It took me the better part of the day to track Sam down, which didn’t exactly do a whole lot for how angry I was at him. I started imagining creative ways to kill him sometime around midday, when the sweat had soaked into my shirt in earnest and my hair was sticking to my sheema from the heat. By the time I finally ran him to ground just before sunset, I had built a very vivid image of how he’d meet his end at my hands.
We’d been damn lucky that Sam hadn’t bled to death that day he’d tried to slip into the palace. After he’d got himself shot, it was only thanks to Hala and Jin that we’d got him back to the Hidden House still breathing. The hours that followed had been a frenzy of trying to keep our foreign friend alive, as well as getting everyone ready to flee if we had to. I didn’t know if we’d been followed from the palace. But I’d already led the Sultan to one of our hideouts once. I wasn’t taking chances.
Finally Sam had stopped bleeding and kept breathing. Though barely on both counts. And no soldiers came knocking at the door of the Hidden House.
I’d spent the night keeping watch over him while everyone else kept watch over the streets. If we had to flee, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to take Sam with us, wounded as he was. So we’d waited and kept watch. I’d prayed a whole lot.
Then, three days after Sam got shot, I woke up next to an empty bed. My face had been pressed so hard into the stitching of the blanket that it had left a mark on my cheek. Where Sam had been, there was nothing but tangled sheets faintly stained with blood. My first thought was that Sam had died sometime in the night and Jin had moved the body to spare me. But then I saw the golden cuff set with emeralds, slipped on to my wrist while I slept. It was Shazad’s, one of the pieces of jewellery she’d paid Sam with, back when he was running information between the palace and the Rebellion.
I read it for what it was, a farewell note. No amount of money is worth dying for, it said. He wasn’t wrong, either. Money was a damn stupid thing to die for. I’d just been figuring Sam was still with us for something more.
Still, leaving me the bracelet seemed like it was more symbolic than anything, since he took everything else Shazad had paid him, down to the very last of her rings.
Shazad’s jewellery was how I found him in the end. There was a goldsmith on the corner of Moon Street who was known to trade coin for material without questions. It took a bit of bribery, but he told me Sam had been by. He was on his way to the White Fish, a bar on the docks that normally served sailors of all sorts passing through Izman. It’d become glutted with the same sailors lately, seeing as no one was getting in or out of the city. The barricade of fire even plunged deep into the sea.
Only there was a rumour going around that there was a man who knew how to get through the barricade, and for the right price he’d give you passage. He was rounding up anyone with the right money at the White Fish.
I’d heard that rumour, too. I’d ignored it since it was so obviously a scam. Only it seemed Sam was stupid enough to fall for it.
The heat of a long day of trawling the city streets clung to me as I pushed through the doors of the White Fish. A dozen pairs of men’s eyes joined it. I knew what they were seeing. It didn’t matter that I was dressed in sturdy desert clothes or that I was armed: I was a woman in a place where only men belonged. I half missed the days when I was a scrawny girl from Dustwalk and could still pass for a boy when I needed to. But it had been a year of decent meals, and there was too much of me to hide what I was now.
Most of the men turned back to their drinks and their gambling, shrugging me off as I pressed further into the bar, searching for a familiar face. But one man stepped square in my path, quickly enough that I had to pull up short to keep from running straight into him.
‘How much?’ he asked without preamble.
‘For you to get out of my way?’ My hand was already on the gun at my belt. ‘I’ll do you a favour, and until the count of three, I’ll let you move for free. After that, I might start charging you in toes.’ When he looked down, the pistol was pointed at his boot. It was an easy shot to pull off in close quarters.
I recognised Sam’s laugh a second before his arm draped itself over my shoulder. ‘Don’t mind my lady friend.’ His voice was too bright, like he was trying to cut through the tension, like sun through clouds. ‘She’s too much for you to handle anyway.’ He winked at the man across from me. In a low voice, in Albish, slow enough so I could understand, he said, ‘Put your gun away before he does something stupid and you and I have to do something heroic.’
I bit my tongue angrily, but he was right. I wasn’t here to draw attention to myself by starting a bar brawl. The man gave us a once-over before taking a step back. Sam pulled me around, turning me towards a table lined with men holding cards, watching us with interest. ‘Sorry about that interruption, boys,’ Sam declared too loudly. ‘Just had to go get my good luck charm.’ He sat back down abruptly, pulling me into his lap so fast I didn’t think about swatting him away until I was already sitting.
I moved the most painful means of death to the top of the list I’d spent this afternoon constructing.
Still, I had to admit, the too-interested eyes that had strayed towards us were moving away, a smug, knowing look crossing the faces of the other gamblers at his table. Now they thought they understood what I was and who owned me. Sam knew what he was doing.
‘You’re going to need a lot more than luck tonight, my foreign friend,’ a man with a dark green sheema draped loosely around his neck said with a laugh. ‘With cards like those.’
‘You looked at my cards?’ Sam slapped a hand dramatically to his chest in feigned shock, like he’d just been shot through the heart. ‘You curs, you cheaters, you—’ I didn’t have time for this.
