‘I’m raising my hands,’ I said automatically. As I did, my brain started scrambling for solutions to having a gun pointed at my back. I couldn’t count on Jin or Sam to come looking for me quicker than a bullet could reach my spine.
‘Do it,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘And turn around so I can see you.’
The figure behind me shifted, and I caught the glint of metal in the glass of the window. A reflection. It wasn’t much, but enough that I could tell where she was. I shifted a little bit, taking stock of the sand clinging to my boots.
‘Turn around, I said,’ the voice harped behind me, thick with Last County accent. ‘If you can’t move faster, I can put a jump in your step.’
I could move fast.
I grabbed for the desert at the same moment that I dropped to one knee in a violent twist of my body. I whipped my hand up, slamming the sand into the barrel of the gun, knocking it clean from her grasp. The shotgun clattered to the ground, skittering out of reach and into a corner.
I was already back on my feet, releasing the sand, the sudden wrenching pain fading as I did, pistol out of its holster …
Pointed straight at my aunt Farrah’s chest.
Farrah froze where she was, staring at me, the shock as evident on her face as it must have been on mine, both of us looking for words.
She found her tongue before I did. ‘I’d have thought you’d at least have the decency to be dead by now.’ Well, that was a bold opener considering I had a gun aimed at her. But then again, this was Dustwalk. We’d all had a gun aimed at us at one point or another. You got used to it. ‘So, I guess you’ve come crawling back after it didn’t work out with whoever that man was that you rode off with? Wish I could say I’m surprised. How long did it take him to realise he couldn’t beat the disrespect out of you? I tried for a year, and it didn’t make a lick of difference.’
It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d last had to bear my aunt’s insults and beatings. I’d spent the last year forgetting about Dustwalk and the girl I used to be here. But suddenly, standing across from her, it felt like it was just yesterday. I waited for her words to open fresh wounds, to make me feel small and angry and powerless against her, no matter that I was holding a gun.
But none of that came. Her words felt hollow, like she was shouting at me from the bottom of a deep pit and I was the only one of us who could see she was trapped in it.
‘Aunt Farrah.’ I lowered the gun, reholstering it. I could take her without a weapon if I needed to. ‘What happened here?’ The house felt huge and empty around me. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘Gone.’ Aunt Farrah spat the word, like it might be my fault. ‘Everybody had to pick up and leave. What was there to stay for after the factory was destroyed?’ I remembered something Shira had told me, back in the harem, about how hard things had got in Dustwalk without the factory. So maybe it was my fault – or Jin’s, if we were being really specific.
‘So, what are you still doing here?’ I asked.
‘Well –’ a sly smile spread over her face as she smoothed a hand over her khalat – ‘not that it’s any of your business, but I’m waiting for a letter from my daughter.’ Her tone was smug and self-satisfied, but her words just filled me with dread. She was talking about Shira, my cousin. Distantly, I remembered Shira telling me that I could trust Sam because she trusted Sam with her family. That he’d arranged to get letters and money down to Dustwalk for her. But there wouldn’t be any more letters coming. ‘She’s the Sultima now, you know,’ Aunt Farrah said.
She hadn’t heard.
‘Aunt Farrah, I’m …’ My voice caught, snagging on the words unhappily. I breathed out slowly. ‘Shira is …’ I didn’t want to be the one to bring this news. But it ought to be me, because I’d stood and watched as Shira was led to the execution block, as she went with every single bit of fight I’d expect from a desert girl. She’d died for the Rebellion. ‘Aunt Farrah, Shira was executed about six weeks back.’
I waited for her face to crumble, but she just stared at me, expression frozen. ‘You’re a liar.’
I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t that. ‘I was there. She died as bravely as anyone could. Her child – that is, your grandson—’ I started, but Aunt Farrah’s face dissolved into a rage before I could finish.
‘Be quiet!’ she snapped, her voice carrying loud enough that I reckoned the boys would hear it outside. ‘You’re a lying little bitch, just like your mother was, and you’d better get back to whatever whorehouse you ran off to when that boy threw you out of his bed. You worthless—’ I closed the space between us with one rapid step, and Aunt Farrah staggered backwards, her words cutting off. It was like she, too, was still expecting me to grow small under her blows.
