Rebel of the Sands

“I meant to. I wanted to. I tried, but . . .” I was making excuses. A lot of excuses for a broken promise, made when I thought we were both just children of foreign men. Not a defective Demdji and a weapon of destruction. “I know,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.

“How come you were locked up?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t obey my commander’s orders.”

“The prayer house,” I realized. “You wouldn’t burn the prayer house in Dassama.” He inclined his head slowly. “How come?” I remembered his disgust at Bahi. “Don’t believe anyone holy enough to be at prayers could be a rebel?”

“I knew there wouldn’t be any Gallan inside,” he said simply.

“The Gallan.” I shook my head in confusion. “Why would . . .” Dassama hadn’t just been allied to Ahmed; it had been a major base for the Gallan army. The Sultan wasn’t trying to burn out the rebellion on behalf of the Gallan. He wasn’t using it as a testing site because it was rising in support of Ahmed. He was scouring the foreigners out of his desert. “You’re not after us. You’re after them.”

“The Sultan told me that God was angry that we’d let faithless foreign powers into the desert. He said he needed me to return our land to our people. My fire could clean out the foreign armies, the ones that would harm us, control us, and take from us what isn’t theirs.”

Who marched in with their blue uniforms and took women and guns alike from this desert.

I thought of standing in the tent with Ahmed, scared his father was coming for us. How stupid and naive. The Sultan didn’t care about a handful of rebels wanting to make a better world. He was making a new world, too. One he didn’t have to share.

Something flashed outside the window. Blue wings. A huge blue Roc. Izz circling above the train. He must’ve realized something was wrong by now.

Noorsham followed my eyes just as Izz flung himself upwards, darting over the top of the train and out of sight.

“You’re from Sazi,” I said, drawing Noorsham’s attention back to me. I pushed myself away from the door and started pacing, keeping his eyes on me. Just because we told the truth didn’t mean I couldn’t fool him. “I can hear it in your accent. The mines.” The pieces were starting to come together: the way the burnt city reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on. Two great disasters separated by the desert. “It wasn’t an accident. It was you.”

“I destroyed the mines on the day I discovered my gift.” He stood up with the same ponderous motions as a Holy Father. “The day I brought light and wrath down on the wicked.”

“And Sazi was wicked, was it?” I traced my finger down the wood of the bar. So long as I was here, my friends stayed alive. So long as I was here, I could buy us some time. I just had to keep him talking. When I glanced out the window, Izz was gone. How long would it take him to figure out we were in trouble?

“You’re from the Last County, too,” he said. “How good were people where you were from?”

He wasn’t wrong. “You’ve killed more people than anybody in the Last County ever did.”

Noorsham spread his hands and the tightly woven chain mail caught the light. “I was chosen for greater things. This is my purpose.”

I recoiled. Greater things. It sounded too close to things I’d said to Tamid about leaving Dustwalk. About there being another life out there. One that wasn’t so small and pointless and short. The things I’d thought in the rebel camp. I could share an accent with someone who killed so gleefully, but I wasn’t willing to share my words. “What’d they do to you, anyhow, the wicked folks of Sazi?”

For a second, even made of metal, he looked human. “Do you remember seven years ago, when the Gallan army came through?” His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the bar as he walked toward me.

“The Gallan army came through more than once,” I said. I didn’t dare move away from him.

“Don’t you pretend you don’t remember.” His accent stumbled, and I heard the Last County thicker than ever. His tongue righted itself again. “This time was different.”

“I remember,” I admitted, even though I didn’t want to. It was a drought year. The restlessness went bone deep, and there were more of the foreigners in their blue uniforms than usual. “My mama and I hid under the house for a whole day. She tried to make me think it was a game. But I was old enough to understand some of why.”

Noorsham nodded. “My sister Rabia was old enough, too,” he said. “And then when the army was gone, folks up on the mountain got together and tossed stones at her and all the other girls for lying with foreign men. Until they were lying dead. And my mama let them.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“For years I waited for God to punish them. I prayed. I’d never figured the punishment would come from me.” His words reminded me of the Holy Father’s voice blistering through the masses on prayer days. I even used to hear the wild religious fervor on Tamid’s tongue sometimes.

“I’d been out of the mines for a while. I was too sick to work. I tried to go, but my mama wouldn’t let me and I didn’t have any fight in me. When I came back all the other men were looking at me sideways. They kept asking after Suha, my other sister. By lunchtime one of them got drunk enough to tell me. While I’d been sick, we’d run low on money. And my mama had been afraid of starving to death, so she sold Suha as a whore to the men in the mine. The same ones who’d killed Rabia for lying with foreigners. And as I found out, I felt it all rush out of me, a light sent from a higher power, destroying them and leaving me whole.”