Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(118)

Her brother met her gaze across the courtyard. ‘You were my family,’ he said softly. ‘I was trying to save you. After I found you were as talented as Mother with machines, I knew our father would try to use you the same way he did her. That destroyed her, Leyla.’

‘I didn’t need saving.’ She tugged the jacket closer around herself against the night air. ‘I took care of myself from the day you left me among those women and their plots. I learned to survive. To make myself useful.’ She had said that to me once in the harem, as Mouhna and Uzma and Ayet disappeared, one after the other. If you weren’t useful, you were liable to vanish, invisible. And who was more invisible than a princess alone in the harem?

So invisible, I hadn’t even considered that Ayet had disappeared after I’d told Leyla that she’d caught me and Sam in the Weeping Wall garden. That Uzma and Mouhna had gone missing after the incident with the suicide pepper and humiliating me in court. So invisible it hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind that she’d witnessed their nastiness, too. That it had been her idea to select them to put into the machine, not the Sultan’s. ‘You were gone and I was here, finishing what Mother started.’ Leyla’s smile was as sweet as ever, and she aimed it at Rahim like a weapon. ‘She would have wanted that. It was the Gallan she hated. Not our father.’

‘You lied to me,’ I said. And I hadn’t spotted it because she was a big-eyed, shy girl with a sweet face.

‘Demdji are always the easiest to lie to. Your kind never expects it,’ the Sultan said. ‘What good daughter wouldn’t obey the word of her father?’ He made a motion, like he was pulling back a bowstring and loosing it. I was holding an entire sandstorm in my mind on the edge of the city, dragging it forward over walls and rooftops. I felt it stagger as something punched through my heart. The horrible, humiliating memory of wanting to impress him, of wanting to please him. Of doubting Ahmed for him.

‘Little Blue-Eyed Bandit, so very trusting, over and over.’ I flinched at the nickname as he started towards me. Jin shifted angrily at the edge of my vision, but he knew better than to try anything as his father drew closer. ‘Oh, yes, Amani, I knew from the moment I saw your little blue eyes.’

All those desperate attempts to hide it from the Sultan, to keep Ahmed from coming up so that the truth wouldn’t slip past my traitorous tongue. And he’d been letting me get away with it, letting me dance around the subject. Because he already knew I was allied with Ahmed.

The Sultan chucked me under the chin gently as he reached me. ‘I could’ve made you tell me what you knew, but that wouldn’t have gotten me to Ahmed. It was a great deal easier to use you to feed fake information to your prince. Once Leyla told me Rahim was a traitor, I could use him to pass information to you.’

I caught a flash of movement behind the Sultan. A figure in the shadows. I looked back at the Sultan, quick as I could. Trying not to betray what I’d seen. I tightened my fist, keeping my grip on the desert.

He turned away. ‘I have to say I rather enjoyed watching you scramble around putting out fires, never noticing the others I wanted you to look away from. While you were looking at Saramotai, I was taking back Fahali. While you were saving traitors from the gallows, I had men arresting dissenters in their own homes. And while you were running around trying to save my traitor son, I was emptying your traitor camp and arresting my other traitor son.’ He dropped one hand on Leyla’s shoulder. ‘She’s done a great deal of good work. How did you think we found you in your little valley hideaway?’ He held something up. It was a compass. Just like the ones Jin and Ahmed had, only smaller. They’d told me once, I remembered, that those were of Gamanix make. Leyla’s mother was a Gamanix engineer. ‘We hid one of these on your spy before we released her to be … rescued.’ Sayyida. She was a trap, too.

‘And when I found out from Rahim you were planning to escape …’ Leyla bounced, excited. ‘Do you want to see?’ It was that same light in her face that I’d seen when she was showing some new toy to the children in the harem. She turned, gesturing to the soldiers. Two of them dragged Tamid away from the wall. He struggled to keep up with them on his fake leg.

I took a step forward and this time, it was Jin who caught me, pulling me back. They forced Tamid to the ground, sitting with his bronze leg splayed out in front of him. Leyla unfastened it with practised ease. She had made it, after all. Proudly she turned the detached leg toward me. Perfectly fitted in the hollow bronze of Tamid’s calf was a compass.

‘I fitted it after I convinced you Tamid should come with us, and he was none the wiser that I was using him to help bring my father to your camp.’

This was my fault. I had led them to us. I had saved Tamid. I hadn’t left him behind and I was still being punished.

I pulled, one last violent yank on my Demdji powers.

And then the sky darkened. The sandstorm was on us.

The Sultan’s head shot up as the shadow fell across us. The raging cloud of sand had rushed in to crown the garden. I raised my hands, taking full grip of it – there was no point pretending now.

I poured everything I had into the sand. All my anger. All my defiance. All my desperation. I whipped the storm into a frenzy before slamming my arms down, pulling the full force of the desert around us.

I looked for the Sultan. He was watching me. The last thing I saw was him smiling at me the same way he had that first day in the war room over the dead duck. Like he was proud.