She hadn’t heard.
‘Aunt Farrah, I’m …’ My voice caught, snagging on the words unhappily. I breathed out slowly. ‘Shira is …’ I didn’t want to be the one to bring this news. But it ought to be me, because I’d stood and watched as Shira was led to the execution block, as she went with every single bit of fight I’d expect from a desert girl. She’d died for the Rebellion. ‘Aunt Farrah, Shira was executed about six weeks back.’
I waited for her face to crumble, but she just stared at me, expression frozen. ‘You’re a liar.’
I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t that. ‘I was there. She died as bravely as anyone could. Her child – that is, your grandson—’ I started, but Aunt Farrah’s face dissolved into a rage before I could finish.
‘Be quiet!’ she snapped, her voice carrying loud enough that I reckoned the boys would hear it outside. ‘You’re a lying little bitch, just like your mother was, and you’d better get back to whatever whorehouse you ran off to when that boy threw you out of his bed. You worthless—’ I closed the space between us with one rapid step, and Aunt Farrah staggered backwards, her words cutting off. It was like she, too, was still expecting me to grow small under her blows.
I suddenly realised that even though it might’ve been a year since I’d stood face to face with her, it hadn’t been that long since I’d heard her voice. It was the same voice that had been whispering in my ear since Imin was executed. Demanding to know who the hell I thought I was to be taking over this rebellion, chastising me for how high and mighty I seemed to believe myself, able to give orders in the place of a prince, even though I was just a nothing girl from nowhere. From poverty and misery and Dustwalk.
Only I knew who I was. I had an answer to the stupid question that voice kept asking me: Who did I think I was? I was a Djinni’s daughter. I was a rebel. I was an advisor to a prince. I had faced down soldiers and Nightmares and Skinwalkers. I had fought and survived. I had stood against a Sultan time and time again. I had summoned an immortal being to his death. I had saved lives, and I had sacrificed lives, and I had seen more and done more good than she ever would. And I had done it in the name of saving people exactly like my aunt – the people of Dustwalk, who’d been turned bitter and angry and desperate by a country that didn’t care about them. I had done it for a prince who did care what happened to them.
I knew who I was. It was Dustwalk that had no idea who I’d become since I left.
‘I’m going to tell you once,’ I said calmly. ‘My name is Amani – or the Blue-Eyed Bandit, if you’re feeling formal.’ I saw understanding register on her face. My legend had made it this far. ‘And not anything else.’ I paused to make sure she understood that my name was not bitch or worthless or anything else before I stepped away from her. ‘Now, I have some questions, and I want straight answers. You came here to wait for a letter from Shira. Where did you come here from? Where did everyone go?’
Her eyes flashed with anger before she answered me. ‘We almost starved, you know,’ she hissed. ‘There was nothing. We were forgotten, abandoned by everyone, and then he came and offered us salvation.’
‘He?’ I asked, but Aunt Farrah seemed distracted now.
‘We had nothing to lose. So we followed him away from here, to a new life.’ Her eyes had taken on a faraway sheen as she spoke with zealous pride.
‘Who did you follow?’ I was treading lightly. She sounded like she might’ve gone sun-mad.
‘The man in the mountain, of course.’
Suddenly I was standing in Bilal’s rooms again, holding the page from his book, staring down at the figure chained inside the rocks.
There’s no such thing as just a story, I’d told him then.
‘He was sent to help us in our time of need.’ Aunt Farrah smiled nastily at my shocked reaction, pleased to be the one to catch me off guard this time. ‘But he protects only the good. Any who come to him who are deemed unworthy …’ She trailed off tauntingly. Bilal had sent soldiers to find him, this man below the mountain – soldiers who never came back. ‘He’s not made of flesh and blood like you and me. He’s made of fire. And he burns the unworthy.’
A man made of fire wasn’t a man. He was a Djinni.
The beginnings of an idea started to form. I had seen what Djinn could do. If there really was one in the mountains … It was such a tempting notion. Facing Ashra’s Wall alone, we didn’t stand a chance. But fighting the legendary with the legendary, fire with Djinni fire – well, that was an idea.
‘Can you take me to him?’ I asked her. ‘Your saviour in the mountain?’
My aunt’s expression was far too knowing and cruel. ‘I can,’ she said. ‘But let me warn you, Blue-Eyed Bandit –’ she fired the name back at me – ‘you have no idea who you’re facing. He knows your heart. And you will burn for each of your sins.’
‘Well,’ I heard Sam say behind her, making my aunt whirl, unsettling her vitriolic composure. He was standing in the doorway, Jin next to him. I wondered how long they’d been witness to our conversation. ‘This sounds like a terrible idea, given how many sins I have.’
‘We should get going then,’ Jin said, clapping Sam on the back jovially. ‘You can count them on the way.’
*
Tamid was the only one of us who wasn’t apprehensive following my aunt out of the ruins of Dustwalk into the mountains. He had a family we were going to find. He had reason to be excited. I had a family, too. I just didn’t want to see them again. Aunt Farrah was already enough. But still, the thought of the man in the mountain kept me putting one foot in front of the other when all I really wanted was to turn back around.
I realised where Aunt Farrah was leading us a few paces before anyone else did. It was close to dusk, and we were deep in the mountains. I’d been on this road once before, with Jin, fleeing on the back of a Buraqi from the chaos in Dustwalk. I could almost taste the iron from the mines in the air as we wound our way up the slope, getting closer, until finally, in the last of the light, we crested over a steep rise, and Sazi came into view. The ancient mountain mining town. Or at least it had been mines before my brother, Noorsham, burned them down using his power.
But Sazi was nothing like the town I remembered.
Last time we were here, Sazi had been a desperate collection of ramshackle houses clinging to the skin of the mountain. But those were gone now, as if they’d been decimated by thousands of years, though it had only been one year. On the outskirts, we passed a lone building that hadn’t completely been destroyed. One wall still stood, a colourful sign swinging above the door: the Drunk Djinni, the bar where I’d left Jin unconscious on a table before making a run for it. Now, instead of booze-stained bar tables, in the shadow of the single remaining wall was a bright canopy, using the wall as support.