Traitor to the Throne

by Alwyn Hamilton

  I felt the rush of using my power through the pain. It would have to do. I released the sand and the pain receded.

  ‘We need to go.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Hala stopped me as I started to get dressed. ‘What do you want to do with her?’ She meant my aunt. ‘Do you want me to tear her mind apart?’ Like Hala had done to her mother who had sold her. Who had used her daughter so selfishly.

  I wanted her to hurt.

  Ahmed would tell me that an eye for an eye would make the whole world blind. Shazad would tell me that was why you had to stab people through both eyes the first time around.

  ‘Did it make you feel better?’ I asked. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a real question. I wanted to know. I wanted to know if hurting my aunt like she’d hurt me would take away this anger rotting in my chest. ‘When you tore your mother’s mind apart? Did it help?’

  Hala turned away from my aunt first. ‘We need to go.’

  Chapter 46

  Moving through the streets of Izman after dark wasn’t exactly easy – not with the Abdals and not with my skin rebelling with pain in every step. Without Hala in my mind, the kingdom of cuts on my body screamed in pain.

  But speed was essential.

  We rounded a corner, and moonlight bounced off metal and clay. Hala grabbed my arm, shoving me between two houses, into the shadows. We didn’t dare move. The Abdal passed by the mouth of the alley, close enough that I could’ve reached out and touched it. And then the sound of steps again, closer, coming from the other end of the street, working their way towards us. Penning us in. Sam didn’t hesitate, grabbing my hand and Hala’s. ‘Hold your breath or get dead very fast.’

  I just had time to suck in a lungful of air before he dragged us both backwards through the wall. We stumbled into a small kitchen. I could hear the rushing of my own heartbeat in time with the steps outside, slowing as they passed. We waited a solid few breaths until Sam dragged us back out.

  We reached the intersection where we were due to meet, with seconds to spare.

  A rope ladder dangled from the rooftop as promised. I started to climb as Hala and Sam slipped into a side alley. Jin reached a hand down for me, clasping my arm as he pulled me up the last few feet on top of the roof. A hiss of pain escaped through my teeth as his thumb hit one of my wounds.

  ‘Is there a reason you keep coming back injured when I leave you for five seconds, or is it—’ His voice carried too loud, and I clapped a hand over his mouth, shutting him up.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m always getting injured when you’re around, too.’ I was raw inside and out. I didn’t feel like explaining my encounter with my aunt just then. I pressed a finger to my lips. When he nodded, I slowly peeled my hand away.

  We flattened ourselves on the edge of the roof. Jin handed me the rifle a second before the Abdal appeared around the corner.

  Its steps echoed around the empty streets, accompanied by the rattle of the wheels of the prison wagon that followed behind and a dozen more boots, on human feet this time.

  A word carved into metal, powering the Abdal like a heart, in the right heel. Somewhere no one would ever have the instinct to hit. We didn’t need instinct; we had insider information.

  Another step.

  Two more.

  I took a deep breath.

  I squinted against the dark, trying to track the glint of metal in the moonlight. Somewhere high above, a curtain twitched, then fell shut, casting the street back into shadows almost as quickly as it had illuminated it.

  But it was enough.

  I pulled the trigger.

  It was a perfect shot. It clipped the edge of the bronze heel guard, bending it at an angle. I almost laughed. Thank God for soft metal.

  The men surrounding the carriage were pulling out weapons already, looking for the threat. But that wasn’t my problem.

  Jin’s gun went off next to me even as Shazad stepped through Delila’s veil of illusion, appearing like an avenging spirit below, blades drawn.

  I took a second shot. It went through soft clay flesh. And a third. And I saw it. The shine of metal under the clay skin. Somewhere inside there was a word. Giving the thing life. A soldier turned a gun toward me and fell.

  And for a moment it was like old times. Like the days before Iliaz. The three of us against the world. The simplicity of rebellion, where every little victory could win a war.

  My next bullet hit hard.

  When mortal things died, they fell. They fell like the soldiers littering the streets under our gunfire. But the Abdal didn’t. It stopped. Just stopped as abruptly as

  I would have when the Sultan gave me an order.

