Two children dashed past us, screaming with laughter. And to my surprised I recognised one of them.
‘Nasima!’ I called out my little cousin’s name without thinking. She skidded to a stop, dark braid swinging in an arc, whipping her back. She stared at me blankly, warily, like I was a stranger.
‘It’s me.’ I pressed my hand to my chest, like I might when talking to a foreigner. Only she was my blood. ‘Amani, your cousin. Don’t you remember me?’
‘No you’re not.’ Nasima took a bold step towards me, in challenge. ‘Amani is dead, my mama said so.’ then she retreated. ‘Are you a Skinwalker?’ she asked. ‘That’s what my mama says about people who pretend they’re other people.’
I started to tell her that if I were a Skinwalker, it would take more than a sheema to protect me from the sun. But she wasn’t listening. ‘Skinwalker!’ Nasima called out, turning and running away from me. People looked up at us as she bolted. On instinct, Jin moved between me and the staring eyes. Only there were no guns pointing our way, no knives being drawn.
They were as unarmed as we were. Defenceless.
Then we heard it through the crowd.
‘Tamid?’
The voice made me stand up straight. It was a voice I was used to being scolded by, for always being around, for corrupting her son. Tamid’s mother pushed her way towards us and my heart faltered a little. The last time I’d seen her had been from the back of a Buraqi, behind Jin, as we’d fled blood and chaos and she’d tried to crawl her way towards her son, who was lying bleeding in the sand with a bullet through his knee, thanks to me. Just before he’d been taken prisoner and brought to the city along with Shira.
Now as she moved towards her son, her face was full of tentative, uncertain hope.
‘Mother.’ Tamid limped towards her. And the hope broke into joy. She rushed to him, moving faster than he could on his false leg. She was crying before she even reached him, clasping him in her arms like he was still a little boy. I caught a few words between her sobs as she clung to him. What happened to you? What did they do to you? And then: You’re alive. You’re alive. Over and over again.
I realised I’d been holding myself like there was an iron rod in my back, waiting for the reproach that was coming my way for what I’d done to her son. But it never came. She didn’t even see me. She didn’t care that he’d been taken away. Just that he’d been brought back.
‘Father?’ Tamid asked, pulling away, looking around, though less hopeful. His mother shook her head.
‘He didn’t …’ She hesitated. ‘He was deemed unworthy. He saw into your father’s heart, and what he did to you.’ Tamid winced. When Tamid was born with a crooked leg, his father had wanted to kill him. Tamid’s mother had saved her son. ‘He burned for it.’ Neither Tamid nor his mother looked particularly sorry about it. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I wondered who else had been judged too sinful by this man in the mountain.
I looked over at my aunt. There was pain scrawled on her face. Two people had been taken from Dustwalk the day I disappeared with Jin. Only one of them would ever come back. Aunt Farrah would never be reunited with Shira this way.
‘Aunt Farrah,’ I tried again, ‘your grandson … In the city. Shira named him—’
‘What is she doing here?’ The belligerent voice cut me off. I knew it instantly. You have got to be kidding me. So my reckoning with my past wouldn’t come from Tamid’s mother after all.
I turned around and faced Fazim Al-Motem. If we really were being judged for our sins, then I didn’t have to worry, not if Fazim was still alive. Fazim had claimed he was in love with Shira, until he tried to threaten me into marrying him so he wouldn’t tell everyone I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. All because he wanted the money I’d get for capturing a Buraqi.
If that wasn’t a sin I didn’t know what was. And yet, here he was, strutting towards me.
‘Pretty bold for a criminal to show her face here,’ Fazim crowed. He looked shorter than I remembered. I vaguely wondered if I’d got taller. ‘Stealing from your own family.’
‘Leave it, boy.’ Another voice spoke. It was my uncle, I realised. I scarcely would have recognised him if my cousin Nasima hadn’t been clutching his hand, still eying me warily. He was wearing rags instead of the fine clothes of a horse merchant, and his hair and beard had grown long.
But Fazim took another swaggering step, full of false confidence as he crossed the rocky terrain to confront me.
‘Do you think he really can’t see that this is a mistake?’ Jin said below his breath, so only I could hear him.
‘Maybe he just hasn’t noticed we outnumber him,’ Sam suggested from my other side. He was regarding Fazim curiously, like he was a harmless oddity in our way. Fazim wasn’t exactly harmless, but they were right. We could do him a lot more harm than he could do me now. ‘What did you do to him anyway, Amani, break his heart?’
‘Not exactly.’ I’d been afraid of him once. Just like I’d been afraid of Aunt Farrah. But in the shadow of the Sultan, the monsters of my childhood seemed ridiculous now.
‘Well, Amani.’ Fazim was very close to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jin’s hand make a fist. I wasn’t going to let it get far enough for that. ‘What do you have to say for—’
I flicked my hand at the sand below his feet, between the stones of the mountain, upsetting his footing – a trick I’d picked up off the Albish in Iliaz. The stab of pain through my stomach was gone as quickly as it came. And as Fazim toppled over, landing flat on his back, it was entirely worth it.
Fazim cursed violently as he sat back up, looking embarrassed as some laughed. A few people edged forward, not entirely sure of themselves. After all, I hadn’t laid a hand on Fazim. But we might be in for a fight all the same.
But then a cry came from the back. ‘He’s coming! Make way, he’s coming.’ The crowd split like a knife slicing cloth, clearing a straight path through the camp. Fazim scrambled out of the way and got to his feet, suddenly looking cowed.
I turned, heart pounding, waiting to see this he. The man in the mountain. The real monster of my childhood stories. The Djinni who had been chained up by his own brethren. The creature who burned people he deemed unworthy of being saved.
And there, standing at the other side of the camp, his hands raised either in blessing or in warning, was my Demdji brother, Noorsham.
Chapter 20
For a second our eyes locked across the rocky terrain, surprise as clear on his face as it must have been on mine. I felt Jin reach on instinct for the gun he hadn’t given away. My hand dashed to his, lacing our fingers together, drawing him away from his weapon carefully. Don’t, I willed him silently.
Noorsham started to move towards us.
He had flattened whole cities. He had burned people from the inside out. It didn’t cost him anything to do it. One wrong move from us and there was no telling what would happen.
But I’d stood across from him before when he’d refused to hurt me.
I’d been there when Jin hadn’t.
And he was my brother, after all. He wouldn’t harm me. I had to believe that.
As Noorsham passed through the crowd slowly, everyone around him bent like blades of grass under a strong wind.
‘You kneel,’ my aunt hissed, loud enough that it was meant to shame me. She was enjoying this, I realised.
But I ignored her. Instead, I took a step to meet him.