My aunt sucked in a breath. I knew she was thinking it would be the end of me. She was thinking I didn’t know what Noorsham could do. But I knew better than anyone. I unlaced my hand from Jin’s as I pulled away from him, crossing the path that had formed between the people of the camp and my brother, until we were only a few steps apart.
He looked different to when I had last seen him. His hair had grown out from the shorn cut that had been under the bronze helmet the Sultan had forced on him. And there was a small scar on his chin. He reached out a hand towards me. For just a second, even in rags instead of metal armour, he looked exactly as he had the moment before he burned Bahi alive, blazing with power and righteousness. He’d burned whole cities with that hand.
And then he clasped my face, and his palms were only as warm as flesh and blood, not immortal fire.
‘Amani.’ Noorsham’s smile could have lit up the world. ‘You’ve found your way home to me, sister.’
And he embraced me.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the stunned look on Aunt Farrah’s face just a little bit.
‘The Eye!’ someone called from the crowd behind Noorsham. ‘How can we trust them without looking at the Eye?’
‘We all had to go through the Eye,’ another person called, sounding angry.
‘The Eye,’ someone else called from far off. ‘The Eye.’ It was picked up like a chant among the assembled people. ‘The Eye. The Eye. The Eye.’ Soon everyone was chanting it.
‘The Eye!
The Eye!
The Eye!’
Noorsham turned in a slow circle. The words of the chant seemed to shake the mountain around us as he surveyed his people. Finally Noorsham moved, raising one hand ever so slightly in the air. It was as if he had flicked a switch. The whole of the mountain fell silent at his command.
Everyone waited with bated breath for him to speak.
‘To the Eye, then,’ he declared. An uproarious cheer swelled from the mountain. Suddenly everyone was moving at once, encircling us, pushing us forward like we were dust caught in a powerful current. I felt fingernails sink hard into my arm. It was Aunt Farrah, gripping me like she was my jailer, driving me forward. Making sure I wouldn’t get away from whatever this Eye was.
We didn’t have to go far.
Noorsham led us to a small indent in the mountain, where the ground sloped off. It was surrounded by prayer scarfs, making it brighter than desert ground ought to be, and the slope was strewn with bright cloths and dried flowers, the kind I’d seen in the Sultan’s gardens but that never grew here on the mountain.
And in the middle of it all was a small, jagged-looking piece of mirror, a shard roughly the shape of an eye. Everyone stopped at the edge of the slope, circling around to watch, but no one passed the line of prayer flags that marked the edge, except for Noorsham, who descended confidently.
He picked up the shard of glass reverently in his palms, lifting it high so that it caught the late afternoon sun.
The shard flashed blue, and I heard Jin suck in a breath next to me. I glanced at him curiously. ‘That looks like a nachseen,’ he said in a low voice.
‘A what?’ That didn’t sound like any language I had heard him speak.
‘A Gamanix invention.’ Like the paired compasses or Leyla’s horde of abominations. A synergy of machine and magic. ‘You can use them to read things in the eyes of others. Armies use them to interrogate spies.’
Noorsham’s blue eyes, so much like mine, turned to catch me. ‘Which one among you will come and face the Eye so I may see the truth of your intentions?’
We traded quick glances. One of us had to spill all our secrets for the lives of everyone else. I ought to send down one of the twins. They were more innocent than Jin or I was. But I could see the naked fear on their faces. And I could feel Noorsham’s gaze boring into the back of my neck. I had volunteered to lead the Rebellion. I should take responsibility.
‘I will.’ I turned back to Noorsham. I stepped between two of the prayer flags, crossing over the invisible border and descending to stand across from my brother.
Up close I could see the Eye better. It was obviously magic, like Jin had said. At the edge of the shard of mirror’s jagged edge, there was something like a crackle of energy, like the spark that fed Leyla’s machines.
‘Where did you get this?’ I asked my brother, keeping a safe distance from the object in his hands.
‘You’re not the only one to come here looking for something,’ Noorsham said vaguely. ‘At first I had to guess what was in their souls. But then foreign soldiers came, and they brought this with them, a gift from God delivered to me by their hands. I use it to see who is truly looking for sanctuary and who seeks something else. And I decide if they stay or if they burn.’
A chill went through me at those words. I thought of the men Bilal had sent south looking for the powerful creature below the mountain that could grant his wish to cheat death. Sure enough, half a dozen of the prayer cloths encircling us now looked like strips taken from the uniforms from the Iliaz command.
Be good, or the monster in the mountain will get you.
Noorsham extended the shard of the nachseen towards me. ‘Look into the Eye, Amani. Let it see you.’
From the crowd above us a rhythmic noise started to pick up: hands pounding against the mountain rock. Just a few at first and then, gradually, more, picking up the cadence. ‘Eye,’ someone chanted, more quietly this time, as their hands slapped the ground like a drumbeat. ‘Eye, Eye, Eye.’ And soon the chant had spread again, everyone speaking softly, but their voices mingling together into a loud rhythm along with the beating of their hands.
We were surrounded. I had walked us all into a trap with a ticking bomb, one I had to defuse now, or we all died.
If Noorsham saw everything that I had done … I didn’t know that I would be seen as being sinless. But also I didn’t see that I had any choice in baring my soul to him either. I did as I was told. I looked down into the glass.
It was as if a tumble of images fell out of my mind, on to the surface of the mirror, and I was watching them all play in quick succession: Shifting desert sands and walls of fire. Execution after execution. Death after death. Djinn trapped under the palace. The Sultan at gunpoint. And then one final glaring image. The thing we were really here for: the man in the mountain.
I tore my head up, breathing hard. It felt like coming up for air underneath the White Fish, except it was as if my mind was what needed to breathe. Jin was next to me, even though I didn’t see where he came from, steadying me with strong arms around my middle. I leaned against him gratefully as Noorsham carefully held the shard of mirror in his hands, inspecting the contents of my mind in it for a very long moment.
‘If we need to run …’ Jin said, low in my ear.
‘You dodge left, I go right, split them up,’ I agreed. It was the only chance we might have of getting out of here in one piece.
Taking his sweet time, Noorsham placed the Eye back on the makeshift altar before turning to the crowd.
I caught Izz’s gaze. He gave me a slight nod, saying he understood; if we bolted he and Maz were ready to shift into something that could outfly the people of Sazi.
‘I have seen her sins.’ My brother finally spoke. ‘I have passed judgement.’ He spread his arms as he faced his disciples, all of them hanging on his every word, leaning forwards with wide zealous eyes. ‘They do not need to burn!’ he declared loudly. And suddenly the crowd was screaming again. This time with joy.
Though the funny thing was, I didn’t find it any less unsettling than when they were baying for my blood.
Chapter 21
I was keenly aware of the stars watching me as I turned over in my bedroll. I hadn’t bothered to pitch one of our tents. It was warm enough this far south, even at night.
Most of Noorsham’s people slept out in the open air. After all, what did they have to hide from the eyes of God? Only, for me, it wasn’t the eyes of God I was worried about but the eyes of the other women, asleep around me.