‘You lied to me,’ I said. And I hadn’t spotted it because she was a big-eyed, shy girl with a sweet face.
‘Demdji are always the easiest to lie to. Your kind never expects it,’ the Sultan said. ‘What good daughter wouldn’t obey the word of her father?’ He made a motion, like he was pulling back a bowstring and loosing it. I was holding an entire sandstorm in my mind on the edge of the city, dragging it forward over walls and rooftops. I felt it stagger as something punched through my heart. The horrible, humiliating memory of wanting to impress him, of wanting to please him. Of doubting Ahmed for him.
‘Little Blue-Eyed Bandit, so very trusting, over and over.’ I flinched at the nickname as he started towards me. Jin shifted angrily at the edge of my vision, but he knew better than to try anything as his father drew closer. ‘Oh, yes, Amani, I knew from the moment I saw your little blue eyes.’
All those desperate attempts to hide it from the Sultan, to keep Ahmed from coming up so that the truth wouldn’t slip past my traitorous tongue. And he’d been letting me get away with it, letting me dance around the subject. Because he already knew I was allied with Ahmed.
The Sultan chucked me under the chin gently as he reached me. ‘I could’ve made you tell me what you knew, but that wouldn’t have gotten me to Ahmed. It was a great deal easier to use you to feed fake information to your prince. Once Leyla told me Rahim was a traitor, I could use him to pass information to you.’
I caught a flash of movement behind the Sultan. A figure in the shadows. I looked back at the Sultan, quick as I could. Trying not to betray what I’d seen. I tightened my fist, keeping my grip on the desert.
He turned away. ‘I have to say I rather enjoyed watching you scramble around putting out fires, never noticing the others I wanted you to look away from. While you were looking at Saramotai, I was taking back Fahali. While you were saving traitors from the gallows, I had men arresting dissenters in their own homes. And while you were running around trying to save my traitor son, I was emptying your traitor camp and arresting my other traitor son.’ He dropped one hand on Leyla’s shoulder. ‘She’s done a great deal of good work. How did you think we found you in your little valley hideaway?’ He held something up. It was a compass. Just like the ones Jin and Ahmed had, only smaller. They’d told me once, I remembered, that those were of Gamanix make. Leyla’s mother was a Gamanix engineer. ‘We hid one of these on your spy before we released her to be … rescued.’ Sayyida. She was a trap, too.
‘And when I found out from Rahim you were planning to escape …’ Leyla bounced, excited. ‘Do you want to see?’ It was that same light in her face that I’d seen when she was showing some new toy to the children in the harem. She turned, gesturing to the soldiers. Two of them dragged Tamid away from the wall. He struggled to keep up with them on his fake leg.
I took a step forward and this time, it was Jin who caught me, pulling me back. They forced Tamid to the ground, sitting with his bronze leg splayed out in front of him. Leyla unfastened it with practised ease. She had made it, after all. Proudly she turned the detached leg toward me. Perfectly fitted in the hollow bronze of Tamid’s calf was a compass.
‘I fitted it after I convinced you Tamid should come with us, and he was none the wiser that I was using him to help bring my father to your camp.’
This was my fault. I had led them to us. I had saved Tamid. I hadn’t left him behind and I was still being punished.
I pulled, one last violent yank on my Demdji powers.
And then the sky darkened. The sandstorm was on us.
The Sultan’s head shot up as the shadow fell across us. The raging cloud of sand had rushed in to crown the garden. I raised my hands, taking full grip of it – there was no point pretending now.
I poured everything I had into the sand. All my anger. All my defiance. All my desperation. I whipped the storm into a frenzy before slamming my arms down, pulling the full force of the desert around us.
I looked for the Sultan. He was watching me. The last thing I saw was him smiling at me the same way he had that first day in the war room over the dead duck. Like he was proud.
Then the sandstorm swallowed us.
‘Amani!’ Shazad’s voice shouted some order to me that was swallowed in the chaos. I turned to face her just in time to see an Abdal rising up behind her, raised hand glowing red. I swung my arm. I felt something tear in my side where my wound had been as the sand turned into a blade and crashed through the Abdal’s leg, cutting into clay flesh and metal bone and severing it, sending the thing toppling to the ground.
‘Watch your back!’ I shouted at her. I didn’t need orders for once. I knew what I was fighting for. I knew who I was fighting. I knew what I needed to do.
We needed the rest of the Demdji. And we needed them out. I couldn’t leave any Demdji in the Sultan’s hands. I couldn’t let him do the same thing to them that he’d done to me.
I slammed my arms down, severing the iron around Izz, then Maz. The twins burst into motion, flesh turning to feathers, fingers to talons as they plunged into the air, then back down. Delila was running for Ahmed as I freed him. And then Imin, who staggered forward, towards Navid.
A bullet caught Hala in the leg. She screamed, staggering forward. She would’ve hit the ground except Sam was there. He grabbed her, arms under her legs, and the two of them vanished through a wall. I turned my attention elsewhere. I’d lost Ahmed in the chaos.
We weren’t winning, but we didn’t have to. We just had to get as many people out as we could. I grabbed a fistful of sand and twisted hard. A stab of violent pain answered in my stomach. And then it was gone. The sand staggered, then dropped. And just like that our cover was gone.
The pain in my side doubled as I tried to grab hold of the sand again. And suddenly, it was blinding. My body was made of pain where it ought to have been flesh and blood. I staggered to my knees, gasping.
‘Amani.’ When I could see again I realised Shazad was kneeling in front of me. The way she said my name made me think it wasn’t the first time. She looked scared. Two other rebels were standing over us, covering her back while she had mine. ‘What’s happening?’
I didn’t know. I couldn’t even talk for the agony. Something my aunt had cut open so carefully inside me felt like it’d ripped in my side.
‘That’s it, you’re getting out of here.’
‘No!’
But Shazad was already helping me to my feet. I tried to pull away, to stand on my own. But she kept her grip.
‘Don’t argue. Last time you got left behind, this happened.’ She meant the Djinn and the Abdals and everything else. ‘Demdji get out first, and that’s an order from your general and your friend. Jin!’ She caught his attention across the chaos of the garden. He was with us in a second. ‘Get her out of here.’
He didn’t need to be told twice and I was in no state to fight an order. His arms were under my knees and shoulders, lifting me off the ground. I remembered the night of Auranzeb.
Are you saying you’re here to rescue me?
This was how to rescue a girl. I might’ve laughed if everything didn’t hurt so much. Shazad covered us as he lifted me towards Izz, who was wearing the shape of a giant Roc, carrying people to safety as fast as he could.