We, he said. As if it was the most casual thing in the world. But it wasn’t. We meant all of us now. Because we’d done it. We’d got everyone out.
The realisation settled over me as I looked around, seeing faces in the light of day. Shazad was walking a few paces ahead, Sam next to her, talking at the rattling speed of a runaway train. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but every once in a while, a small smile danced over her face. To one side of us, Tamid was limping painstakingly down the mountain, eyes on the path to keep from tripping, sometimes leaning on Delila for help. Or maybe she was leaning on him, it was hard to tell. Ahmed led the way up ahead, Rahim next to him, the rabble of former prisoners dragging themselves to safety in his wake. We were a sorry collection: wounded, burned, half-starved, bedraggled, exhausted.
But free. We had done it. The impossible. We’d left Eremot alive.
‘Where are we?’ I asked. My voice came out raspy.
‘Nearly at Sazi,’ Jin said. He nodded upwards, and I noticed a small bird swooping in circles over our heads. Maz, I realised, our scout.
A sudden panic gripped my chest. We needed to slow down. We needed to be careful.
‘I can walk,’ I said hastily. ‘Izz, stop.’ Our blue Demdji did as I said, and I swung one leg over him, sliding off his back. Jin followed close behind, steadying me as I hit the ground, head swimming.
I pushed through the tired mass of rebels and released prisoners. I needed to talk to Ahmed. We couldn’t just barge into Sazi like this. But it was too late. As I broke through to the front of the pack, I saw the outskirts of Sazi. People were already gathering at the bottom of the slope, staring up at us expectantly. But I knew they weren’t waiting for us. They were waiting for Noorsham.
‘Where is he?’ someone called out from the assembled crowd, as we got closer. ‘What have you done with him?’
Ahmed’s brow furrowed as he turned to me. ‘What are they talking about?’ But I didn’t answer Ahmed. I called out to the crowd instead.
‘He’s …’ Dead stuck on my tongue as we drew to a stop a few paces away. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t alive either.
‘Noorsham is not coming back.’
A rustle went through the crowd around us as this news settled. I shifted nervously; it wouldn’t take long for it to turn to anger. ‘You killed him.’ An accusation came from a skinny woman at the front of the crowd.
‘No,’ I protested, shaking my head, scrambling for the right words. Shazad pressed through to the front now to stand beside me. I could feel the tension building in her like it did before a fight.
‘Liar!’ another cry came up angrily from the back. The rest of the crowd was shifting uncertainly, but I didn’t think it would be long before they turned against us.
‘She’s not lying,’ Tamid said, but his voice was drowned out by the shouting.
‘Well.’ Sam came up behind me. ‘This doesn’t look good.’
Emboldened by the mob forming at his back, a man stepped towards me. Shazad might be weak, but she still moved faster than most, and she was between us in a second. ‘Try it,’ she challenged.
The man took another step, seeming like he fully intended to try to take us on. I felt drained. Too drained to fight. But we didn’t have a choice. Ahmed had led us back here when we should’ve steered clear. And now we had a mob facing us. I had seen what they were capable of when they had forced us to confront the Eye. We might match them in numbers, but we were a sorry collection of bedraggled prisoners, and they were an angry mass of devotees.
Behind the belligerent man, a woman picked up a stone from the ground, preparing to throw it.
Then, just as the last of the sunlight started to fade, a light bloomed from the mountain face. Right between Shazad and the first man who had challenged us, the air turned itself inside out, changing the darkness into dozens of colours. And then it spread, in the open space between the belligerent inhabitants of Sazi and our people, forming into a collection of bronze soldiers facing a fiery wall. An illusion in miniature of what had awaited us outside Eremot.
The woman staggered back, dropping the stone from her hand as tiny Abdals blossomed around her feet like flowers. And Delila stepped forward, out of the crowd.
‘She’s not lying.’ Delila spoke softly, but that didn’t keep her from being heard. Not when she was conjuring images from thin air. ‘He wasn’t killed. He walked into the arms of death like a hero.’ Even as she spoke, a small figure of Noorsham materialised out of thin air and started to advance.
Delila’s voice was gentle and melodic. It always had been. It was what made everyone think she was so fragile, that she needed to be protected. But it was a good voice for stories, too. She held the attention of the crowd easily as her words and her illusions worked together to tell the tale. She chose her words carefully, stopping and pausing at the right moments. Delila, who had been the subject of so many stories, about the Sultan’s unfaithful wife and the Rebel Prince’s return, was now telling one for herself. Her voice cracked as it got to the end, as Noorsham’s soul evanesced from his body, taking the place of Ashra’s Wall.
‘So you see –’ Delila’s illusions melted away as she finished – ‘he can’t come back. We are here instead.’
Darkness and silence followed those words for a long moment. As the spell of her words slowly began to drop away.
Then a man fell to his knees. Another one dropped down behind him, and then another and another, until in the space of a few moments every single one of Noorsham’s people was kneeling before Delila.
She had done it. Delila had saved us. And she’d done it without a single weapon. I’d forgotten how powerful a story could be.
Suddenly, from the middle of the crowd, a boy stood back up abruptly. I knew him, I realised. He was from Dustwalk. His name was Samir, and he was a year or so younger than I was. My hand strayed for a gun that wasn’t there. But he made no move to fight.
‘Are you really the Rebel Prince?’ he asked.
All eyes turned to Ahmed. ‘I am.’
‘I could fight for you,’ the boy declared loudly. ‘Against the Sultan. He killed our leader. He drove us from our homes.’ A murmur of ascent went through the crowd. ‘I would fight for you.’
‘I would fight for you, too.’ Another man stood up, this one older, more hardened. ‘If our leader was willing to die for you, so am I.’
‘So would I.’ It was a girl who stood up now, sweeping short dark hair behind her ears, speaking a little more quietly than the men.
‘And so would I.’ I knew that voice. It was Olia, my cousin who was nearest to me in age now that Shira was gone. If there was ever someone I didn’t think cared about a damn thing enough to fight for it, it was her. But then, Hala had been that way, too. So had I, once. I noticed Olia’s mother, my uncle’s second wife, grab for her arm, as if to pull her back. But Olia jerked her arm out of her mother’s reach, standing tall as others rose around her, declaring their allegiance.