  And the streets were still again.

  I clambered down after Jin.

  The Abdal stood unnervingly frozen. I’d seen enough of Leyla’s little inventions close up to know this one was different. It was as much a creation of a Djinni as I was.

  The lock at the back of the carriage splintered under another gunshot, taking my focus with it. I joined Shazad and Jin at the back of the wagon, as the door swung open. Rahim was bound and gagged, a sack pulled over his head. I held up a hand, stopping Jin and Shazad. Rahim had rescued me once; I owed him the same.

  The wagon rocked gently under my weight as I entered.

  I pulled the bag off Rahim’s head. He jerked, like he was ready to fight, arms bound and all. He stopped when he saw me, holding still long enough to let me pull the gag from his mouth. ‘What’s happening?’ he rasped.

  ‘This is a rescue,’ Shazad said from behind me, framed in the doorway, one arm braced against the roof of the carriage. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘You got us an army,’ Jin added as I sliced the ropes around his arms free. ‘Now how do you feel about leading it?’

  Rahim glanced over his shoulder uncertainly between us. The impossibly beautiful general, a half-Xichian prince he didn’t yet know was his brother, an impostor Blue-Eyed Bandit, a Demdji with purple hair dyed black toying nervously with an illusion of a flower, another doing nothing to hide the gold of her skin. I didn’t have to imagine what he was thinking. I’d been in his place eight months ago. His gaze finally landed back on me.

  ‘Welcome to the Rebellion,’ I said. ‘You get used to it.’

  *

  We moved as quickly as we could back through the darkened and deserted streets of Izman. The Abdals patrolling the streets in a steady chequerboard rhythm might not be called by the commotion, but that didn’t mean we were going to make ourselves a moving target. We caught Rahim up in interrupted whispers as we worked our way back towards Shazad’s home.

  We told him that Leyla was safe.

  That we were going to take the army from Lord Bilal by force.

  That he was going to help us do it.

  Rahim didn’t even blink. Maybe rebellion ran in the blood of the Sultan’s sons. Maybe it ought to be called treason. Whatever it was, we were going to use it to take the throne.

  Shazad’s house was quiet when we pushed through the kitchen door. It was late, I supposed. But still, something about the quiet needled at me. The tension of returning from a mission was missing.

  Ahmed waiting to make sure we were all coming home alive. Waiting for his sister.

  Imin waiting for Hala.

  My senses had reached a fever pitch by the time we were climbing the stairs at the end of the tunnel into the garden. I was on the last step when my boot hit something that rolled away with a familiar ping. A bullet. It skittered into the silent garden and then vanished.

  A feeling of wrongness hit me a fraction of a second too late. I heard the click of two machine cogs slotting together. The whirr of metal pieces working, spinning faster and faster, and then snicking into place. That was the only warning I had before the illusion disappeared.

  Chaos bloomed as the serene front dropped away. Bodies littered the ground, rebels mostly, only one or two men in uniform, weapons still in hand. The corpses sprawled across shatte
red tents, staining the ground red. Survivors were shoved back against the walls, bound by their hands. They were on their knees with soldiers gathered around them. Ahmed. Imin. Izz and Maz. Navid. Tamid. All still alive, at least.

  And facing us was a whole host of Abdals.

  They had created the illusion, I realised. They didn’t just have Noorsham’s power to destroy. They were as powerful as Demdji. And leading them …

  ‘Yes, Amani.’ The Sultan smiled Jin’s smile at me. The one that meant trouble. Like he could read my mind. Out of the chaos around him, our bound and dead rebels, one figure emerged. Leyla unbound. And unafraid. She was wearing a jacket that looked like it belonged to the Sultan over the same clothes she’d been wearing since Auranzeb. That trapped-animal look in her eyes was gone. She wore a satisfied smirk instead as her father spoke.

  ‘It was a trap.’

  Chapter 47

  I pulled out my gun, already knowing it was too late. Two dozen guns clattered to attention, ready to shoot us if they had to. Shazad and Jin had weapons drawn, spoiling for a fight.

