Flying got boring after a while.
After the initial rush of leaping into the air, the desert shrinking below, the wind whistling an excited tune in our ears as we soared higher above the ground than wingless creatures were ever meant to … after all that wore off, it was just a whole lot of waiting. Hot sun tracking our every mile, arms cramping from clinging to Maz’s back, the wind drowning out any chance to talk as we headed south, following Jin’s compass. We flew further west than the compass told us to so that we could fly close to the mountains that ran along Miraji’s border. It was better than heading due south across the desert, risking running out of water before we found Eremot.
We were headed south without an army, or a plan, or any idea what we were facing. But the way I saw it, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do now except follow Jin’s compass and see what we found at the end. Every day we wasted was another day our friends were imprisoned. Maybe in danger. Maybe dying.
It was the end of our first day of travelling when I noticed the landscape was starting to look familiar. A break in the thankless stretch of desert, a break in the endless view of golden sand and blue skies, a jagged break in the ground: the Dev’s Valley.
My heart skipped as I craned over Maz’s back, peering down below us. We were skimming over the northernmost edge of it; it was the same path that we would take home if we were coming back from the north. Returning from a mission for Ahmed. With Shazad next to me. Because somewhere far below us, hidden in the twists and turns of those canyons, was what used to be our home, the wreckage of the rebel camp.
The desperate reckless urge hit me to ask Maz to take us down. Maybe if he could just land in the valley we could go home again. I could shoo away all the sand that I’d buried the camp in when we had to escape and unearth it like some ancient relic. We could all be safe again, for a little while. But that was foolish. We were too far from that home now.
Instead we stopped near the city of Fahali just as the sun was beginning to set. As close as we dared land near civilisation. A side effect of escaping by the skin of our teeth was that more than just Leyla had been left behind in Iliaz. Food, weapons, water skins … a whole lot of things that we were bound to need on the way south.
‘Sam and I will go,’ Jin said, counting out the small stash of money we had. ‘It’s not safe for Demdji these days.’
‘Because you both think that being from halfway around the world is less conspicuous?’ I stretched my legs, sore from a day of gripping on to Maz’s feathered back.
‘I mean …’ Sam scratched the top of his head – ‘I’d say I’m definitely less conspicuous than blue skin and blue hair.’
‘Hey!’ Izz said, even as Maz, in the shape of a large lizard, managed to look offended.
‘I ought to go,’ I argued, glancing at the city on the horizon. ‘So long as I don’t look anyone in the eye it ought to be fine.’
‘Right,’ Jin said, flipping a two-louzi coin along his knuckles. ‘When’s the last time you got in any trouble when left to your own devices?’ But he flipped the coin in my direction all the same. I caught it out of the air as he handed the rest of our money over. He knew I was right. Foreigners in this part of the desert during a war would arouse suspicion.
I paused as I rewrapped my sheema.
Tamid was unstrapping his false leg, sitting on the ground. ‘None of us knows where the compass is leading.’ I could tell he knew I was talking to him, even though he wasn’t looking at me. ‘This might be the closest thing to civilisation we see for a while. You could stay here if you wanted. When this is all over there’ll be trains running again, back down to Dustwalk …’
‘No.’ He didn’t look up. ‘The compass points south and south is the way to Dustwalk. I’ll keep going with you as far as I need to get home.’
Home. If home was Dustwalk instead of the Dev’s Valley, that was the last home I wanted to go back to.
*
Fahali wasn’t just any city. It was the first city that had knelt to Ahmed, after we’d saved it from being annihilated by Noorsham. It was one of our cities – or it used to be. It had been occupied by the Gallan for nearly two decades before that. Now, with the news that Ahmed was dead, it was an uncertain city. As I walked through the streets, I could feel the unease. News of impending war and invasion must’ve reached them. Everyone kept their eyes down, moving quickly, as if they were afraid to be outside too long.
I kept my own eyes to the ground as I navigated the city, my sheema pulled over my face. There were people here who would know me even if I didn’t stand out like Jin or the twins would.
