Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(103)

‘All at the cost of slaughtering our immortals.’

‘The First Beings made us to fight their wars. But where have they been in our wars? While our borders are harried by foreigners with their greater numbers? While my people make it easier for them by turning against each other at the urging of my son?’ He spoke patiently. Like he might do for his own children. Explaining a difficult lesson. Only he wasn’t my father. My father was a Djinni. My father was a Djinni trapped inside the palace at his mercy. And for the first time since the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, at very real risk of dying. My father hadn’t cared when I had been about to die. Why should I care about him? But I did.

‘The time of the immortal things is long over. We have taken this world from them. There is a reason that Demdji like you are rarities now. This world belongs to us. And this country belongs to us. It is the role of children to replace their parents. We are the Djinn’s children.’ The Sultan smiled a slow, lazy smile. ‘And I think you’re out of bullets.’

And then Jin was across. He grabbed the edge of the wall and pulled himself up with a grunt of pain, and then his arms were around my waist. He half leapt, half dropped, his hand looping around the rope as he went. And we were falling. On the other side of the palace walls.

And I was free.





Chapter 39

Izman was blazing still with Auranzeb celebrations, even in the ruins of the Blessed Sultima’s Uprising. News hadn’t reached the city yet of what was going on in the palace. That we were free of foreign rule. That the Sultim was dead.

I trusted Jin to lead us through the unfamiliar streets. The journey was painstakingly slow as we laced our way under the shadows of windows spilling out light and noise, through the winding side alleys of the unfamiliar city. Avoiding the big streets flooded with drunks and celebrations.

‘Here.’ Jin pulled me to a stop finally, by a small door in a white stucco wall in an alley so narrow the wall before us almost touched the one behind us. A gutter ran from the door through the narrow paved streets.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting on the other side. For it to lead to another world maybe, like our old door. Or that it would spill down into a secret passage that would lead to wherever the rest of the Rebellion had set up since we’d lost the Dev’s Valley.

Instead we stepped into a large kitchen warmly lit by the embers of a dying fire. It was about the most normal kitchen I’d ever been in. Just like my aunt’s back in Dustwalk. Except this one didn’t seem to be in low supply of food. Gleaming pots and pans hung from the ceiling between drying herbs and spices. Tinned supplies lined the shelves.

I slammed the door shut on the night behind us. I didn’t have time to consider where we were, except safe. Jin and I collapsed next to the fireplace, his back against the wall. I was on my knees facing him.

‘You’re covered in blood.’ I eased him down off my shoulder. ‘I need to see.’

‘I’m fine.’ But he let me tug the hem of his shirt over his head all the same, wincing as his arms went up over his head. His bloodstained shirt hit the floor in a ball even as he rested his arms on top of his head, stretching his chest out and giving me unhindered access. He wasn’t lying to me, at least; the better part of the blood didn’t seem to be his. Some stained his skin, but aside from the wound in his side that had kept him from jumping to the wall and a huge bruise blooming like a cloud under the tattoo of the bird over his ribs, he didn’t seem too badly hurt.

I noticed it then. A bright red cloth wrapped around the top of his left arm like an armband. I might’ve thought it was a bandage, but I’d know my sheema anywhere.

I reached out without thinking, fingers skimming the edge of where the fabric met his skin. His eyes snapped open at the touch, and he looked down, like he’d forgotten he was wearing it. ‘This is yours.’ His fingers started to fumble with the knot on the inside of his arm.

I sat back on my heels. ‘I thought I’d lost it.’ It was stupid. It was nothing but a piece of cloth. It wasn’t the Rebellion; it wasn’t Jin. It was just a thing. A thing I didn’t think I’d ever get back.

‘I thought you’d left it.’ He didn’t look at me. He was still fiddling with the knot. It was fastened tightly. Like he’d been desperate not to lose it.

‘Left it?’ Finally the knot came apart in his fingers.

‘The morning after you vanished.’ His shoulders were taut as he unwound the red sheema from his arm. ‘You were gone, and this was outside my tent.’ I must’ve lost it in the scuffle with Safiyah. When I’d been standing outside his tent. Deciding whether to go in. ‘It seemed like a message.’

The skin under where it had been tied was paler. Like it hadn’t seen the sun in a while. He handed me the sheema. I took one end. Our history hung between us, a dozen tiny reminders of the first days we’d known each other. When things had been simpler. He’d been the Eastern Snake and I’d been the Blue-Eyed Bandit and it’d been just the two of us, not the two of us and a whole revolution. A whole country.

I started to say something about how stupid it was to think I’d leave and tell him with a discarded sheema. But then, we hadn’t been all that good at telling each other things.

‘You left first.’ I pulled at the edge of the sheema. ‘When I was hurt, you left me.’