Rebel of the Sands

“Come on now, you’re not going to kick a cripple, are you?” he joked. I wanted to smile back, but I felt like someone had wrung me out. Tamid’s own good mood flickered uncertainly. “Well, um, I’ve been looking for you.” He stumbled over his words, making my heart swell. I was going to miss him like fire. I’d always known at the back of my mind there’d come a day when I’d leave and he’d stay behind, but I hadn’t expected it to rush in on us so quickly. “Here.” He pressed something into my hand. “Seemed like you took a bit of a beating capturing that Buraqi.” It was a small glass bottle with white powder pills bumping in the bottom. Pain pills. The kind his father made his money from, selling them to factory workers who got hurt on the job. Or when they shot each other to settle a fight.

“It’s the kind that knocks you out, isn’t it?” I knew the medicines better than I’d like. I’d had enough lashings for my smart tongue in the last year. “I can’t take it.” I tried to hand the pills back. I took a deep shuddering breath. “I’m going to make a run for it on the Buraqi. Want to come?”

Tamid smiled gamely. “Sure, where are we going?” He figured I was joking. I didn’t answer. I just held up my bag for him to see. It registered on his face slowly. “Amani . . .” There was an edge to the way he said my name, like he needed to have enough fear for the pair of us. “You’re likely to get yourself hanged.”

“I’m just as likely to die here.” I pulled him aside, out of the crowd, next to the schoolhouse so we were out of the way. Wild recklessness had been building in my bones for hours. Days. Weeks. Years. And it filled up too much of me to let in anything else just now. “And they could do a lot worse than hang me.” The truth came out in a rush as the celebrations carried on around us. Everything—about my uncle, Jin, and Fazim, and how Jin left without taking me with him, and how Fazim blackmailed me to wind up wed or dead if I stayed. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to wed anyone. Not him. Not my uncle.

“And in what part of this brilliantly thought-out plan were you going to tell me you were leaving?” He looked wounded.

“I didn’t think . . .” I swallowed hard against the guilt welling up. I hadn’t really thought. That was the truth of it. There’d been no time to think. No room to think about anything other than Fazim and getting away. “You weren’t ever going to come, Tamid,” I said softly. “You’re only going to try to make me stay, and I’m in too much trouble to stay.”

“You wouldn’t be in trouble if you’d just stayed put instead of running off to the pistol pit in the first place. Why didn’t you talk to me? We could’ve figured something out together, you and I. Why do you always—” Tamid bit off his words in a breathy huff. “You always have to make things so difficult.” A long silence stretched out between us in place of the argument we’d had a hundred times. “I know what to do.” Tamid wasn’t looking at me. In the shadow of the house cast by the swinging lamplight, it was hard to read his expression. I cast my eyes around nervously, keeping my eyes out for any sign of Fazim. “You could—you could marry me.”

That pulled my attention back. “What?”

“Fazim can’t do anything if you’re already wed.” He looked so terribly earnest, it made me want to reach out to him. “I could keep you safe. From him. From the army. From your family. You wouldn’t even have to live under Farrah’s roof anymore. I’d been figuring I’d ask your uncle anyway.” He couldn’t quite meet my eyes, he looked faintly embarrassed. “Once you were a bit older. I didn’t want to pounce as soon as your mother had been dead a year. I wanted to give you time. But I’d never let him wed you, Amani, if you’d told me. This would just mean asking him for you a bit sooner.”

He’d been planning on asking to marry me? For how long? The notion had never crossed my mind. I’d figured he’d always understood that I was planning on leaving. Or maybe he’d just thought I’d never make it.

“Tamid.” I lowered my voice, unsure of what to say. I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted. Not when our ideas were so at odds.

Fazim appeared through the crowd. He wasn’t alone. Gold-and-white army uniforms trailed behind him, parting the crowd.

My stomach leapt into my mouth as I plastered myself into the shadows. Tamid glanced over his shoulder. He saw what I did. When he turned back he must’ve read my answer all over my face. I couldn’t stay. He couldn’t keep me safe. “Go.”

“Tamid . . .” I didn’t want to leave with him angry at me. But he wasn’t angry enough to want me dead.

“Go!”

For once I did as I was told.

The street was thick with the crowds. I dodged around Old Rafaat leaning heavily on his granddaughter’s arm and shoved past a stranger who was playing a sitar out of tune before colliding with the side of my uncle’s house. I was steps from the stables. If I could get to the Buraqi—

“There you are!” Aunt Farrah yanked me around to face her. For the first time the cold fury in her face didn’t reach me. She was going to scream at me for my smart mouth, for knocking over her daughter, for not helping with dinner for all I knew. It might’ve mattered this morning, but I was long past caring now.

“Let me go.” I tried to tug my arm free, but her grip tightened.