Hero at the Fall

by Alwyn Hamilton

  ‘Who did you follow?’ I was treading lightly. She sounded like she might’ve gone sun-mad.

  ‘The man in the mountain, of course.’

  Suddenly I was standing in Bilal’s rooms again, holding the page from his book, staring down at the figure chained inside the rocks.

  There’s no such thing as just a story, I’d told him then.

  ‘He was sent to help us in our time of need.’ Aunt Farrah smiled nastily at my shocked reaction, pleased to be the one to catch me off guard this time. ‘But he protects only the good. Any who come to him who are deemed unworthy …’ She trailed off tauntingly. Bilal had sent soldiers to find him, this man below the mountain – soldiers who never came back. ‘He’s not made of flesh and blood like you and me. He’s made of fire. And he burns the unworthy.’

  A man made of fire wasn’t a man. He was a Djinni.

  The beginnings of an idea started to form. I had seen what Djinn could do. If there really was one in the mountains … It was such a tempting notion. Facing Ashra’s Wall alone, we didn’t stand a chance. But fighting the legendary with the legendary, fire with Djinni fire – well, that was an idea.

  ‘Can you take me to him?’ I asked her. ‘Your saviour in the mountain?’

  My aunt’s expression was far too knowing and cruel. ‘I can,’ she said. ‘But let me warn you, Blue-Eyed Bandit –’ she fired the name back at me – ‘you have no idea who you’re facing. He knows your heart. And you will burn for each of your sins.’

  ‘Well,’ I heard Sam say behind her, making my aunt whirl, unsettling her vitriolic composure. He was standing in the doorway, Jin next to him. I wondered how long they’d been witness to our conversation. ‘This sounds like a terrible idea, given how many sins I have.’

  ‘We should get going then,’ Jin said, clapping Sam on the back jovially. ‘You can count them on the way.’

  *

  Tamid was the only one of us who wasn’t apprehensive following my aunt out of the ruins of Dustwalk into the mountains. He had a family we were going to find. He had reason to be excited. I had a family, too. I just didn’t want to see them again. Aunt Farrah was already enough. But still, the thought of the man in the mountain kept me putting one foot in front of the other when all I really wanted was to turn back around.

  I realised where Aunt Farrah was leading us a few paces before anyone else did. It was close to dusk, and we were deep in the mountains. I’d been on this road once before, with Jin, fleeing on the back of a Buraqi from the chaos in Dustwalk. I could almost taste the iron from the mines in the air as we wound our way up the slope, getting closer, until finally, in the last of the light, we crested over a steep rise, and Sazi came into view. The ancient mountain mining town. Or at least it had been mines before my brother, Noorsham, burned them down using his power.

  But Sazi was nothing like the town I remembered.

  Last time we were here, Sazi had been a desperate collection of ramshackle houses clinging to the skin of the mountain. But those were gone now, as if they’d been decimated by thousands of years, though it had only been one year. On the outskirts, we passed a lone building that hadn’t completely been destroyed. One wall still stood, a colourful sign swinging above the door: the Drunk Djinni, the bar where I’d left Jin unconscious on a table before making a run for it. Now, instead of booze-stained bar tables, in the shadow of the single remaining wall was a bright canopy, using the wall as support.

  Aunt Farrah stopped walking abruptly. ‘There are no weapons allowed beyond this point.’

  Immediately the twins held up their hands. ‘Don’t look at us.’

  ‘Or me.’ Tamid was breathing hard from the walk up the mountain. But he had refused my help over and over until I’d stopped offering it.

  That left the three of us.

  Reluctantly I unbuckled my holster. The boys followed suit. Sam gave his guns a quick, showy and totally impractical twirl around his fingers before offering them to Aunt Farrah. Jin and I handed over our knives and guns, too.

  ‘Is that everything?’ Aunt Farrah demanded as she leaned them gingerly against the wall. I could see stacks of weapons under the canopy now, guns and bombs and swords and knives. A whole arsenal stored in the crumbled building. ‘He will know if you’ve kept anything hidden.’

