Traitor to the Throne

by Alwyn Hamilton

  ‘Ahmed—’

  ‘Amani.’ He grabbed me roughly by the shoulder, jolting me forward into a hug. I collapsed gratefully. Ahmed was a lot easier to believe in when he was flesh and blood in front of me. ‘Welcome home.’

  Chapter 40

  The ripples of the night before hit us one by one.

  The events of Auranzeb were twisted by the palace before being spread among the people of Izman. The Sultan announced Miraji’s independence from foreign rule. Any country that threatened our borders would burn for it.

  The announcement went on to say that in the fighting of the night Prince Kadir had been killed. He had died bravely in combat, killed by his own brothers, the Rebel Prince and Prince Rahim, who had turned on his family unexpectedly, along with Lord Bilal, who had escaped. Prince Rahim had been apprehended trying to flee like a coward. He would be cursed forever for killing his own blood. The Sultan was grieving his son. There was no news about an execution for Rahim. After what had happened at Shira’s execution I could see why the Sultan might not want to risk another public beheading.

  There were going to be new Sultim trials. To choose a new heir to Miraji. The Sultan had told me the people never loved the throne so much as when princes were killing each other for it. He’d murdered his own son and now he was using his death to win the people back over from the Rebellion to the throne.

  But we could use it, too. We would remind the city that the Sultim trials had already chosen an heir. Prince Ahmed.

  In light of the recent events, the palace announced there would be a new curfew. The Sultan’s army of Abdals would patrol the streets. They could not be reasoned with or argued against. Anyone found on the streets between sundown and sunrise would be executed. It was for safety, the palace said. After all, only dark intentions belonged to the dark hours of the night. They didn’t say it was to hobble the Rebellion, but we all heard the meaning behind the words.

  And we were hobbled.

  It was strange, hearing it from the outside, after being on the inside for so long. We were operating blind again just when we couldn’t afford to. It was agreed that Imin would go back to the palace, to be our eyes.

  ‘Isn’t there another way?’ I knuckled my eyes tiredly as I went over it with the others. We were in Shazad’s father’s office. It had been set up as a war room of sorts. Not that much had needed to change for that. There was something comforting about it even though we could scarcely have been further from Ahmed’s pavilion back in the rebel camp. The walls were pinned with maps and notes. The map of Izman I’d stolen from the Sultan’s desk the night we’d eaten together was right in the middle. I recognised a lot of the rest as information I’d passed on from inside the palace.

  Some of it Rahim had given me.

  I’d escaped, but he was still inside. And we needed to know what was happening to him. So I felt a stab of guilt as I voiced my objection. ‘I’m not sure it’s smart to put another Demdji in the Sultan’s hands.’ Rahim had been my ally, but no one knew better than I did the risks of Imin getting found out.

  Navid looked hopeful at my objection. He was sitting in a huge armchair in the corner, arms circled around Imin. She was wearing a petite feminine shape, small enough that she fit into her husband’s arms like she was a missing piece who’d belonged there all along. Her legs were tucked under her as she leaned against his chest comfortably, eyes closed. She was exhausted but awake. The night before had taken its toll on everyone. Hala was truly asleep in a corner. Jin was sitting on Shazad’s father’s desk, shirt flung over his back, as Shazad inspected the wound on his side.

  ‘You need to get this seen to properly,’ Shazad said to Jin. ‘Somewhere you won’t bleed all over my father’s study. Go find Hadjara.’ We’d lost our Holy Father in the escape from the Dev’s Valley. Until we had someone new, Hadjara was a decent seamstress.

  ‘If you don’t need me—’ Jin said, easing himself to his feet.

  ‘We’ve done fine without you so far, brother,’ Ahmed commented. It was a low blow. Shazad and I shared a look. This new tension that hung between Ahmed and Jin wasn’t good for anyone.

  But Jin didn’t say anything as he brushed past me on his way to the door, fingers dancing across the back of my hand like he wanted to take it. ‘Don’t volunteer for anything stupid while I’m gone.’

  ‘We don’t have that many other choices that I can see,’ Imin said as the door closed behind Jin. ‘Unless someone else would like to reveal now that they’ve been sitting on a secret shape-shifting skill so I can take a break. Anyone? No? I didn’t think so.’

