‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said finally. ‘I can smell it on you. That’ll be why it started again. Thins the blood. You don’t need stitches, just a bandage and to learn how to hold your drink.’
It was the way she said drink that made me sure. Her accent had been worn smooth by years in other places, places that didn’t swallow that word like they were always thirsty, but there was no mistaking it. Not with the way the rest of the words dropped and rose. I could’ve picked out that accent in the cacophony of a bazaar. It was my accent.
‘You called me Zahia,’ I said, biting the bullet so fast I didn’t have time to lose my nerve. ‘That was my mother’s name. Zahia Al-Hiza.’ I watched her close for a reaction. ‘But she was born Zahia Al-Fadi.’
The woman’s face folded like a bad hand of cards. She pulled away from me, dropping the collar of my khalat, and pressed the back of her hands to her lips, stifling what sounded like a sob.
I stared at her, unsure of what to do. I ought to give her some privacy or some comfort. But I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her.
‘That would make you Amani, then.’ Her voice sounded choked when she finally spoke again. She shook her head angrily, as if to dispel the tears. Desert girls didn’t cry. ‘You look exactly like Zahia at your age.’ I’d heard that before. She reached out a hand like she was going to touch me. There were tears in her eyes. ‘It’s like seeing my sister the day I left Dustwalk all over again.’
‘Your sister?’ I pulled away before her fingers could so much as graze my cheek. ‘You’re Safiyah Al-Fadi?’ I saw it as soon as she said it. I might be the spitting image of my mother but I saw her in this woman, too. She was the middle sister of the three Al-Fadi girls. My mother and Aunt Farrah’s mythical third sister. The one who had famously vanished out of Dustwalk to make her own life. Who my mother always talked about running away to find. Who I’d been headed for when I first left Dustwalk. Before I’d chosen Jin and the Rebellion. ‘You’re supposed to be in Izman.’
‘I was in Izman.’ She suddenly busied herself, pulling bottles out of the Holy Father’s trunk, checking them over with a quick, practised eye. ‘I went there to find my fortune. I was there for nearly seventeen years.’ She uncorked one without a label to sniff the contents, carefully avoiding meeting my eye.
I didn’t like that she was here. It didn’t seem right that in this whole huge sprawling desert we would find each other somewhere neither of us was ever meant to be. It seemed like the world had bent itself over backwards trying to push us together. Had I done this? I raked my mind for the things I’d said in the days Jin and I had walked across the desert, when I’d still thought I was going to wind up in Izman. Had I told some truth by accident? Before I’d known I was Demdji and that I couldn’t lie – before I’d understood how dangerous it was to speak truths about the future, that it would twist the universe to make them true? All I’d have to have done was tell Jin I was going to find my aunt and the universe would rearrange the stars to make it so. And give me some kind of poisoned version of the truth.
Or was this just dumb luck?
Her nervous fingers finally settled on a bottle. She tipped out something thick and foul-smelling onto her fingertips and dabbed it across my wound.
‘So how come you left Izman?’
‘Because fortune is a funny thing.’ I waited, but it seemed that was all the explanation I was going to get for how she’d wound up in Saramotai. ‘Though I must admit I didn’t think it was going to lead me to being imprisoned by a revolutionary who wanted to overturn the world order.’
‘Malik wasn’t ours,’ I argued, wincing against the pressure of her fingers on my collarbone.
‘Do you hand pick all your followers?’ She pressed a little harder on my wound than she needed to. ‘He did things in your prince’s name; that’s enough for me. He nearly killed me doing it, too. You know, some of this desert didn’t ask for a rebellion that might get us killed.’ She pulled away from me, wiping her fingers on a cloth. ‘But I suppose, as the Holy Father in Dustwalk would have said, Fortune and Fate.’
Three words and I was standing back in the prayer house in Dustwalk all over again, being preached to. That was an old expression the Holy Father used when times were hard. Fortune and Fate. It meant that fortune and fate weren’t always the same.
I understood that better than anyone.
‘Here.’ My aunt Safiyah dusted her hands off quickly, pulling out another of the bottles from the Holy Father’s chest. ‘Take this for the pain. It’ll help you sleep.’
It was her accent, mingled with those words, talk of sleep and medicines, that drew the memory out of the corner of my mind.
Tamid.
It hit me like a blow to the chest.
I’d pushed down all thoughts of him for months now. But it was as if she’d summoned him here, with her Dustwalk accent, the tiny bottle of medicine in the dim light, the sick longing for people I used to know. He was the only friend I had before this place and the Rebellion. Who used to stitch me up and sneak me things until the pain went away.
Who I left to die in the sand.
Was this how truth-telling myself to my aunt would twist around on me? Reminding me of who I was before Ahmed’s rebellion? Of the people who’d suffered and died because of things I did?
All of a sudden, taking something that would send me to sleep and away from that memory seemed awful tempting.
But before I could take the bottle, the entrance to the tent flapped open violently. My head snapped around. My first thought was that Jin had followed me here. But through the lingering haze of drink I saw two figures silhouetted in the light of the lamp, against the backdrop of the dark outside. Jin would have come after me alone. And they were tangled together like two drunk wedding revellers looking for some privacy, stumbling into the wrong tent.
Then they shifted, and the light caught the knife.
I was on my feet in a heartbeat even as I heard a voice I knew well choke out my name.
It was Delila.
Chapter 9
The figures staggered backwards out from the tent. But it was too late to run. I was already on my feet.
‘Stay here,’ I ordered Safiyah, swiping up a knife as I went.
‘Stop!’ The order came at me as I burst out of the sick tent after them. Before I could see clearly. Before I even recognised the second figure holding Delila hostage. Dark hair flopping over his proud brow, his eyes panicked in a way I’d never seen before. Surprise staggered the strength in my voice. ‘Mahdi?’
He was holding Delila around her waist. A knife was pressed across her throat so hard he’d already drawn blood. I could see it running in a fresh trickle down her skin and under her khalat, staining it.
‘Don’t come any further!’ He was shaking hard.
‘Mahdi.’ I kept my voice level, even though my mind was making a mad dash for an explanation. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I’m saving her.’ Mahdi’s voice rose frantically. I checked how far we were from the wedding. Too far for anyone to hear him, no matter how loud he got. ‘I’m saving Sayyida. Raise your hands where I can see them!’
I kept eye contact with Delila as I did what he said, desperately trying to tell her it was going to be all right. I was not going to let her die here.
‘What’s in your hand?’ he called out, urgently.
The knife.
‘I’m letting it go,’ I said, keeping my voice level. I unclenched my fist and let it drop. It planted blade-down in the sand. ‘I’m unarmed now.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Mahdi pulled at Delila, and she whimpered. He was frantic, manic – and that knife was awfully close to her throat. ‘You’ve got an entire desert around you.’
He wasn’t wrong. I could have him down in a handful of seconds if I wanted. But I couldn’t make sure that knife didn’t go through Delila as he fell.