The storytellers never knew that the man who stood on that stage did it by his own choice. That he could have escaped his fate if he were a less good man. A less brave man.
On that day, a hundred thousand men and women would come to watch and each would tell the story of what they saw there. The tales would cross the sands in the months that followed, repeated across the desert and on foreign shores. The same stories would be told again among caravans in the centuries that followed, when the time came to teach their children of all the great heroes who had come before them in the desert.
But there would only ever be six people who would know the story of what truly happened that day. The people of the caravans would never know what came to pass in the prison cells below the palace between dawn and dusk. Before the moment that all of Izman saw on the stage.
Six people, who had all fought side by side and were imprisoned side by side for it. They sat in the dark, awaiting their fates like thousands who had sat there before them. They passed whispers inside their cell, swearing that the Rebellion would not die there with them. Though by dawn, two of them would be dead.
Six people who would never tell the story of what took place on the day that would be known forever as the day the Rebel Prince died.
Chapter 50
When the legendary Princess Hawa died at Saramotai time lost all sense. The sun rose to watch her fall. It stopped in the sky in the dead of night. And the stars stared down alongside to witness the birth of grief in a new world. The entire world held its breath as Attallah dropped dead because his heart was torn in two.
Time didn’t stop now. It was already running out. There was no time to plan. No time to race for reinforcements or even a gun. I didn’t know what to do. Or even what I was running towards. I just knew that I was running, pressing through the mob in the streets, racing towards the palace.
No time to get help. No time to plan a rescue. That was what the Sultan was counting on.
He was going to execute Ahmed and we barely even had time to get there, let alone plan how to get him out. We were going to have to make a plan on the fly. Like we always did.
We were good at that.
I saw a man with a gun as we shoved by. ‘Jin.’ I grabbed his arm. He stopped, looking where I was pointing. I didn’t need to say anything further. Jin grabbed the man, wrenching his arms behind his back, holding him as I grabbed the gun. And then we were moving again, rushing away from the man’s shouted accusations.
The crowd started to get too thick before we were even within sight of the palace. I pushed. The streets were choked with people and I couldn’t move any more.
I couldn’t even see the square. I shoved forward, but soon I was trapped in the mass of bodies. I squirmed through until I was shoved up against a wall. I looked up.
I couldn’t climb that. Not alone. But I could get up there with help. Jin knew what I was thinking before I’d even finished thinking it.
‘You’ll be alone,’ he said. Someone jostled him, pressing us closer together, until we were flush against the wall. Alone, with a gun, powerless and bleeding from a half dozen places.
‘I know.’ I ran my tongue along my lips. They were caked with salt.
Jin lifted me up. I grabbed the ledge above, dragging myself up painfully. And painfully slow, fighting through the stabbing in my side.
My feet hit the ledge and I started to run, ignoring the shooting pain in my body. A jump carried me easily over the narrow gap onto the next roof. I landed hard, scraping my knee. I was back up, leaving a streak of new blood behind. I jumped to the next roof, startling some birds into flight. I kept going. Shoving forward, onwards and onwards, until there was nowhere to go. And I was standing on a roof overlooking the square in front of the palace.
Ahmed stood alone, chained by his wrists to the stage set above the heaving mass of people. His eyes were cast down. I knew what he was seeing. The images of pain and death. The writhing monsters.
The last thing Shira had seen.
The last thing Ahmed would see.
Unless I saved him.
A man was reading out what I could only guess was a list of my Rebel Prince’s supposed crimes. I couldn’t hear him over the din of the crowd. Above him I spotted the balcony from which I’d watched Shira die. They had shielded it with iron instead of carved wood after the riots. Through the gaps in the lattice I thought I could just make out the Sultan, surveying the scene, come to watch another son die.
As the list reached its end, Ahmed finally looked up, out over the sea of Mirajin citizens. Facing his people.
‘The Sultan,’ the man cried, ‘in his great wisdom and mercy, has agreed to grant leniency to any other rebels. They will keep their heads but be condemned to a life of penance serving this country, which they betrayed.’ Leniency my ass. The Sultan had told me himself he needed to win back the love of his people. I remembered him chastising Kadir for Shira’s execution. The people didn’t love you for killing an innocent. ‘But, for his crimes against his own blood, Prince Ahmed has been condemned to die.’ But Ahmed, he’d told the people, had killed Kadir, his own brother. They had to see Ahmed die.
I aimed my gun at the balcony, squinting. That was a small target from this far. Even for me. And I didn’t know if I had a shot to waste.
Over the roofs of Miraji behind me, the sun was setting.
I flattened myself on my stomach and aimed the gun. God, I hoped it was a good gun. I didn’t have a plan beyond shooting the executioner. But that had to be enough, for now at least. I had to save Ahmed and then I could worry about whatever came next.
The executioner stepped onto the stage and my heart stuttered. They hadn’t sent a man to kill Ahmed. The Sultan had sent an Abdal.
Even I couldn’t make that shot.
I had the executioner in my crosshairs and I was helpless. I aimed the gun all the same. I fired. One clean shot, through the knee. A scream went up from the crowd at the sound of gunfire. But the executioner didn’t so much as stagger. I fired again and again and again, aiming desperately for the tiny target of its foot. Until the gun in my hand was empty.
Until the Abdal had reached Ahmed.
It forced him to his knees in front of the wooden block they’d laid there. Ahmed didn’t fight. He knelt down with dignity, his eyes going down to the gruesome scenes below as he laid his head on the executioner’s block.
I reached out for the desert. I could feel it scattered through the streets, sand invading the city. I started to gather it to me but the pain stabbed through my side, sending me down with a cry, scattering the sand back to street dust.
The mechanical man took one step backwards. Swinging the axe upwards. And I was helpless. I was helpless without my Demdji powers, without any bullets. Unable to stop it. Unable to do anything.
‘Ahmed!’ His name ripped out of me. Through the crowd. Over the din of people calling out, pressing forward, calling for his head, for his freedom.
I was too far away for him to hear me. Too far away to reach him. But somehow from the block his head tilted up just as the axe swung high. He looked straight at me. His eyes met mine.
The low rays of the sun struck the iron of the axe, turning it into a blazing light as it reached its pinnacle.
But the sun didn’t stop. Time didn’t stop. The world didn’t show any sympathy for my grief.
The axe fell. It turned from sunlight to iron. To blood.
Chapter 51
I didn’t cry until I was safe.