  ‘I’d offer, but I don’t think foreigners are all that welcome in the palace at the moment,’ Sam offered. He was watching Shazad. ‘And I don’t make a beautiful enough woman to pass in the harem very long. Amani can vouch for that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I admitted. ‘He doesn’t have the cleavage to pull off a khalat.’ Shazad snorted.

  ‘Someone has to go,’ Imin said, uncurling herself from her husband’s grip, shifting easily from wife to rebel. ‘If I get caught I can always take poison before he gets his claws into me like he did Amani.’ I wasn’t entirely sure she was joking.

  We stole a few hours of sleep after daybreak, when we were sure the palace was done feeding lies to the people and the rush of the night before had worn off. We were in Shazad’s home, which meant she had her own rooms inside the house. That was the moment it hit me in earnest that our old home was gone. Our tent was gone. The small space that we had shared for half a year and that had become as familiar as my bed in Dustwalk had ever been.

  I figured I could’ve found my own tent. If I’d wanted to. Start getting settled into this new camp. Instead, I found Jin. He was dozing in the shade of an orange tree with huge, sprawling branches. His shirt was riding up and I could see the place Hadjara had patched him up. He startled awake as I stretched out next to him, stilling as he realised it was me. I knew he was watching me. In the scarce few months we’d had between Fahali and the bullet that caught me in the side, we’d stolen plenty of moments together in the desert but never slept side by side. He shifted slightly so he was on his side facing me as I settled down, pillowing my head with my arm. The grass was still cool from the night. I might be sleeping on the ground again, but I had the feeling I would rest easier here than I had on a hundred cushions in the harem. ‘I haven’t gotten around to setting up a new tent yet.’ His arm found the small of my back. ‘Seeing as I only just got back from chasing down this girl I know.’

  ‘Next time you should try to keep better track of her,’ I said as I closed my eyes, leaning my head into him.

  ‘I’m counting on it.’ He settled me against him. That was the last thing I heard before I dozed off.

  Shazad woke us both sometime in the afternoon; her hair was wet from a bath and twisted up into a knot at the back of her head. I wondered if she’d had any real rest since Auranzeb. Leyla had finally come to, she told us.

  Shazad had made good on her promise of chains. Tamid and Leyla had been confined to two of the many empty rooms in the house, chained and locked until we could count on them not making a run for it. I’d tried to go see Tamid in the room adjoining Leyla’s, but he’d pretended to be sleeping, which was a clear enough message for me.

  Leyla looked like a trapped animal, her knees pulled up to her chin, eyes darting between me, Jin, Ahmed, and Shazad, like she was trying to watch us all at once.

  No. Not a trapped animal. She was looking at us like we might be the animals. About to tear her apart at any second. I remembered the day I met her, in the menagerie. When she’d been building a small mechanical elephant and I’d been the one being circled by Kadir’s wives. But this was different. At least I figured it was.

  ‘So,’ Ahmed said conversationally, sitting down at the end of the bed. She drew her legs in a bit further. ‘You built an army of machine and magic for my father.’

  ‘I didn’t—’ Leyla had always sounded young, but her small voi
ce was almost gone now. ‘Please, don’t hurt me. I didn’t have a choice in helping him.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you,’ Ahmed said gently at the same time that Shazad made a disbelieving noise at the back of her throat.

  ‘Everyone has a choice,’ Shazad said when Leyla looked at her with wide, startled eyes. I kicked her ankle. Hard. The last thing we needed was to scare Leyla too badly to talk. She looked at me sharply.

  ‘My choice was to help my father or watch my brother die.’ Leyla buried her face in her chained-up hands miserably. ‘What would you have done?’ And then she started to cry. Out of nowhere, big ugly sobs that shook her whole body violently.

  ‘Your father threatened Rahim?’ I asked, instead of letting Shazad answer that question. ‘He told you he would hurt him if you didn’t help him?’ Rahim had been worried about Leyla being in danger in the harem, but it looked like he was the one being threatened.

