Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(65)

The Sultan let go of the stem of his glass. He wiped his fingers clean of grease and orange pulp before pulling a familiar piece of yellow paper from his pocket. It was folded into smaller squares, and it looked worn out from folding over and over again. From across the table, I looked at Ahmed’s sun on it upside down. A new dawn. A new desert.

‘These are all very fine ideas he has,’ the Sultan said. ‘But you sat in that council today, Amani. Do you think my son knows how many guns we can promise the Gallan without overtaxing our own resources? Do you think he knows that the Albish queen, the latest in a long line of sorceresses, is rumoured to have hardly any magic left to defend her country with? That the Xichian emperor has not picked an heir yet and their whole country is on the brink of civil war?’ He really seemed to expect me to answer.

‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth. I wasn’t privy to everything Ahmed knew. But if I were being more than truthful, if I were being honest, I’d give him a real answer. No. He doesn’t know.

‘If the world were simple,’ the Sultan said as he smoothed the tract out across the table, ‘we could be free of foreign powers, an independent nation. But we are a country with borders, with friends and enemies at all of them. And unlike my son I am not interested in conscripting this entire country to defend it. How many untrained men and women do you think have died fighting for his beliefs?’

Ranaa’s face invaded my mind. The little Demdji from Saramotai. The stray bullet. Watching the light in her hands extinguish as her power went, then her life.

The Sultan’s army had wanted her. But if it weren’t for us trying to save her, she’d be here instead of me. She might be sitting on soft pillows, hair clean and scented with lavender, mouth sticky with candied oranges. Instead of turned to ashes on a funeral pyre and scattered into the desert sand.

‘If the throne changes hands, we will be invaded. My son is an idealist. Idealists make great leaders, but they never make good rulers. So I’ll tell you what I believe, Amani. I believe that if my son’s rebellion were ever to succeed, or even to gain enough of a foothold to cast doubt upon my rule, we would be torn to shreds by foreign powers. It would destroy Miraji, just like my father would have destroyed it before us.’





Chapter 25

It was closer to dawn than dusk when I returned to the harem. I hated the quiet. I could hear my fears that much louder for it.

Back in the rebel camp there was no such thing as silence, even in the darkest hours of night. There was the clink of weapons on those keeping watch. Conversations whispered in the night. The riffling of paper from Ahmed’s tent as he worried long after the rest of us had stopped. Here, any night sound was covered by the gentle running of water or the patter of birds.

My fingers were slick with fat from the skin of the duck and sticky with the sweetness of the orange. I wiped my hands across the hem of my kurti as I stepped into my rooms, starting to pull the clothes over my head.

‘What kind of time do you call this, young lady?’ The voice made me jump violently. Dropping the hem of my shirt, I reached for a weapon I didn’t have. Exhaustion and confusion blurred my vision for a moment. There was a figure sitting on my bed in a khalat. A khalat I recognised … because it belonged to Shazad, I realised after a moment. Only the person wearing it was a head taller than Shazad, at least, and had wider shoulders that pulled at the fabric enough to make some of the stitching pop. The face was hidden by a sheema, one blond curl escaping underneath to drop lazily over pale blue eyes.

Sam.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I hissed, glancing around nervously as I dropped down on the mat across from him. ‘Someone might see you.’

‘Oh, plenty of folk have.’ Sam lowered his voice to a whisper to match me. He loosened the sheema around his face. It was tied correctly this time; I could only guess his way of knotting it haphazardly like an infant had bugged Shazad as much as it did me. ‘But who’s going to notice another woman in here?’ He had a point. Women seemed to appear and disappear in the harem without anyone batting an eye. ‘Shazad’s idea. She didn’t think it was a good idea for you to get caught with a man in your bed. Although I don’t know if I have the figure to pull off this khalat.’ He cinched it around his waist with his hands, like he was trying to make it fit him properly.

‘Don’t worry, none of us can fill out a khalat the way Shazad can,’ I said. But there was something nagging at me. ‘Jin’s not back yet.’ It wasn’t a question. I didn’t even have to test the truth out on my tongue before saying it. Because if Jin were back, Sam wouldn’t be here alone.

Sam kicked back, lacing his hands behind his head. ‘This is the Rebel Prince’s missing brother I keep hearing about? He’s the one you wish was waiting for you in your bed right now, I gather.’ He winked at me.

I dodged the comment. ‘He wouldn’t make nearly so convincing a girl as you do,’ I said. ‘Are you wearing make-up?’

‘Oh, yes, just a little. Shazad did it for me.’ He preened a little.

‘She must like you. I’m usually the only person she does that for.’

‘She was worried about you after you missed meeting me by the Weeping Wall tonight.’ I’d missed my meeting time with Sam by a long way after I’d given up trying to escape the dinner. ‘In particular she was concerned you might – and these are her words – “do something typically Amani-ish” and get yourself caught. She’s got the entire camp packed up and ready to move again if I didn’t find you by dawn.’