Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed me and slammed me into the metal hard, sending pain shooting up my body, an explosion of feeling across every bit of skin that I had.
And then I was staring up into the cruel face of the Gallan ambassador. Behind him was Kadir. Before I could speak a word, the man drove a hand into my middle, pinning me still, knocking the air out of my lungs.
‘In my country,’ the Gallan ambassador said in his thick accent, ‘we hang demons’ children by the throat.’ His hand tightened on my windpipe, forcing me up straight. ‘But I don’t have any rope with me.’
God, the metal door at my back was starting to hurt now. I could feel my thoughts blurring and my vision going black as his hand tightened around my throat. My hands scrabbled uselessly against the back of the hand gripping my windpipe. There were a dozen things I should’ve been able to do to fight back against him. I could’ve clawed the soft spots inside his wrists, jabbed at his eyes, driven my leg into his groin. Except the Sultan had ordered me not to harm anyone. I was going to die. The panic started in earnest now. I was going to really and truly die.
And then suddenly I could breathe again. Air flooded back in a gasp as the hand released my throat. I wrenched myself away from the wall, falling to all fours. I knelt there for three long breaths, waiting to remember how to breathe. A crack like breaking bone sounded, and a cry of pain. I looked up in time to see Kadir reel back, clutching his nose.
Over him, blazing with the setting sun at his back, stood Rahim, his brother’s blood on his fist. The light blurred his features so I almost couldn’t recognise him. He looked like every hero I’d ever imagined from the old stories: the First Mortal facing death instead of running from it; Attallah outside the walls of Saramotai, outnumbered; the Grey Prince against the Conqueror. He didn’t look real.
And then he dropped to his knees across from me and he was human again. ‘Amani.’ He tipped my head back, checking me with the sure hands of someone who knew a battlefield injury. ‘Are you all right?’ I could see behind him now that there were two soldiers with him and they were holding the Gallan ambassador away from me. ‘Amani,’ Rahim pressed. ‘Talk to me or I’m taking you to the Holy Father.’
‘I’m fine.’ My voice came out scratchy but still mine. ‘I’m sure I have something to wear that’ll go well with the bruising.’ Rahim helped me to my feet. I touched my throat, sensitive where the ambassador’s fingers had tried to crush my windpipe.
‘Soldiers.’ Kadir had recovered enough from his broken nose to speak. He pulled his hands away from his face though blood was still gushing across his mouth. ‘Release the ambassador. Take my brother away instead.’
The soldiers didn’t move. Instead they both looked at Rahim for instructions. I noticed their uniforms then. They were Mirajin, but instead of the standard white and gold of the palace they were emblazoned on the chest with the same blue stripe as Rahim’s. They were from his command in Iliaz. The emir must’ve arrived. This was why he’d been late coming back for me. He’d found his men.
‘Stay where you are.’ Rahim gave the order with a controlled ease I’d never seen in him before. I realised this was where he truly belonged, among soldiers, not among politicians in a palace. He was a soldier through and through. No, not a soldier. A commander.
Kadir’s gaze flicked frantically between the soldiers and Rahim. ‘I said let him go. I order you as your Sultim!’ His voice, thick with the blood of a broken nose, rose with anger.
They might as well have been deaf. Rahim calmly took his time pulling off the jacket of his uniform and placing it around my shoulders before addressing his brother. ‘These are my men, brother. They follow their commander, not their Sultim.
‘Escort him back to his chambers,’ Rahim ordered the soldiers holding the Gallan ambassador. ‘Before we start an international incident. Amani, let’s go.’
Rahim had already turned away when Kadir pulled the pistol from his belt. I cried a warning, but too slow. The gun went off, hitting one of the soldiers. It was a sloppy shot, the shoulder instead of the chest, but it was enough to make his grip slacken.
The Gallan ambassador wrenched himself free of the soldier’s grip. The foreigner grabbed the blade on his belt, diving for the wounded soldier. Rahim moved quickly, his own weapon already drawn, meeting the ambassador’s blade in the air in one easy gesture before it could run his soldier through.
Kadir was still raging. He raised his gun again, pointing it straight at Rahim’s back. I moved as fast as Shazad had taught me.
He had a loose grip on the gun – I couldn’t tell if it was anger or just bad training. I might not be able to hurt him, but I didn’t have to let him kill Rahim, either. I slammed my palm flat against the place where the grip of the gun was sticking out from his fist. The gun went off, the bullet hitting the wall, as his fingers flew open. The gun jolted upwards, out of his hand. I caught it easily before it hit the ground, flipping it around in my fingers with familiar ease.
I aimed the pistol at Kadir. He went still, staring at me over the barrel of the gun, like he couldn’t quite understand what had happened. ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’
That was true enough. I couldn’t. I had orders against it. But he didn’t know that. I pulled back the hammer on the pistol all the same. ‘Want to bet your life on that?’ My fingers were shaking from trying to pull the trigger. And I was that ten-year-old girl again, holding on to a too-big rifle for dear life. Knowing that if I dropped it, I’d be helpless.
‘Drop the gun, Amani.’
Even if I hadn’t known the voice, the tug in my gut at the order would’ve given him away.
No. I fought against it.
But my arms were already moving without wanting to. I fought it until my arms screamed. The gun clattered to the ground.
When I turned around, the two soldiers were standing at sharp attention, the injured one clutching his shoulder. At their feet the ambassador’s body was slumped in the grass. His hands, which had been wrapped around my throat a few moments earlier, were limp now. The bloodstained sword was in Rahim’s hand.
And, surveying the whole scene, from my discarded gun to the blood spreading out from under the ambassador’s body, his expression unreadable, was the Sultan.
*
The Sultan’s fingers drummed out a pattern on the ivory and wood chessboard inlay of his desk as his eyes traced the line of my throat. It was going to bloom into an impressive bruise shaped like the Gallan ambassador’s hand in a few hours, but for now, it still felt raw and red. We were in the Sultan’s study. The same one I’d stolen those papers from a few weeks back. There was a weight to the room with the Sultan in it that hadn’t been there without him. Like all the maps on the walls and spread across the desk were extensions of him. Jin had once told me I was this desert. I wondered if he’d change his mind if he saw in here.