Hero at the Fall (Rebel of the Sands #3)(10)

‘Do you know the words to release a Djinni?’ I asked. She’d told us she didn’t. But that was back when she’d been play-acting as a teary-eyed lost little princess and I’d been too trusting to question her about it.

‘No.’ The third bullet buried itself in the wall, sending stone spraying violently as it did, making her flinch out of the way. Well, at least she had been honest about one thing when she was lying about being on our side.

Leyla started to cry, her sobs echoing loudly around the walls of the garden.

That was the third gunshot inside the harem. Someone ought to have reached us by now. Something was wrong. I listened carefully under the sound of Leyla crying. Far off I thought I could hear the screams of excited birds. Probably the ones trapped in the menagerie, startled by the loud noise and unable to get away. But there were no other screams to go with them – no women calling out for help or panicking at the sound of gunshots so near them. Just the bubbling of fountains and, far off in the distance, the noises of the city.

‘Why is it so quiet?’ My question hadn’t actually been for Leyla, but she answered it all the same.

‘There’s no one else here,’ she said through a sob. ‘My father sent them all far away, to safety out of the city.’ She didn’t say it, but I almost heard the so there that she was longing to tack on to the end. Like she wanted me to think I was wrong for judging her father the villain of this story. That he was a man who cared about his wives and his sons and had hurried them off to safety. But I didn’t care what she wanted me to think about her father. What I did care about was the way she had said that. He sent them all far away.

I’d asked the wrong question. We needed to get out of the city. But we didn’t need a way to bring down the magical barrier keeping us in. We needed a way around it. ‘So you’re saying there’s a way out of the city.’

Leyla’s already tormented expression shifted as she realised what she’d revealed to me. ‘No.’ I raised the gun and pointed at her. ‘Yes,’ she admitted quickly, amending the lie before I could fire again. ‘Yes.’

The bullet struck the wall behind her, sending a spray of stone debris across her face. She was telling the truth, or else that bullet would’ve wound up in her shoulder. It was as if a weight that had been sitting on my chest since the moment we realised we were trapped had been lifted and I could breathe again. There was a way out. And I had someone who knew where it was at gunpoint. We were almost free.

‘How do we get out of the city, Leyla?’

She had stopped crying. She considered me for a moment with those dark eyes under long lashes, rimmed in red from her tears. She ran a sleeve across her nose, sniffling like a little girl. There was almost nothing of her brother Rahim in her. Or the Sultan, for that matter. There was more in that face of her pale Gamanix mother – an inventor’s daughter from the same northern land that had made Jin’s and Ahmed’s compasses. Her features were more delicate than her brother’s or father’s, and though she was as dark as any Mirajin girl, it was obvious she hadn’t seen as much sun as a girl ought to have, trapped behind these walls. The harem had made her look soft and childish, where Rahim looked hardened by his years in the mountains. But that didn’t mean that was what they were: a hardened son and a gentle daughter. Rahim had looked broken by his sister’s betrayal of him in favour of their father, the man who cost their mother her life. And, in turn, Leyla had seemed to be sharpened by her loyalty to their father, those fine features turning cruel. I saw it now, that nastiness in the curl of her lip as she stared down the barrel of my gun and answered me. ‘There’s a gap in the barrier, by the northernmost gate, big enough for a person to slip through.’

I fired, and the bullet hit her in the leg. She screamed again, doubling over in pain as the consequence of the lie made her bleed. Fresh anger bloomed in me, that she would start trying to trick me now that we were so close. ‘Now, why did you think that lie would work?’ I asked her.

‘Because you’re almost out of bullets.’

She was right, I realised. Five shots. I’d taken five shots at her. Which meant this was my last one.

And then I saw it above me: the shape of a giant Roc shooting back into the air from the ruins of the palace dome. Jin and Maz, leaving the inner sanctum of the palace, making a run for it. Meaning we were out of time. That was when I heard the sound of approaching footsteps and shouts far off in the harem. The guards were finally coming for the Sultan’s favourite daughter.

We needed to get out.

I aimed the gun at her. ‘Leyla, how do we get out of this city? Tell me the truth and this bullet will miss you. Lie and it’s going to bury itself in your skull.’

Leyla was shaking a little as she stared me down. She was scared. She was a traitor to us, but I was the enemy to her. This was war, after all.

‘Why should I tell you if you’re just going to kill me anyway?’ she shot back at me. ‘That bullet might miss me, but there are other ways you could kill me. You could break my neck or choke me to death.’ A memory passed between us: Leyla gently inspecting the bruises on my neck after the Gallan ambassador had almost squeezed the life out of me. ‘Why would you leave me alive?’ She had a good point: she was a danger to us alive. And if she gave me this information, she was no more use to us. ‘I’d rather die than be a traitor to my father and my ruler. I’ll never tell you.’ I kept my finger on the trigger. But I didn’t squeeze. I’ll never tell you. I didn’t want to know if that was true. And if it was a lie, then I needed her without a bullet in her skull.