Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(29)

I was breathing like someone who’d never had enough air. Somewhere at the bottom of my lungs I found words again. “They’re not out of sight yet.”

Jin didn’t look at me. “No.” His arms were planted on either side of my head, against the rattling carriage wall. He bent toward me just a little, and my body tugged toward him. “They’re not.”

Someone slapped him on the back and the world careened back in. “How much is she charging, friend?” One bunk over someone laughed.

At the other end of the carriage, a head that might’ve belonged to a soldier turned at the sound. Jin grabbed my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

The door I’d come through was still open. I was about to tell him it was no good heading back that way, that we didn’t have anywhere to hide. Then his arms were around my waist.

I didn’t have time to say a thing before he jumped.





ten


For a sliver of an instant I was flying.

Then rails flashed in the edge of my vision, narrowly missing a chance to get better acquainted with my skull. My ribs and the ground weren’t so shy.

We hit the sand hard. Air burst out of my lungs. We rolled one over the other, Jin’s grip tight around me, the train screaming in my ears, drowning out everything I wanted to shout back. Finally we stopped in a bank of sand.

I shoved Jin off me, an ache spreading from my shoulder to my hips. He cursed, clutching his side, but I was ready to run as fast as the train until I caught up. I was on my feet just in time for night and black smoke to swallow the last of the gleaming metal carriages.

For one crazy second I thought about running behind and grabbing hold. Riding for days hooked onto the back of a train.

But the train was gone. Carrying hundreds of people away to Izman. Without me. And I felt something rupture inside. I wrapped my arms around my ribs to keep it in.

“You all right?” Jin was watching me, clutching his side. “Amani?”

The way he said my name on a long exhale set me off like a spark in a powder keg. I swung my fist, straight for his face.

Jin grabbed my wrist before my knuckles could get flirting distance from his nose. He pulled me into him, knocking me off balance.

“Here’s a tip for you.” He was close to me now, close as he had been when he kissed me, or when I kissed him. “Don’t try to hit a man in the face when he’s looking straight into your eyes. You’ve got traitor eyes, Bandit.”

I drove my other fist into his gut hard enough that my knuckles popped. Jin doubled over, coughing. “Thanks for the tip.” I wished victory didn’t feel so much like I’d sprained my hand.

“Any time.” He clutched his stomach where I’d hit him, but it looked like he was laughing. I had the wild urge to hit him again while he was down. Instead I drew my shirt up, pulling the gun out of where it was tied against my hip.

“We should start walking,” Jin said. “We’re probably less than a day out of Massil. We’ll have to follow the rails. We could be there before the sun gets too high if we start now.”

“What makes you think I’m going anywhere with you?” If it weren’t for his having an army on his tail, I’d still be on the way to Izman. Of course, if it weren’t for him I’d also still be in Dustwalk. But I wasn’t going to get into that just now. I shoved my gun back in my belt; no need to hide it here. Better for folks to know I was armed.

“You got a better plan?” Jin waved his arm at the empty desert like he was offering me a feast for fools. “Would you rather strike off across the desert and wind up food for buzzards than walk another day with me?”

He wasn’t wrong. It was open nothingness as far as the eye could see all around us. Except for the rails that ran like an iron scar through the sand. There were only two ways to go if I wanted to stay alive. Forward with him. Back to Juniper City.

I wasn’t going back.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I riffled my fingers through my hair, pulling it loose from where it was trapped under my sheema as I started to walk. “You’re not near worth dying over.”

? ? ?

WE WALKED IN silence as night crept its way across the sky. My anger kept me three steps ahead of Jin as we walked. But even that fire started to dim as the night wore on. I told myself over and over again there’d been another way. We could’ve stayed on the train. Found somewhere to hide. Something.

After a few hours of turning it over and over in my head, though, I couldn’t think of anything else that we could’ve done except jump.

It was hard to stay angry at someone who’d saved your life.

We’d been walking near all night when I noticed the other figure.

I thought it was a trick of the hazy gray predawn light. The uncertain times between day and night, where neither God nor the Destroyer of Worlds had true dominion, were the most dangerous. But no, down the rails, someone was walking toward us.

I dropped to the sand on instinct, flattening myself into the landscape. Jin was down next to me in a second without question. “What is it?” He had the sense to keep his voice low as he crawled up next to me on his elbows.

“Someone is coming.” I nodded ahead. All I could make out was a silhouette on foot, coming in our direction. It could just be a lone desert nomad, leaving Massil as we were going in. Or it could be that someone in the third-class carriage had told the soldiers they’d seen a girl dressed as a boy and a foreigner jump off the train.