I slipped it on, revelling in the feeling of the fabric against my skin. It occurred to me that I’d never worn a piece of clothing that had never been worn by anyone else before. My clothes in Dustwalk were all cast-offs from cousins. I’d bought second-hand clothes in Juniper City when I fled there. Even my clothes in the rebel camp were Shazad’s. This was the first thing I’d ever worn that truly fit me. It had been made for me. And I knew what it meant.
It was forgiveness for going to see Bahadur.
*
In spite of the Sultan’s gift I didn’t know what I might’ve lost by tricking my way out of the harem. The Sultan’s trust, definitely. My freedom, too, probably. There was nothing stopping him from stripping away the freedom he’d given me with just a few words. He wouldn’t be wrong not to trust me to leave the harem. I ran my thumb over the raised golden thread of the sleeve as I headed for the edge of the harem. I was working to destroy him, after all.
But even though my step slowed the closer I got to the gates I didn’t meet any invisible barriers there. I passed through the archway that led towards the palace the same way I had yesterday, when Shira and I had been tricking our way out. Still, I didn’t quite dare drop my guard just yet. But there was no battalion of soldiers waiting for me at the gates, either. Just one man, same as always. Only it wasn’t a soldier. Or rather, it wasn’t just any soldier.
Prince Rahim, Leyla’s brother, wearing his commander’s uniform, was waiting for me outside the gates, hands clasped behind his back. The one who’d spoken that day in court as if he was born on a battlefield. The one who’d watched me with dark eyes that made me nervous so often during negotiations. He didn’t speak a whole lot, but when he did, it was always something worth hearing.
‘Well, at least I know you won’t be able to outrun me in that,’ Rahim said, taking in my khalat. He offered me his right arm.
‘Isn’t being my escort a bit below the station of a prince?’ I asked, pushing past him and heading towards the now-familiar path to the council chamber. He fell into step behind me.
‘I managed to convince my father that you might need someone with a little more experience to watch you. Possibly someone bright enough to know that the Sultima isn’t due to give birth for weeks. Not a bad trick, though.’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered,’ I asked as we passed under a blue-and-white mosaic archway, ‘that I get a commander watching me?’
Rahim’s lip twitched up. ‘You don’t remember me.’ It wasn’t a question.
We’ve never met before. It was on the tip of my tongue. But it wouldn’t go any further. I looked at him curiously out of the corner of my eye as we walked, my mind racing to place him. I thought he looked familiar when I first met him but I’d chalked that up to his resemblance to Leyla. And to their father. ‘Then again’ – he tapped the place my scar was, by my hip – ‘you did go down awfully fast with that bullet.’
A blast. The smell of gunpowder. A shooting pain in my side. Then darkness. In Iliaz. A soldier behind Jin raising a gun, finger already on the trigger. I knew him all at once.
I stopped short. ‘You shot me in Iliaz.’
‘I did.’ Rahim kept walking, apparently satisfied now that we were such old friends with a history of gunpowder and near death between us. ‘Although, luckily for us, it looks like I didn’t do an especially good job of it. So here’s hoping you can forgive me and we can start over.’
He knew. He’d seen me in Iliaz, which meant he knew who I was. He knew I wasn’t just a Demdji from the Last County.
Rahim realised I wasn’t following him any more. He stopped, too, turning back to face me. ‘I had my suspicions as soon as I saw you at court that day. But I wasn’t sure until my brother’s charming wife decided to … expose you a little.’ He looked embarrassed saying it, at least. But I still felt the heat of the old humiliation prickle across my skin. ‘I knew as soon as I saw the scar on your hip.’
‘So why am I walking to a council meeting with you instead of hanging by my ankles in a cell telling your father all the secrets of the Rebellion?’
‘We hang people by the wrists now instead of the ankles,’ Rahim said. ‘Keeps prisoners more lucid if all the blood doesn’t rush to their head.’ I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
‘You don’t have much of a way with words, anyone ever tell you that?’
‘That’s why I’m a soldier, not a politician. Or I used to be.’ Rahim drummed his fingers across the sword on his belt. ‘My father and I aren’t on the best of terms.’
‘And selling out the Blue-Eyed Bandit to him wouldn’t put you back in his good graces?’ I asked.
‘My father doesn’t have any good graces. He’s just very good at pretending he does when it suits him. Which puts you and me on the interesting same side of hating my father.’
I watched him carefully. This had to be a trick. Some ploy of the Sultan’s. Only I was at his mercy. He didn’t need to send me a fake traitor; he could just order me to tell him everything I knew about the Rebellion. You’re lying to me. I tried it out, but it wouldn’t get past my tongue. He wasn’t lying. But he wasn’t telling the whole truth, either.
‘What is it you want? From us being on the same side, that is.’
‘A new dawn.’ Rahim flicked one of the tracts that had fallen from the sky out at me between his fingers. It was creased from the pocket of his uniform. ‘A new desert.’