Traitor to the Throne

by Alwyn Hamilton

  *

  I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck.

  The Sultan had told me to come find him when I’d succeeded, and the tug of an order on my gut kept me moving. I didn’t think about what I was doing until I’d pushed past the guard, who didn’t try to stop me, and burst through the doors.

  Dozens of heads turned to look at me as I crashed in. A thought flitted through my mind that I shouldn’t be doing this. But it was a little late for that. I strode up to the table, my eyes on the Sultan, and slammed my prize down on the table in front of him, making his cup shake.

  The Sultan looked at the dead duck.

  It was only then that I took stock of my surroundings. The council room was full to bursting. With men in uniforms. Uniforms of all sorts. Golden Mirajin uniforms and the blue of the Gallan empire.

  And they were all staring at me: a wild-eyed girl who had just slammed a dead duck with an arrow through its neck down on the table in front of her Sultan. Prince Rahim was hiding a smile under the pretence of scratching his nose, but nobody else seemed amused.

  I had just interrupted one of the Sultan’s councils to decide the outcome of the ceasefire and the fate of our whole country, with a dead duck.

  I wondered if this was what would cost me my head.

  ‘Well, it seems you are a half-decent shot after all,’ the Sultan said, too low for anyone else to hear. ‘You will leave the harem at any time you please.’ There was a short pause in which a moment of hope bloomed, that he might really leave that loophole for me, one that would allow me slip out of his grip and back to the Rebellion … ‘But you will do so with a guard. And you will not leave the palace.’ My hope died. I was stupid to even entertain it to start with. The Sultan wasn’t an incautious man. And then, raising his voice: ‘Someone take this duck to the kitchens and my Demdji to somewhere she belongs.’ I saw the Gallan delegation’s heads lift at the word Demdji. They’d call me a demon but they knew what that word meant all the same. I wondered if the Sultan was rubbing me in their faces. That didn’t seem much of a political tactic.

  A servant lifted the duck by the neck gingerly. The papers spread across the desk shifted as he did. I caught sight of a map of Miraji, drawn in faded black ink. Marked with newer blue lines. On our half of the desert. It was barely a glimpse of a corner but it was enough. I saw it. Circled in fresh blue ink was a tiny black dot, labelled in careful print: Saramotai.

  My mind dashed to Samira. To the rebels Shazad was going to send to hold the city. To Ikar on the walls. And the women who’d chosen to stay behind. All of them sitting like a bull’s-eye inside the blue ink circle.

  A servant was already taking my arm, urging me out of the room. Trying to move me on. But I couldn’t go. Not without knowing what was happening to the city we’d already given so much to free. My mind started running, trying to find a way to stay. To get those papers.

  The Gallan ambassador was talking to the Sultan now. ‘We have a command a thousand men strong coming from the homeland with His Majesty for Auranzeb. They will need to be armed if they are to hold Saramotai. Furthermore—’

  ‘He’s lying.’ The words slipped out. The servant holding my arm hissed a warning through his teeth, tugging me towards the door harder now. But the Sultan held up his hand, stopping him.

  ‘What was that, little Demdji?’

  ‘He’s lying,’ I said again, louder this time. I tried the next words on my tongue, looking for the untruth. ‘The Gallan troops coming with their king aren’t as many as he says.’ There it was.

  The Sultan ran one calloused finger in a ring around the rim of his glass. His mind was as quick as Ahmed’s. I was a Demdji. If I said someone was lying, then that was God’s honest truth.

  ‘Where did you learn Gallan?’ the Sultan asked me.

  Now, that was a dangerous question. Some of the truth of it was Jin and a long desert crossing and sleepless nights keeping watch.

  ‘The Last County suffered under the Gallan alliance.’ It was a half-truth folded up in deception, usually too obvious to get past the Sultan. But I was offering him a gift. It might be enough. ‘And us Demdji, we pick things up fast.’

