Hero at the Fall

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.