I suddenly realised that even though it might’ve been a year since I’d stood face to face with her, it hadn’t been that long since I’d heard her voice. It was the same voice that had been whispering in my ear since Imin was executed. Demanding to know who the hell I thought I was to be taking over this rebellion, chastising me for how high and mighty I seemed to believe myself, able to give orders in the place of a prince, even though I was just a nothing girl from nowhere. From poverty and misery and Dustwalk.
Only I knew who I was. I had an answer to the stupid question that voice kept asking me: Who did I think I was? I was a Djinni’s daughter. I was a rebel. I was an advisor to a prince. I had faced down soldiers and Nightmares and Skinwalkers. I had fought and survived. I had stood against a Sultan time and time again. I had summoned an immortal being to his death. I had saved lives, and I had sacrificed lives, and I had seen more and done more good than she ever would. And I had done it in the name of saving people exactly like my aunt – the people of Dustwalk, who’d been turned bitter and angry and desperate by a country that didn’t care about them. I had done it for a prince who did care what happened to them.
I knew who I was. It was Dustwalk that had no idea who I’d become since I left.
‘I’m going to tell you once,’ I said calmly. ‘My name is Amani – or the Blue-Eyed Bandit, if you’re feeling formal.’ I saw understanding register on her face. My legend had made it this far. ‘And not anything else.’ I paused to make sure she understood that my name was not bitch or worthless or anything else before I stepped away from her. ‘Now, I have some questions, and I want straight answers. You came here to wait for a letter from Shira. Where did you come here from? Where did everyone go?’
Her eyes flashed with anger before she answered me. ‘We almost starved, you know,’ she hissed. ‘There was nothing. We were forgotten, abandoned by everyone, and then he came and offered us salvation.’
‘He?’ I asked, but Aunt Farrah seemed distracted now.
‘We had nothing to lose. So we followed him away from here, to a new life.’ Her eyes had taken on a faraway sheen as she spoke with zealous pride.
‘Who did you follow?’ I was treading lightly. She sounded like she might’ve gone sun-mad.
‘The man in the mountain, of course.’
Suddenly I was standing in Bilal’s rooms again, holding the page from his book, staring down at the figure chained inside the rocks.
There’s no such thing as just a story, I’d told him then.
‘He was sent to help us in our time of need.’ Aunt Farrah smiled nastily at my shocked reaction, pleased to be the one to catch me off guard this time. ‘But he protects only the good. Any who come to him who are deemed unworthy …’ She trailed off tauntingly. Bilal had sent soldiers to find him, this man below the mountain – soldiers who never came back. ‘He’s not made of flesh and blood like you and me. He’s made of fire. And he burns the unworthy.’
A man made of fire wasn’t a man. He was a Djinni.
The beginnings of an idea started to form. I had seen what Djinn could do. If there really was one in the mountains … It was such a tempting notion. Facing Ashra’s Wall alone, we didn’t stand a chance. But fighting the legendary with the legendary, fire with Djinni fire – well, that was an idea.
‘Can you take me to him?’ I asked her. ‘Your saviour in the mountain?’
My aunt’s expression was far too knowing and cruel. ‘I can,’ she said. ‘But let me warn you, Blue-Eyed Bandit –’ she fired the name back at me – ‘you have no idea who you’re facing. He knows your heart. And you will burn for each of your sins.’
‘Well,’ I heard Sam say behind her, making my aunt whirl, unsettling her vitriolic composure. He was standing in the doorway, Jin next to him. I wondered how long they’d been witness to our conversation. ‘This sounds like a terrible idea, given how many sins I have.’
‘We should get going then,’ Jin said, clapping Sam on the back jovially. ‘You can count them on the way.’
*
Tamid was the only one of us who wasn’t apprehensive following my aunt out of the ruins of Dustwalk into the mountains. He had a family we were going to find. He had reason to be excited. I had a family, too. I just didn’t want to see them again. Aunt Farrah was already enough. But still, the thought of the man in the mountain kept me putting one foot in front of the other when all I really wanted was to turn back around.
I realised where Aunt Farrah was leading us a few paces before anyone else did. It was close to dusk, and we were deep in the mountains. I’d been on this road once before, with Jin, fleeing on the back of a Buraqi from the chaos in Dustwalk. I could almost taste the iron from the mines in the air as we wound our way up the slope, getting closer, until finally, in the last of the light, we crested over a steep rise, and Sazi came into view. The ancient mountain mining town. Or at least it had been mines before my brother, Noorsham, burned them down using his power.