  The Sultan’s finger made another thoughtful loop of the rim of his glass. ‘I am sorry that you suffered,’ he said finally. ‘Much of my desert did.’ Finally he addressed the translator. ‘Tell the Gallan ambassador that I know there aren’t a thousand Gallan soldiers arriving with his king. And that I want the real number.’

  The translator’s eyes darted nervously between the Sultan and me as he spoke. The Gallan ambassador looked surprised as the words reached him. His eyes flicked to me, seeming to understand that I had something to do with this. But he didn’t miss a beat as he started speaking again in that guttural language of the west. I didn’t catch every word, but I did catch the number. ‘He’s still lying,’ I said again quickly. ‘There aren’t five hundred.’

  The Sultan considered me as he spoke to his translator. ‘Tell the ambassador that perhaps lying is more tolerated in Gallandie, but in Miraji, it is a sin. Tell him that this is not the first time since our alliance ruptured that one of his countrymen has tried to deceive me into providing weapons for their troops overseas in order to continue their war in the north, under the guise of arming only those allies coming to our desert. Tell him that he has one more chance to tell me the real number or I will halt negotiations altogether until his king arrives.’

  ‘Two hundred.’ The translator spoke finally, after a tense moment. The Sultan’s eyes flicked to me along with the rest of the room.

  ‘It’s the truth.’ It rolled easily off my tongue.

  ‘Well.’ The Sultan tapped the edge of his glass. ‘That’s a fairly substantial difference, isn’t it, Ambassador? No, there’s no need to translate that.’ He waved as the translator started to lean in to speak. ‘The ambassador understands my meaning. And I think he, and everyone else here, understands that they are better off not lying to me. Sit down, Amani.’

  He gestured to a seat behind himself. It was an order. I couldn’t disobey it. And I wanted to stay. This was what I had asked for. But my legs still shook a little as I folded down onto the cushion behind the Sultan.

  It wasn’t until I was settled that I realised he had called me by my name. Not little Demdji.

  I had his attention now. I just prayed I didn’t have enough for him to start calling me the Blue-Eyed Bandit.

  Chapter 24

  The duck I’d killed was served dressed in candied oranges and pomegranates, on a platter the colour of Hala’s skin, my arrow still through its neck. I wondered if that was part of the lesson. When a bullet disappeared inside flesh, you could almost forget it. The arrow wasn’t that kind.

  The council had gone on well past the sunset, as translators worked frantically, translating Gallan and Albish and Xichian and Gamanix. My head was churning with everything I’d heard in that room, turning it over and over like a prayer until I knew it by heart. I was going to try my damned hardest not to forget a word of it before I could get the news out to Shazad. One wrong detail, one point misremembered, and I could cost thousands of lives. I tried to sift out anything useless with every rotation through my head, leaving only what I could use.

  The Sultan was going to march troops to take back Saramotai. If negotiations were successful, the city would go back to the Gallans’ hands. A direct access point back into the desert and into Amonpour. Amonpour was allied with the Albish. There was an Albish camp on the border that would be in their path. They would march in three days. The Sultan was going to march troops to take back Saramotai …

  ‘You seem distracted.’ The Sultan interrupted my thoughts as he settled across from me.

  ‘Your rooms are just about the same size as the whole town where I grew up.’ It was a quick jab, meant to distract him, lest he think to order me to tell him what I was thinking about. I’m considering everything I’m going to tell the
Rebellion about your plans.

  Truth be told, his rooms were the size you’d expect for the ruler of the whole desert. I was brought in only as far as the antechamber, but I could see more doors leading off to a bedchamber with a thick red carpet, and into private baths on another side. The walls in the receiving chamber were gold and white mosaics that reflected the light of the oil lamps around us so well I almost thought it was still day. Except that above us a huge glass dome gave a clear view of the sky. And to one side a balcony overlooked the sheer drop down the cliffs to the sea.

  ‘Dustwalk.’ He seemed to pull the name from the far reaches of his mind. ‘Tell me about it.’ It was an order. Whether he meant it to be or not.

