Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(64)

A little more time. If we hadn’t interfered. If we hadn’t saved Fahali. Saved our people. Saved my brother. And he reckoned he could’ve saved the whole country. They would have been a sacrifice for the greater good.

‘You’re not eating.’

I wasn’t hungry. But I speared a piece of cold meat all the same. The orange had congealed into a sticky paste around it. It was too sweet when it hit my tongue now. You’re wrong. The words, too, were sticky on my tongue. I couldn’t spit them out. I wished Shazad were here. She knew more than I did. She’d read up on history and philosophy and had better schooling with her father’s tutors than I’d had in a busted-down schoolhouse at the end of the desert. She was better at debating things than I was. But we’d both been in Saramotai. A power play disguised in a just cause. ‘Awfully convenient how saving this country meant you becoming Sultan without the Sultim trials.’

‘The Sultim trials are another antiquated tradition.’ The Sultan placed his wine back on the table, carefully steadying it by the stem. ‘Hand-to-hand combat between brothers and riddles to prove a man had half a brain might’ve been the best way to pick a leader when we were just a collection of tents in the desert fighting the Destroyer of Worlds’ monsters, but wars are different now. Wit and wisdom are not the same. Neither are skill and knowledge. And Sultans don’t go out on the battlefield with a sword any more. There are better ways to lead.’

‘You held a Sultim trial anyway.’ I reached for another orange off the duck, moving slowly so as not to rustle the stolen supply route map hidden in my waistband.

‘Yes, and look how well that served me. I acquired a rebel son out for my throne as a result of it.’ He laughed to himself, as he pushed the gold platter closer towards me. A low, self-deprecating chuckle that reminded me of Jin. ‘I had to hold the trials, to show the people that though I had taken my throne by … other means, I was still upholding the traditions of our country. As antiquated as it is, it can still serve a purpose.’ He settled back in his seat again, watching me eat. ‘In some countries, the people love their royals best when they are celebrating weddings or new royal children. If only that were the case with my people, I would never run out of their love. But the Mirajin people are not so easily bought. They never love my family more than when we are fighting to the death for the right to rule them. They never love me so much as they do on Auranzeb when I remind them that I killed twelve of my brothers with my own hands in one night.’ He said it so calmly that whatever warmth his laugh had brought into the room drained out of it instantly. ‘I try not to remind them that it was the same night I handed them over to the enemy they hate so much. But really, this is a violent country, Amani. You’re proof of that. Our dinner is proof of that.’ He tapped the arrow through the duck’s neck. ‘I put a knife in your hand and your first instinct was to stab me.’

‘You tried to stab me first,’ I objected without thinking. That time he really did laugh, in earnest.

‘This is a hard desert. It needs a hard man to rule it.’ A harder man than Ahmed. The thought shot across my mind again. I shoved it away as forcefully as I could. The Sultan had said it himself, rulers were different these days. And what Ahmed lacked in strength he made up for by being good. A better man than most of us. He was so good, in fact, that Shazad and I hadn’t even hesitated when it came to taking Delila to Saramotai. We’d disobeyed our ruler without a second thought. Without any fear of consequences.

Shazad would say it was a poor ruler who needed to rely on fear to make his people obey. I might not be so well versed in philosophy, but it seemed to me like without obedience a man was no ruler at all.

Was Ahmed really going to run this whole country if he couldn’t even get me and Shazad and his sister to fall in line?

‘There is nothing I wouldn’t do for this country, Amani. Still.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I will grant you that Kadir would perhaps have not been my first choice to succeed me were it not for the trials.’ He played with the stem of his glass, seeming to drift far away.

‘Who would you have picked?’ I wasn’t sure if I meant it as an earnest question or a challenge of whether he actually knew any of his sons well enough to pick one. But the Sultan seemed to sincerely consider my question.

‘Rahim is a great deal stronger than I gave him credit for as a boy.’ Leyla’s brother. The prince who held himself like a military man and who had challenged Kadir in court and sat on the war council with him. ‘He might have made a good ruler, if I had kept him closer. And if he weren’t so ruled by his emotions.’ The light through the glass dome caught the rim of his glass as he spun it. ‘But truthfully, had he only been raised in my palace, Ahmed might be the best choice.’ That caught me off guard.

‘You mean the Rebel Prince,’ I said carefully, all too aware I was treading on dangerous ground now.

‘My son believes he is helping this country; I know he truly does.’ He called Ahmed his son. Ahmed always called the Sultan his father, too. Jin never did. To Jin he was always ‘the Sultan’. Like he was trying to sever any strings between himself and his father. But it seemed like Ahmed and the Sultan had less interest in severing those ties. ‘The trouble with belief is that it’s not the same as truth.’

The memory rose from the quiet part of my mind where most of my memories of Jin lived. A night in the desert. Jin telling me belief was a foreign language to logic. But what else did we have?