The Tyrant's Nephew

by Sophie Masson

  About the book

  Omar didn’t ask to be the nephew of the ruthless dictator of Mesomia - and he certainly doesn’t want to inherit a country whose people are in fear for their lives. He hasn’t a choice, though - until the day he is saved from a deadly ambush by Latifa, a beggar girl. When his uncle places Latifa under a Spell of Darkness, Omar can’t stand by and watch his rescuer die. Neither can Ketta, Latifa’s white cat and a jinn in disguise. Together, the two embark on an extraordinary adventure to find the spell’s antidote - through the eerie, hostile marshlands, then flying on an enchanted carpet to the perilous mountain stronghold of a rebel werewolf clan. But they must face their greatest danger when they return to the palace.

  Balancing on a knife-edge - at the mercy of the tyrant’s terrifying mood Swings and cruel punishments, the evil Secretary’s machinations, and the rebels’ own plans for the fate of the country - Omar will learn the true meaning of courage before his journey is over.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Also by Sophie Masson

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright

  More at Random House Australia

  With thanks to Zeyad

  Now does he feel

  His secret murders sticking on his hands;

  Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;

  Those he commands move only in command,

  Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

  Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

  Upon a dwarfish thief.

  (from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare)

  One

  The big black limousine purred through the dark, silent streets of Madinatu es Salam. Because of curfew there was not a soul about to get in the way. Everyone knew what happened to those who broke curfew – or at least, they knew that those people were never seen again. Shutters and doors were tight-closed against the night; no-one wanted to be caught even accidentally glancing out of a window. Years of The Vampire’s rule had taught them well: curiosity was a very dangerous thing, and best not indulged in.

  Inside the car it was as silent as the city outside. The uniformed driver stared straight ahead; the three heavily armed bodyguards glanced from side to side; the tall, thin, bespectacled man in the elegant suit sat quietly with his smart fedora hat on his lap, not speaking to the short dark boy at his side.

  Omar was glad the Secretary didn’t speak to him. He was scared of the man. He was scared of all of them. He didn’t want to be in this car, heading for his uncle’s palace. He wanted to be back home on his widowed mother’s farm, with his younger sister, Mariam, living his life in peaceful obscurity. He wanted to be a farmer. He’d always loved green, growing things; he had a way with them that people said was nothing short of magical. But now, all that was finished. He was on his way to his uncle’s palace. His uncle, Haroun bin Said al-Alakah, more commonly known as The Vampire, the feared dictator of Mesomia.

  Omar hadn’t seen his uncle for several years. Very few people had seen him in recent times. It was said that the sorcery and evil The Vampire indulged in had so ravaged him that he was almost unrecognisable as a human being and stayed hidden in his palace all the time. Omar couldn’t believe this, not really. But his uncle’s few appearances on television didn’t do much to allay the rumours – he always wore sunglasses and was always heavily made up. His thuggish son, Sayid, who The Vampire had been preparing as his successor, used to be seen out and about, but Sayid was dead now, killed in a high-speed car accident a few months ago. That was why Omar had been plucked from the safety of his mother’s farm. God save him, he was to be The Vampire’s heir.

  Omar swallowed and glanced blindly out of the window. If only he could have escaped, run away to the far ends of the earth. But that was impossible because The Vampire would go after his mother, and he would show her no mercy even though she was the widow of The Vampire’s much-loved older brother, Ali.

  Omar thought of his mother’s still, white face when she heard the news he was to live at The Vampire’s palace. He remembered the fear leaping into her eyes. She knew that she could not refuse; and knew, too, that being chosen as The Vampire’s heir might well be his death sentence. There was no choice. He had to do as he was told. He had to pretend to be glad of the ‘honour’ The Vampire was conferring on him. He had to pretend to be glad about living at The Vampire’s palace, being groomed to take over from his uncle eventually. That would not be for several years; Omar was only fourteen. In his mind, the years stretched on in front of him, heavy, dark, full of fear.

  He started. What was that? Something small and white running across the road. The Secretary raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s just a cat,’ he said coolly, flicking Omar a glance of amused contempt. Omar felt the sting of it like a whip. In the eyes of many of The Vampire’s men, Omar was just a pawn, a thing that only needed to be taken into account because it belonged to their master. For the moment, anyway.

  Omar shivered and huddled down into himself, clutching his prayer beads. His mother had given them to him just before he left. ‘They were your father’s,’ she said. ‘They will protect you.’ Omar had thought, but they didn’t protect poor Father. Ali, Omar’s father, had died in a plane crash eleven years before. Mariam had only been a baby in their mother’s belly, then. She had never known their father.

  The beads were a small comfort to him – they were the last thing his mother had given him, and they still held the fragrance of the velvet-lined drawer where she had kept them. He could feel tears sparking hotly under his eyelids and blinked them fiercely away. It would never do to let these hard men see him weeping, like a girl or a baby. They already thought badly enough of him.