  ‘It’s a small town at the end of the desert. I grew up there.’ It was the truth and it was obedience to his order. Even if it wasn’t what he was after. One wrong word about Dustwalk and I might give away everything. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  For all the size of the room, the table we were seated at was small enough that, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve reached across it and slit my throat with the long knife he was toying with.

  I didn’t like being around the Sultan any longer than I had to. Not when he had so much power over me. Not when all it would take was one false word for him to find out who I was. Besides, it was after dark. Which meant I was already late to meet Sam by the Weeping Wall. I hadn’t told him about my plan to get out of the harem, seeing as I had no way of being sure I’d succeed or not. I sure hadn’t been expecting the plan to succeed so well that it would end with me sitting across from the Sultan. For once I had a whole lot more to tell Sam than he had to tell me. I just had to get back in time to meet him. And before I accidentally revealed the whole Rebellion to the Sultan.

  He was watching me now. As if wondering whether to push the point of my hometown or release me from the order. But I was beginning to understand how the Sultan worked. If I gave him some truth, some weakness, on my own, he’d stop circling me. ‘I hated that godforsaken dead-end town.’ I gave him that admission. ‘Please don’t make me talk about it.’

  He considered me slowly. ‘You hated everything about it?’

  I was about to tell him yes, but it wouldn’t get past my tongue. Tamid, I realised. That was holding me back. I worried at one of the scars healing on my arm, feeling the little piece of metal shift underneath. I ought to hate him now. But I didn’t know if I could hate him back then. ‘No,’ I said finally. ‘Not everything.’

  I thought he would press me. But he just nodded. ‘Help yourself to the food.’ Another order I couldn’t disobey. I had to make him order me to leave. I couldn’t last a whole dinner with the Sultan pulling little truths out of me one by one.

  ‘Why am I here?’ I started to spear the oranges off the duck one by one, putting them onto my plate. ‘You’ve got a whole garden full of wives and daughters – you could pluck one of them out to eat with you if you’re lonely.’

  I knew I was crossing into dangerous territory now. But if I was going to get expelled back to the relative safety of the harem in time to meet Sam, I couldn’t mince my words. But the Sultan just sighed in resignation as he knocked my fork aside and started to carve a knife through the brown crackling flesh. ‘Perhaps I just enjoy your company.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ I watched the knife work its way through the skin, cutting a perfect round circle off the bone.

  ‘You’re right, perhaps enjoy is a strong word.’ He placed the meat carefully onto my plate for me. ‘I find you interesting. Now’ – the Sultan drew back – ‘eat something.’

  I ignored the meat and leaned across the table to spear another candied orange straight off the skin of the duck instead. It hit my tongue in a burst of sweet and bitter like nothing I’d ever had. I leaned across again to take another one while I was still chewing the first. I caught sight of a faint smile on the Sultan’s face. ‘What?’ I asked, mouth full.

  ‘Nothing.’ The Sultan was still toying with the knife in his hand. ‘I just wish you could see the look on your face. If it could be bottled, it would be the elixir the alchemist Midhat was hunting for.’ In the stories, Midhat was an alchemist of great talent and great misery who lost his mind trying to make and bottle joy since he could not find it in the world. ‘Then again’ – the Sultan switched his grip on the knife, sawing at the meat of the duck I’d killed – ‘if I could’ve bottled the look on our foreign friends’ faces when you dropped this onto the council table, that would also give me a great deal of joy.’ He carved a leg of the duck and placed it on his own plate. Last time I’d eaten a duck, it’d been one Izz had caught in Iliaz. It still had the marks of a crocodile’s teeth through it, and the fat spat off it into the fire, making Jin curse when a bit sizzled and hit his wrist. Now I was taking food from the same hands that had held his mother down and claimed her by force when the Sultan was the same age as Jin. Probably in these same rooms.

  ‘Your Exalted Highness.’ The servant had appeared at the door so silently that I started. He was dropped into a deep bow at the door. ‘The Gallan ambassador has asked to see you. I advised him you were otherwise occupied, but he has been very insistent.’

  ‘The Gallan ambassador summons me to him in my own palace.’ The Sultan sounded more resigned than anything as he pushed away from the table. ‘Excuse me.’ My eyes followed him all the way to the door.

