Rebel of the Sands

“You mean if I wanted to.” His eyes searched mine, and for one second they looked as dark and focused as they had in the few moments after he’d kissed me on the train. My eyes were probably as wild as that second, too. The last time we’d really stood this close. On the edge of living or dying. Of wanting and needing.

“Tell me we couldn’t do it.” Jin interrupted my thoughts. “Tell me that the two of us together, we couldn’t get every one of the Camel’s Knees out of the city alive if we really tried. Hell, tell me you couldn’t do it on your own if you set your stubborn head to it.” A small smile was creeping back. “Tell me that and we’ll walk away. Right now. Go and save ourselves and leave them to die. All you’ve got to do is say the word. Tell me that that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand to the sea. Just say it.”

My story.

I’d spent my life dreaming of my own story that could start when I finally reached Izman. A story written in far-off places I didn’t know how to dream about yet. And on my way there, I’d slough off the desert until there was nothing left of it to mark the pages.

Only Jin was right. I was a desert girl. Even in Izman I would still be the same Blue-Eyed Bandit with a hanged mother, who left her friend dying.

He didn’t need me to answer, not really. I gave myself away too easily. Or maybe he just knew me too well. “Any ideas, Bandit?”

And that easily we were a team again.

I tilted my head back. Between two windows, laundry drifted lazily in the hot desert wind. “Some.”

•   •   •

I WAS DRESSED as a girl for the first time since I’d left Dustwalk. The plain blue khalat we’d stolen off a clothesline was too tight around my arms with my boy’s clothes on underneath.

“I’d almost forgotten you were a girl under there.” Jin looked me over, hands hooked above his head. He still looked rumpled from sleep. Exhaustion had gotten the better of us while we waited for the cover of dark, and we’d both fallen asleep slumped inside an alleyway narrow enough to hide us. I’d woken with a stiff spine and Jin’s arm slung across me like he was trying to keep me from running out on him in his sleep again. But there was no chance of that. I was done leaving people behind.

“Did you want to be the girl?” I asked, readjusting the red sheema I’d wrapped around my waist like a sash.

“You make a prettier girl than I do.” He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

The plan was simple. I was going to walk into the city barracks and walk back out with information on where the prison was. The city barracks housed the Mirajin guard most of the time, but it seemed like half of them were camping in tents while the Gallan army housed their soldiers. Once we knew where they were we’d be able to work on getting the Camel’s Knees out. If anyone questioned me I was to say I was there to get water, just like the stream of women going in and out all day.

As it turned out, rumors were running freer than the pumps in Fahali. The Camel’s Knees weren’t the only caravan to turn up lips cracked and gasping out news of Dassama. The city’s supplies were stretched thin under the weight of the extra people, caravans and soldiers alike. Water was being rationed, and half the wells and pumps were closed. But not the one in the barracks.

“I’ll be nearby if you get in trouble. Just stay in sight.” He nodded above at a rooftop with a decent overview of the barracks—decent enough that a good shot might be able to hit a soldier on the inside. I was the better shot. But he was right: I also made the better girl. Which meant I was counting on Jin to cover me.

It was a short walk to the army barracks, but the streets were busy in the cool just before dusk. I kept my eyes low as I fought my way through the crowds in the last of the setting sun. I’d near forgotten what it felt like to be a girl in Miraji. I was inconspicuous, but not the way I’d been as a boy. Not because I was the same as everyone else. Because I didn’t matter.

Nobody in Miraji had ever thought enough of a girl to imagine I might be a spy.

The barracks were four long, low buildings painted in white around a dusty square. Besides the prison there’d be sleeping quarters, kitchens, storage, and the stables. That’s what Jin had told me, at least. All I had to do was figure out which one was the prison and get back out.

I tried to look like I was keeping my eyes on my feet as I walked through the dusty yard. There were soldiers practicing with guns and various targets. One of the Gallan soldiers had a gun with a sharp end like I’d never seen before. He fired at a cloth figure of a man before ramming forward, driving the sharp tip through the dummy’s stomach.

In the middle of the square was the water pump with three Gallan soldiers stationed at it, taking coin from anyone who wanted to use it. A line of women holding pails on their hips snaked out from the pump. They all kept their eyes low, like they were trying not to be noticed by all the armed men around them. I didn’t have a bucket. I just had to hope nobody noticed, or there’d be more questions than I was fit to answer.

The girl at the front of the line was about my age and dressed in a dusty pink khalat. A small child was hanging off the hem, sucking her fist. The girl in pink’s hands were empty of coin, but she was begging, her eyes red from crying. I heard a sliver of her conversation as I passed. Her family, they were thirsty, she was saying. Thirsty and poor. She couldn’t pay the new tax on water, but she was begging for their pity. The soldier’s eyes swept her with the same look the parched women were given the water pump.