Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1)(9)

I found a boot and dropped it from as high as I could so it hit the floor with a loud thud. Shira flinched. She was the only one of my female cousins I shared blood with. The others belonged to my uncle’s other wives. Aunt Farrah had given her husband three boys, then Shira.

She simpered at me through heavy-lidded eyes. “You look terrible, cousin. Didn’t sleep well?” My fingers faltered on the sash I was knotting around my waist. Shira smirked pointedly. “Looks like you must’ve been tossing and turning, too.” I resisted the impulse to tug my sleeve down over my bruised elbow. Of course Shira knew I’d snuck out. She slept two feet away.

Not that she could’ve guessed where I’d gone. But that wouldn’t stop her from telling if she thought it’d get her something, even if it was just the satisfaction of seeing me get a beating.

“How could I sleep?” I went back to tying my sash with sluggish fingers. “Did you know that you snore?”

Olia snorted under her covers. “See, I told you,” she shot at her half sister. Sometimes I almost liked my next youngest cousin. We used to get along just fine back before I lived under my uncle’s roof and hating me became one of Aunt Farrah’s household rules.

“Though maybe that wasn’t you last night,” I jabbed at Shira. “Hard for a pile of blankets to snore.”

Shira’s bed had been as empty as mine when I’d clambered back through the window after using some of our precious water to scrub the smell of smoke and gunpowder from myself. Judging by the sickly sweet smell of oils on her, she’d been out to see Fazim. He’d probably told her he was going to the pistol pit and coming back rich.

I tried not to smile at the memory of him getting pitched from the competition. I wasn’t even sure Fazim had made it out alive.

We were at a stalemate. I wouldn’t tell so long as she didn’t. After a moment, Shira flopped back onto her bed and started pulling a comb through her hair, ignoring me.

I was running my fingers through my own mess of black hair as I made my way into the kitchen. The boy cousins were already starting to mill around on their way to work, shouting to one another over the prayer bells. No one who worked in the factory had time for prayers except on the holy days. I snaked around my cousin Jiraz, whose uniform was half on, half knotted around his waist as he scratched at a healing burn across his chest. He’d gotten it from one of the machines a few months ago when it belched fire at him unexpectedly. He was lucky he’d lost only a month of work instead of his life.

I grabbed the tin of coffee off the top shelf. It was mighty light. There was sawdust mixed in to thin it out, too. My stomach tightened. Things always got bad when food was low. Actually, things were always bad. They just got worse.

“Farrah.” Uncle Asid walked into the kitchen, rubbing his hand across his face. Nida, his youngest wife, trailed behind, eyes on the ground, hands over her pregnant belly. I turned my attention away just in time to pretend I didn’t notice my uncle’s eyes drag along me. “Is there coffee yet?”

Desperate restlessness filled me. I wasn’t staying here. No matter how light the coin purse I wore tied against my middle felt after last night.

“Give me that.” Aunt Farrah snatched the tin with one hand, the other smacking me sharply across the back of the head. I winced. “I told you to go open the store, you hear me?”

“I couldn’t not hear you.” I stepped out of her reach, not that it’d save me from a beating later. I was glad to get the hell out of this house and out of my uncle’s sights, but I couldn’t stop my smart mouth. “Any louder and the whole town could hear you screeching.” I let the door clatter shut behind me as I dashed down the steps and into the street, Aunt Farrah’s threats of a switch to my back fading with every step.

My uncle’s shop and his house were at opposite ends of Dustwalk, which was a whole two hundred and fifty paces to walk. Dustwalk’s single street was as crowded as it ever got, what with the men trudging to the factory and women and old folks rushing to the prayer house before the sun burned away the last of the cooler night air. The familiarity weighed on me. Lately I’d been thinking someone just ought to kill this town out of mercy. No steel was coming down from the mountains. It’d been years since the last Buraqi was spotted. There were a few regular horses left to sell, but they weren’t worth a whole lot.

There was only one thing I’d ever liked about Dustwalk, and that was all the space outside of it. Beyond the flat-faced, dead-eyed wooden houses, you could run for hours and still find nothing but scrub and sand. I resented it now, how far it was from everywhere else. But when I was younger it’d been enough just to get away. Far enough that I couldn’t hear my father slurring that my mother was nothing but a used-up foreigner’s whore who couldn’t give him a son. Far enough that no one could see me, a girl with a stolen gun, shooting until my fingers were sore and my aim was good enough that I could’ve knocked a shot glass out of a drunk’s shaky fingers.

The furthest away I could ever get was when my mother used to tell me bedtime stories of Izman. Only when my father couldn’t hear. The city of a thousand golden domes, with towers that’d scratch the blue off the sky, and as many stories as there were people. Where a girl could belong to herself and the whole city was so rich with possibilities that you almost tripped over adventures in the street. She read me the stories of Princess Hawa, who sang the dawn into the sky early when Izman was attacked by Nightmares in the night. Of the nameless merchant’s daughter who tricked the Sultan out of his jewels when her father lost his fortune. And she read me the letters from her sister Safiyah.