  I was on my feet as soon as he’d disappeared.

  I flung open two wrong doors until I found the one that led to his office.

  Facing me, instead of a wall, was a huge glass window overlooking Izman. From all the way up here, in the night, the city looked like a second sky, windows dancing with lights like stars across an otherwise dark sea. The Sultan’s kingdom spread out below him. It was the closest I’d come to Izman since the day I woke up in Tamid’s workroom. I resisted the impulse to press my hands against the glass like a child.

  The other three walls seemed designed to match the window by night. Blue plaster, inset with what looked like yellow glass stars that would catch the sun in the day.

  It reminded me of Ahmed’s pavilion. Back in a home that was gone now.

  I tried to imagine my prince here, when we took the city, keeping the peace.

  But right now we were still in the middle of a war and I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to find something that might win it.

  The room was dominated by a huge desk that was covered in papers and books and maps and pens. I doubted he’d miss some of it if it went missing. It was just a question of what to take.

  The Sultan is coming back. I tried to say the words out loud, but they wouldn’t cross my tongue. I was safe for now, as I started to carefully lift papers off the desk, holding them up to the glow of light from the city through the window. I tried over and over again to repeat the words as I worked. An early warning system. I found a sheet of paper scribbled with figures and numbers I didn’t understand. Another one was a map of Miraji. It detailed troop movements, but those I’d heard about already in the meeting earlier. My fingers faltered over a familiar-looking drawing of armour. It was the suit of metal they’d put on Noorsham. There were words scribbled along the edges. The ones used to control him.

  There were more schematics like it underneath. And others for what looked like machine parts. One of the pieces of paper was held down by a tiny piece of metal the size of a coin. My name was carved into it along with a jumble of other words in the first language. So this was what I had under my skin. I fought my urge to fling it through the window and watch the glass shatter.

  I took one of the sketches and kept exploring. I pulled out a few interesting-looking pieces of paper. One looked like supply routes. Shazad would be able to decipher that easier than I could. There was another one that looked like a map of Izman. There were dots of red ink interspersed across the paper. I held it up to the light, trying to figure out what they might be marking. But I didn’t know Izman.

  ‘The Sultan
is coming back.’ The words slipped out into the silence of the room, setting off a jump of panic in my chest. I didn’t have any pockets. I shoved the papers into the waist of my shalvar as I hurried out of the study, tugging my kurti back down over it.

  I was back at the table picking at my food when the Sultan reappeared, taking his seat across from me. ‘What did he want?’ I asked as he picked the knife back up. I prayed he couldn’t hear the raggedness of my breathing.

  ‘You.’ He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it took me aback. ‘You know, in the Gallans’ so-called religion they believe First Beings are creatures of evil. And their children are monsters.’

  ‘I know what they believe.’ My mouth had suddenly gone dry. I reached for the pitcher of sweet wine. The sudden movement made the paper stuffed inside my clothes crackle and I stilled.

  ‘They want me to hand you over.’ If the Sultan had noticed the noise, then he was doing a mighty fine job of hiding it. ‘To be brought to justice, they say. Which is a pretext, of course. They are hiding behind religious righteousness because they don’t want to admit that you are a serious threat to their being able to lie to my face and sway an alliance back in their favour.’

  ‘One of them called me a barbarian.’ I heard the bile on my own tongue. As far as I was concerned, killing off First Beings and Demdji was more barbaric than killing a duck.

  ‘Good,’ the Sultan said. ‘It would serve all of them well to remember that the people of Miraji can hold their own. Even if it is just against a duck.’ I wasn’t sure where the swell of pride came from. ‘You want to know why you’re here, Amani, dining in my chambers? It sends a message. When we were allied with the Gallan I would have had to hand you over to hang. Now’ – he picked up the pitcher I’d been too frightened to reach any further for – ‘you are free to be my guest.’

  ‘You hate them.’ I couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘They hate us. They’re using us. Why make another alliance?’ My voice had risen without my meaning it to.