Rebel of the Sands (12 page)

“All right?” I'd been ready to argue and drag him out of here. But all the fight had gone out of him with those two words. “That's it? You're not going to smart-talk your way around me?”

“All right,” Jin repeated. He spread his hands wide like he was surrendering, though the grim set of his mouth made it seem like he'd rather do anything but. “You're right. So what do you suggest we do?”

I was feeling bolder than I ever had. “We could just keep running, Jin. If we had to.”

“You mean if I wanted to.” His eyes searched mine, and for one second they looked as dark and focused as they had in the few moments after he'd kissed me on the train. My eyes were probably as wild as that second, too. The last time we'd really stood this close. On the edge of living or dying. Of wanting and needing.

“Tell me we couldn't do it.” Jin interrupted my thoughts. “Tell me that the two of us together, we couldn't get every one of the Camel's Knees out of the city alive if we really tried. Hell, tell me you couldn't do it on your own if you set your stubborn head to it.” A small smile was creeping back. “Tell me that and we'll walk away. Right now. Go and save ourselves and leave them to die. All you've got to do is say the word. Tell me that that's how you want your story to go and we'll write it straight across the sand to the sea. Just say it.”

My story.

I'd spent my life dreaming of my own story that could start when I finally reached Izman. A story written in
far-off places I didn't know how to dream about yet. And on my way there, I'd slough off the desert until there was nothing left of it to mark the pages.

Only Jin was right. I was a desert girl. Even in Izman I would still be the same Blue-Eyed Bandit with a hanged mother, who left her friend dying.

He didn't need me to answer, not really. I gave myself away too easily. Or maybe he just knew me too well. “Any ideas, Bandit?”

And that easily we were a team again.

I tilted my head back. Between two windows, laundry drifted lazily in the hot desert wind. “Some.”

•   •   •

I WAS DRESSED
as a girl for the first time since I'd left Dustwalk. The plain blue khalat we'd stolen off a clothesline was too tight around my arms with my boy's clothes on underneath.

“I'd almost forgotten you were a girl under there.” Jin looked me over, hands hooked above his head. He still looked rumpled from sleep. Exhaustion had gotten the better of us while we waited for the cover of dark, and we'd both fallen asleep slumped inside an alleyway narrow enough to hide us. I'd woken with a stiff spine and Jin's arm slung across me like he was trying to keep me from running out on him in his sleep again. But there was no chance of that. I was done leaving people behind.

“Did you want to be the girl?” I asked, readjusting the
red sheema I'd wrapped around my waist like a sash.

“You make a prettier girl than I do.” He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

The plan was simple. I was going to walk into the city barracks and walk back out with information on where the prison was. The city barracks housed the Mirajin guard most of the time, but it seemed like half of them were camping in tents while the Gallan army housed their soldiers. Once we knew where they were we'd be able to work on getting the Camel's Knees out. If anyone questioned me I was to say I was there to get water, just like the stream of women going in and out all day.

As it turned out, rumors were running freer than the pumps in Fahali. The Camel's Knees weren't the only caravan to turn up lips cracked and gasping out news of Dassama. The city's supplies were stretched thin under the weight of the extra people, caravans and soldiers alike. Water was being rationed, and half the wells and pumps were closed. But not the one in the barracks.

“I'll be nearby if you get in trouble. Just stay in sight.” He nodded above at a rooftop with a decent overview of the barracks—decent enough that a good shot might be able to hit a soldier on the inside. I was the better shot. But he was right: I also made the better girl. Which meant I was counting on Jin to cover me.

It was a short walk to the army barracks, but the streets were busy in the cool just before dusk. I kept my eyes low as I fought my way through the crowds in the last of the setting sun. I'd near forgotten what it felt like to be a girl
in Miraji. I was inconspicuous, but not the way I'd been as a boy. Not because I was the same as everyone else. Because I didn't matter.

Nobody in Miraji had ever thought enough of a girl to imagine I might be a spy.