  It wasn’t everything. I’d seen Jin hold back one of his pistols, tucking it into his belt before pulling his shirt over it. I fiddled with the spare bullet I’d kept in my pocket. Between the two of us we had a working weapon. ‘I’m all out of knives and guns.’ It was the closest to an honest answer I could give. But it seemed to satisfy her. ‘Aunt Farrah,’ I asked as she started walking again, ‘what is this place?’

  ‘We saw the error of our ways.’ Aunt Farrah’s hands were folded in her khalat. Her hard demeanour had suddenly changed as we passed some invisible barrier into the camp, her head bowing like she was going to prayers. ‘We were arrogant to try to claim this world for our own by building houses in the sands when we are meant to roam it.’

  Sure enough, as we pressed deeper into what was left of Sazi, there were hundreds of tents, a riot of colours dotting the otherwise bleak mountain landscape. And among them were hundreds of people, more than all of Dustwalk, Deadshot and Sazi put together. Men and women crowded between tents and small fires, laughing and talking. Clusters of women sat together sewing a patch in a torn tent canvas. A group of men seemed to be carving things out of wood. It reminded me of the camp we’d lost, a sanctuary hidden from the world.

  Two children dashed past us, screaming with laughter. And to my surprised I recognised one of them.

  ‘Nasima!’ I called out my little cousin’s name without thinking. She skidded to a stop, dark braid swinging in an arc, whipping her back. She stared at me blankly, warily, like I was a stranger.

  ‘It’s me.’ I pressed my hand to my chest, like I might when talking to a foreigner. Only she was my blood. ‘Amani, your cousin. Don’t you remember me?’

  ‘No you’re not.’ Nasima took a bold step towards me, in challenge. ‘Amani is dead, my mama said so.’ then she retreated. ‘Are you a Skinwalker?’ she asked. ‘That’s what my mama says about people who pretend they’re other people.’

  I started to tell her that if I were a Skinwalker, it would take more than a sheema to protect me from the sun. But she wasn’t listening. ‘Skinwalker!’ Nasima called out, turning and running away from me. People looked up at us as she bolted. On instinct, Jin moved between me and the staring eyes. Only there were no guns pointing our way, no knives being drawn.

  They were as unarmed as we were. Defenceless.

  Then we heard it through the crowd.

  ‘Tamid?’

  The voice made me stand up straight. It was a voice I was used to being scolded by, for always being around, for corrupting her son. Tamid’s mother pushed her way towards us and my heart faltered a little. The last time I’d seen her had been from the back of a Buraqi, behind Jin, as we’d fled blood and chaos and she’d tried to crawl her way towards her son, who was lying bleeding in the sand with a bullet through his knee, thanks to me. Just before he’d been taken prisoner and brought to the city along with Shira.

  Now as she moved towards her son, her face was full of tentative, uncertain hope.

  ‘Mother.’ Tamid limped towards her. And the hope broke into joy. She rushed to him, moving faster than he could on his false leg. She was crying before she even reached him, clasping him in her arms like he was still a little boy. I caught a few words between her sobs as she clung to him. What happened to you? What did they do to you? And then: You’re alive. You’re alive. Over and over again.

  I realised I’d been holding myself like there was an iron rod in my back, waiting for the reproach that was coming my way for what I’d done to her son. But it never came. She didn’t even see me. She didn’t care that he’d been taken away. Just that he’d been brought back.

  ‘Father?’ Tamid asked, pulling away, looking around, though les
s hopeful. His mother shook her head.

  ‘He didn’t …’ She hesitated. ‘He was deemed unworthy. He saw into your father’s heart, and what he did to you.’ Tamid winced. When Tamid was born with a crooked leg, his father had wanted to kill him. Tamid’s mother had saved her son. ‘He burned for it.’ Neither Tamid nor his mother looked particularly sorry about it. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I wondered who else had been judged too sinful by this man in the mountain.

  I looked over at my aunt. There was pain scrawled on her face. Two people had been taken from Dustwalk the day I disappeared with Jin. Only one of them would ever come back. Aunt Farrah would never be reunited with Shira this way.

  ‘Aunt Farrah,’ I tried again, ‘your grandson … In the city. Shira named him—’

  ‘What is she doing here?’ The belligerent voice cut me off. I knew it instantly. You have got to be kidding me. So my reckoning with my past wouldn’t come from Tamid’s mother after all.

