Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(48)

Three days later the news came that Aziz had been killed in battle. That was what Sabriya had seen from the top of the tree, across the walls, across deserts and cities and seas.

The wall looked just like every other in the harem in the dim light of my oil lamp. Ivy blooming with flowers all the colour of the setting sun climbed from the earth up the stone wall, trying to hide the fact that we were in a prison. I pushed the ivy aside, setting my hands against the solid stone. My fingers met an uneven surface. When I held the lamp up I realised it looked like a gouge – several of them. The kind fingernails might leave.

‘And her wailing carried on for seven nights and seven days.’ I jumped at Shira’s voice behind me. She was draped in a dark blue khalat that made her melt in with the shadows. ‘Until the Sultan could listen to her grief no more, and he strung her up where only the stars could hear her wail.’

I dropped my hand. ‘Who knew such love could exist in the harem.’

Shira didn’t miss the sarcasm in my voice. ‘Anyone less self-centred than you.’ I was about to retort that she didn’t love Kadir, no more than she’d loved Naguib. But then I realised that her hands had drifted to her pregnant stomach as she spoke. Folk did terrifying things for the ones they loved. That, I’d learned from stories. I even had a bullet wound scar across my hip from Iliaz to prove it.

‘So what now?’ I raised an eyebrow at her expectantly, a trick I’d learned from Jin.

‘Oh, now we wait, cousin.’ Shira leaned against the huge tree, tilting her head back.

I was going to have to play along with Shira’s game. I flopped against the tree next to her. ‘How long?’

Shira tipped her head back further. ‘It could be a while. I can’t tell. It’s hard to see the sky properly from the city.’

I leaned my head back against the trunk, my hair snagging in the rough bark. She wasn’t wrong. Through the crisscrossing branches of the huge tree I could see the dark sky, but with the lights from the palace and the city, I couldn’t make out the stars.

‘So.’ Shira broke the silence after a moment. ‘Are you really with the Rebel Prince?’ She was fiddling with something, and I realised it was a rope that ran the length of the tree, like a pulley. She was tugging it absently, up and down. At the top, above the line of the harem walls, a piece of cloth stirred in the wind.

‘I really am.’ She was signalling someone. It could be a trap for all I knew. I couldn’t do much about it if it was except face it when it came.

‘Who would’ve thought it?’ Shira smiled. ‘Two girls from Dustwalk, with royalty. What was it the Holy Father used to say?’ Her accent was slipping. I wondered if she noticed. ‘Men who worship at the feet of power either rise with it—’

‘—or get trampled,’ I said, filling in the saying. ‘Good thing we aren’t men, then.’ I didn’t know why I was buying into her game. But I was real low on people I could talk to in this place. Leyla was sweet enough, but she was still the Sultan’s daughter. And Tamid wasn’t worth thinking about. He might be alive, but my friend had still died in the sand in Dustwalk. Shira’s dark eyes met my pale ones. A moment of recognition passed between us. We’d both hitched our wagons to powerful folk, just on different sides. If that was the choice, to rise or be flattened, chances were one of us was going to wind up rising and the other one dead.

‘Shira—’ I started. I wasn’t sure how I was going to finish.

I never did. Because a man stepped out of the Weeping Wall.

I’d seen a whole lot of Demdji do impossible things, but I’d be lying if I said I’d been expecting that.

The man was flesh and blood, and though at first glance he was dressed in desert clothes, he was distinctly un-Mirajin. He had hair the colour of sand, held back by a sheema that looked like it had been tied by someone with no hands, and pale skin that glowed in the lamplight. And his eyes were nearly as blue as mine. For a second I thought he was a Demdji.

‘Blessed Sultima,’ he said, his voice low and tinged with an accent. Not a Demdji, then, just a foreigner.

He pulled himself to his full height, giving me a better view of him. Dark polished boots different from anything I’d ever seen in the desert rose to his knees, his loose desert trouser legs stuffed inside, and he wore a white shirt open at the collar. I got the strangest impression he was pausing for effect. After a beat, he stepped forward dramatically.

That was when his arm got stuck in one of the vines that hung from the wall.

It sort of ruined the effect.

He recovered as well as he could, untangling his arm. Then he plucked one of the flowers from the vine and offered it to Shira with an extravagant bow. ‘Your beauty grows with every passing day.’

His badly tied sheema flopped open, falling off his face so I could see him clearly. He wasn’t a whole lot older than we were, and a light constellation of freckles over his pale nose made him look even younger. He was northern but not Gallan; his words sounded wrong, and I’d seen enough of the Gallan to know he wasn’t one of them. He straightened and flung the sheema over his shoulder like the sweep of a cloak. Shira took the flower and pressed it to her nose.

So this was how Shira smuggled things into the harem. And, judging by the look he was giving her, this was how she’d managed to get herself pregnant, too.