘I don’t want to hear tricks or half-truths.’ He spoke so low only I could hear. ‘My father was a fool and he died at my hands, with a surprised look on his face. I am clearly not a fool, or else my rebel son would have done the same to me already. Now’ – he carefully peeled one last strand of hair away from my face – ‘all I want is six simple words from you.’
The Blue-Eyed Bandit might be the stuff of campfire stories, but Demdji, we were the stuff of legends. Half of Miraji wasn’t even sure we were real. But the Sultan seemed well informed.
I had to lie. I couldn’t lie, but I had to. Everything depended on it. Not just me getting out of here, and not just my life. Everyone’s. If I couldn’t lie now, he might pull truth after truth from my lips – maybe even about the Rebellion. He’d pull knowledge out of my silences. And he’d turn me into a weapon like he had with Noorsham. Into a slave.
I reached desperately for the lie that would get me out of there. Get me away from this enemy wearing the face of my prince.
I fought with everything in me. But everything in me was Demdji.
And Demdji couldn’t tell lies.
The Sultan laughed. It was an unexpectedly honest sound. ‘No need to strain yourself. I knew what you were from the moment I saw you, little Demdji.’ He’d been toying with me.
‘Reward this good woman.’ He gestured to my aunt lazily. The soldier snapped to attention and gestured for my aunt to follow him. His shoulders seemed to sag in relief as he left the room. She looked so damn pleased with herself as she turned, disappearing from the room. And I hated her. God, I hated her.
From the corner of my eye I noticed Tamid shifting in the corner, like he was expecting a dismissal, too. Like he’d rather leave than watch whatever the Sultan was about to do to me.
‘Sit down, Amani,’ the Sultan ordered.
I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to stand and face our enemy. But suddenly, and against my will, my body moved on its own, folding my legs under myself until I was sitting back on the marble slab where I’d woken up.
Panic rose up, almost choking me. I’d never been betrayed by my own body like that before. ‘What did you do to me?’
The Sultan didn’t answer right away. ‘Your eyes betrayed you from the start.’ Traitor eyes. ‘There was another Demdji before you. He had blue eyes, too.’ Noorsham. He was talking about Noorsham. ‘It’s one of the great justices of our world that your kind, for all your power, are yet so vulnerable to words.’ They’d had Noorsham’s true name. That was how they’d controlled him. Noorsham had worn a mask, made of bronze, engraved with his name. The Sultan knew Noorsham’s true name. ‘What do you think the chances are there are two Demdji in the desert with blue eyes who don’t share the same father? I would say they were small.’ Which meant the Sultan knew our father’s name. And my true name. My eyes shot around the room, looking for a bronze suit like the one they’d encased Noorsham in. But the room looked like nothing more than a Holy Father’s chambers. Tamid had always wanted to be a Holy Man.
‘We lost our last Demdji, unfortunately,’ the Sultan was saying. ‘It was our young Tamid’s idea to make things a little more secure this time.’ He nodded to my one-time friend. Tamid was still looking anywhere but at me.
Traitor to the Throne Page 11