The room was moving, I realised then. Was I on a train? The floor shifted below me and my stomach heaved again. No, this was different. There was no steady, juddering feeling. This was more like being rocked in a cradle by a drunken giant.
As my head cleared I took stock of things. I gingerly set the bucket down again and eased myself up. I could sit up. That wasn’t nothing to start with. And thanks to the light coming through a small window above me, I could see.
I was on a bed in a cramped room with damp wooden walls and a damp floor. The light had the feel of late afternoon. Burned sky after a long day in the desert. It’d been night when I was taken, so that meant I’d been asleep nearly a whole day. At least a whole day.
I shifted, trying to stand up, but my right hand pulled me up short. I was tied to the frame of the bed.
No. Not tied. Chained.
Iron was biting into my skin. I could feel it the moment I reached for my power. I shoved up the sleeve on my arm to get a look at it. The iron was clamped like an angry hand on a child’s wrist. Only not completely. A sliver of light leaked between my skin and the iron.
I could work with that.
Without thinking, I reached for my sheema. My fingers scraped across bare neck instead. It felt like being punched in the stomach.
It was gone. I remembered now. Jin had tied it like a sling. I’d been struggling as the drug filled my nose and mouth, and the sheema slipped off me. Gone in the sand.
It was stupid. It was just a thing. Just a stupid strip of red cloth against the desert sun. Except it was a stupid thing Jin had given me. Snatched off a clothesline in Sazi, the day we’d escaped Dustwalk. I’d never stopped wearing it since then. Even when I was angry at him. It was mine. And now it was gone.
But there were other ways out of this.
I worried at the stitching on my shirt until the side of it gave way. Tearing off a strip of cloth, I started to stuff it between my skin and the iron manacle. It wasn’t exactly easy work – the manacle was tight and the cloth was awkward and thick. But I kept going all the same, working the piece of cloth in one bit at a time.
There. I felt it the moment the iron stopped touching my skin. My power rushed back in.
I was tired and thirsty, and my mouth tasted of vomit and some unknown drug that was still lingering in my lungs, but I could do this. I reached for the desert outside with everything I had. I felt it surge in answer, only to have it slip away. I pulled again, but nothing came. It felt like reaching for something just a little too far away.
I fought down the panic. There were still other ways. Like there’d been in Saramotai. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I could feel it now as I calmed myself. Even against the strange lurching of the room and my dizzy head. The sand that clung to my skin.
I raised my free hand in one quick violent motion, tearing the sand from every part of me that I could find, scraping skin off with it. I slashed the sand down towards my arm in one sharp motion.
The chain on the manacle splintered like wood under an axe. And I was free.
I bolted for the door, fighting the haze that was clinging to my mind like a lingering desert exhaustion. The floor tilted below me, pitching me out into a long dark hallway. At one end light leaked through from whatever was above. The floor heaved again below me.
Something connected in my mind, pieces from stories. Some I’d heard around campfires, and some Jin had told me.
This wasn’t a train.
I was on a ship.
Wooden steps rose to meet me in the spot of sunshine, and I bashed my shin into a step as I scrambled upwards, the ground tilting yet again. And then I was up in the sunlight and fresh air.
I was momentarily blinded by the sudden glare after the dark. But I’d never been the sort to stop running just because I couldn’t see where I was going. As my vision cleared I bolted forward, focusing on the place where the ship seemed to end.
Shouts followed me, but I didn’t stop. I pushed my legs forward into one last violent whip of speed. I crashed full force into the rail at the edge of the ship. My escape.
Only there was no escape.
I’d once asked Jin if the sand sea was like the real sea. He’d given me that knowing smile he used to use when he knew something I didn’t. Before I stripped all his secrets away and that smile became mine.
But now I knew.
There was water as far as the eye could see. More water than I’d seen in my whole life, more water than I’d known even existed in the world. I’d seen rivers and I’d seen pools, and I’d even seen some desert cities that had the luxury of fountains. I’d never seen anything like this.
It was as vast as the desert. And it kept me as trapped as I ever had been in Dustwalk by the miles and miles of burning sand.
Hands grabbed me from behind, yanking me away from the railing like someone thought I might throw myself off and into the mouth of the sea.
The haze of the world was starting to fade, and I was becoming aware of other things around me now. The strange smell that I could only guess was the drowned, endless stretch of sea around me. Shouts and cries, someone asking how the hell I’d gotten out.
It was a rabble of men who surrounded me. Mirajin, and no mistaking it – their skin was desert dark, and darker still for some of them. Bright sheemas covered their faces, and their hands were hard from work and raw with welts. I held on to my handful of sand, even though I knew I couldn’t take down half their number before someone would shoot me. Not when there were already three pistols aimed at me.
And then there, standing among the crowd of men in a white khalat so brilliant it hurt my eyes, was the reason Jin was still alive. It wasn’t the Sultan’s army who’d taken me after all.
It was my aunt Safiyah.
‘You drugged me.’ My voice sounded scratchy. My aunt whose hands danced with practised ease through the medicines in the Holy Father’s supply chest. She’d made the food. She could have slipped anything into it to knock out the rebels so she could escape. How easy would it have been for her to grab me as I stormed to Jin’s tent, and knock me out with something stolen when I’d left her alone with his supplies unlocked. Twice she’d tried to push bottles that would put me to sleep. For the pain.
Shazad always said I was bad at watching my back. That was why she did it for me. Shazad would’ve also said this was one of those times to keep my mouth shut. But Shazad wasn’t here. Because this woman had kidnapped me. ‘You know, last time I drugged someone who trusted me,’ I said, ‘I had the decency to leave him where he was.’
‘God, I wish you didn’t sound so much like her, too.’ She spoke low enough so I was sure I was the only one who heard. Safiyah circled around me, to where the sailor was still holding my arms. I felt her touch the strip of torn shirt still stuffed between my skin and the manacle. ‘Clever.’ She almost sounded proud of me. ‘So you can use your Demdji tricks.’
I tried to pull away but the sailor held me fast. ‘You know what I am.’ It wasn’t a question, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want answers.
‘I’ve been trading medicines in Izman since before you were even born.’ She pulled the cloth free from my wrist almost gently. ‘Do you really think you’re the first Demdji I’ve ever come across? Your kind are a rare breed. And worth a small fortune each. People in my trade learn to recognise the signs. I guessed because of your eyes, but I knew when that sandstorm saved us out in the desert. And your mother was always so secretive about you in her letters.’
She was in Saramotai for no good reason. No good reason except that the Emir of Saramotai had just started bragging to the world he had a child with eyes like dying embers who wielded the sun in her hands. Ranaa had been worth something. But my aunt had missed her chance to take the little Demdji girl. So she’d taken me instead.