Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(11)

“See,” Tamid went on, sounding more like my chiding friend again. “I bet you’re glad you listened to me about going to the pistol pit.” I screwed up my face. It was as good as admitting guilt. His expression dropped. “You didn’t.”

“Shut up, will you?” I looked at Hayfa, who seemed a little too interested in staring at Tamid’s crutch while pretending not to listen. “You want to get me hanged?”

When he sighed, I felt his disappointment. “So that’s why you look like an exhausted wreck this morning.”

“And folks say you’re not much of a charmer.” But I scrubbed a hand over my face all the same, like I might be able to rub away evidence of last night. “I could’ve won.” I leaned in close to Tamid so nobody would overhear. “If they’d played halfway fair.”

“Didn’t say you couldn’t, Amani.” He didn’t share my excitement. “I said you shouldn’t.”

It was an old argument. We used to have it back when my mother was still alive. When she used to talk about Izman. We stopped having it after she died. I didn’t bother telling Tamid I was still planning on going. Not until the night I overheard my uncle.

After scrambling away from where I had been crouched below the window, I headed straight for Tamid’s house. I’d climbed through his window like I’d done since I was old enough to be able to jump to the windowsill. And just like always Tamid greeted me, trying to look exasperated and failing. I told Tamid I was running out of time, that I needed to get out now or never. While I talked his expression turned less joking.

Tamid had never really understood my need to get out of Dustwalk. Of all folks in this godforsaken town, he should have.

That night he said the same thing he always did. No matter where we went, nothing could change what we were: a cripple and a girl. If we were worthless here, why would it be different anywhere else? I’d tried to tell him different. About the letters from Aunt Safiyah. About a better life. About bigger things than living and dying in this dead-end desert town. But for someone so filled with holy zeal, Tamid wasn’t really the blind faith sort. So I let him figure he’d converted me and didn’t tell him I was planning on strapping my chest down and making a run for it, one way or another. I wasn’t like him; I had to believe Izman was better than here, or there wasn’t much point living anywhere at all.

Now Hayfa cleared her throat. “It’s not my place and all, but you’re about to be late for prayers, sir.”

Tamid and I traded a look, both of us stifling our laughs like we were kids in a classroom again. “Lateness is a sin, you know,” Tamid said with mock sternness.

In school, Tamid and I were late all the time. We used to try to blame his leg, and our schoolteacher used to scold us that lateness was a sin. We might’ve been frightened, except he told us everything was a sin. Tamid had read the Holy Books three times over, and as far as he could find, neither lateness nor talking in lessons nor falling asleep in school was a sin.

Still, Tamid took the crutch back from Hayfa as she tried to usher him toward the prayer house and away from me.

“We’re not done talking about this,” Tamid called as I turned to walk in the opposite direction. I spun long enough to give him a mocking salute before I dashed across the scorching sand toward the shop.

I tossed open the iron grates on the storefront before kicking the door open to get as much sunlight inside as I could before going in. I checked around the bags of salt and shelves stacked with tinned things swimming in thick juices that made them last unnaturally long, watching for any shadow that might move. The doors and windows of the store were edged in iron, just like every house in the Last County, but that didn’t always stop things from crawling through in the dead of night. In the desert you learned to look out for ghouls in the shadows. Ghouls came in a thousand different forms. Tall faceless Skinwalkers, who’d eat a man’s flesh and take his shape so they could feast on his family, too. Small leathery Nightmares, who sunk their teeth into sleeping men’s chests and fed off their fear until the soul was sucked out.

Iron was the only thing that’d keep them out. It was the only thing that’d kill them, too. They hid from the sunlight, but the only thing that would really do the trick was a bullet to the skull or an iron knife through the ribs. Iron turned all immortal things mortal. Powerless. That was how the Destroyer of Worlds killed the first First Beings. And that was how humans, in turn, killed the Destroyer of Worlds’ ghouls.

There weren’t so many ghouls as there used to be. The last person to get killed by one round these parts was a decade ago. But every once in a while, one would crawl over some break in the iron and into the corner shadows of a house and get a bullet to the head for its troubles.

Once I was satisfied that the shop was as empty as a drunk’s bottle, I propped open the door to get whatever breeze there was before dumping out what was left of my money on the counter. It came to six fouza and three louzi, no matter how many times I counted it. That wasn’t enough to make it out of sight of Dustwalk, let alone to Izman. Even if I emptied the shop till and didn’t get caught I wouldn’t make it that far.

I needed a new plan. And I needed one soon.

The iron bell on the door rattled, giving me just enough warning to swipe up my pathetic collection of coins before Pama Al’Yamin came in, herding her three boys.