But Sazi was nothing like the town I remembered.
Last time we were here, Sazi had been a desperate collection of ramshackle houses clinging to the skin of the mountain. But those were gone now, as if they’d been decimated by thousands of years, though it had only been one year. On the outskirts, we passed a lone building that hadn’t completely been destroyed. One wall still stood, a colourful sign swinging above the door: the Drunk Djinni, the bar where I’d left Jin unconscious on a table before making a run for it. Now, instead of booze-stained bar tables, in the shadow of the single remaining wall was a bright canopy, using the wall as support.
Aunt Farrah stopped walking abruptly. ‘There are no weapons allowed beyond this point.’
Immediately the twins held up their hands. ‘Don’t look at us.’
‘Or me.’ Tamid was breathing hard from the walk up the mountain. But he had refused my help over and over until I’d stopped offering it.
That left the three of us.
Reluctantly I unbuckled my holster. The boys followed suit. Sam gave his guns a quick, showy and totally impractical twirl around his fingers before offering them to Aunt Farrah. Jin and I handed over our knives and guns, too.
‘Is that everything?’ Aunt Farrah demanded as she leaned them gingerly against the wall. I could see stacks of weapons under the canopy now, guns and bombs and swords and knives. A whole arsenal stored in the crumbled building. ‘He will know if you’ve kept anything hidden.’
It wasn’t everything. I’d seen Jin hold back one of his pistols, tucking it into his belt before pulling his shirt over it. I fiddled with the spare bullet I’d kept in my pocket. Between the two of us we had a working weapon. ‘I’m all out of knives and guns.’ It was the closest to an honest answer I could give. But it seemed to satisfy her. ‘Aunt Farrah,’ I asked as she started walking again, ‘what is this place?’
‘We saw the error of our ways.’ Aunt Farrah’s hands were folded in her khalat. Her hard demeanour had suddenly changed as we passed some invisible barrier into the camp, her head bowing like she was going to prayers. ‘We were arrogant to try to claim this world for our own by building houses in the sands when we are meant to roam it.’
Sure enough, as we pressed deeper into what was left of Sazi, there were hundreds of tents, a riot of colours dotting the otherwise bleak mountain landscape. And among them were hundreds of people, more than all of Dustwalk, Deadshot and Sazi put together. Men and women crowded between tents and small fires, laughing and talking. Clusters of women sat together sewing a patch in a torn tent canvas. A group of men seemed to be carving things out of wood. It reminded me of the camp we’d lost, a sanctuary hidden from the world.
Two children dashed past us, screaming with laughter. And to my surprised I recognised one of them.
‘Nasima!’ I called out my little cousin’s name without thinking. She skidded to a stop, dark braid swinging in an arc, whipping her back. She stared at me blankly, warily, like I was a stranger.
‘It’s me.’ I pressed my hand to my chest, like I might when talking to a foreigner. Only she was my blood. ‘Amani, your cousin. Don’t you remember me?’
‘No you’re not.’ Nasima took a bold step towards me, in challenge. ‘Amani is dead, my mama said so.’ then she retreated. ‘Are you a Skinwalker?’ she asked. ‘That’s what my mama says about people who pretend they’re other people.’
I started to tell her that if I were a Skinwalker, it would take more than a sheema to protect me from the sun. But she wasn’t listening. ‘Skinwalker!’ Nasima called out, turning and running away from me. People looked up at us as she bolted. On instinct, Jin moved between me and the staring eyes. Only there were no guns pointing our way, no knives being drawn.
They were as unarmed as we were. Defenceless.
Then we heard it through the crowd.
‘Tamid?’
The voice made me stand up straight. It was a voice I was used to being scolded by, for always being around, for corrupting her son. Tamid’s mother pushed her way towards us and my heart faltered a little. The last time I’d seen her had been from the back of a Buraqi, behind Jin, as we’d fled blood and chaos and she’d tried to crawl her way towards her son, who was lying bleeding in the sand with a bullet through his knee, thanks to me. Just before he’d been taken prisoner and brought to the city along with Shira.
