I wasn’t even sure how we got back to the Hidden House. All I knew was a hand leading me through streets that had turned to chaos as soon as the axe fell. Through a world that had stopped making sense. Jin. He could’ve been leading me to the executioner’s block and I wouldn’t have known until I was looking up at the crowd with the axe hanging above me.
But then we were through the doors, into the safe haven of the Hidden House, where we’d all been together only two nights before. Sara was waiting inside the doors, a screaming baby on her hip. Her lips were moving, but I didn’t hear anything she said. Jin pulled me past her. And it came on like a punch to the gut. My knees gave out below me on the stairs.
I sobbed. For all the dead. For all the losses. For the things that had been taken away. It was seared into my mind forever. The blade. The blood. The eyes.
The look in his eyes as they met mine across the crowd.
A second before he died.
And it was my fault. Mine and someone I trusted. Someone I thought was innocent.
The scream came on so sudden and violent that I had to stuff my sheema into my mouth to keep it from being heard through the walls of the house. It tasted of sweat and sand and of Jin’s skin somehow.
I could hear the sounds from the next room. Voices dropped low, tentative with uncertainty and thick with grief. What was left of the Rebellion. The folk who’d escaped the attack at Shazad’s.
The murmur was soothing. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall.
Too many people had traded their lives for someone else’s now.
Bahi had burned to save Shazad.
Shira had walked to the executioner’s block for her son.
Rahim had thrown himself on the mercy of his merciless father for Leyla.
My mother had bowed her head to a noose for me.
I thought about revenge and about love and about sacrifice and the great and terrible things I’d seen people do. I thought about how many people I’d seen lay their lives down for the Rebellion, over and over.
I thought about the moment the axe fell. The eyes locking with mine a second before the light left them.
The stairs creaked with a new weight next to me. I knew it was Jin without opening my eyes. I knew before he leaned his weight into my side. Before he laced his hand with mine, running his thumb across my palm in a slow circle.
‘We’re not done yet.’ My voice scraped out. Almost gone but still there. I finally opened my eyes.
‘I know.’
*
The low murmur of voices died with our entrance, leaving nothing but the chanting in the streets below. A constant thrum like a heartbeat. Good. Silence was death. And the Rebellion wasn’t dead yet.
And every eye in the room was on me. Rebels I knew well and rebels I didn’t.
Hala’s golden hands were wrapped around a steaming cup someone had given her, dark hair all over her face. Sara sat in a corner, her son asleep in her arms, staring through the shutters into the street below and blinking back tears. Sam was running his finger around the rim of an empty glass, over and over. Maz was wrapped in a blanket, shaking violently, blue hair sticking up at all angles. Tamid was stitching the wound in Izz’s arm from where the bullet had torn through his wing, obviously grateful for something to do.
There was only one spot left free, at the head of the table. Half of the people in the room were sitting on the floor rather than take that place. I felt Jin tense behind me as he saw it.
I cleared my throat, but my voice came out steady. ‘We need a plan.’ I fought the instinct to look for Shazad to start making one with me. She’d been taken with Ahmed. Delila. Imin. Rahim. Navid. They’d all been captured, along with dozens of others.
‘What is there left to plan?’ Hala was looking into her coffee cup instead of at me. She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘You don’t think it’s only a matter of time before that axe comes down again, and again and again—’
‘Hala.’ Maz cut her off with a hand on her arm. She pulled herself up short, opening her eyes, staring me down. I flinched at the gaze. Her eyes might be the dark brown of any desert girl’s, but they still reminded me of Imin’s golden eyes.
‘—until everyone else is gone, too,’ she finished.
‘No.’ I held my ground. The Sultan might’ve thought he was using me, those months in the palace. But I hadn’t spent all that time there without learning a thing or two about the man who ruled over Miraji. The Sultan was smart. Too smart to risk more rioting in the streets. ‘The Sultan is losing his grip on his people. He knows that. That’s why Rahim wasn’t executed. He needed Ahmed to die publicly.’ Someone in a corner made a noise like a sob, quickly smothered in their sheema. ‘But for the rest of them, he gains more by showing mercy than by showing force.’
‘You’re thinking he’ll send them away,’ Hala said.
‘Instead of executing them,’ Maz filled in. A spark of life flared back in the room briefly.
I had to tell them the rest, the thing I’d figured out. I was going to have to tell all of them. But my eyes kept drifting to Hala in her corner. Waiting was not going to make it easier.
‘There’s something else.’ The room went quiet. ‘We lost someone today.’ I could see it all in my mind. A head lifting on the block. Meeting my eyes. Creatures of illusion and deceit. ‘But it wasn’t Ahmed.’ My eyes the colour of the sky. His the same shade as molten gold. Staring straight at me. I knew those eyes. But they weren’t Ahmed’s.
My meaning dawned slowly through the room. Slowest across the golden-skinned Demdji’s face.
Imin.
‘Hala, I’m so sorry.’
Grief and rage warred across her face while the rest of us were silent for Imin. Her head dropped into her hands.
Ahmed wouldn’t have let anyone go to the executioner’s block for him. But he wasn’t the only one being kept prisoner. Half the Rebellion would’ve sooner walked onto that stage than let Ahmed do it. Shazad would’ve worked out the plan, in all the confusion of the attack. Delila with her hair dyed dark, concealing her Demdji side; she might not be able to hide a whole rebellion but she was good enough to hide her brother, for a time, conceal his identity under an illusion of a different face. Whichever one Imin had been wearing when they were taken. And Imin was good enough to take Ahmed’s place. Not just good enough. More than good.
Imin had walked into an execution for our prince.
‘Ahmed is alive.’
I looked around the table, the small cramped room in this, our last refuge. ‘The Sultan might’ve bested us today, but he can’t plan for everything. He didn’t plan on me slipping out of his grip.’ I met Tamid’s eyes. ‘He didn’t plan on us escaping. And he sure as hell didn’t plan on Ahmed living. So he’s not planning on us saving him, either.’
‘Who is going to lead us?’ Izz asked. His eyes turned to Jin.
‘Don’t look at me,’ Jin said. He was leaning against the door frame. Like he might disappear on the Rebellion again any second.
‘I can lead us.’ That drew every eye in the room to me. I waited. But there wasn’t a single word of protest. Not a word of argument.
I was a Demdji. I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. I was their friend. I had learned strategy from Shazad. I had been among the enemy. I hadn’t left them when Jin had. And they believed me when I said that I could lead.
We were going to rescue our people, our friends, our family. And when we had them all back we were going to march Rahim to Iliaz for an army. I pressed away from the wall. I was unsteady, but I was still standing. We were still here.
And this time, the Sultan had given us an advantage – the only thing that was truly invincible. Not an immortal creature. But an idea. A legend. A story.
The Blue-Eyed Bandit was always more powerful than I was. The Rebel Prince was always more powerful than Ahmed. And now, we could write a better story than the prodigal prince. One no one would ever forget. One the entirety of Miraji would stand behind.
The prince who returned from the dead to take his throne and save his people.