  ‘Rahim has no idea. He never knew what happened to our mother.’ Leyla wiped at her running nose with her sleeve as best she could with tied hands. ‘All those years back. She told my father she could make him a machine that could power all of Miraji. That could change the world.’ Her mother had been the daughter of a Gamanix engineer. The country that melded magic and machines. ‘And she did it. Except that it needed to take its energy from somewhere. It took it from her.’ Leyla wiped angrily at the tears welling in her eyes. ‘Just like it did for all the other people who came after her.’

  ‘Like Sayyida,’ I realised. ‘And Ayet.’ And Mouhna and Uzma. Girls who had disappeared out of the harem without a trace. A place where girls disappeared all the time without causing any ripples.

  ‘They were tests. You can take—’ Leyla squeezed her eyes shut. ‘The Holy Books say that mortals are made with a spark of Djinni fire. The machine takes that spark and can give life to something else. Not true life, but – what they have. My father figured if he could do that with a mortal life, what could be done with an immortal one?’ Leyla looked pained.

  ‘You can power an army that doesn’t fall when faced with bullets,’ Shazad filled in, understanding what it was we’d all seen the night before. The gravity of what we were facing moved between the four of us. ‘That doesn’t tire or eat. That can stand against Miraji’s enemies.’

  ‘Including us,’ I said, grimly. ‘How do they work?’

  Leyla shrugged, looking miserable. ‘The same way all magic does. Words, words, words.’

  ‘So how do we stop them?’ Shazad interrupted before Leyla could tumble down some rabbit hole of self-pity.

  ‘It’s almost impossible.’ Leyla shook her head, tears squeezing out of her eyes. ‘You’d have to destroy the power source and—’

  ‘The machine,’ Jin said. He took a step forward and Leyla flinched away from him. I put a hand on his arm, stopping him. He might technically share the same blood as Leyla, but he was a dangerous-looking tattooed stranger to her, not a brother.

  ‘How do we do that?’ Shazad asked. ‘We’ve got enough gunpowder to blow the whole thing if we can—’

  ‘No,’ Leyla said hurriedly, her eyes wide and panicked. ‘You’d destroy the whole city!’ Like in the story of Akim and his wife. Djinni fire out of control. ‘The Djinni has to be released, not unleashed. The energy released with the right words. Same as he was captured with.’ Then Leyla looked straight at me. ‘Amani bound him. She’s the only one who can unbind him.’

  And just like that, everyone was looking at me. If I’d known I was doomed to get this much attention I might’ve brushed my hair.

  Chapter 41

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you all.’ Ahmed looked around the kitchen crowded with rebels. ‘This is going to be a challenge.’ It was a good thing for morale that Ahmed wasn’t a Demdji. If he couldn’t lie, I was pretty sure he would’ve struggled to use the word challenge instead of, say, disaster.

  We were two dozen or so packed to the rafters around Shazad’s kitchen, leaning against the colourful tiles that swirled around the walls like steam off a fine dish, our heads bumping pans that hung from the ceiling. Shazad stood next to Ahmed, at his right hand like she always did. Jin was leaning on the fireplace; if you didn’t know he was injured, you might not even guess he was using it for support. Sam had retreated to the back, letting his hand pass in and out of the wall absentmindedly.

  I cradled the cup of strong coffee in my hands. I’d slept a few more restless hours, but not enough. There were faces that should have been here that weren’t, people who had died in the escape from the valley. There were new faces I didn’t know. Still, even in the strange setting, it felt just like it used to in Ahmed’s pavilion in the camp. We’d lost that home, but we were still fighting to make a new one.

  The curtains in the kitchen were red, drawn against peeping eyes on the street. They turned the room bloody as the dawn.

  A new dawn. A new desert.

  ‘We’re outnumbered,’ Ahmed said, ‘outmanoeuvred and outgunned.’

  Jin caught my eye across the room, an eyebrow going up as if to say, Not much of an inspirational speech. I snorted.

