Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(39)

“You’re a real charmer, anyone ever tell you that?”

“They have, actually, but usually they say it without rolling their eyes.”

We leaned back in silence. A line of laundry drifted lazily above us in the afternoon heat as I took stock of the situation. We were stuck in a city with the Gallan, their great destroyer of cities, and Naguib, and now the caravan was gone. “We need to get out of here,” I said.

“And what about everyone else, Bandit?” Every time he called me that it made something inside me pull toward him that I couldn’t quite shake. “Planning to leave them all behind?”

I wasn’t planning on leaving you behind. “I’m not planning anything,” I said instead. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.” But now that I did think about it, Jin was right. I knew what most of the Camel’s Knees would do if they were me. This was the desert. You took care of yourself and your own. The rest got left in the sand to die. Like Tamid.

“There’s a train straight to Izman tomorrow,” Jin said. “That’s about as far ahead as you need to think.”

“So come with me.” The words were out too quick. “You’re not going to find the bomb here without getting yourself killed. You’ve got to know that. And if we stay much longer, both of us are going to wind up dead.”

Something between us seemed to still. I watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders as he took a deep breath. Then a second one. A third. “All right.”

“All right?” I’d been ready to argue and drag him out of here. But all the fight had gone out of him with those two words. “That’s it? You’re not going to smart-talk your way around me?”

“All right,” Jin repeated. He spread his hands wide like he was surrendering, though the grim set of his mouth made it seem like he’d rather do anything but. “You’re right. So what do you suggest we do?”

I was feeling bolder than I ever had. “We could just keep running, Jin. If we had to.”

“You mean if I wanted to.” His eyes searched mine, and for one second they looked as dark and focused as they had in the few moments after he’d kissed me on the train. My eyes were probably as wild as that second, too. The last time we’d really stood this close. On the edge of living or dying. Of wanting and needing.

“Tell me we couldn’t do it.” Jin interrupted my thoughts. “Tell me that the two of us together, we couldn’t get every one of the Camel’s Knees out of the city alive if we really tried. Hell, tell me you couldn’t do it on your own if you set your stubborn head to it.” A small smile was creeping back. “Tell me that and we’ll walk away. Right now. Go and save ourselves and leave them to die. All you’ve got to do is say the word. Tell me that that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand to the sea. Just say it.”

My story.

I’d spent my life dreaming of my own story that could start when I finally reached Izman. A story written in far-off places I didn’t know how to dream about yet. And on my way there, I’d slough off the desert until there was nothing left of it to mark the pages.

Only Jin was right. I was a desert girl. Even in Izman I would still be the same Blue-Eyed Bandit with a hanged mother, who left her friend dying.

He didn’t need me to answer, not really. I gave myself away too easily. Or maybe he just knew me too well. “Any ideas, Bandit?”

And that easily we were a team again.

I tilted my head back. Between two windows, laundry drifted lazily in the hot desert wind. “Some.”

? ? ?

I WAS DRESSED as a girl for the first time since I’d left Dustwalk. The plain blue khalat we’d stolen off a clothesline was too tight around my arms with my boy’s clothes on underneath.

“I’d almost forgotten you were a girl under there.” Jin looked me over, hands hooked above his head. He still looked rumpled from sleep. Exhaustion had gotten the better of us while we waited for the cover of dark, and we’d both fallen asleep slumped inside an alleyway narrow enough to hide us. I’d woken with a stiff spine and Jin’s arm slung across me like he was trying to keep me from running out on him in his sleep again. But there was no chance of that. I was done leaving people behind.

“Did you want to be the girl?” I asked, readjusting the red sheema I’d wrapped around my waist like a sash.

“You make a prettier girl than I do.” He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

The plan was simple. I was going to walk into the city barracks and walk back out with information on where the prison was. The city barracks housed the Mirajin guard most of the time, but it seemed like half of them were camping in tents while the Gallan army housed their soldiers. Once we knew where they were we’d be able to work on getting the Camel’s Knees out. If anyone questioned me I was to say I was there to get water, just like the stream of women going in and out all day.

As it turned out, rumors were running freer than the pumps in Fahali. The Camel’s Knees weren’t the only caravan to turn up lips cracked and gasping out news of Dassama. The city’s supplies were stretched thin under the weight of the extra people, caravans and soldiers alike. Water was being rationed, and half the wells and pumps were closed. But not the one in the barracks.