Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(23)

She held the coin up to the faint light before tossing it back on the table. “This isn’t real money.”

I picked it up. Sure enough, the round piece of metal was about the same size as a louzi, but it was too thin, and printed with a sun instead of the profile of the Sultan.

“My mistake.” Jin kept his head low, so the brim of his hat hid his foreign features, as he gave her a new coin. The girl bit it before sauntering back to the bar.

Jin propped his elbows on the table and filled my glass back up to the brim. He was favoring the shoulder he hadn’t taken a bullet to. I watched the strain across his back, his shirt pulling so I could see the tattoo of the sun rising over his collar. I glanced down to the coin in my palm, the same image staring up at me.

“What’s the sun?” I asked.

“That might be a bit of an existential question four drinks in,” Jin said, putting the bottle down, his shirt shifting again to eclipse the tattoo.

“Three drinks. And I meant that one.” I reached across the table and tugged his collar down so I could see the tattoo on his chest. My knuckles grazed his heartbeat. I let go quickly, realizing I was too close to start undressing him.

“It’s a symbol for luck,” Jin said. He pulled his collar back up, but I could still see the edge of the ink over his heart.

“It’s on your foreign coin.” He raised his eyebrows at the accusation in my tone. But I figured he knew what I meant. The sun was printed on what I figured was a Xichian coin, which meant it was a national symbol. Jin might have been born here, but he’d told me he was raised in Xicha. It seemed awfully patriotic for a mercenary to have his country’s sun tattooed over his heart.

“Why did you come back for me?” I leaned toward him, trying to unravel him. “You could’ve made a clean getaway.”

There was a tug at his mouth as he leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “I needed a fast horse.” He was so close I could smell the alcohol on him. So close he might’ve kissed me. He seemed to realize that at the same moment I did and pulled away. “Besides, I owe you. When you caught the Buraqi, it drew every person in the Last County away from that goddamn factory just long enough for me to get in and send it up. I’ve been trying to do that for weeks now. I was getting mighty low on money.”

So that was why he’d been in the pistol pit that night.

“And all of it just to blow up some factory in the dead end to nowhere?”

“The biggest weapons factory in the country. And by extension, the world.”

“The world?” I’d never known that. It didn’t seem possible.

“It’s not hard when you can’t build something half the size of it anywhere else without it getting torn down by First Beings.”

My head was feeling light from the alcohol, and in the dark of the bar I was struggling to put his words together. “What do you mean, torn down?”

Jin paused, drink halfway to his mouth. “Come on, desert girl. How long had it been since you’d seen a First Being before the Buraqi came into town? Magic and metal don’t mix well. We’re killing it. But it’s fighting back.” The Buraqi’s screams lit up my memories. “Most other countries can make anything on a small scale, including weapons. But a few tried to build factories just like yours hundreds of years ago. The living earth itself rebelled. There’s a valley in Xicha that’s called Fool’s Grave. It used to be a town. They’d built a cannery there. Legend says they were open about a month before the First Beings who lived in the earth had enough and tore apart the ground under the town and flooded the ruins. The same thing happened everywhere. So after a while folks stopped building factories. Except in Miraji. Your First Beings are the only ones who seem to put up with it.”

“And what makes us so special?”

Jin shrugged. “Maybe it’s because the desert’s magic already comes out of fire and smoke instead of growing, living things. Or because the earth here is already dead. But the fact is, your country is at the crossroads between the East, where guns were born, and the West, where they’re waging a war of empires. And it’s the only one in the world that can build weapons on a massive scale. This desert is valuable. Why do you think the Gallan are here?”

“So we’re just one giant weapons factory to them?” The notion was unsettling.

Jin poured himself another drink. “And there are a lot of countries who aren’t very pleased by your Sultan providing the Gallan with weapons to invade them if they got it into their heads to try.”

“So which one of those countries are you blowing up factories for?” I prodded the sun on his chest. The Xichian symbol.

Jin raised his glass in a mock toast. “Maybe I’m just a pacifist.”

I clinked my glass to his. “You have an awful lot of guns for a pacifist.”

The words were met by a wry turn of his mouth. “And you’re too smart for someone who doesn’t know nearly enough about her own country.”

We drank. As my empty glass hit the table, something crashed in the corner of the room. I jumped. A chair had knocked to the ground. Its owner, a man in a dirty green sheema, was on his feet, facing another man who was lounging back, both feet propped up, a game of cards spread out on the table. A pretty girl was between them, molding herself up against the standing man, whispering in his ear until he folded back into his chair. The sitar player started up again in his corner, and someone laughed high and clear, breaking the tension.