And for a time things were well for the Rebellion, for the Blue-Eyed Bandit, and for the Foreign Prince.
Until the balance started to shift against the Rebel Prince. Two dozen rebels were lost in a trap set for them in the sands, where they were surrounded and outgunned. A city rose up against the Sultan, crying out the Rebel Prince’s name in the night. But those who had saw the next dawn with the blank eyes of the dead. And the Blue-Eyed Bandit fell to a bullet in a battle in the mountains, gravely wounded and only just clinging to life. There, for the first time since the threads of their stories had become tangled, the Blue-Eyed Bandit’s and the Foreign Prince’s paths split.
While the Blue-Eyed Bandit clung to her life, the Foreign Prince was sent to the eastern border of the desert. There, an army from Xicha was camped. The Foreign Prince stole a uniform and walked into the Xichian camp as if he belonged. It was easy there, where he did not look foreign any more. He stood with them as they battled the Sultan’s forces, spying in secret for the Rebel Prince.
And for a time things were well, hiding among the foreign army.
Until the missive came from the enemy camp, its bearer wearing the Sultan’s gold and white and holding up a flag of peace.
The Foreign Prince would have killed for news of what came in that missive for his own side, but there was no need. It was known that he spoke the desert language. He was summoned into the Xichian general’s tent to translate between the Sultan’s envoy and the Xichian, neither of them knowing he was an enemy of them both. As he translated he learned that the Sultan was calling for a ceasefire. He was tired of bloodshed, the message said. He was ready to negotiate. The Foreign Prince learned that the ruler of Miraji was summoning all the foreign rulers to him to talk of a new alliance. The Sultan asked for any king or queen or emperor or prince who would lay claim to his desert to come to his palace to make their case.
The missive went to the Xichian emperor the next morning. And the guns stopped. The ceasefire had started. Next would come negotiations. Then peace between the Sultan and the invaders. And without the need to mind his shores, the desert ruler’s eyes would turn inward again.
The Foreign Prince understood it was time to return to his brother. Their rebellion was about to turn into a war.
Chapter 2
I’d always liked this shirt. It was a shame about all the blood.
Most of it wasn’t mine, at least. The shirt wasn’t mine, either, for that matter – I’d borrowed it from Shazad and never bothered to give it back. Well, she probably wouldn’t want it now.
‘Stop!’
I was jerked to a halt. My hands were tied, and the rope chafed painfully along the raw skin of my wrists. I hissed a curse under my breath as I tilted my head back, finally looking up from my dusty boots to lock eyes with the glare of the desert sun.
The walls of Saramotai cast a mighty long shadow in the last of the light.
These walls were legendary. They had stood indifferent to one of the greatest battles of the First War, between the hero Attallah and the Destroyer of Worlds. They were so ancient they looked like they’d been built out of the bones of the desert itself. But the words slapped in sloppy white paint above the gates … those were new.
Welcome to the Free City.
I could see where the paint had dripped between the cracks in the ancient stones before drying in the heat.
I had a few things to say about being dragged to a so-called Free City tied up like a goat on a spit, but even I knew I was better off not running my mouth just now.
‘Declare yourself or I’ll shoot!’ someone called from the city wall. The words were a whole lot more impressive than the voice that came with them. I could hear the crack of youth on that last word. I squinted up through my sheema at the kid pointing a rifle at me from the top of the walls. He couldn’t have been any older than thirteen. He was all limbs and joints. He didn’t look like he could’ve held that gun right if his life depended on it. Which it probably did. This being Miraji and all.
‘It’s us, Ikar, you little idiot,’ the man holding me bellowed in my ear. I winced. Shouting really didn’t seem necessary. ‘Now, open the gates right now or, God help me, I’m going to have your father beat you harder than one of his horseshoes until some brains go in.’
‘Hossam?’ Ikar didn’t lower the gun right away. He was twitchy as all get-out. Which wasn’t the best thing when he had one finger on the trigger of a rifle. ‘Who’s that with you?’ He waved his gun in my direction. I turned my body on instinct as the barrel swung wildly. He didn’t look like he could hit the broad side of a barn if he was trying, but I wasn’t ruling out that he might hit me by accident. If he did, better to get shot in the shoulder than the chest.
‘This’ – a hint of pride crept into Hossam’s voice as he jerked my face up to the sunlight like I was a hunted carcass – ‘is the Blue-Eyed Bandit.’
That name landed with more weight than it used to, drawing silence down behind it. On top of the wall Ikar stared. Even this far away I saw his jaw open, going slack for a moment, then close.
‘Open the gates!’ Ikar squawked finally, scrambling down. ‘Open the gates!’
The huge iron doors swung open painfully slow, fighting against the sand that had built up over the day. Hossam and the other men with us jostled me forward in a hurry as the ancient hinges groaned.
The gates didn’t open all the way, only enough for one man to get through at a time. Even after thousands of years those gates looked as strong as they had at the dawn of humanity. They were iron through and through, as thick as the span of a man’s arms, and operated by some system of weights and gears that no other city had been able to duplicate. There’d be no breaking these gates down. And everyone knew there was no climbing the walls of Saramotai.
Seemed like the only way into the city these days was by being dragged through the gates as a prisoner with a hand around your neck. Lucky me.
Saramotai was west of the middle mountains. Which meant it was ours. Or at least, it was supposed to be. After the battle at Fahali, Ahmed had declared this territory his. Most cities had sworn their allegiance quickly enough, as the Gallan occupiers who’d held this half of the desert for so long emptied out of the streets. Or we’d claimed their allegiance away from the Sultan.
Saramotai was another story.
Welcome to the Free City.
Saramotai had declared its own laws, taking rebellion one step further.
Ahmed talked a whole lot about equality and wealth for the poor. The people of Saramotai had decided the only way to create equality was to strike down those who were above them. That the only way to become rich was to take their wealth. So they’d turned against the rich under the guise of accepting Ahmed’s rule.
But Ahmed knew a grab for power when he saw one. We didn’t know all that much about Malik Al-Kizzam, the man who’d taken over Saramotai, except that he’d been a servant to the emir and now the emir was dead and Malik lived in his grand estate.
So we sent a few folk to find out more. And do something about it if we didn’t like it.
They didn’t come back.
That was a problem. Another problem was getting in after them.
And so here I was, my hands tied so tight behind my back I was losing feeling in them and a fresh wound on my collarbone where a knife had just barely missed my neck. Funny how being successful felt exactly the same as getting captured.
Hossam shoved me ahead of him through the narrow gap in the gates. I stumbled and went sprawling in the sand face-first, my elbow bashing into the iron gate painfully as I went down.
Son of a bitch, that hurt more than I thought it would.