  ‘And out-Demdjied, judging by those things at Auranzeb,’ someone muttered from the back. A ripple of assent went through the room. The rumours of the Abdals and their strange powers had spread frighteningly fast. Shazad said there were already signs of it snuffing what sparks of dissent we’d been able to ignite in the streets.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Yasir. And that’s where we start.’ Shazad took control easily as she stepped up to the table. Ahmed ceded the room to her. I had an image of Shazad next to Ahmed on the throne. As his Sultana as well as his general, her head dipped over some problem with a golden crown slipping down her brow. It would suit her. ‘We have three problems of pressing urgency right now, and thanks to our real Blue-Eyed Bandit, now returned to us – no offence,’ she tossed over her shoulder at Sam, ‘we might have solutions for them.’

  ‘Even if she did create one of those problems in the first place,’ Hala muttered.

  I ignored her. As I stepped forward, eyes followed me. I might not have been back long but I’d already noticed the change. I wasn’t just the Blue-Eyed Bandit any more; I was the girl who had made it out of the palace alive, who had stood toe to toe with the Sultan and escaped. ‘The first problem is that we need an army, a true army that can go up against the Sultan’s. If we can forge an alliance with Lord Bilal, then we have a fighting force. We’ve arranged a meeting with Lord Bilal a few hours from now. Before dark. By the end of it, here’s hoping we’ll have an army.’

  ‘Assuming he hasn’t already fled the city,’ Hala added.

  ‘Did you get more pessimistic since I left,’ I asked, ‘or did I just forget what a pain in the ass you are?’

  ‘Well, you know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder.’ Hala shot a fake smile my way. ‘Isn’t optimism what got you captured in the first place?’

  ‘Please keep in mind how many ways I know to kill you both if you don’t shut up,’ Shazad interrupted before we could descend into an all-out brawl. A laugh went around the room, lightening the weight of the mood.

  ‘Our second problem,’ Ahmed said, trying to get the room back on track, ‘is that even if we do get an army, we can only stand against another army of flesh and blood. Not one made out of mechanical parts and magic. Which is why we need to get Amani to that machine.’

  ‘And right now it’ll be too well defended. There’s no way we can get anywhere near it,’ Shazad said. ‘Not unless we draw the Sultan and his whole army away from guarding it. Which, as it turns out, wars are very useful tools for.’

  Everyone stared at Shazad. ‘Are you suggesting we start a war just to get Amani into the palace?’ someone said from the back of the room.

  ‘No,’ Shazad said. ‘We need to start a war anyway. I’m suggesting we use the war to make our odds of winning a little better by giving Amani the opportunity to sneak into the palace.’

  Even i
f I could get inside I wouldn’t be able to deactivate the machine without the right words to free the Djinn in the first language. Words not even Tamid knew.

  ‘Bringing us to our final problem,’ Ahmed pressed on. ‘Which is that Amani is currently … incapacitated.’ That settled the room soon enough. I self-consciously rubbed the spot on my arm where I could feel one of the pieces of iron sewed into my flesh. It was like prodding at a loose tooth. An instinct, a tic, feeling that little shoot of pain when I pressed it in, reminding myself this wasn’t truly part of me. Reminding me I was useless with my body riddled with iron scars.

  ‘Where are we on finding a Holy Man we can trust?’ Shazad asked, leaning her knuckles on the table. ‘Someone to cut the iron out of Amani?’ I knew what the words cost her. In the months since Bahi had died, I didn’t know if I’d truly heard Shazad talk so plainly about Holy Fathers. Not even when I’d been shot through the stomach. But then again, I had been unconscious for most of that.

  ‘More or less exactly where we were the last three times you asked me that,’ said Sam. He was on edge. ‘Holy Men are largely in the pockets of your Sultan. They’d all sell you out in a heartbeat sooner than they’d help you.’

  And Tamid couldn’t be trusted not to stick a blade in me either, given how he felt about the Rebellion.

  ‘Can’t we take a chance?’ I rubbed my finger along my forearm, worrying at the piece of metal below there. I wanted to claw it out of my skin myself.

  ‘No,’ Jin said without hesitation, speaking for the first time. Everyone’s head swivelled towards him. Jin didn’t tend to speak up at war meetings, unless he had something that needed saying. Which meant folk tended to listen. Only there was an uneasiness among the rebels now. He hadn’t disappeared on just me. He’d abandoned the whole Rebellion. ‘We’re not taking chances with you.’

  ‘So either we find someone,’ I concluded, ‘or I’ve got to walk into the palace more or less defenceless.’