The boy knew she was dangerous when he met her, with a gun in her hand and no care for her own life in a dusty desert town at the end of the world. She was all fire and gunpowder, and her finger was always on a trigger.
He guessed he was in trouble when those same fingers danced across the stories inked into his skin without seeming to understand how much power she had in her. Or how much power she could have over him. He knew it for sure when he woke up with a headache, missing the girl, and found that he was glad she had given him an excuse to go after her.
He knew it when she drove him across the desert for fear that losing her would tear him in half. He knew it when he did lose her, and he would have torn the whole world apart looking for her.
But he wondered if a boy from the sea and a girl from the desert could ever survive together. He feared that she might burn him alive or that he might drown her. Until finally he stopped fighting it and set himself on fire for her.
Chapter 38
Something was wrong.
I woke suddenly, completely certain of that.
Only my waking mind wasn’t as sure as my sleeping mind had been. And for just a few seconds, it didn’t seem like anything could be amiss. I was lying in the circle of Jin’s arms, fitted against him like we were two pieces meant to fit together. There was a heavy blanket between me and the morning air that I remembered Jin pulling over us last night. My head rested on the tattoo over his heart, listening to its steady beat, as he drew lazy patterns with his fingers across the bare skin of my back underneath the blanket.
And then I remembered that today was the day we were all going into battle.
Jin felt me wake up. ‘What’s wrong?’ he mumbled tiredly into my hair. I lifted my head enough so I could see him. His lids were heavy with sleep, his hair dishevelled, but his eyes were as sharp and ready as ever, watching me. I wondered how long he’d been awake.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. But even now I couldn’t shake it. It was there, an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like there was some danger coming that I couldn’t see yet. I sat up abruptly and smacked my head against the lamp, the same one from last night.
I cursed, rubbing my head, as Jin laughed from where he was still sprawled lazily on the ground. ‘You’ve got a new enemy. The Sultan and his army will have to wait until you’ve defeated that lamp.’
I stuck my tongue out as I pulled the blanket off him, wrapping it around myself like I’d just stepped out of the baths in Izman, before venturing outside the tent. Dawn was only just putting on its face, the faint pink of the sky igniting Izman to the east of us. But even in the half-light, I could see there was something else between us and the city.
I squinted, trying to get a better view of the shifting, blurred thing on the horizon. It almost looked like—
It hit me all at once. That feeling of wrongness wasn’t just fear – it was coming from my Demdji side.
I pushed my way hurriedly back into Jin’s tent. He looked up from where he was pulling clothes on. ‘It’s a sandstorm,’ I said, suddenly breathless. I started searching for my own clothes. ‘The Sultan, he knows we’re here.’ I found my trousers, putting them on quickly under the blanket. ‘He’s using the Abdals to – he’s doing this to keep me here.’ I grabbed my shirt out of the pile, hands shaking. I could already anticipate the pain of trying to hold back a sandstorm long enough to make it a fair fight. I knew I couldn’t hold it back and get into the city. I yanked my shirt on.
Jin drew me to him. ‘Calm down.’ His steadiness made me still. ‘We have armies and other Demdji. You’re not alone in this fight. However –’ he hooked his hands under the hem of the shirt I had just put on – ‘I am going to need my shirt back, because I don’t think I’m going to fit in yours.’ I just had time to realise he was right – I’d taken his shirt without noticing, and I was drowning in it – before he stole a quick kiss from me and pulled the shirt back over my head, tossing me mine instead.
It was a lot harder to believe you might lose a war when you could still laugh on the morning of the last battle.
I stepped out of Jin’s tent just as the storm reached us. I took in a breath as sand rushed closer, encircling the camp, pushing towards the tents. I raised my arms, hands steady as the storm got close enough that I could feel the sands lashing at my skin.
I pushed back with everything I had in me.
The storm stopped its invasion all at once. Sand strained against me at the edges of the camp. The desert that usually obeyed me was fighting back. I couldn’t get it to disperse, couldn’t wave a hand and scatter the storm back into the dunes where it had come from. Instead, the sandstorm whipped around the camp in a cyclone, like a wild animal prowling on the outskirts of a cage, nipping occasionally at the edges of tents, making them tremble in the air.
This was a standstill.
‘God, there you are!’ I opened my eyes at the sound of Shazad’s voice to find her, Ahmed, Rahim and Sam running towards me, all of them looking unsettled as the storm raged around us. ‘I tried to find you when I saw the sandstorm, but I couldn’t track you down.’ Shazad’s eyes slid to Jin, standing in the opening of his tent just behind me. We both still looked dishevelled from more than just sleep. The sly look on my friend’s face told me she understood now she’d been looking in the wrong tent. But her mind slid quickly back to the present. ‘Amani, how long can you hold this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Not as long as the Abdals could, that was for sure. I was already starting to feel the strain, the risk of the wild storm slipping its leash and tearing through the camp. And the power controlling it on the other side came from machines. I was only flesh and blood. ‘What do we do?’ I asked, breathless. I needed to go to the palace; that was the plan. I had to deactivate the machine. If I didn’t we would be helpless against the Sultan’s metal soldiers. But if I left, the sand would rush in and drown us. And it would all be over.
‘I’m not sure,’ Shazad said, watching the sand circling us. We all stared at her, even as I could feel my knees threatening to give out.
Sam spoke first. ‘Did she just say she’s not sure, or was I hallucinating?’
‘I’m thinking.’ Shazad’s voice was still level. I could see it going through her mind, the cost-benefit analysis of what was likely to get the fewest people killed. It shouldn’t be her decision to make. And it wasn’t. It was Ahmed’s.
‘Amani needs to go to the palace,’ he said, taking the decision away from her. ‘My father is obviously doing this to keep her here, which means he’s afraid of what will happen if Amani does get to the machine.’
‘People will die.’ One of my knees buckled, and suddenly Jin was behind me, steadying me. My arms were shaking. No matter what we decided, the reality of my failing power might decide for us. But I wasn’t giving up that easy. ‘You can’t fight in a sandstorm.’ I could feel the power of it pressing against me, threatening to swallow the camp whole.
‘And we can’t fight at all so long as the Sultan has this power to wield against us,’ Ahmed said. ‘The plan remains unchanged. Now, if everyone can—’
The sensation hit me so suddenly that I doubled over. It wasn’t the pain I normally felt when using my powers; it was more like a blow. Power slamming into mine, knocking the storm out of my hands.
I lost control. Whatever Ahmed was going to say was lost in the rush of the sandstorm.
I braced myself against Jin, my body radiating pain, as I waited for the sand to swarm in, to consume us.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the sand rose, spiralling far up into the air, towards the clouds. For a moment it hung over us like a huge, dark cloud, blotting out the sky, a swirling mass that could easily crash down and crush us all. I started to reach for it again, even though I knew it was hopeless.
And then, suddenly, the sand scattered through the air, falling harmlessly like rain around us.