  I turned around and faced Fazim Al-Motem. If we really were being judged for our sins, then I didn’t have to worry, not if Fazim was still alive. Fazim had claimed he was in love with Shira, until he tried to threaten me into marrying him so he wouldn’t tell everyone I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. All because he wanted the money I’d get for capturing a Buraqi.

  If that wasn’t a sin I didn’t know what was. And yet, here he was, strutting towards me.

  ‘Pretty bold for a criminal to show her face here,’ Fazim crowed. He looked shorter than I remembered. I vaguely wondered if I’d got taller. ‘Stealing from your own family.’

  ‘Leave it, boy.’ Another voice spoke. It was my uncle, I realised. I scarcely would have recognised him if my cousin Nasima hadn’t been clutching his hand, still eying me warily. He was wearing rags instead of the fine clothes of a horse merchant, and his hair and beard had grown long.

  But Fazim took another swaggering step, full of false confidence as he crossed the rocky terrain to confront me.

  ‘Do you think he really can’t see that this is a mistake?’ Jin said below his breath, so only I could hear him.

  ‘Maybe he just hasn’t noticed we outnumber him,’ Sam suggested from my other side. He was regarding Fazim curiously, like he was a harmless oddity in our way. Fazim wasn’t exactly harmless, but they were right. We could do him a lot more harm than he could do me now. ‘What did you do to him anyway, Amani, break his heart?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I’d been afraid of him once. Just like I’d been afraid of Aunt Farrah. But in the shadow of the Sultan, the monsters of my childhood seemed ridiculous now.

  ‘Well, Amani.’ Fazim was very close to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jin’s hand make a fist. I wasn’t going to let it get far enough for that. ‘What do you have to say for—’

  I flicked my hand at the sand below his feet, between the stones of the mountain, upsetting his footing – a trick I’d picked up off the Albish in Iliaz. The stab of pain through my stomach was gone as quickly as it came. And as Fazim toppled over, landing flat on his back, it was entirely worth it.

  Fazim cursed violently as he sat back up, looking embarrassed as some laughed. A few people edged forward, not entirely sure of themselves. After all, I hadn’t laid a hand on Fazim. But we might be in for a fight all the same.

  But then a cry came from the back. ‘He’s coming! Make way, he’s coming.’ The crowd split like a knife slicing cloth, clearing a straight path through the camp. Fazim scrambled out of the way and got to his feet, suddenly looking cowed.

  I turned, heart pounding, waiting to see this he. The man in the mountain. The real monster of my childhood stories. The Djinni who had been chained up by his own brethren. The creature who burned people he deemed unworthy of being saved.

  And there, standing at the other side of the camp, his hands raised either in blessing or in warning, was my Demdji brother, Noorsham.

  Chapter 20

  For a second our eyes locked across the rocky terrain, surprise as clear on his face as it must have been on mine. I felt Jin reach on instinct for the gun he hadn’t given away. My hand dashed to his, lacing our fingers together, drawing him away from his weapon carefully. Don’t, I willed him silently.

  Noorsham started to move towards us.

  He had flattened whole cities. He had burned people from the inside out. It didn’t cost him anything to do it. One wrong move from us and there was no telling what would happen.

  But I’d stood across from him before when he’d refused to hurt me.

  I’d been there when Jin hadn’t.

  And he was my brother, after all. He wouldn’t harm me. I had to believe that.

  As Noorsham passed through the crowd slowly, everyone around him bent like blades of grass under a strong wind.

  ‘You kneel,’ my aunt hissed, loud enough that it was meant to shame me. She was enjoying this, I realised.

  But I ignored her. Instead, I took a step to meet him.

  My aunt sucked in a breath. I knew she was thinking it would be the end of me. She was thinking I didn’t know what Noorsham could do. But I knew better than anyone. I unlaced my hand from Jin’s as I pulled away from him, crossing the path that had formed between the people of the camp and my brother, until we were only a few steps apart.

