Rebel of the Sands
I remembered the girl from the Gallan camp. I’d thought it was blood in her hair. It might’ve just been that it was red. The Djinni’s mark.
“Half of Miraji would go after them to get something from them. Like a finger, for it’s supposed healing powers. Ask Bahi if you want theology. Most folks would call it—”
“Desert magic.” So this really was where the stories came to life. Heroes and monsters come to fight and die for the Rebel Prince.
Jin and I had talked about those stories. About the Rebel Prince. And then Jin had lied to me until I was just some silly girl barging into something I couldn’t begin to be prepared for.
• • •
SHAZAD WAS ABOUT my size. Except a lifetime of eating proper meals made her more filled out in all the areas that helped me look like a boy when I needed to. I tugged at the clothes she’d loaned me uncomfortably as I crossed the camp, trying to retrace my steps from that morning.
I met Bahi just outside the tent with the canopy of stars where I’d woken up. He was ducking out. He caught me tugging at the chest of the shirt, wet hair dripping down my back, making it stick to me. Shazad had showed me where I could wash, a small pool shielded from view of the camp, before leaving me to do . . . whatever it was she did here. I had nowhere else to go and nothing else I was meant to be doing.
“Why’re you wearing Shazad’s clothes?” Bahi asked, looking me over.
“Why do you know Shazad’s clothes on sight?” I countered without thinking.
Bahi scratched the back of his neck, pulling a face. He looked like a kid caught doing something wrong. “She’s sort of hard not to look at,” he admitted. “Don’t tell her I said that. I’m fairly sure she knows about five different ways to kill me without actually having to touch me. And if I’m dead there’ll be no one to take care of your prince.”
“He’s not mine,” I said defensively. And then, because I couldn’t help it, “How is he?”
“You got him here in time.” Bahi ran the hand with the tattoo on it through his hair. “Now we just have to wait.”
“Can I see him?”
“I don’t see why not.” Bahi shrugged, gesturing behind himself.
The heat hit me like a wall as soon as I pulled back the tent flap. Jin was lying as I’d left him, still as the dead.
Only his brother sat next to him. Prince Ahmed’s shirt was loose at the collar, and I could see the echo of Jin’s sun tattooed on his own chest in the dim light from the lamp. He looked up at the sound of the tent flap falling shut behind me. “Your Majesty.” The words tripped out, unnatural. “I’m sorry, I should—”
“No, please, stay.” I stopped my retreat. I wasn’t sure how to refuse a prince. I sat down across from Ahmed on the other side.
I stilled. Ahmed brought the present rushing back in. Jin wasn’t just some foreign boy with a traitor smile; he was the Sultan’s son and I was far out of my place sitting with this pair of prodigal princes.
“Is Jin even his real name?” I asked when the silence had stretched too long.
“Yes,” Ahmed said. “But it’s not his full name. Our father named him Ajinahd Al’Oman Bin Izman. Lien, his mother, was the one who nicknamed him Jin.”
Nearly two months and he hadn’t even told me his real name.
Ahmed was watching me. “You think he doesn’t trust you. But that’s not true.”
I scoffed.
“The compass.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the battered brass thing in his hands. I thought of the tattoo on Jin's back. The compass. On the other side of the sun. Like his heart beat between the two. “It’s of Gamanix make. While the Albish and the Gallan war over magic and mortality, the Gamanix balance the two. A little bit of science, a little bit of magic. Each compass is twinned with another. That compass is our lifeline. In the six years since we got them, I’ve never let mine out of my sight. I would have lost Jin a dozen times if not for this. My brother may have little regard for his own safety, but if he trusted you with his family, there’s no way he could trust you more.
“It was Jin’s mother who got us out of the palace alive, you know.” I didn’t know that. Just like I didn’t really know anything real about Jin. But he didn’t seem to need me to answer him. I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me. “Lien and my mother were like sisters. They came into my father’s harem near the same time, and Jin and I were born hours apart. I was early and Jin was late. I was fifth of my father’s sons. He was sixth. We were born early enough in our father’s reign that we were treated well, but not so early that he took more notice of us than our mothers liked. Lien called it fate. Jin doesn’t believe in fate.
“I don’t have a single memory of my mother’s face. I was too young when she died.” The Sultan’s pretty young wife from the story. The one who was beaten to death for giving birth to Delila. She’d been a few words in the tale of the Rebel Prince to me. But she’d been flesh and blood to Ahmed. “All my memories of Miraji are of my brother. The night Delila was born, Jin was sick. Lien and my mother had been planning an escape ever since my mother learned she was carrying a Djinni’s child. It wasn’t safe to move Jin—he was running a fever—but it wasn’t safe for Delila to stay. So Lien had to risk it. I remember little bits from that night. Clinging to Lien’s skirts while she peeled off a sultan’s ransom in gold bracelets to pay for a ship to Xicha.