This city knew me. And once I’d known it pretty damn well, too. But it had changed since we were last here. The streets were filled with women in rags, begging, and children running around barefoot. Where the sprawling market ought to have been, the streets were empty, shops boarded up.
I felt a tug on my clothes. I snapped around quickly, grabbing the small hand that had been trying to find its way into my pockets. It was a little girl, her eyes big in her gaunt face.
‘I wasn’t doing anything!’ The boldness of the lie was somewhat undercut by the panic in her expression.
‘It’s all right.’ I dropped to my knees, though I didn’t let her go, in case she fled. ‘You think you could tell me what’s happening here?’
The waif looked at me warily, as if she didn’t believe that I didn’t know. ‘Food doesn’t come any more,’ she said finally. ‘My papa says it’s our punishment for turning against the Sultan.’
So the Sultan was starving them out for allying with us. He could do that. Most of the desert’s trade came on the caravans or on trains from eastern Miraji. If he’d cut off what was coming from across the mountains, then there wouldn’t be enough for everyone.
‘Well, you can tell your papa there’s a difference between punishment and revenge.’ I let her go, pushing my sheema away as I leaned back against the wall, silently cursing the Sultan’s name. Ahmed would never have let this happen if he were still here. Hell, he would never have let this happen if he were Sultan. I’d seen Ahmed give up his own food to people hungrier than him more than once.
I was going to have to leave this starving city without supplies. Izz or Maz could probably catch us a rabbit to cook up in the hills for tonight. And then after that … we’d have to survive. We were good at that. It was why we were still here.
I let her go, but the little girl didn’t dash away like I’d expected. She was staring at me curiously now we were directly eye level. ‘Are you the Blue-Eyed Bandit?’ she asked boldly. And then before I could answer she kept going. ‘Are you here to save us? The man in the uniform said you would save us.’
‘What man in the uniform?’
‘The one who came through the city a few days ago. He said the Rebellion would save us. He said he was a general and he knew. He said his daughter was with them and that all of you would save us.’
General Hamad, Shazad’s father. He had come through this way. My head dashed around without thinking, like I might be able to spy him among these streets. Like he wasn’t long gone.
‘Was he right?’ she asked insistently. ‘Are you here to save us?’
I wanted to lie, to tell her that I would. That I could save them. But I was just a girl from Dustwalk. ‘No.’ I straightened. ‘I’m not here to save you.’ But I’m going to try to save someone else for you.
They needed more than a girl from Dustwalk. They needed their prince. They needed his general. The best I could do was try to bring the real saviours back.
*
It was our sixth day of flying when the direction of Jin’s compass changed abruptly in his hands. It had been pointing due south since we left Iliaz, heading over the desert as straight as a bullet. But now, suddenly, it swung back north. We’d passed over our target. Jin quickly leaned over Maz’s neck, giving him instructions. Maz did as he was told, plunging us towards the sand. Izz followed behind.
I squinted through the haze of the afternoon heat as we descended. There, not far off, was a town, the first we’d seen in days. I hadn’t even noticed it when we’d passed over it a moment ago, but I knew it instantly all the same: Juniper City. It was where I’d got on a train to Izman a year ago, and where Jin caught up with me as I tried to head north with his compass. They called it a city, and back then it was the biggest place I’d ever seen. But since then I’d seen Izman. Juniper City didn’t look like much in comparison.
Jin’s compass was pointing straight towards it.
Something wasn’t right. I knew I ought to be happy. I ought to feel some hope. That we were close. That we’d found our people. But this wasn’t exactly Eremot, the prison of legends. It was just a big town in the desert. And I might not trust Leyla, but I knew she hadn’t lied to me. Instead of hope, a new fear was being born in my chest. That this was a wild-goose chase. That we were going the wrong way. That Ahmed and the others weren’t going to be here.
But there was only one way to know for sure.
We walked in silence, following Jin’s compass to the city. Izz became a small bird, flying excitedly ahead of us, then back again, while Maz sat on my shoulder, a little blue-headed lizard basking in the afternoon sun.
It was slow-going with Tamid’s bad leg, and I caught him glancing over his shoulder more than once as we walked. Back in the direction of Dustwalk. I’d promised to get him as close to home as possible. This was pretty damn close.
