Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(77)

‘Naguib said he’d left you to bleed out in Dustwalk. I thought you were dead, Tamid.’ The words I’d comforted myself with for months since that day sounded like a poor excuse now he was standing in front of me in the flesh.

‘So did I.’ His right hand was a fist against his thigh now. ‘I thought I was dead while I writhed in agony and when I got here and the Holy Father said it was infected. That it would have to come off. You weren’t here when they sawed off my leg, Amani. But now you are. Let me guess: you want my help. You want me to tell you which little metal bump under your skin is the one you need to cut out to escape.’ My fingers pressed so hard against the metal on my arm I wondered if it would bruise. Tamid knew me well enough to read my silence.

He pushed himself off the edge of the table. I pretended not to notice the slight wince as his freshly oiled leg hit the ground, or the way he steadied himself for a fraction of a heartbeat before he started to work his way around the small space, tidying up even though it was already spotless. Straightening bottles so the labels all faced out in a perfect line, making them clink with every twist. He slammed a door shut that led towards a small side chamber, where I could see a bed. ‘You’re predictable as anything. You know, back in Dustwalk, you always figured I didn’t sleep all that well. But that wasn’t true. It was just that, if I knew you’d gotten a beating, I’d lie awake waiting for you to crawl through my window asking for something.’

I hadn’t known that. I swallowed the tears that were welling up in my throat. ‘I don’t believe you hate me as much as you want me to think you do.’

‘How do you figure?’ Leyla had left her tools behind, and he started lining those up. He sounded disinterested.

‘Because if you really hated me, you’d have turned me over to the Sultan as a rebel by now.’ I saw the truth of it as soon as I said it. ‘Instead, you pretended not to know me the day I got here. You’ve been helping the Sultan a whole lot of other ways.’ This truth came out like an accusation. It was easier to accuse him as a rebel against an enemy than as a girl against an old friend. ‘You gave him the knowledge he needed to control Noorsham and to control me. And enough first language to capture a Djinni. But you didn’t give me up.’ I saw him wince at the mention of the Djinni. I seized on it. He might not care enough about me any more to help, but I knew Tamid. If you cut him he’d bleed holy words. ‘He’s going to be able to kill a whole lot more people with a Djinni on his side, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘And that’s all right with you, is it?’

‘Do you mean because it’s unholy, or because of how I feel—’ Just for a second his fingers slipped, sending a small circular instrument skidding off the table and to the ground. ‘Because of how I felt, about you?’

How did you feel about me? But that wasn’t a fair question when I already knew the answer. I saw it now, written all over him.

‘He’s our Sultan, Amani. Our job is to obey, not to question.’

‘You don’t believe that.’ A simple truth slipping out. I retrieved the metal tube off the floor and handed it back to him. ‘Not you who went to prayers every single day. You don’t believe keeping a Djinni prisoner is the right thing.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. I’ve scoured the books in the Sultan’s library and I couldn’t find the words to release a Djinni, only to bind one—’ He caught himself, looking at me straight on now. He ignored the metal tube I still had in my hand, refusing even that peace offering.

‘You only know the words to bind them, not to release them?’ I imagined my father trapped under the palace forever as we mortals did what we did best: died, and then forgot about him, trapping him there for all eternity.

‘What do you care?’ Tamid asked.

‘Turns out I’m in the business of saving lives now.’

‘Well, it’s a shame that wasn’t your line of employment ten months ago when you left me to die.’

‘They did this to you, Tamid.’ I held my ground. ‘Not me.’

‘Yes, they did,’ he said. ‘But it was you who left me behind.’

I didn’t have anything I could say to that.

Tamid tilted his head further away from me. On most men I knew, the dark hair would’ve fallen in front of his eyes, hiding them from me. But Tamid’s hair was always perfectly combed against his head. ‘What do I have to say to make you leave, Amani?’

That was all he needed to say.





Chapter 30

I leaned against a pillar in the courtyard at the bottom of the steps. Back on steady ground, pressing my hands back into the marble hard. I forced my tears to dry. I forced myself to remember I was a desert girl. I didn’t have water to spare. And this wasn’t any kind of place to show weakness. The palace was as dangerous as the desert at night.

Rahim had told me to wait for him. I wasn’t meant to be without a guard. I didn’t know how long his talk with Leyla would take. But, while it was awful tempting to go snooping around, I couldn’t risk getting caught unaccompanied. It would blow Rahim’s cover, too. And I doubted the Sultan would forgive me a second time after I’d gone to see Bahadur. As soon as that thought shot across my mind I wondered what it was doing there. It shouldn’t matter; I’d never minded getting into trouble before. It was because my head might wind up on the chopping block, I told myself. It was because losing his trust would mean losing access to the information we needed.