My legs couldn’t afford to.
I grabbed Shira and moved at the same moment the train pitched sideways. The force sent Shira careening backward into the young commander with a cry. He caught her clumsily.
I flung myself through the carriage door, ignoring the shouts behind me. I ran the length of the carriage, shoved past the passengers who’d started to emerge into the corridor, and through the next door, fumbling for a lock behind me. Anything to slow them down.
Nothing.
Cursing, I turned and kept running, down and down until I was halfway through second class. I could still hear my pursuers. I was going to run out of train any minute now. I needed to figure out where I was going before I wound up in the sand.
I’d worry about that when it happened.
I flung myself against the door at the end of the carriage. It jammed.
I rattled the handle, looking behind me for uniforms. I rammed my shoulder against the door again and again. Shouts were getting closer, though it was hard to tell over the rattling of the train.
The door gave. Night air, rails, and sand rushed up to meet me as I pitched forward. I grabbed the door frame, catching myself just in time.
Where there’d been a walkway between the other carriages, here there was only a yawning gap with a narrow metal coupling linking the two cars. In the light from the carriage behind me I could make out the rails whipping below my feet. The air lashed my clothes around me, invisible fingers trying to snatch me back to the sands where I belonged.
There was another door across the way. I could make it through that.
Probably.
Only one way to find out.
I leapt and hit the door full force. It gave way with a dull thud that sent me sprawling, battered and breathless, but alive, across the carriage floor.
I pulled my dangling feet up behind me in a graceless scramble. The door swung shut, narrowly missing my toes. There was a lock this time, and I shoved the bolt into place and hurried to stand up.
There were no more compartments here, just rows of bunks, stacked one atop another all the way back. Dozens of passengers craned around the metal frames to stare at me. They looked like prisoners pressing desperate faces through iron bars. At least one of them was bound to give me up as soon as the soldiers got through the door.
I dodged between beds. A game of dice and drink was under way between some men. They were sitting on the floor, using a bunk like a table. Stained cards were spread out across the sheets, between handfuls of coins. I wove my way through the mass, looking for a place to hide. Four women huddled together on a single bunk, combing one another’s hair and eating dates. A little boy with bare feet ran up and tried to grab one. He got a hairbrush to the knuckles and started to wail.
I realized my sheema was loose around my neck, my hair tumbling free, making me a girl again. A girl in boys’ clothes. I went to wrap it back around my face. Even as I did, an arm latched around my waist, a hand over my mouth. My attacker pulled me free from the crowd and pushed me up against the train wall between two bunks.
I looked up straight into a pair of familiar foreign eyes.
“You,” Jin said, pinning me in place, “are really something else.”
The panic dropped away. Jin might not look all that happy with me, but it was better than being caught by a soldier. I shoved him so his hand fell away from my mouth. “I’m going to go ahead and take that as a compliment. What are you doing here?”
“Searching this whole damn train for you,” he said, sounding relieved.
“Well, you didn’t make it to the front,” I said.
“The front?” He cocked an eyebrow questioningly and then it hit him “You bought a first-class ticket? Why? How?”
Like hell I was going to admit it was a mistake. “I sold Iksander,” I said instead.
“Iksander?” Jin’s grip loosened a little.
“The Buraqi,” I explained, looking over his shoulder. It was just a matter of time until I’d see the flash of gold-and-white uniform.
“You named him Iksander?” There was something in his face, like he was trying to figure me out.
“I had to call him something, and it’s as good a name as any other. My uncle had a horse he named Blue. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a blue horse.” I didn’t know why I was getting defensive.
“So you named him after a prince who got himself turned into a horse by a Djinni two hundred years ago?”
“Why does it matter how long ago it was?” I asked in exasperation. “It won’t stick anyhow. I sold him. To this trader who called himself Oman Slick Hands, even though his palms just seemed sweaty to me. Only he wasn’t exactly honest, because an honest trader would’ve turned me in for a girl.”
“Or a blue-eyed thief.” Jin looked amused. “I ought to turn you in.”
“Well, you’re going to have your chance soon enough, because the army is on this train, and they’re after me just now. Or probably after you, but I’m in their way.”
Jin’s head darted up, looking back the way I came.
“Fine,” Jin said. “Give me the compass and I’ll get us out of here.”
“The compass?” I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting after he’d tracked me three days across the desert, but it wasn’t this.
“You’re too smart to play dumb, Bandit.” Jin’s eyes searched me, like I might be hiding his compass in plain sight.
“You’re mistaking my playing dumb for my thinking you’re an idiot for wanting a beat-up compass.”
His hand was clamped firmly over my pulse. “So we both know you took it. Give it back and we’ll call it quits for poisoning me. I won’t even ask you to pay me back half of the money for the Buraqi you stole.”
“I didn’t poison you. I drugged you. And that Buraqi was mine.” I tried to pull my arm free, but he was stronger than I was. “You stole it first. If you hadn’t set such a bad example, maybe I would’ve never stolen your broken compass.”
“Broken?” His hand tightened until it hurt.
“Yeah.” I struggled not to wince. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “I rode all night in the wrong direction following the needle on that compass, until the sun came up and straightened me out.”
I felt him relax against me. “If it’s no good to you, then you won’t miss it.”
“Seeing as it’s no good to me, why would I have kept it?”
“Amani.” He leaned toward me until I could feel the heat of him in the small space. “Where is it?”
I tightened my jaw. “Soldiers are coming.”
“Then you’d better tell me fast, Bandit.”
I didn’t speak right away. Our wills locked against each other. I wanted to lie to him. Tell him it was gone with the Buraqi. Keep making him suffer for refusing to take me with him in Dustwalk, for saying I wasn’t going to get to Izman in Sazi. For trying to keep me where I was when I was fighting so hard to break away.
“Amani,” he lowered his voice. A real note of desperation in my name. “Please.” My anger came apart with a tug of his words.