The barracks were four long, low buildings painted in white around a dusty square. Besides the prison there'd be sleeping quarters, kitchens, storage, and the stables. That's what Jin had told me, at least. All I had to do was figure out which one was the prison and get back out.

I tried to look like I was keeping my eyes on my feet as I walked through the dusty yard. There were soldiers practicing with guns and various targets. One of the Gallan soldiers had a gun with a sharp end like I'd never seen before. He fired at a cloth figure of a man before ramming forward, driving the sharp tip through the dummy's stomach.

In the middle of the square was the water pump with three Gallan soldiers stationed at it, taking coin from anyone who wanted to use it. A line of women holding pails on their hips snaked out from the pump. They all kept their eyes low, like they were trying not to be noticed by all the armed men around them. I didn't have a bucket. I just had to hope nobody noticed, or there'd be more questions than I was fit to answer.

The girl at the front of the line was about my age and dressed in a dusty pink khalat. A small child was hanging off the hem, sucking her fist. The girl in pink's hands were empty of coin, but she was begging, her eyes red from
crying. I heard a sliver of her conversation as I passed. Her family, they were thirsty, she was saying. Thirsty and poor. She couldn't pay the new tax on water, but she was begging for their pity. The soldier's eyes swept her with the same look the parched women were given the water pump.

Two Gallan soldiers leaned in and said something to each other in their ugly foreign language. Then one of them with pale eyes like mine and unnaturally yellow hair gestured to the girl to follow him. The girl knelt down and pried the child from her khalat, handing her the bucket. I was too far away now but I guessed she was telling the little girl to stay put. The little girl took a staggering step to follow all the same, but one of the other women in line grabbed her, holding her back. Even holding the child, she spat at the girl in pink.

“Foreigner's whore!” she called, loud enough for me to hear. The girl in pink shrank away.

I thought of my mother. Anger spurred me toward them before I could think better of it. I didn't have a plan, I didn't even have a weapon, but I'd figure that out on the way.

I was five steps behind them when two figures I recognized emerged from a doorway, making me stop short. Commander Naguib was wearing a golden Mirajin uniform with twice as many buttons as when I'd seen him in Dustwalk the first time. He looked like he was trying to stand straight enough to make it fit him right. The Gallan next to him, on the other hand, seemed like he was born in his uniform. He was old enough to have been Naguib's father, and a head taller. Red tassels hung off his uniform,
but instead of making him look like a cushion, they reminded me of scars. The soldier dropped the crying girl's arm and snapped into a salute of his commanding officer. “General Dumas, sir.”

So this was the Gallan general. The one whose name they spoke like it carried the weight of the law. Who'd moved half an army here to hunt the Rebel Prince. Who'd had a whole desert town razed as a testing site for a weapon to conquer the world.

I might be inconspicuous as a woman, but Naguib was bound to recognize me. I turned away quickly, eyes searching for an escape. There was a doorway to my right. Holy words were etched into the wood in a deep scrawl. That could only mean one thing: a prayer house. The Gallan did not worship the same god, Jin had told me that. The door came open under my hand and I plunged through blindly, slamming the door behind me.

The sound of praying greeted me, mingled with sobbing.

The last of the day's light was trickling in between the lattice of the windows. It was uneven where the wood had rotted away. Where the light hit the floor I could see that the tiles had been smashed to dust. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I realized the praying was coming from a girl, sprawled on her knees, her hands shackled to the wall. Her face was pressed to the ground, hidden behind matted hair that looked almost red-tinted in the dying sunlight. Like dye. Or blood.

Something else shifted in the gloom. And then a golden army uniform stepped into the light. I pulled back, toward the door, but it was too late. He'd seen me.

“Here to pray?” the soldier asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. Something rattled on his wrists. More chains. This wasn't a prayer house after all, not anymore at least. It was part of the prison. “We don't have a Holy Father, but you're welcome to join us all the same.”