  They would die; they both would. I could see it now. We were all trapped. Me, Jin, Shazad, Rahim, Delila, Hala, and – I looked around for Sam. He was gone. Nowhere to be seen. We were surrounded. We were outnumbered. But that wasn’t going to stop them from going down fighting.

  ‘Stand down!’ Ahmed ordered from where he was kneeling. ‘Everyone stand down, weapons down.’

  I could see Shazad struggling with every fibre of her being against the order as Jin’s hand opened and closed on the gun in the corner of my vision. But my attention belonged to the Sultan. His eyes were locked on me. I could almost hear him. That weighted, reasonable voice that made me feel like we were all just children acting out. You know how this ends if you fight, Amani.

  ‘Do as he says,’ I said. ‘Weapons down.’ I tossed my gun to the ground. The iron left my skin with a sigh of relief.

  Finally Shazad’s swords clattered to the ground noisily. Jin’s gun followed. I was unarmed. But I wasn’t helpless. The Sultan might have choreographed this, but there was something he wasn’t expecting.

  Somewhere at the edge of my awareness, beyond the city walls, I reached for the desert.

  ‘Very wise.’ The Sultan nodded to Ahmed, tied and trapped. ‘You know, it never ceases to amaze me how ironic the world can be. That the son who is most like me is the only one who wants to denounce me.’

  ‘Well, that’s just not true.’ Rahim stepped between me and his father. I used the shield of his body to shift my hands a tiny bit. I tried to pull without my arms, without any sweeping movements. I pulled from deep down in my gut, the part of me that had kept me alive against all odds until now. It came with a shooting pain in my old wound.

  ‘I’d denounce you in a second, Father.’

  Far away, the desert surged up in answer.

  ‘That’s why you’re on that side of Father’s guns and I’m on this one.’ Leyla finally spoke. Her shy, lilting voice, which had always sounded sweet, took on a different tone now as it bounced around the walls of the garden. Gone were the wide, tear-filled eyes. ‘I’m the one who didn’t betray my family.’

  Her brother met her gaze across the courtyard. ‘You were my family,’ he said softly. ‘I was trying to save you. After I found you were as talented as Mother with machines, I knew our father would try to use you the same way he did her. That destroyed her, Leyla.’

  ‘I didn’t need saving.’ She tugged the jacket closer around herself against the night air. ‘I took care of myself from the day you left me among those women and their plots. I learned to survive. To make myself useful.’ She had said that to me once in the harem, as Mouhna and Uzma and Ayet disappeared, one after the other. If you weren’t useful, you were liable to vanish, invisible. And who was more invisible than a princess alone in the harem?

  So invisible, I hadn’t even considered that Ayet had disappeared after I’d told Leyla that she’d caught me and Sam in the Weeping Wall garden. That Uzma and Mouhna had gone missing after the incident with the suicide pepper and humiliating me in court. So invisible it hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind that she’d witnessed their nastiness, too. That it had been her idea to select them to put into the machine, not the Sultan’s. ‘You were gone and I was here, finishing what Mother started.’ Leyla’s smile was as sweet as ever, and she aimed it at Rahim like a weapon. ‘She would have wanted that. It was the Gallan she hated. Not our father.’

  ‘You lied to me,’ I said. And I hadn’t spotted it because she was a big-eyed, shy girl with a sweet face.

  ‘Demdji are always the easiest to lie to. Your kind never expects it,’ the Sultan said. ‘What good daughter wouldn’t obey the word of her father?’ He made a motion, like he was pulling back a bowstring and loosing it. I was holding an entire sandstorm in my mind on the edge of the city, dragging it forward over walls and rooftops. I felt it stagger as something punched through my heart. The horrible, humiliating memory of wanting to impress him, of wanting to please him. Of doubting Ahmed for him.

  ‘Little Blue-Eyed Bandit, so very trusting, over and over.’ I flinched at the nickname as he started towards me. Jin shifted angrily at the edge of my vision, but he knew better than to try anything as his father drew closer. ‘Oh, yes, Amani, I knew from the moment I saw your little blue eyes.’