  Without any warning, the car lurched violently to one side. There was a huge bang, a sharp crack, then another. The front passenger window exploded; a bodyguard slumped down in his seat, his machine gun still in his hand, his face covered in blood. The driver shouted, ‘Hang on!’ and pressing down hard on the accelerator pedal, he swerved the car wildly, the other bodyguards firing madly out of the windows into the night, a machine-gun stutter that seemed never-ending. Omar and the Secretary crouched down beneath the back seat. Omar could smell the sickly scent of the Secretary’s hair oil and see the sheen of cold sweat on the man’s nose, on either side of his spectacles. Why, he’s afraid, he thought vaguely. He felt nothing himself – except for a weird sensation as if all his pores were really tiny sharp pins of steel, prick-ling up.

  There was another huge bang, and more of the cracks. The driver screamed – a long peal of terror. Omar, lifting his head up, thought he saw an impossible sight: a tall figure made of the night,
with red eyes, looming like a ghost. The driver screamed again, then fell forward onto the wheel, the car now spinning wildly out of control, the bodyguards shouting and firing. One of them tried to grab the wheel, but the car was too far gone into its skid. It careered off the road, heading straight for the tall grim wall of a house. Shouting and yelling, the bodyguards pulled open the front doors and jumped clear, firing into the night as they did so.

  The Secretary fumbled with his door and got it open. Omar clutched at him but the man pushed him violently away, and spun himself out of the speeding car. For a disjointed second Omar thought he saw a snake slithering out. It was only in the blink of an eye; in the next second all he saw was the car door swinging, and the rushing dark outside.

  The car was heading straight for the wall, but Omar could not move. He closed his eyes. There was another huge bang, a great jolt, then suddenly, he was flying through the air. I’m dead, he thought, in bleak surprise; then everything went black.

  Two

  A hand was pulling at him. A girl’s voice was whispering, ‘Come on, you’ve got to get up. You’ve got to follow me. You’re too heavy for me to lift.’ Omar’s eyes flicked open. He saw a thin, grubby face bent over his, huge black eyes staring at him. The girl looked about Mariam’s age. She was dressed in rags and her long, stringy hair was covered with a dirty scarf. A tiny white cat was sitting on her shoulder, staring at Omar with unblinking, jewel-green eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ said the girl impatiently. Omar sat up. His head ached violently. For a moment he could not remember what had happened. Where was he? He looked around. He was on the ground, at the entrance to a dark alleyway. Memory suddenly returned to him. He clutched at the girl’s arm. ‘The car … the others …’

  She gestured with her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Dead,’ she said, matter-of-factly. And now Omar could see the flames and smoke rising in the air some distance away. ‘They tried to escape, but the Shadow Walkers got them,’ she went on. ‘Come on. You can’t stay here. You’ve got to come with me.’

  She plunged into the darkness of the alleyway. Omar jumped up and ran stumblingly after her. ‘Wait, please!’ He was nervous of the alleyway, with its walls pressed closely together and its smell of drains, but he was even more nervous of being alone in the dark, with whatever was out there. The Shadow Walkers, she’d said. He had no idea what they were, but remembering the red-eyed ghost he’d glimpsed in those final moments, he was sure he did not want to find out.

  The girl stopped. ‘Hurry!’ She dropped down on all fours, the cat still clinging to her shoulder. Omar watched as she lifted a manhole cover and slid it aside. She motioned him forward. ‘Come on, get down there.’

  ‘Go down there?’ whispered Omar, looking into the darkness below. The girl shrugged.

  ‘Of course. You’ve got to go down first, because I’ve got to close the cover. Come on! What are you afraid of?’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ said Omar, trying to salvage some dignity. He sat down on the edge of the hole.

  ‘Just drop down,’ said the girl. Closing his eyes, he did just as she said. He heard a little splash; he was standing in shallow water. An instant later, the girl dropped down beside him. She slid the manhole cover back into place and they were in pitch blackness. Then a tiny light pierced the darkness; the girl had turned on a small torch. In its feeble light Omar could see slimy walls, a curved ceiling and greyish water at his feet. We’re in the sewers, he thought, with a shudder.

  ‘You’d better stick close to me,’ said the girl. ‘There’s quite a way to go, and you don’t want to get lost down here.’

  I’m quite sure I don’t, thought Omar. Aloud, he simply said, ‘Okay. Where are we going?’

  ‘Where you belong, of course,’ she said, then without waiting for him to say any more, she set off.

  They went along for what felt like hours. The girl seemed to know her way unerringly, turning left or right down passages that looked exactly alike to Omar. Every now and then Omar jumped as something scuttled over his feet.

