“It was Jin’s mother who got us out of the palace alive, you know.” I didn’t know that. Just like I didn’t really know anything real about Jin. But he didn’t seem to need me to answer him. I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me. “Lien and my mother were like sisters. They came into my father’s harem near the same time, and Jin and I were born hours apart. I was early and Jin was late. I was fifth of my father’s sons. He was sixth. We were born early enough in our father’s reign that we were treated well, but not so early that he took more notice of us than our mothers liked. Lien called it fate. Jin doesn’t believe in fate.
“I don’t have a single memory of my mother’s face. I was too young when she died.” The Sultan’s pretty young wife from the story. The one who was beaten to death for giving birth to Delila. She’d been a few words in the tale of the Rebel Prince to me. But she’d been flesh and blood to Ahmed. “All my memories of Miraji are of my brother. The night Delila was born, Jin was sick. Lien and my mother had been planning an escape ever since my mother learned she was carrying a Djinni’s child. It wasn’t safe to move Jin—he was running a fever—but it wasn’t safe for Delila to stay. So Lien had to risk it. I remember little bits from that night. Clinging to Lien’s skirts while she peeled off a sultan’s ransom in gold bracelets to pay for a ship to Xicha.
“But those things belong to a dream. What I remember better than anything is sitting on a bunk with my hand on my brother’s heartbeat as he burned up on an unsteady ship taking us away from home and Lien making me pray for Jin to make it through the night alive while she rocked my sister to try to stop her screaming.” He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “I’ve lost count of how many prayers I’ve sent up for my brother to keep him alive since then. He has had more than his share of brushes with death for one life.”
“Some folks are just better at putting themselves in the line of fire,” I said. “Your Majesty.”
“Please, call me Ahmed. All you need to do is look around to see that my majesty is very much in question.” He looked nothing like his brother in that moment. Jin always smiled at me like we were both about to be in big trouble and he loved it. The prince smiled like he was forgiving you for it. “My brother may have little regard for his own safety, but most of the time, when he’s stepped into the line of fire, it’s been to put himself between death and Delila or me. I’ve never seen him flirt so carelessly with death for anyone other than us before. Until you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I focused on Jin instead of the Rebel Prince. His foreign features were the one familiar thing in this uncanny place full of purple-haired princesses and golden-eyed shape-shifters, even though he might as well have become a stranger all over again the moment Ahmed called him brother.
“Winning your throne, your kingdom . . .” I began. “Is it worth all these people dying?” Is it worth his life? “The Sultan killed your mother, the Sultim stole your throne—that’s nothing to do with anyone else. You want to know who killed my mother? Your country.” I didn’t mean it to come out sounding like a taunt. But I wanted to hear him say it. That he really can save this desert.
“I’m not here for power.” Prince Ahmed was calm, as if I hadn’t just thrown his mother’s murder in his face. Somehow it didn’t come out cocky. “I’ve seen the way my father rules like a man afraid to lose even a scrap of his power to another. He thinks that’s the only way, and that’s why we are poor and occupied and weak. I never planned to come back to Miraji to take my father’s seat.
“We went everywhere before coming here. We saw the Ionian Peninsula, where they have a council of men and women, chosen from among their people, poor and rich alike, so that they can be heard equally. We went to Amonpour, where their trade and their industry make them wealthy and full instead of poor and starving. We went to Albis, where women can inherit land and hold jobs and are treated as equal to men in all things. And Espa, where on one particular drunken evening we thought doing this”—the prince pulled aside his collar so I could see the whole of his sun tattoo, identical to Jin’s—“was a good idea. It’s a Xichian symbol for luck and fortune. Appropriate when you’re living job to job, ship to ship, like we were then. I didn’t exactly plan on it becoming the symbol for a whole revolution.
“The people of this desert should have a country that belongs to them, not to one man. Everybody in this country lives like they’re lit with fire at birth. There’s so much greatness in Miraji, and so many terrible things being done by my father and by the Gallan. This country’s people deserve better. Shazad deserves a country where her mind isn’t wasted because she’s a woman. The Demdji shouldn’t fear for their lives just because my father has allied with a country that burns those touched with magic. My mother deserved better than being beaten to death for rebelling against a life she didn’t choose for herself. We could make Miraji the greatest country in the world.
“My father made it the way it is, a warring, violent place, half in the hands of the Gallan king. And my brother Kadir is like him. With him as Sultim, we will keep living under foreign empires who come in and bleed the sands dry. Or we could change everything.”
Prince Ahmed’s face came alive when he was talking about the desert. And the more he talked, the harder it was not to believe him. I finally understood the crazy kid in the pistol pit the night I met Jin. That these ideas could make men shout for rebellion even when it meant they would hang for it.
nineteen
Dark fell in the oasis earlier than I thought it would. I hadn’t noticed when we’d been crossing the desert, but now it struck me that Shihabian really must be close. At twilight, the colorful world turned to a softer version of itself. Campfires burned among the trees. Each was surrounded by a little pocket of people, sharing food, laughing. I thought of Dustwalk at dinnertime. Everybody shut up inside their houses, jealously guarding every scrap they had. Here the food was laid out on a big carpet in the middle of the camp, with a stack of mismatched plates.
Shazad and I sat down by one of the small fires. Shazad helped herself to two plates, piling flatbread and fruit on one and handing it to me.
“Where do all these people come from?” I asked Shazad in between bites. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I started eating.
Shazad looked around at the hundred or so rebels, as if the question surprised her. “A little bit of everywhere. There were only a dozen of us when we fled Izman after the Sultim trials. But in the last year, the cause has gotten bigger. More people have joined. A few were turned out of their houses or arrested for supporting Ahmed a little too loudly. Some we broke out of prison. Farrouk and Fazia are orphans from Izman.” She gestured to the pair I’d seen tinkering with the bomb that morning, now building some kind of structure out of bread. “We hired them to make an explosive device on a mission a few months back and the Sultan’s army identified them, so they’re refugees now. Fairly useful to have around, although I worry one day they’ll blow this whole place sky-high.”