It was only then that I took stock of my surroundings. The council room was full to bursting. With men in uniforms. Uniforms of all sorts. Golden Mirajin uniforms and the blue of the Gallan empire.
And they were all staring at me: a wild-eyed girl who had just slammed a dead duck with an arrow through its neck down on the table in front of her Sultan. Prince Rahim was hiding a smile under the pretence of scratching his nose, but nobody else seemed amused.
I had just interrupted one of the Sultan’s councils to decide the outcome of the ceasefire and the fate of our whole country, with a dead duck.
I wondered if this was what would cost me my head.
‘Well, it seems you are a half-decent shot after all,’ the Sultan said, too low for anyone else to hear. ‘You will leave the harem at any time you please.’ There was a short pause in which a moment of hope bloomed, that he might really leave that loophole for me, one that would allow me slip out of his grip and back to the Rebellion … ‘But you will do so with a guard. And you will not leave the palace.’ My hope died. I was stupid to even entertain it to start with. The Sultan wasn’t an incautious man. And then, raising his voice: ‘Someone take this duck to the kitchens and my Demdji to somewhere she belongs.’ I saw the Gallan delegation’s heads lift at the word Demdji. They’d call me a demon but they knew what that word meant all the same. I wondered if the Sultan was rubbing me in their faces. That didn’t seem much of a political tactic.
A servant lifted the duck by the neck gingerly. The papers spread across the desk shifted as he did. I caught sight of a map of Miraji, drawn in faded black ink. Marked with newer blue lines. On our half of the desert. It was barely a glimpse of a corner but it was enough. I saw it. Circled in fresh blue ink was a tiny black dot, labelled in careful print: Saramotai.
My mind dashed to Samira. To the rebels Shazad was going to send to hold the city. To Ikar on the walls. And the women who’d chosen to stay behind. All of them sitting like a bull’s-eye inside the blue ink circle.
A servant was already taking my arm, urging me out of the room. Trying to move me on. But I couldn’t go. Not without knowing what was happening to the city we’d already given so much to free. My mind started running, trying to find a way to stay. To get those papers.
The Gallan ambassador was talking to the Sultan now. ‘We have a command a thousand men strong coming from the homeland with His Majesty for Auranzeb. They will need to be armed if they are to hold Saramotai. Furthermore—’
‘He’s lying.’ The words slipped out. The servant holding my arm hissed a warning through his teeth, tugging me towards the door harder now. But the Sultan held up his hand, stopping him.
‘What was that, little Demdji?’
‘He’s lying,’ I said again, louder this time. I tried the next words on my tongue, looking for the untruth. ‘The Gallan troops coming with their king aren’t as many as he says.’ There it was.
The Sultan ran one calloused finger in a ring around the rim of his glass. His mind was as quick as Ahmed’s. I was a Demdji. If I said someone was lying, then that was God’s honest truth.
‘Where did you learn Gallan?’ the Sultan asked me.
Now, that was a dangerous question. Some of the truth of it was Jin and a long desert crossing and sleepless nights keeping watch.
‘The Last County suffered under the Gallan alliance.’ It was a half-truth folded up in deception, usually too obvious to get past the Sultan. But I was offering him a gift. It might be enough. ‘And us Demdji, we pick things up fast.’
The Sultan’s finger made another thoughtful loop of the rim of his glass. ‘I am sorry that you suffered,’ he said finally. ‘Much of my desert did.’ Finally he addressed the translator. ‘Tell the Gallan ambassador that I know there aren’t a thousand Gallan soldiers arriving with his king. And that I want the real number.’
The translator’s eyes darted nervously between the Sultan and me as he spoke. The Gallan ambassador looked surprised as the words reached him. His eyes flicked to me, seeming to understand that I had something to do with this. But he didn’t miss a beat as he started speaking again in that guttural language of the west. I didn’t catch every word, but I did catch the number. ‘He’s still lying,’ I said again quickly. ‘There aren’t five hundred.’
The Sultan considered me as he spoke to his translator. ‘Tell the ambassador that perhaps lying is more tolerated in Gallandie, but in Miraji, it is a sin. Tell him that this is not the first time since our alliance ruptured that one of his countrymen has tried to deceive me into providing weapons for their troops overseas in order to continue their war in the north, under the guise of arming only those allies coming to our desert. Tell him that he has one more chance to tell me the real number or I will halt negotiations altogether until his king arrives.’
‘Two hundred.’ The translator spoke finally, after a tense moment. The Sultan’s eyes flicked to me along with the rest of the room.
‘It’s the truth.’ It rolled easily off my tongue.
‘Well.’ The Sultan tapped the edge of his glass. ‘That’s a fairly substantial difference, isn’t it, Ambassador? No, there’s no need to translate that.’ He waved as the translator started to lean in to speak. ‘The ambassador understands my meaning. And I think he, and everyone else here, understands that they are better off not lying to me. Sit down, Amani.’
He gestured to a seat behind himself. It was an order. I couldn’t disobey it. And I wanted to stay. This was what I had asked for. But my legs still shook a little as I folded down onto the cushion behind the Sultan.
It wasn’t until I was settled that I realised he had called me by my name. Not little Demdji.
I had his attention now. I just prayed I didn’t have enough for him to start calling me the Blue-Eyed Bandit.
Chapter 24
The duck I’d killed was served dressed in candied oranges and pomegranates, on a platter the colour of Hala’s skin, my arrow still through its neck. I wondered if that was part of the lesson. When a bullet disappeared inside flesh, you could almost forget it. The arrow wasn’t that kind.
The council had gone on well past the sunset, as translators worked frantically, translating Gallan and Albish and Xichian and Gamanix. My head was churning with everything I’d heard in that room, turning it over and over like a prayer until I knew it by heart. I was going to try my damned hardest not to forget a word of it before I could get the news out to Shazad. One wrong detail, one point misremembered, and I could cost thousands of lives. I tried to sift out anything useless with every rotation through my head, leaving only what I could use.
The Sultan was going to march troops to take back Saramotai. If negotiations were successful, the city would go back to the Gallans’ hands. A direct access point back into the desert and into Amonpour. Amonpour was allied with the Albish. There was an Albish camp on the border that would be in their path. They would march in three days. The Sultan was going to march troops to take back Saramotai …
‘You seem distracted.’ The Sultan interrupted my thoughts as he settled across from me.
‘Your rooms are just about the same size as the whole town where I grew up.’ It was a quick jab, meant to distract him, lest he think to order me to tell him what I was thinking about. I’m considering everything I’m going to tell the Rebellion about your plans.