Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(76)

The Sultan considered me before nodding, letting me and Rahim drag back behind the rest.

‘There’s a—’ Prisoner wouldn’t get past my tongue. ‘A boy. From the Last County. He only has one leg.’

‘I know him.’

‘Can you get me to him?’ I pressed.

‘Do you want to tell me what you need with him badly enough to risk going places my father doesn’t want you?’

‘Do you want to tell me why your sister so desperately needs to be saved from the harem?’

Rahim scratched the edge of his mouth, hiding a smile. ‘This way.’

*

I started to recognize this part of the palace as we came to the foot of a long winding staircase. My first day in the palace, I’d clambered down this, body aching with fresh wounds, fighting legs that couldn’t help but obey the Sultan’s order to follow him.

I heard voices as we got closer to the top. I recognized Tamid’s instantly. It was a voice that went with laughing ourselves stupid after we’d been sent out of the schoolroom for misbehaving. With nights falling asleep while he read me the Holy Books after my mother died. The other was soft and female. A part of me wanted to turn back. To avoid sticking my fingers in this wound. But Sam had been talking sense for once. I had no right to be a coward in this rebellion.

I pushed the door open.

Two startled heads looked up at me. Tamid was sitting on the edge of the same table I’d woken up on. The sight of him was so heartbreakingly familiar that for a moment I wanted to rush to him and pour everything out. His left trouser leg was rolled up to his knee. Or where there ought to have been a knee.

Instead there was a bronze disc hiding the place where his leg ended. It was secured to the scarred skin with a leather strap. There was nothing attached to it. The rest of Tamid’s leg – the hollow, polished bronze – was in Leyla’s hands, as she sat across from him. She gaped at me and Rahim with wide eyes, mouth moving open and shut in silent panic.

Well. I hadn’t been expecting that. I didn’t think Rahim had, either.

‘Don’t tell Father!’ she blurted out finally. It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Though the fact that she was suddenly flushed from neck to chin wasn’t doing her any favours, either. ‘I was just here to make sure it wasn’t …’ She trailed off.

‘Squeaking,’ Tamid filled in even as Leyla made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a squeak herself. ‘The joints were squeaking. Leyla came to tune my leg up. Seeing as she built it and all.’

‘I bet she did.’ Rahim eyed Tamid in that way that fathers and brothers eyed boys who looked at their daughters and sisters wrong. So this was the secret Leyla was keeping, which Shira wanted so bad. Shira thought she was sneaking off to plot against her with her brother, but she was just an infatuated girl leaving the harem to see a boy.

It might’ve been funny if I wasn’t certain that Shira could use this, too. More than once I’d gotten a beating for sneaking off to see Tamid. And I wasn’t a princess. And I hadn’t been in love with him. Was this why Rahim was so desperate to get Leyla out of the palace? Would she get punished for this as much as Tamid would? But there was something else passing between the siblings, skipping straight over Tamid. ‘You designed that, Leyla?’ Rahim gestured at the articulated bronze limb in her hands.

She nodded nervously. ‘I thought – it might be useful.’ So she didn’t just make toys for children in the harem. That was impressive, I had to admit.

But Rahim was angry in a way I didn’t wholly understand. ‘Come on, Leyla, I’ll walk you back to the harem. There are some things we need to discuss anyway.’ Good, it was long past time to tell Leyla about the plan for Auranzeb. The holiday was only a handful of days away now and she needed to know we were getting her out of there.

What followed was the longest, most awkward minute of my life as Leyla reattached Tamid’s leg. Everybody was trying their hardest not to look at anyone else. The sound of mechanisms clicking together punctuated the silence as Leyla worked. When she was finally, mercifully done, Rahim practically dragged her out of the room, remembering me at the last second. ‘Amani, I’ll come back and get you.’

Tamid and I didn’t speak as Leyla followed her brother out. The awkwardness stretched between us long after their footsteps had faded.

‘I’d love to be able to storm away, but, you know.’ Tamid tapped on his leg, below the knee. A hollow sound reverberated back. I winced. ‘It seems like you ought to be the one to leave. Out of respect.’

‘Tamid—’

‘Do you want to know how I lost my leg, Amani?’ Tamid cut me off.

‘I know how.’ I remembered that last dark night in Dustwalk clearer than any of the hazy days that came before.

‘No.’ Tamid slammed his hand down against the table underneath him. I might’ve flinched if I wasn’t so used to the sound of gunfire aimed at me. ‘You don’t. You saw Naguib shoot me and then you left. You weren’t there while I lay screaming in the sand. You weren’t there when Shira started striking bargains, saying she could help find you. That she knew you better than almost anyone, that she knew where you’d go. Better than almost anyone.’ His hands shook as he clenched them into fists. ‘You didn’t see them tear me away from my mother to take me with them, too, on the off chance I might be useful. You weren’t with me on that train that rattled its way to Izman.’ I had been on that train. I’d seen Shira on that train. I’d kissed Jin on that train. Not ever imagining Tamid might be on board, too.