‘We are not leaving her behind.’ I’d made the mistake of leaving someone in need behind to save myself before – my friend Tamid, the night I’d fled Dustwalk with Jin. I’d been scared and desperate and frantic. I’d taken Jin’s hand without thinking, and I’d left Tamid to bleed out in the sand. I’d left him to die. I couldn’t undo what had happened that night. But I wasn’t the girl from Dustwalk any more. I could make sure nobody got left behind again.
‘Who knows how to use a gun?’ I asked the group of women. No one moved. ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that hard. You point and shoot.’ Samira’s hand went up first. A few more followed her lead nervously. ‘Take them off the bodies,’ I ordered, swiping one for myself. I flicked the chamber of the gun open; the slightest touch of iron instantly made my power slip away. But there was a full round. I flicked it shut again and tucked it against my hip, careful not to let any part of it touch my skin. I didn’t strictly need a gun. I had the entire desert. But it was always nice to have options. ‘Let’s move.’
*
It was after dark and the streets of Saramotai were empty. A whole lot emptier than they ought to be this soon after nightfall.
‘Curfew,’ Mahdi explained in a low whisper as we moved. ‘The peasant usurper’s way of keeping the population under control.’ He didn’t need to say peasant with quite that much disdain, but I wasn’t about to come to the defence of Malik after he’d taken Saramotai by force and corrupted Ahmed’s name.
Curfew was going to make things a whole lot easier or a whole lot harder. Right in front of the prison the road split. I hesitated. I couldn’t remember where I’d come from.
‘Which way to the gates?’ I asked in a low voice. The women following us stared at me with huge, terrified eyes. Finally, Samira loosed her arm from Ranaa’s grip and pointed silently to the right. She almost managed to hide the fact that she was shaking. I kept my finger on the trigger as we pressed forward.
I hated to admit that Mahdi was right, but we weren’t exactly inconspicuous sneaking out of the prison trailing dozens of wealthy-looking women in torn khalats. And I wasn’t counting on the women I’d given guns to – they held them like baskets to market instead of weapons. I had my suspicions that Mahdi could talk someone to death, but otherwise he was useless. And carrying the unconscious woman who’d called me by my mother’s name made it more than a little difficult for Imin to fight if we ran into trouble.
I supposed I’d just have to keep us out of trouble, then. That wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
Still, we didn’t meet with any resistance as we passed quietly through the deserted streets of Saramotai, retracing my steps from earlier in the day. I was just starting to think we were going to make it, when we rounded the last corner and two dozen men with rifles looked up at us.
Damn.
They were clustered around the city gates in gleaming white-and-gold uniforms. Mirajin uniforms. And not the makeshift ones of the guards who’d blundered into the prison and to their deaths. Real ones. Which meant they were the Sultan’s men. On our side of the desert for the first time since Fahali.
I let out the most colourful Xichian curse Jin had taught me as my gun leapt into my hand on instinct. I knew it was too late, though – we were caught. One of the women behind me panicked, and before I could stop her she was gone, darting towards the maze of city streets like a frightened rabbit looking for cover.
I’d watched birds of prey hunt. The rabbit never made it.
A shot went off. Another chorus of screams behind me. And a cry of pain, cut off by a second bullet.
The woman was sprawled on the street, blood mixing with dirt. The bullet had torn straight through her heart. No one else moved.
I kept my finger steady on the trigger. Two dozen guns were up and pointing at us. I just had the one. No matter what anybody had heard about the Blue-Eyed Bandit, it wasn’t actually possible to take out two dozen men with one bullet. Or even with my Demdji gift. Not without someone else getting shot.
‘So this is the legendary Blue-Eyed Bandit.’ The man who spoke wasn’t wearing a uniform. Instead he was dressed in a gaudy blue kurta that he’d paired with a badly matched purple sheema. He was the only one who didn’t have a rifle pointed at my head.
So Malik, the usurper of Saramotai, had returned.
I was dimly aware of Ikar, perched at his watchpost above the gate, legs dangling as he craned over the scene. ‘I’d just been informed you were gracing our city with your illustrious presence.’
He used awfully big words that didn’t seem all that comfortable in his mouth. His hollow face was skeletal in the buttery glow of the lamp. I’d grown up in a desperate place; I knew the look of someone who’d been ravaged by life. Only instead of lying down and taking his fate, he’d decided to take someone else’s fate from them instead. I could guess that the kurta on his back was the emir’s. He had the shape of someone who’d worked and scraped and wanted and suffered, dressed in the clothes of someone who’d never known true want. My finger twitched on the trigger. I was itching to shoot something, but that wouldn’t get us out alive.
The small contingent of Sultan’s men shifted nervously, looking at me, like they were trying to decide whether I really was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. It looked like stories about me had made it all the way to Izman.
‘And you’re Malik,’ I said. ‘You know, I’d heard when you hanged that lot of people, you did it in the name of my prince. But it looks to me like your loyalty lies elsewhere.’ I gave the soldiers a mock salute with my free hand. ‘Not so much a revolutionary as an opportunist, by the look of things.’
‘Oh, I believe wholeheartedly in the cause of your Rebel Prince.’ When Malik smiled in the light of the lamps held by the nearby soldiers, he looked like he was baring his teeth. ‘Your prince calls for freedom and equality in our desert. I’ve spent my whole life bowing to men who thought they were greater than me. Equality means I should never have to bow again. Not to the Sultan, not to the prince, and not’ – he turned and spat towards Samira, making her flinch under his sudden attention – ‘to your father, either.’ The movement dashed light and shadow across the walls of Saramotai. Two huge figures hewn into the stone flanked the gates on this side: Hawa and Attallah, joining hands across the curve of the arch.
I hadn’t seen them on my way in, not with my back to them. I wondered what they would think if they knew that the city they’d fought so long to save from the outside had rotted from the inside.
Paint had long since faded off the stone, though I thought I could make out the red of Attallah’s sheema. And I’d swear Hawa’s eyes were still flaked with blue.
‘I’m making my own equality,’ Malik said, pulling my attention back to him. ‘What does it matter if I’m raising up the low or bringing the folk up on high to their knees, so long as everyone winds up with their feet in the same dust? And she’ – he pointed at Ranaa – ‘is going to buy our freedom.’
‘Your feet aren’t in the dust.’ Samira pushed Ranaa behind herself protectively. She was doing a mighty fine job of hiding her fear. There was nothing but hate in her as she stood between the man who’d already killed most of her family and the one tiny piece of it left. ‘You’re standing on the backs of the dead.’
‘The Rebel Prince will lose this war.’ One of the Sultan’s soldiers stepped forward. ‘Malik is a wise man to see it.’ The words sounded forced and false, like it pained him to pander to Malik. ‘The Sultan has agreed to give Saramotai to Lord Malik when he reclaims this half of the desert. In exchange for the Demdji girl.’ The Sultan might want another Demdji to replace Noorsham, but I wouldn’t stake a single louzi that he was willing to give up part of the desert for her. Malik was just stupid enough to think that the Sultan would keep his promise.
‘You’re outnumbered.’ That had never mattered much to me before. ‘Drop the gun, Bandit.’ Malik sneered.