The boy became determined to no longer be nameless. So he signed his life to his queen and donned a uniform, pledging to earn his name by fighting for his sovereign and his land. He travelled to a kingdom across the sea, the land without winter.
There, instead of a name for himself, he found blood and guns and sand. He knew that nobody lost their names as quickly as the dead, so he fled once more. He hid himself in the sprawling city of Izman, a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds like he’d never known. When he first grew hungry he remembered what he had once been good at: going places he didn’t belong. He stole a loaf of bread his first night in the city, which he ate sitting atop a prayer house, looking out over the rooftops. On the second night he stole a fistful of foreign coins that he traded for a bed. On his third he took a necklace which could have easily fed all his parents’ children for a year. As he learned to slip in and out with ease among the streets, he heard a name being whispered. One that didn’t truly seem to belong to anyone. A legend. So he took it for himself. He used the name to take other things. Rich people’s jewels and careless men’s wives. He even stole a princess’s heart, like the thieves in the stories he knew. But this time he was not foolish enough to give his in return. He had learned not to give things away to anyone who asked.
And so he had a name. And it fit him so well that he almost started to believe it was truly his. Until he met the girl who it belonged to. The girl in the harem with eyes that could light the world on fire. She was asking for his help.
He was to carry a message to a general’s daughter. He found her home easily. It was a large house with a red door in the wealthiest part of the city. He waited on a corner, watching the door, servants coming and going, watching people wearing a small fortune’s worth of jewels on their hands wave at each other, as he waited for the girl.
Finally he saw the general’s daughter.
He knew her before she even placed her hand on the red door. She was beautiful enough that it was as difficult to look at her as it was to stare at the sun. She was like something crafted her whole life with the purpose only to be seen and coveted. And she moved with the easy certainty of someone who knew that her place in the world was above most.
As soon as he saw her he recognised her, though they had never met.
Her hair and skin and eyes were dark, where the lord’s daughter had been as pale as milk. Her clothes were colours stolen from the Djinn, where the lord’s daughter’s had been the colours of the rainy skies and the rivers and the fresh grass. But they were the same. She was the kind of girl who thought she deserved everything just by asking for it.
And he knew that if he knocked on the red door he would be turned away with a scoff and a wave. Because nameless bandits were not invited in to talk to generals’ daughters.
So he waited for nightfall in the city. Windows in the street lit up one by one and then went dark as silence drew down across the city. Except for the window that belonged to the general’s daughter. He watched that window into the dark hours of the night until finally that light went out, too. And the once-nameless boy did what he did best and walked into somewhere he wasn’t supposed to go, straight through the wall and up the stairs to where she slept.
She was sprawled across colourful pillows, dark hair covering her face. He knelt down next to her bed, to wake her from her slumber. But before he could say a word he found a knife to his throat.
It had happened so quickly he hadn’t seen the general’s daughter move.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. She didn’t look afraid. He saw then that he’d been entirely wrong. She was not like the lord’s daughter at all. She had not been crafted to be seen and coveted. She had crafted herself to fool the world. And the easy certainty of her step was the knowledge that she was being underestimated. And she got what she asked for because she asked for it from the right end of a blade. ‘Answer me quickly and correctly or you’ll never speak another lie again.’ She pressed the blade towards his throat.
And suddenly, the once-nameless boy knew he didn’t want a stolen name, tarnished with use. What he wanted desperately was a name good enough to give to this girl. But until he had that, he would have to use another.
‘I’ve come in the name of the Blue-Eyed Bandit.’
Chapter 21
I knew something was different when I was woken up by three servants instead of by the sun. I was being propped up to a sitting position and my kurti pulled over my head before I was even fully awake.
‘What’s happening?’ I made a grab for the hem, but something new was being draped around me already.
‘The Sultim has ordered that you will attend him in court today.’ The servant who answered was the same one who’d brought me into the harem. I’d never gotten her name out of her.
And here I thought I was off-limits. But I supposed that was only to being treated as a wife, not as a thing to be polished up and put on display. I yanked my arm back towards myself as a woman scraped something rough along my fingernails. She grabbed my hand back and started again, making me wince at the noise.
‘It’s a great honour.’ The servant gathered my long hair up, fastening a clasp behind my neck. Not a necklace, I realised; this was meant to pass for a khalat. It was fine blue cloth stitched with black that matched my hair. Except it left half of me bare. My arms, my shoulder, and half my back were exposed. I almost laughed. This would never pass for desert clothes, not in a place where the sun beat down on every bit of skin it could find. This was the luxury of a city. And the decadence of a harem. She pulled me to my feet so that the clothes fell over my loose shalvar. At least I seemed to be allowed to keep that on.
I could make this real difficult for them if I wanted to. I could resist and make the Sultan dictate my every movement. But the last thing I wanted was more orders.
And I got the feeling that, as hard as I could make things for them, the Sultim could probably make them a whole lot harder for me.
Besides, I was being permitted to leave the harem, even if it wasn’t out of the palace. It’d been seven days since I’d sent Sam to Shazad. Seven days of the same lazy indifference that marked every day in the harem. It wasn’t like waking up in the rebel camp. The tension in my bones wasn’t matched by anyone else’s. The restlessness of an impending battle, the fear of not knowing – they were mine alone. I’d even gone to the Weeping Wall once or twice and strung up the white cloth into the huge tree, hoping the signal would bring him back. Nothing.
Everything depended on a stupid boy who couldn’t even tie a sheema right and there was nothing else I could do except wait for news. Wait like Sabriya for Prince Aziz. Helpless and blind to see who would die in battle. I felt like I might lose my mind.
I’d be damn stupid to turn down a shot at getting a look outside.
*
The parts of the palace that they led me through now weren’t near so empty as those I had followed the Sultan through. Servants scurried past us, heads bowed, carrying platters heavy with colourful fruit or crisp clean linens. A small gaggle of Xichian men in what looked like travelling clothes sat in a garden that we passed. My neck craned their way instinctively as Jin dashed across my thoughts. A man dressed finely enough to be an emir and trailing three identically dressed women swept down the hallway ahead of us, disappearing up a staircase. A pair of foreign-looking men in strange uniforms stepped aside as we passed. My heart jumped at the sight of them. They looked Gallan. But no, their uniform was wrong. Albish, maybe?