Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(66)

Somewhere in the midst of dining with the Sultan I’d stopped feeling afraid of him finding out who I was. Sam’s words were a sharp reminder that I wasn’t risking only my own life. We’d been found once already.

‘I’ve been waiting for so long I was beginning to think she was right and that I’d have to take up the mantle of the Blue-Eyed Bandit permanently. And after being filled in on what “something typically Amani-ish” means, I’m not sure I’m up to the task. Did you really throw yourself under the hooves of a Buraqi? I’d lose a rib doing that.’

I rolled my eyes, letting the joke in his voice burn away some of the guilt. ‘If there was ever motivation to stay alive …’ I trailed off. I couldn’t exactly tell him that Shazad had been wrong to worry. I had, after all, nearly been trampled by a Buraqi, twice. And I had sat across from our enemy and discussed Ahmed over dinner that night. ‘You can tell Shazad I’m still alive. And I have free rein in the palace now. You should lead with that.’ I dropped down next to him. ‘Before you tell her that I missed our meeting because I was dining with the Sultan.’

Sam burst out laughing so loud I was worried he might wake someone. The harem had thin walls. ‘So what does a rebel talk to the Sultan about these days? Though my mother always said to keep politics away from the dinner table – so perhaps you just discussed the weather? Though, best I can tell, you only have one type of weather here.’

I could still taste the orange on my lips when I ran my tongue across them. I considered what the Sultan had said about the fact that he was trying to stop a war. A war Ahmed was helping to instigate. That giving over this information would help the Rebellion but might hurt Miraji.

‘The Sultan is going after Saramotai.’ I reached into my shirt and pulled out the map of the supply route. The drawing of Noorsham’s armour was wrapped around my upper arm. ‘Five hundred men are to leave Izman in three days, marching on the city through Iliaz.’ Sam stayed quiet as I pulled confidential information out of my clothes. Which was commendable, really. ‘There are too many to stop. Izz or Maz can get there ahead of the Sultan’s troops with a warning easily and evacuate everyone.’

‘Evacuate them where?’ Sam said.

‘I don’t know.’ I finally pulled the map of Izman out from the waistband of my trousers and leaned back, sprawling my aching legs across the bed of pillows so that they tangled with the hem of his borrowed khalat. ‘But it’s either get them out or someone talks Ahmed into letting Delila try to make a whole city disappear long enough to baffle the Sultan’s troops. Tell Shazad. She’ll know what to do.’

‘Seems like you already know what to do.’

I shrugged. I’d spent the last half a year listening to Shazad and Ahmed strategise. I’d picked up a few things. ‘There’s more.’ I laid out the movements of other soldiers for Sam, struggling to remember all the details from the war council. There were more travelling south into the territory that Ahmed had claimed. Sensing a weakness. But it was a diversion; Saramotai was the only city they were going to take back for now.

‘When the troops start to leave the city, it won’t be so swarming with soldiers any more,’ I pointed out. ‘Shazad said half the Rebellion was short on things to do; well, this is a good chance to change that. Supply routes to the army, and I don’t know what this one is marking’ – I pointed out the red dots – ‘but seems worth looking into.’ I handed him the stack of papers and gave him as much as I could remember from the war council, each a precarious building block towards peace in Miraji that we could dismantle, that we could seize and use as a weapon in the Rebellion. And I tried to shake the feeling that I was a traitor to my whole country with every word I spoke.





Chapter 26

Now that I could leave the harem, I spent as little time as I could there. The palace could’ve been a barren wasteland to rival the Last County and I wouldn’t have cared, so long as it was free of Kadir and Ayet and the rest of the gaggle of wives.

I was required a few hours every day at the Sultan’s meetings. He met with each of the foreign delegations separately. The Albish ambassador was an ancient man with pale age-spotted hands that shook so hard he couldn’t hold a pen. I overheard him tell his scribe that I reminded him of his granddaughter. He didn’t lie as viciously as the Gallan but he didn’t come ready to hand over the truth, either. He might wear a kinder face but he wanted something from us, same as the Gallan did. The Xichian didn’t have an ambassador. They sent a general who eyed me with distrust with every word I spoke.

I sat behind the Sultan in each meeting, to his right, where he could catch my eye when someone was talking and know the truth of it. I kept the men negotiating the terms of the ceasefire honest. And I learned as much as I could while I was at it. I learned where the foreign troops were stationed along our borders. I learned who the Sultan trusted and what he knew about the Rebellion. His son Rahim, Leyla’s brother, attended every single meeting. He scarcely spoke unless his father asked him something directly. A few times I caught him watching me.

After a few meetings I learned that I couldn’t avoid Kadir entirely outside of the harem. Every so often, he would turn up at negotiations, too, forcing a place for himself at the table. Unlike his brother, he offered opinions his father didn’t ask for. Once I caught one of the ministers rolling his eyes as Kadir spoke.