‘Sam,’ I interrupted his mock tirade. ‘Buy me a drink.’ When he looked about to protest, I toyed pointedly with the sleeve of the arm slung around my shoulder. I could feel the cards tucked inside his shirt pressing against me. ‘Now, before I say something that might get you shot.’ He took my meaning as I got to my feet, freeing myself of the indignity of his lap.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said dramatically as he rose, kicking his chair back out of the way, ‘your infidelity leaves me no choice but to fold this hand. But I will return when I’ve had some luck rub off on me.’ He winked widely, pulling me tight against him by the waist. Thumbscrews. The way I murdered him was going to include thumbscrews.
‘So here’s what I’m thinking,’ Sam said. He drew me towards a table in a dark corner and gestured to the barman with two fingers. ‘Your timing is perfect to help me cheat my way to victory.’ The barman set down two glasses of amber liquid in front of us, sliding mine to me with a careful once-over. I met his gaze steadily in return. ‘All we need to do is work out some sort of code between us,’ Sam went on blithely, clearly not caring who overheard.
‘Selling Shazad’s jewellery wasn’t enough? Are you just getting greedy now?’ I ran a finger along the rim of the glass of liquor that had just been put down in front of me.
‘Oh, don’t be like that.’ He jostled me, like it was all some big joke. ‘My friend over there is charging an arm and a leg to get smuggled out of here.’ He nodded towards a man at the bar who was still looking at us. ‘And the only people who can get away with missing their limbs and still being as dashing as I am are pirates. I have no interest in spending the rest of my life eating fish with my hook hand.’
‘Why would anyone replace their hand with a hook?’ Sam didn’t used to give me this much of a headache.
He opened his mouth like he was going to explain to me some foreign concept that had gone far over my head, like he used to in our meetings at the palace, but then seemed to change his mind and took a sip of his drink instead. ‘The point is,’ Sam ploughed on, a nervous energy seeming to animate him, ‘that if I want to get out of this city and keep all my appendages, I’ve got to find something else to offer him.’
I glanced over at the man leaning on the bar. If he actually had a way out of this city, then I was the Queen of Albis.
‘So, tell me, what exactly is your plan here?’ I shifted my chair so that I had him in my sights. ‘Even if you can get out of Miraji, you’re a deserter, Sam.’ I didn’t bother softening the blow. ‘I don’t know what they do in Albis, but here if you turn your coat on the army, they take your head off your shoulders.’
‘In Albis, they let you keep your neck and use it to hang you from a tall tree.’ He didn’t sound all that bothered by it. ‘An oak, if there’s one immediately available, but ash or yew will do at a pinch. And since it’d be criminal to rob the world of me, I’m not going back to Albis. I hear the Ionian Peninsula has beautiful women and good food and the sun lets up every once in a blue moon, unlike here.’
‘So you got shot once and now you’re running scared?’ We’d all got ourselves shot once or twice in this war. I’d dug a bullet out of Jin’s shoulder before I even knew his name. I had a scar across my stomach from a wound that had nearly killed me. Sam lost a little bit of blood and suddenly he was deserting all over again.
But Sam didn’t look as cowed as I’d hoped he would. ‘Yes,’ he said, like I was the one being unreasonable. ‘Anyone who isn’t afraid of dying is stupid or lying.’ He tipped his drink at me like a bow. ‘And I’m a better liar than that.’
I tapped my glass, thinking of what Tamid had told me about the likelihood of me burning alive when I released Fereshteh’s energy from the machine. ‘We’re all going to die some day, Sam. What else are you going to do? Keep running from one country to another until you get a knife between the ribs because you walked through the wrong wall in the next city? Or from poison in your glass because you charmed the wrong woman in the one after that? Or do you think it might be worth standing still for once?’ I asked. ‘Here with us.’
A wry smile crossed his face. ‘They talked a lot about making a stand when I joined the army, too. Turns out what that means for boys who were born farmers’ sons is that they wanted us to stand in front of enemies’ cannons so the rich men’s sons behind us could go home with the glory.’
‘I don’t care about glory,’ I challenged. ‘I care about getting our people home. People I know you care about, too.’
Sam leaned his head back against the wall, like he was truly considering it. Out of the corner of my eye, I realised that the man at the bar was looking at us again. His eyes darted away, like he’d been caught. There was something unsettling about him.
‘Sam,’ I said carefully, keeping my tone neutral, ‘did that friend of yours happen to say how it was he’s able to sail out of Izman now when no one else has managed it in weeks?’
‘Mmm?’ Sam scratched his eyebrow with a thumb evasively. ‘I don’t recall.’
That sounded as good as a no to me. The man’s foot was tapping out a frantic timpani against the edge of the bar. Almost like he was nervous. Or waiting for something.
‘How about a price?’ I asked. ‘Was there a number mentioned before you turned up here with your money, or did you get here to find out that whatever amount you brought wasn’t enough?’
‘Well …’ Sam looked thoughtful. The drinks were dulling him. ‘That’s how business works. When a service is so in demand … it would be stupid to set his going rate too low …’ Now even he sounded sceptical.
‘You don’t think it’s strange –’ my hand strayed to my pistol even as I kept my voice steady – ‘that this is all happening now, right when the Sultan is especially desperate to be get his daughter back. And that you just happened not to have the right amount of money so that you’d have to stick around, gambling for a shot at getting out.’
It finally dawned on Sam what I was saying. He cursed in Albish, looking more annoyed than anything else. ‘It’s a trap.’