I wasn’t sure if we were prisoners or not.
We were divided up quickly, before I could talk to Jin about the captain’s offer, each of us sent to separate rooms. They didn’t lock our doors, but there were soldiers posted outside.
The room I was escorted to didn’t look like a cell either. It was about the size of my aunt’s whole house back in Dustwalk, dominated by a large bed littered with colourful pillows and a carpet that stretched from one wall to the other and depicted a hunting scene, a man with arrows chasing a flock of birds around and around the border. My window overlooked the courtyard, the fortress walls and, just beyond that, the side of the mountain that plunged down in rolling waves of green vines to a smaller village a little way below.
As I peered out, there was a knock at the door. Two servants entered, heads down. One was carrying a pitcher of water, the other a huge silver platter heavy with food. They set them down on the table before quickly leaving, closing the door behind themselves.
Whatever privileges were being given to us didn’t extend to Sam.
Hala had died at dawn. It was nearing dusk now, and we were close to losing Sam, too. A third of our rebels dead in one day. Losing people this quickly was an impressive feat for any leader.
But in return, we could add hundreds to our numbers and keep two of our country’s enemies from allying against us.
A whole army in exchange for the life of one boy who was a whole lot more trouble than he was worth. But he was my friend and our ally all the same. He had saved me as many times as I had saved him, and he’d brought me help when I needed it in the harem. I’d lay down my life for him in a fight. I didn’t know if he’d do the same for me, but he sure hadn’t given me permission to give up his life for him.
And if I did, even if I gained us an alliance, I’d be handing over my country to foreign hands, just like the Sultan had done when he’d usurped his own father. The Albish were better than the Gallan, but they were still foreigners. They were still here to occupy our desert.
Who the hell was I to make this call? This shouldn’t be my decision – not Sam’s life, not the throne, not the lives of our friends or the fate of a whole country. Someone else should be deciding these things, Ahmed or Shazad or even Rahim. Someone who knew a damn about something.
I glanced at my door. Jin had been led into a room just across the hallway from mine. With walls and doors between us, I was somehow more keenly aware of him than I had ever been.
If I tried to cross the hallway, would the soldier stop me? And if he didn’t, and I took a few short steps to his room and knocked at the door, then what? I wasn’t sure what I would say. What I would do. What did I even want from him – to talk? For him to tell me that I should let Sam die for the sake of the Rebellion? For his help making a plan to get our imposter bandit out of here alive? Or did I want something else? I could feel his absence like an itch below my skin.
Before I could think better of it, I was at the door, wrenching it open. The soldier standing outside was Mirajin, one of Bilal’s men and too well trained by Rahim to jump at sudden noises. He glanced at me calmly from where he was standing at attention between the two doorways.
‘Do you have orders to stop me?’ I asked.
The soldier considered me for a long moment. ‘There’s a rumour going around that you’re headed to rescue the commander.’ He was talking about Rahim. Their commander, the man they were still loyal to. Anwar, the young soldier who had been translating for Bilal, must have told the rest of the men what I’d said.
‘I’m going to try.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘In that case, as far as I’m concerned, you can go wherever you want.’ He moved to let me pass. I stepped out of the room and glanced at Jin’s closed door. The idea of taking another step towards it, of closing that last distance between us, sent a small thrill down my spine that felt equal parts fear and anticipation.
Fear got the better of me.
I turned, moving down the hallway and away from him quickly.
*
I found the captain on the fortress walls, surveying six of his soldiers who were lined up, taking shots at a bale of hay with unnecessarily decorative rifles. They were handmade, just like all the guns that came from anywhere in the world that wasn’t Miraji. That was why they needed us so badly. We could arm as many people in a day as they could in a month of making weapons.
The last of the setting sun hit the barrels of the rifles, making the gold insets gleam in the twilight. They were in the shapes of elaborate twisting vines that worked their way down into the wooden handles. They looked more ceremonial than useful. For an execution rather than for battle. I guessed the bale of hay was a stand-in for Sam.