Now as she moved towards her son, her face was full of tentative, uncertain hope.
‘Mother.’ Tamid limped towards her. And the hope broke into joy. She rushed to him, moving faster than he could on his false leg. She was crying before she even reached him, clasping him in her arms like he was still a little boy. I caught a few words between her sobs as she clung to him. What happened to you? What did they do to you? And then: You’re alive. You’re alive. Over and over again.
I realised I’d been holding myself like there was an iron rod in my back, waiting for the reproach that was coming my way for what I’d done to her son. But it never came. She didn’t even see me. She didn’t care that he’d been taken away. Just that he’d been brought back.
‘Father?’ Tamid asked, pulling away, looking around, though less hopeful. His mother shook her head.
‘He didn’t …’ She hesitated. ‘He was deemed unworthy. He saw into your father’s heart, and what he did to you.’ Tamid winced. When Tamid was born with a crooked leg, his father had wanted to kill him. Tamid’s mother had saved her son. ‘He burned for it.’ Neither Tamid nor his mother looked particularly sorry about it. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I wondered who else had been judged too sinful by this man in the mountain.
I looked over at my aunt. There was pain scrawled on her face. Two people had been taken from Dustwalk the day I disappeared with Jin. Only one of them would ever come back. Aunt Farrah would never be reunited with Shira this way.
‘Aunt Farrah,’ I tried again, ‘your grandson … In the city. Shira named him—’
‘What is she doing here?’ The belligerent voice cut me off. I knew it instantly. You have got to be kidding me. So my reckoning with my past wouldn’t come from Tamid’s mother after all.
I turned around and faced Fazim Al-Motem. If we really were being judged for our sins, then I didn’t have to worry, not if Fazim was still alive. Fazim had claimed he was in love with Shira, until he tried to threaten me into marrying him so he wouldn’t tell everyone I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. All because he wanted the money I’d get for capturing a Buraqi.
If that wasn’t a sin I didn’t know what was. And yet, here he was, strutting towards me.
‘Pretty bold for a criminal to show her face here,’ Fazim crowed. He looked shorter than I remembered. I vaguely wondered if I’d got taller. ‘Stealing from your own family.’
‘Leave it, boy.’ Another voice spoke. It was my uncle, I realised. I scarcely would have recognised him if my cousin Nasima hadn’t been clutching his hand, still eying me warily. He was wearing rags instead of the fine clothes of a horse merchant, and his hair and beard had grown long.
But Fazim took another swaggering step, full of false confidence as he crossed the rocky terrain to confront me.
‘Do you think he really can’t see that this is a mistake?’ Jin said below his breath, so only I could hear him.
‘Maybe he just hasn’t noticed we outnumber him,’ Sam suggested from my other side. He was regarding Fazim curiously, like he was a harmless oddity in our way. Fazim wasn’t exactly harmless, but they were right. We could do him a lot more harm than he could do me now. ‘What did you do to him anyway, Amani, break his heart?’
‘Not exactly.’ I’d been afraid of him once. Just like I’d been afraid of Aunt Farrah. But in the shadow of the Sultan, the monsters of my childhood seemed ridiculous now.
‘Well, Amani.’ Fazim was very close to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jin’s hand make a fist. I wasn’t going to let it get far enough for that. ‘What do you have to say for—’
I flicked my hand at the sand below his feet, between the stones of the mountain, upsetting his footing – a trick I’d picked up off the Albish in Iliaz. The stab of pain through my stomach was gone as quickly as it came. And as Fazim toppled over, landing flat on his back, it was entirely worth it.
Fazim cursed violently as he sat back up, looking embarrassed as some laughed. A few people edged forward, not entirely sure of themselves. After all, I hadn’t laid a hand on Fazim. But we might be in for a fight all the same.
But then a cry came from the back. ‘He’s coming! Make way, he’s coming.’ The crowd split like a knife slicing cloth, clearing a straight path through the camp. Fazim scrambled out of the way and got to his feet, suddenly looking cowed.
I turned, heart pounding, waiting to see this he. The man in the mountain. The real monster of my childhood stories. The Djinni who had been chained up by his own brethren. The creature who burned people he deemed unworthy of being saved.
And there, standing at the other side of the camp, his hands raised either in blessing or in warning, was my Demdji brother, Noorsham.