  ‘It’s only rats. They know better than to bother us, with Ketta looking at them,’ the girl said, nodding towards the tiny white cat on her shoulder. Not once, Omar realised, had he heard it make a sound.

  A while later, he said, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Latifa,’ said the girl, without turning her head.

  ‘Why did you help me?’

  ‘Because I did,’ said the girl.

  ‘But do you know who –’

  ‘Of course I know. You are Omar, the tyrant’s nephew.’

  Omar was silent for a little while. Then he said, ‘Who are the Shadow Walkers?’

  This time she did turn around. ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘What?’ said Omar. ‘Should I know who they are?’

  ‘It’s true, then. He’s succeeded in destroying people’s memories.’

  ‘What?’ repeated Omar, baffled.

  ‘Your uncle has succeeded in what many sorcerers have tried before him, and failed: he has made people forget.’ She stopped and looked hard at Omar. ‘The Shadow Walkers are an order of legendary warriors from the northern mountains, from the land of the werewolf clans. It was said The Vampire had destroyed them all, he had banished even mention of their name. But tonight I have seen Shadow Walkers, without a doubt. Something has stirred in the north and anything could happen now!’ Her thin face, in the white light of the torch, was flushed with excitement. Omar stared at her.

  ‘I have never heard any of this before,’ he murmured. Why was she telling him this when she knew he was The Vampire’s nephew? Such talk was treasonous. She could be tortured to death most horribly for saying even half of the words she’d said. He was both thrilled and afraid for her.

  She seemed to read his mind.

  ‘Don’t worry. I know I can trust you. Ketta says you can be told things. And Ketta never lies.’

  Omar looked at the little cat. Its eyes glowed very greenly back at him. ‘I’m glad Ketta vouches for me!’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ said Latifa, and smiled. She had one tooth missing. It made her look even more like Mariam, who had lost her last milk tooth a few weeks ago.

  ‘I don’t understand. If they were Shadow Walkers, whom you admire, and they wanted to kill me, why did you help me?’

  ‘They didn’t want to kill you,’ she said. ‘I doubt they even knew you were there. It was someone else they were after. It was his car, after all.’

  ‘Oh …’ An image of the Secretary’s thin, narrow face jumped into Omar’s mind, and he shivered. The Secretary was one of The Vampire’s closest advisers and there were some ugly stories about him, too, whispered in the bazaars and villages of Mesomia. Well, now he was dead, and very few would mourn him.

  Latifa broke into his thoughts. ‘Okay, Omar, we’d better go on. It’s still a little way to your uncle’s palace.’

  ‘My uncle’s palace?’ said Omar, his heart sinking. ‘I don’t want to …’

  But she was already away, and he had to hurry to keep up with her.

  Three

  Some time later, Latifa stopped. ‘This is where I’ll leave you,’ she said. Omar looked uncertainly around. They were at the entrance to yet another passageway, which looked just as dark as the others.

  ‘Don’t worry. If you go just twenty paces down that passage,’ said Latifa, correctly reading his expression, ‘you’ll come to an old iron ladder set into the wall. Go up it and you’ll find a manhole directly above you. Open it and you’ll emerge into the gold-market district. And that’s only a short way from the palace gates.’ She smiled her missing-tooth grin again. ‘Good luck, Omar.’ On her shoulder, Ketta shifted, and Latifa stopped, as if she was listening to something. Then she said, ‘Omar, Ketta says you must be careful. Very careful.’

  ‘I will be,’ whispered Omar. ‘Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you, too, for not hating me because of my … relatives.’

  ‘Why should I hate you?’ said the girl,
laughing. ‘You’re not The Vampire, and you can’t help who you were born to. My mother died young and my father was a drunk and a bully who tortured cats for amusement, but Ketta doesn’t hate me because of it.’

  ‘Oh, Latifa, I wish you could come with me,’ said Omar fervently.

  ‘Not a good idea,’ said Latifa. That was where she was quite unlike Mariam, Omar thought – she was obviously used to taking charge, to having to cope on her own. ‘Now, Omar, have you got that? Twenty paces, then there’s the ladder. Here, take the torch.’

  ‘But you need it,’ Omar murmured, though the thought of setting off alone, without any light, down that smelly dark passage was not reassuring at all. She waved him away. ‘You need it more than I do. Ketta can put me right, if I go the wrong way.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Latifa, I will never forget your kindness and I –’ But Omar never finished what he was about to say, because Latifa had already scampered off, the little white sphinx of a cat shining on her shoulder.

  He stood there for an instant, watching his rescuer disappearing into the darkness. His heart felt heavy. He wished they could have escaped somewhere together – travelled miles in the sewers under the city until they reached the country, where they could pick up his mother and sister, and vanish together, far away from Mesomia.