The top of the bale came loose as the bullets struck it, and it teetered for a moment before toppling backwards, off the wall. I leaned over, watching it plummet down and over the cliff face before crashing on the mountain far below.
It was a long drop.
‘Miss Amani.’ Captain Westcroft acknowledged me, dismissing his soldiers with a quick nod. ‘How can I help you tonight?’ If he was surprised that I’d got out of my room, he didn’t show it.
‘I want to talk to you about Sam.’
‘I see.’ Clasping his hands behind his back, he slowly began to walk along the walls, letting me fall into step behind him.
‘I want to make his release a condition in our alliance.’ Shazad would be able to negotiate this. I wasn’t her, but I could pretend I was for one conversation.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ The captain sounded genuinely regretful. The sky was darkening around us quickly as we walked, and torches and lamps started to spring to life throughout the fortress, pushing back against the night.
‘Then it better become possible.’ I tried to say it like Shazad would, like I wasn’t asking – I was ordering. ‘Sam’s not yours to execute; he’s with us now.’
‘He is still a deserter. And he will always be a deserter. An army runs on discipline. In places like these, far from home, desertion and insubordination become greater threats than ever. And if I am going to ask these soldiers to march across a desert for you, they need to be disciplined.’ He stopped walking, turning to face me, looking grave. ‘Your friend needs to be made an example of for three hundred other men.’
Three hundred soldiers.
It was the best chance we’d have at getting Ahmed back. The Albish might even have enough magic among them to get us through Ashra’s Wall, if it was real.
I’d have to be stupid to turn that down. But then, I’d been accused of that plenty in my life. Stupid, ignorant, reckless girl from Dustwalk who wouldn’t know a good deal if it was staring her in the face.
‘Captain,’ someone called in Albish, drawing Westcroft’s attention down to the courtyard below. The soldier standing guard at the gate said something too quick for me to catch.
The captain’s reaction was instant, his face shifting to real worry. ‘Excuse me,’ he said swiftly before moving down the stone stairs that led from the wall towards the gate. I followed him.
I wasn’t even at the bottom step when I saw what had caused the commotion. Through the fortress’s gate, I could see a pale figure stumbling out of the gloom. He was clutching his side, wearing an Albish uniform covered with blood. I could just see in the faint torchlight that his face was twisted in pain.
The Albish soldiers were already rushing forwards, past the gate and into the dark, to help him. The Mirajin soldiers, on the other hand, hung back, rightfully wary. There was something wrong here, something unsettling about this wounded soldier limping home through the night. All of us who’d been born in this desert could feel it. Years in Dustwalk checking over my shoulder, wary of dark corners and of things that lurked in the gloom, had trained my instincts. But I had learned some more tricks since my desert days.
‘It’s not human.’ The words fell too easily off my tongue to be anything but the truth, and I knew. I knew as the soldiers stumbled towards the edge of the light cast by the lamps burning near the gate, grasping him by either arm, holding him up.
Neither of them saw the glint of its teeth as it shifted its head towards the nearest soldier’s throat to rip it out.
It was too late to cry out a warning. Too late to do anything except move.
I was quick. My hand was around the pistol holstered at the captain’s side before he could so much as see me moving. The weapon came alive in my grip. I took aim quickly, as the ghoul’s maw opened, ready to clamp down.
I fired.
The bullet caught the Skinwalker between the eyes.
Its stolen face didn’t even have time to look surprised as it dropped dead.
Instantly, the foreign soldiers’ guns were swinging back towards me, thinking I had killed one of their own. My hands were already up, finger off the trigger, trying to prove I wasn’t a threat. The gun was wrestled off me, and my arms were grabbed.