  All those desperate attempts to hide it from the Sultan, to keep Ahmed from coming up so that the truth wouldn’t slip past my traitorous tongue. And he’d been letting me get away with it, letting me dance around the subject. Because he already knew I was allied with Ahmed.

  The Sultan chucked me under the chin gently as he reached me. ‘I could’ve made you tell me what you knew, but that wouldn’t have gotten me to Ahmed. It was a great deal easier to use you to feed fake information to your prince. Once Leyla told me Rahim was a traitor, I could use him to pass information to you.’

  I caught a flash of movement behind the Sultan. A figure in the shadows. I looked back at the Sultan, quick as I could. Trying not to betray what I’d seen. I tightened my fist, keeping my grip on the desert.

  He turned away. ‘I have to say I rather enjoyed watching you scramble around putting out fires, never noticing the others I wanted you to look away from. While you were looking at Saramotai, I was taking back Fahali. While you were saving traitors from the gallows, I had men arresting dissenters in their own homes. And while you were running around trying to save my traitor son, I was emptying your traitor camp and arresting my other traitor son.’ He dropped one hand on Leyla’s shoulder. ‘She’s done a great deal of good work. How did you think we found you in your little valley hideaway?’ He held something up. It was a compass. Just like the ones Jin and Ahmed had, only smaller. They’d told me once, I remembered, that those were of Gamanix make. Leyla’s mother was a Gamanix engineer. ‘We hid one of these on your spy before we released her to be … rescued.’ Sayyida. She was a trap, too.

  ‘And when I found out from Rahim you were planning to escape …’ Leyla bounced, excited. ‘Do you want to see?’ It was that same light in her face that I’d seen when she was showing some new toy to the children in the harem. She turned, gesturing to the soldiers. Two of them dragged Tamid away from the wall. He struggled to keep up with them on his fake leg.

  I took a step forward and this time, it was Jin who caught me, pulling me back. They forced Tamid to the ground, sitting with his bronze leg splayed out in front of him. Leyla unfastened it with practised ease. She had made it, after all. Proudly she turned the detached leg toward me. Perfectly fitted in the hollow bronze of Tamid’s calf was a compass.

  ‘I fitted it after I convinced you Tamid should come with us, and he was none the wiser that I was using him to help bring my father to your camp.’

  This was my fault. I had led them to us. I had saved Tamid. I hadn’t left him behind and I was still being punished.

  I pulled, one last violent yank on my Demdji powers.

  And then the sky
darkened. The sandstorm was on us.

  The Sultan’s head shot up as the shadow fell across us. The raging cloud of sand had rushed in to crown the garden. I raised my hands, taking full grip of it – there was no point pretending now.

  I poured everything I had into the sand. All my anger. All my defiance. All my desperation. I whipped the storm into a frenzy before slamming my arms down, pulling the full force of the desert around us.

  I looked for the Sultan. He was watching me. The last thing I saw was him smiling at me the same way he had that first day in the war room over the dead duck. Like he was proud.

  Then the sandstorm swallowed us.

  ‘Amani!’ Shazad’s voice shouted some order to me that was swallowed in the chaos. I turned to face her just in time to see an Abdal rising up behind her, raised hand glowing red. I swung my arm. I felt something tear in my side where my wound had been as the sand turned into a blade and crashed through the Abdal’s leg, cutting into clay flesh and metal bone and severing it, sending the thing toppling to the ground.

  ‘Watch your back!’ I shouted at her. I didn’t need orders for once. I knew what I was fighting for. I knew who I was fighting. I knew what I needed to do.

  We needed the rest of the Demdji. And we needed them out. I couldn’t leave any Demdji in the Sultan’s hands. I couldn’t let him do the same thing to them that he’d done to me.

  I slammed my arms down, severing the iron around Izz, then Maz. The twins burst into motion, flesh turning to feathers, fingers to talons as they plunged into the air, then back down. Delila was running for Ahmed as I freed him. And then Imin, who staggered forward, towards Navid.

  A bullet caught Hala in the leg. She screamed, staggering forward. She would’ve hit the ground except Sam was there. He grabbed her, arms under her legs, and the two of them vanished through a wall. I turned my attention elsewhere. I’d lost Ahmed in the chaos.