For one stupid moment I could've sworn the words came from Tamid. I stumbled back to a hundred dusty days kneeling side by side with Tamid, saying holy words. Then I found my footing in the present, where Tamid was dead. It was just the accent, I realized. It was tainted with something that sounded like the Last County. But there was something else familiar about it, something that wasn't quite Dustwalk but that I knew all the same. Finally his face caught the light, with its unnaturally pale eyes, and the memory came fully formed.

“I know you,” I said. From the other side of the desert, in my uncle's shop, when Jin hid below the counter and Commander Naguib stepped inside.
This desert is full of sin.
The smart-talking scrawny kid with eyes like mine who'd flanked his commander.

“And I know you.” He frowned as he dropped his hands, the manacles rattling over the sound of the girl's praying. His sallow face twisted in thought before he hit on it. “You're the girl from the shop.”

“So is this where smart-talking your commander lands you?” I asked. I couldn't help myself.

“No.” His accent seemed to get thicker from talking to me, and I heard my own dropping back into the Last County lilt. “I'm just special.”

“You've got a mighty fine opinion of yourself.” The girl's praying got louder. “And what about her?”

“She's special, too,” the soldier said.

I supposed they must've made Commander Naguib angier than most to warrant being locked away here instead of with the rest of the criminals. “And where would you two be if you weren't special?” I asked.

The young soldier looked straight through me. “You wouldn't be trying to find the prison, now would you?”

I ran my tongue over my dry lips nervously. I shouldn't trust him. He was a soldier. But he was a prisoner, too. And that ought to mean we were on the same side. Or at least that we had the same enemy.

“If I helped you get out of here, would you tell me where it is?” I touched the manacles on his hands. His wrists felt feverish. I'd promised Jin I wouldn't do anything stupid. But if we were getting the caravan out, we might as well get everyone else out, too. Jin could pick a lock. He'd told me that in the desert. One of those times he'd started to talk about something he'd learned along with his brother before cutting himself off.

“And where would I go?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I admitted. We were both an awfully long way from home. “Wherever you wanted.”

A gunshot from outside made me jump. Then everything went quiet again. Everything but the girl's praying.

“Amani.” My name in the young soldier's mouth caught me off guard. “That's you, isn't it?”

“How do you know that?”

“Your cousin talked about you a whole lot. The pretty one with the dark hair.” Shira, selling me out on the train. Who they must've brought along to find me and, through me, Jin.

“What happened to her?” I asked. She'd tried to get me killed. I shouldn't care. “Is she alive?”

“She wasn't as useful as she made herself out to be to the commander. Though maybe it was more that you weren't where you ought to be. She got left with the Sultan in Izman.” The Sultan had once beaten a woman he'd loved to death. What'd happen to a girl who meant nothing to anyone in Izman?

“I'm Noorsham,” he said. “Since you didn't ask and all.” And what would happen to this poor scrawny kid from the end of the desert with too smart a mouth to be a soldier?

Voices came from the other side of the door. The girl's praying doubled. I stood up sharply.

“You ought to hide,” Noorsham said, his blue eyes locked on mine seriously.

Heart pounding, I rushed away from the lamplight. There was no light at the back of the huge prayer-house-turned-prison. I pressed myself into the shadows just as the door opened. Naguib and General Dumas entered. Jin had said he didn't believe in fate until he met me, and I was starting to think he was right. The only thing between me and getting caught was a thin veil of darkness and Noorsham not selling me out.

But Naguib and General Dumas paid no mind to Noorsham. They stopped in front of the praying girl instead.

“This is her?” General Dumas's Mirajin was cleaner than the soldier's who'd arrested the Camel's Knees, like it'd been worn smooth by years of practice. His eyes flicked to Noorsham, “And this one?”

“Just a soldier who cannot obey a simple order,” Naguib said. Even I knew disobeying a direct order meant execution in the army. If I didn't get Noorsham out, he'd be dead at dawn.

“Disobedient soldiers are a failing of their commander,” General Dumas said. Naguib's jaw twitched. “It means they do not respect you.” The general drew his gun. The girl's head was still pressed to the ground. General Dumas grabbed her hair, yanking her up. Her prayer turned to a scream of pain.