‘That wasn’t one of your soldiers,’ I said in Mirajin, loud enough for Bilal’s men at the gate to hear me, even as my arms were being wrenched painfully behind my back. ‘It was a Skinwalker.’ I thought maybe understanding dawned across the captain’s face, but the rest of the soldiers looked blank. They didn’t understand that they had brought this upon themselves. Bilal, lingering in his sickbed, wouldn’t have known what they were doing. I wondered if he even would’ve cared.
And suddenly I saw another flicker of movement.
And I remembered, on our climb up the mountain: there had been more than one body buried out there, half-dragged out of the dirt with teeth marks on its skin.
‘And it’s not alone.’
The Mirajin soldiers were quick to react, guns swivelling into the darkness. But the Skinwalkers knew we were wise to them now. They kept to the shadows, darting in and out too quickly to be a useful target even as barrels tried to follow them through the night.
We didn’t have any warning before the next thing sprung. Its mouth clamped over a soldier’s shoulder, ripping through flesh and muscle, all the way to the bone. The man’s scream echoed down the mountain.
But Rahim’s men were well trained. Another soldier was on the Skinwalker in a second, his knife across its throat, sending the monster down to the ground twitching.
Then another Skinwalker surged out of the darkness towards the soldier.
‘Close the gates!’ the captain was calling, even as his men took aim at the newest Skinwalker, catching it in the chest, sending it reeling back. ‘Close them now!’ He called the same order in Albish, unsure in this muddled army who was manning what.
The soldiers started to retreat quickly, keeping their guard up, as the huge iron gate was lowered over the entrance. Albish and Mirajin guns clattered, pointing at the Skinwalkers. There were dozens of them slinking through the dark now, darting in and out of focus. Drawn out from their mountain hiding places, looking for more bodies to devour.
A shot went off by my ear. I didn’t have to check if it had hit its target. I knew it hadn’t by the way the soldier was holding the weapon. The Albish held their guns like they were afraid of them, too used to magic defending them. I didn’t ask permission before I knocked the gun from his loose grasp and aimed. Three Skinwalkers went down in the dark before the gun clicked empty. Damn it.
‘Where do you keep your ammunition?’ I asked in Mirajin, not bothering to summon up the few words I knew in their language, what with the gunfire filling the air and all. The soldier shook his head blankly at me, even as I gestured with my empty weapon. I rolled my eyes, exasperated, turning to the captain.
He looked troubled. ‘We don’t need to turn this into a battle,’ he said. ‘We can wait them out until morning behind the walls—’
‘All that’ll happen then is that they’ll lose interest in us and head for the houses further down the mountain,’ I snapped. We could defend the fortress. The men and women of Iliaz’s villages wouldn’t have as many guns and soldiers ‘Now, where do you keep your ammunition?’
The captain looked grim. ‘There is a tent by the east gate.’
I ran, dashing around the central building of the fortress and heading for more bullets. I saw the tent there, propped against the outer wall, sticking out like a sore thumb in the northern Albish colours, clashing against the fortress’s warm stone.
Inside, the tent was lined with weapon upon weapon: guns and swords and rifles and even a few things that might’ve been bombs, all neatly stacked up, a little arsenal ready to march on Izman, if needed. I was reaching for a cache of bullets when I saw the gilded rifles lined up neatly to one side.
And I stopped.
Outside were raised voices, more gunshots, and, further away now, the sounds of an invasion of ghouls being held back. I’d been in a whole lot of fights in the name of the Rebellion now. I’d been afraid in them before. Or I’d felt nothing, everything in me focused on staying alive. But the anger I had felt tonight, that was new. It surged from some dark part of my soul, older than I was. Old as my bloodline, old as the desert. Our desert – not theirs to march their armies through and claim through bargains and alliances, all while putting their dead in the ground so our monsters could thrive. It was our desert, not theirs and not the Gallan’s and not any other northerners’ from the edges of the horizon.
And I wasn’t going to let them have it.
The Skinwalkers they could handle without me. That was just one fight. I had a war to win. Quickly, I grabbed a knife from the wall and got to work on my sabotage.