By tomorrow morning he would be home. And I could tell myself all I liked that it wasn’t my home any more, but the only thing that had made it bearable during the last year I’d lived there, after my mother was hanged, was Tamid. And even if he hated me, I didn’t know that I had it in me to hate him. I only hated that he was going back.
That I was losing one more person. Not to death maybe, but to somewhere I’d never see him again just the same.
It was nearer to dusk than noon when we passed through the city gates. Jin and Sam wore their sheemas tight to hide their foreignness as best they could as we joined the crowds in the streets.
The war had not reached this far south yet in earnest, but there were still signs of it. Supplies from anywhere other than the desert or the nearby mountains seemed fewer in the market stalls. And there were more men carrying weapons on the street than I remembered.
We followed Jin’s compass past colourful stalls in the souk, through streets that were clean and wide compared to Izman’s old maze. This was a new city. Its name was in Mirajin instead of the old language. We ducked under canopies and around brightly painted buildings, past women dragging whining children away from stalls of sweets.
And then finally we rounded the corner of a bright blue house, and I saw a small boy crouched in a doorway, something glittering in his hands.
We all hung back uncertainly, watching the little boy. He couldn’t have been more than six, and he was talking to himself under his breath as he turned the compass over and over, in that way children do when they are playing make-believe, spinning a story in their minds. Weaving a world where they’re more than just a grubby boy on the street playing with a toy compass, or a skinny girl out the back of a house with a gun and tin cans, pretending they’re a great explorer on an adventure, or a Blue-Eyed Bandit.
One of us needed to talk to him.
Jin moved first, and the rest of us watched from the mouth of an alley as he crouched down, resting his arms on his knees.
The little boy looked up, staring at Jin with big, dark eyes, wary but not afraid. ‘Hello,’ Jin greeted him, pulling down his sheema to show his full face. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m Oman.’ Of course he was. Half the little boys in this country were named Oman, after the Sultan.
‘Oh, really,’ Jin said, leaning forwards on his knees. ‘Oman is my father’s name.’ I’d never heard Jin call the Sultan his father in all the months I’d known him. ‘Do you think you could tell me where you got that compass, Oman?’
‘I found it,’ Oman said, gripping the compass a little tighter to his chest. ‘I didn’t steal it.’
‘I believe you,’ Jin said patiently. I could see that he was worried, the way his thumb ran circles along the opposite hand as he clasped them together in front of him. Because if Ahmed didn’t have the compass, we didn’t have a way to find Ahmed. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘Train station,’ the boy said finally.
‘I didn’t think there were any trains running these days,’ Jin said, looking my way. I shrugged unhelpfully. The trains from Izman had stopped months ago, best I knew, after we claimed the western desert.
‘They’re not leaving,’ the boy said, with an eye roll like we might be stupid. ‘But sometimes they come in. They bring people with them.’
‘People like soldiers and prisoners?’ Jin asked. The little boy shrugged. ‘And where do the people go?’
The boy shrugged again. ‘Out of the city. Towards the mountains.’
The Sultan was shipping prisoners. Juniper City was the furthest south you could get with a train. And then they were being taken on to Eremot … wherever that was. If it was even as real as Leyla said.
We were close, and we could find them, but every moment we wasted looking was another moment they were stuck there.
‘Oman,’ Jin said seriously, looking at the little boy, ‘see, that compass belongs to my brother.’ He reached into his pocket, pulling out the identical, albeit more battered, one.
‘It belongs to me now,’ Oman said stubbornly.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Jin said. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’ The ten louzi that Jin produced from his pocket was a small fortune to a little boy. Oman grabbed it eagerly, dropping the compass in the dust.
Jin returned to us, holding both compasses. His knuckles were white from clutching them so tightly. I reached out a hand, resting it over his. I couldn’t tell him everything was going to be all right, because I couldn’t lie.
He shifted his hand in mine, and I thought he might be pulling away, but instead he slipped Ahmed’s compass into my grip.
‘We need a new plan,’ he said.