Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(37)
fourteen
I could see the mountains from Fahali, like ragged teeth in the afternoon haze. Amonpour was across those mountains, on the other side of the Dev’s Valley. And the border meant soldiers. We were stopped at the gates by the city guard, bored-looking Mirajin men in pale yellow, who flipped through our saddlebags lazily, chatting to Parviz as they did. Most of the caravan sank down to sit in the sand, leaning just inside the city walls while the bags were searched.
We’d walked with barely any rest since Dassama, only stopping in the darkest hours of the night when continuing might as well mean death by ghoul instead of by thirst. I remembered what Jin had said our first night in the desert: the desert didn’t let weakness live.
And we were still alive. We were Mirajin and we survived. Even as my legs gave out below me, I’d never been prouder to be a desert girl, among the Camel’s Knees.
A coin danced across Yasmin’s knuckles absently, catching the sunlight. Worry danced across her face quicker than the sunlight off the coin and vanished just as fast. Her palm tightened around the half-louzi piece. Parviz’s eyes veered away once too often as the guard rummaged through his belongings, his back too stiff. My hand drifted to my gun without really being sure what I was afraid of.
I looked around for Jin. I spotted him a good twenty paces away, pulling his hat low as he headed away from the caravan. My tiredness and my stiff legs forgotten, I pulled myself to my feet and dashed to catch up to him.
“Hey!” I shoved him in the shoulder, closing the distance a moment before he would’ve disappeared around a corner. In one movement, his hand was on my wrist, halfway to reaching for his gun before he realized it was me. He was jumpier than a barefoot beggar on hot sand.
“You ought to know better than to sneak up on a man like that, Bandit.” He dropped my arm, trying for lightness. I didn’t rise to the bait.
“And you ought to know better than to think you can sneak away from me.” We were far enough from the Camel’s Knees to not be overheard, but I kept my voice low all the same. “You’re hiding something.”
Jin laughed, though not like it was actually funny. Like he didn’t even know where to start. When he pushed his hand through his hair his sheema fell back. I was seeing him unobstructed, in the light of day, for the first time in weeks. “There are a lot of things you don’t know, Amani.”
That was probably true. Jin didn’t tell me much. There were just the moments when the walls he kept around himself cracked and I saw a hint of something through them, when he slipped and mentioned a brother, or a dead mother, but he closed those up fast enough.
“So what don’t I know about Dassama?” The memory of the scorched sand hung between us uneasily, ending any attempt at a joke he might’ve tried to make. We’d both seen a whole city gone up in flames. And he’d barely said a handful of words to me since then. Like he was avoiding me.
“Amani—” He reached for me, his hand dropping away just in time to hide a gesture that didn’t seem to belong to a brother in view of the caravan. I glanced behind me. They were still being searched at the gate. Colorful scarves unraveled in one of the guards’ arms, making Isra scold him as she snatched them back off the ground.
“You don’t have to carry on through the desert from here if you don’t want to.” My full attention came back to Jin. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. He was watching me close, gauging my reaction.
“How do you reckon?” I asked warily.
“There’s a train. It runs from an outpost a few hours’ walk outside Fahali. It goes straight to Izman. You could be drinking arak in the shade of the palace walls in fewer days than I have fingers, if you wanted.”
A train. Like the one he’d pulled me off all those weeks ago on the other side of the desert. A straight shot to the capital, after sixteen years of aiming for it, and he was offering it to me. And I’d never see Jin again. That was what he was really offering me: a way out of this. To turn my back on Dassama and what he knew and walk away to the life I’d always wanted. Or always figured I did.
“And if that’s not what I want?” I had traitor eyes and there was no way he could mistake my meaning.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t tell whether it was relief or resignation. When he inhaled I could see the Xichian sun over his heart rise just above the horizon of his shirt collar. “I told you in Sazi that the Sultan was building weapons for the Gallan. But it wasn’t just guns.”
“What do you mean?” The factory outside of Dustwalk had made nothing but guns my whole life. Jin’s jaw worked, like he was testing the words. I’d watched him cross paths with death and dodge it with a wry tilt of the hat a half dozen times now. This was something different. This was something more than just him in trouble.
“There were rumors of another weapon,” he said finally. “Something they were making far down in the south. A bomb that could level whole cities like the hand of God itself. Whole countries even.”
Whole countries like his. He’d told me other things about the Gallan: That they were building an empire at the borders of countries around them as their magic faded. A weapon like the one that had destroyed Dassama would let them swallow other countries whole.
“We thought it might just be something being spread to scare folks,” Jin went on. “But in the end better safe than dead.” He let out a long exhale, but my own breathing was feeling shallow. “So I was sent down to the end of civilization to see what I could find. And lo and behold there’s a monster of a weapons factory. I figured even if there was no great leveler of civilizations, this was something. Something that might be able to cripple the Gallan for a little while, stem their supply of guns to their armies overseas. When I blew it up I thought any great weapon that could slaughter cities would go up with it. Judging by the burnt Oasis, Naguib got it out first. If the Sultan’s made a weapon like this for the Gallan, they won’t need a single bullet to bring the whole world to its knees.”