Rebel of the Sands

sixteen

I pulled the knife out of Jin’s belt. There was mercy and then there was a coward’s escape, and the cowards had walked on. I pressed the knife against the wound and black venom oozed out across the blade. I wiped it on my shirt before laying it back against his skin. I did it again and again until my neck burned from the sun and more blood oozed out than black.

“Jin!” I slapped him hard across the face. His eyes squeezed shut tighter, so I hit him again. This time his eyes opened. “Jin!” I grabbed both his shoulders. “Don’t you dare fall back asleep.”

His eyes cracked open just far enough to see me. “Where . . .” he started weakly.

“They walked on.” I sat back. We needed to follow the Camel’s Knees’ tracks to civilization. Find help. Some medicine.

“And you’re still here?” Jin squinted at me, then started to laugh halfheartedly. “Either I’m dreaming or I’m dead.”

I had to keep him talking. “Dream about me often?”

“Dreams. Nightmares. Not sure.” Jin’s hand reached up like he wanted to check if I really was an illusion. I grabbed it as it grazed my jaw and swung it round my shoulder.

“Come on, dream yourself to your feet.” I braced my shoulder under his arm and heaved him up.

Jin said something to me in Xichian and then laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Oh, well—he might not be lucid, but he was upright. And when I put one foot in front of the other, he followed.

We’d been walking for a little while when the babbling started. Words in other languages. Names I didn’t know. One I did. Sakhr. Our old joke churned out by his mind made sick with the venom. I tried to convince him not to talk, but he was too far gone in some delusion. And so long as I kept him walking, I didn’t have it in me to worry about anything else.

The sun was straight above us when I realized we weren’t following the caravan’s tracks in the sand anymore. I spun around, confused. Had we gotten off course? Had they blown away already? The sun had risen to our right this morning. I wasn’t sure if we were still headed north—or anywhere at all.

“We’re lost.”

Jin was sitting with his head between his knees. He struggled to pull something that glinted in the sun from his pocket. The broken compass.

“Here.” He pressed the compass into my hand. “We’re not lost.”

He was delirious if he thought a faulty compass would do us any good. Something inside me was cracking. At this rate, we were both going to die. In the desert, lost meant dead. If the things in the dark didn’t get you, the sun did.

“Jin.” I dropped down next to him, trying to keep him awake. “Jin, this compass doesn’t point north. If we follow it, where is it going to take us?”

I could tell Jin was struggling to stay lucid, his body fighting against the Nightmare venom. “To help. We’re not far.”

“Not far from what?” I pushed. But Jin’s only answer was something in Xichian I didn’t understand. He was done making sense. I sagged onto the sand, holding the compass. The arrow pointed straight west now. Into the Dev’s Valley. In the haze of the desert heat I could see the place the sand ended: a sheer drop down a cliff face. What the hell; it didn’t matter what direction we died in.

It was a hell of a lot harder than it looked getting down into the canyon than it had looked from the top. And it’d looked impossible from there. Jin could still walk, but he leaned more heavily on me with every step.

I had a mean slice on my arm from skidding on some loose rocks near the top of the valley. One cracked rib from where I’d slammed into a rock nearer the bottom. There were a few others in between that I hadn’t had time to worry about yet. The rest of my body was just a dull ache under Jin’s weight.

At least there was water at the bottom.

The Dev’s Valley ran like a wound deep into the skin of the desert, a shallow river like an exposed vein at the bottom. I sat Jin down as I plunged my hands into the water and scrubbed blood before sticking my face in, too, and gulping as fast as I could.

I gathered a handful of water. “Jin.” His head was tipped back, eyes squeezed shut against something he didn’t want to see, except it was inside his head. “Jin.” I pressed the water to his mouth and forced him to drink.

I sat back with my legs in the water and pulled out the compass. I’d managed not to smash it, at least. It pointed straight into the dusty canyon maze, but it didn’t say how far I had to go, and Jin wasn’t in any kind of state to tell me. Only one way to find out.

I was just lugging Jin back to his feet when I heard it, echoing through the canyon walls: the sound of hoofbeats on stone. Someone was coming out of the canyon. I hesitated for only a second before heading for cover. We moved painfully slowly, Jin’s weight pressing down on my spine. I half led, half dragged him into the dusty maze. I could hear the hoofbeats getting louder with every step. We were going too slowly. We needed to get to cover before whoever it was spotted us. We reached the mouth of one of the paths into the canyon just as a soldier in Gallan blue emerged from another.

My whole body rebelled against the sight of him as I remembered the Gallan in Fahali. The general with his gun to the girl’s head. But there was nothing I could do now except watch with bated breath from our place hidden in the shadows of the canyon, while the soldier dismounted, dropping to his knees to drink.

“Amani—” Jin had finally opened his eyes. They were clear for a moment. “He can’t find us, if they do—”