  He looked different to when I had last seen him. His hair had grown out from the shorn cut that had been under the bronze helmet the Sultan had forced on him. And there was a small scar on his chin. He reached out a hand towards me. For just a second, even in rags instead of metal armour, he looked exactly as he had the moment before he burned Bahi alive, blazing with power and righteousness. He’d burned whole cities with that hand.

  And then he clasped my face, and his palms were only as warm as flesh and blood, not immortal fire.

  ‘Amani.’ Noorsham’s smile could have lit up the world. ‘You’ve found your way home to me, sister.’

  And he embraced me.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the stunned look on Aunt Farrah’s face just a little bit.

  ‘The Eye!’ someone called from the crowd behind Noorsham. ‘How can we trust them without looking at the Eye?’

  ‘We all had to go through the Eye,’ another person called, sounding angry.

  ‘The Eye,’ someone else called from far off. ‘The Eye.’ It was picked up like a chant among the assembled people. ‘The Eye. The Eye. The Eye.’ Soon everyone was chanting it.

  ‘The Eye!

  The Eye!

  The Eye!’

  Noorsham turned in a slow circle. The words of the chant seemed to shake the mountain around us as he surveyed his people. Finally Noorsham moved, raising one hand ever so slightly in the air. It was as if he had flicked a switch. The whole of the mountain fell silent at his command.

  Everyone waited with bated breath for him to speak.

  ‘To the Eye, then,’ he declared. An uproarious cheer swelled from the mountain. Suddenly everyone was moving at once, encircling us, pushing us forward like we were dust caught in a powerful current. I felt fingernails sink hard into my arm. It was Aunt Farrah, gripping me like she was my jailer, driving me forward. Making sure I wouldn’t get away from whatever this Eye was.

  We didn’t have to go far.

  Noorsham led us to a small indent in the mountain, where the ground sloped off. It was surrounded by prayer scarfs, making it brighter than desert ground ought to be, and the slope was strewn with bright cloths and dried flowers, the kind I’d seen in the Sultan’s gardens but that never grew here on the mountain.

  And in the middle of it all was a small, jagged-looking piece of mirror, a shard roughly the shape of an eye. Everyone stopped at the edge of the slope, circling around to watch, but no one passed the line of prayer flags that marked the edge, except for Noorsham, who descended confidently.

  He picked up the shard of glass reverently in his palms, lifting it high so that it caught the late afternoon sun.

  The shard flashed blue, and I heard Jin suck in a
breath next to me. I glanced at him curiously. ‘That looks like a nachseen,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘A what?’ That didn’t sound like any language I had heard him speak.

  ‘A Gamanix invention.’ Like the paired compasses or Leyla’s horde of abominations. A synergy of machine and magic. ‘You can use them to read things in the eyes of others. Armies use them to interrogate spies.’

  Noorsham’s blue eyes, so much like mine, turned to catch me. ‘Which one among you will come and face the Eye so I may see the truth of your intentions?’

  We traded quick glances. One of us had to spill all our secrets for the lives of everyone else. I ought to send down one of the twins. They were more innocent than Jin or I was. But I could see the naked fear on their faces. And I could feel Noorsham’s gaze boring into the back of my neck. I had volunteered to lead the Rebellion. I should take responsibility.

  ‘I will.’ I turned back to Noorsham. I stepped between two of the prayer flags, crossing over the invisible border and descending to stand across from my brother.

  Up close I could see the Eye better. It was obviously magic, like Jin had said. At the edge of the shard of mirror’s jagged edge, there was something like a crackle of energy, like the spark that fed Leyla’s machines.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked my brother, keeping a safe distance from the object in his hands.

  ‘You’re not the only one to come here looking for something,’ Noorsham said vaguely. ‘At first I had to guess what was in their souls. But then foreign soldiers came, and they brought this with them, a gift from God delivered to me by their hands. I use it to see who is truly looking for sanctuary and who seeks something else. And I decide if they stay or if they burn.’

  A chill went through me at those words. I thought of the men Bilal had sent south looking for the powerful creature below the mountain that could grant his wish to cheat death. Sure enough, half a dozen of the prayer cloths encircling us now looked like strips taken from the uniforms from the Iliaz command.