Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(41)
“I know you,” I said. From the other side of the desert, in my uncle’s shop, when Jin hid below the counter and Commander Naguib stepped inside. This desert is full of sin. The smart-talking scrawny kid with eyes like mine who’d flanked his commander.
“And I know you.” He frowned as he dropped his hands, the manacles rattling over the sound of the girl’s praying. His sallow face twisted in thought before he hit on it. “You’re the girl from the shop.”
“So is this where smart-talking your commander lands you?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.
“No.” His accent seemed to get thicker from talking to me, and I heard my own dropping back into the Last County lilt. “I’m just special.”
“You’ve got a mighty fine opinion of yourself.” The girl’s praying got louder. “And what about her?”
“She’s special, too,” the soldier said.
I supposed they must’ve made Commander Naguib angier than most to warrant being locked away here instead of with the rest of the criminals. “And where would you two be if you weren’t special?” I asked.
The young soldier looked straight through me. “You wouldn’t be trying to find the prison, now would you?”
I ran my tongue over my dry lips nervously. I shouldn’t trust him. He was a soldier. But he was a prisoner, too. And that ought to mean we were on the same side. Or at least that we had the same enemy.
“If I helped you get out of here, would you tell me where it is?” I touched the manacles on his hands. His wrists felt feverish. I’d promised Jin I wouldn’t do anything stupid. But if we were getting the caravan out, we might as well get everyone else out, too. Jin could pick a lock. He’d told me that in the desert. One of those times he’d started to talk about something he’d learned along with his brother before cutting himself off.
“And where would I go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. We were both an awfully long way from home. “Wherever you wanted.”
A gunshot from outside made me jump. Then everything went quiet again. Everything but the girl’s praying.
“Amani.” My name in the young soldier’s mouth caught me off guard. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“How do you know that?”
“Your cousin talked about you a whole lot. The pretty one with the dark hair.” Shira, selling me out on the train. Who they must’ve brought along to find me and, through me, Jin.
“What happened to her?” I asked. She’d tried to get me killed. I shouldn’t care. “Is she alive?”
“She wasn’t as useful as she made herself out to be to the commander. Though maybe it was more that you weren’t where you ought to be. She got left with the Sultan in Izman.” The Sultan had once beaten a woman he’d loved to death. What’d happen to a girl who meant nothing to anyone in Izman?
“I’m Noorsham,” he said. “Since you didn’t ask and all.” And what would happen to this poor scrawny kid from the end of the desert with too smart a mouth to be a soldier?
Voices came from the other side of the door. The girl’s praying doubled. I stood up sharply.
“You ought to hide,” Noorsham said, his blue eyes locked on mine seriously.
Heart pounding, I rushed away from the lamplight. There was no light at the back of the huge prayer-house-turned-prison. I pressed myself into the shadows just as the door opened. Naguib and General Dumas entered. Jin had said he didn’t believe in fate until he met me, and I was starting to think he was right. The only thing between me and getting caught was a thin veil of darkness and Noorsham not selling me out.
But Naguib and General Dumas paid no mind to Noorsham. They stopped in front of the praying girl instead.
“This is her?” General Dumas’s Mirajin was cleaner than the soldier’s who’d arrested the Camel’s Knees, like it’d been worn smooth by years of practice. His eyes flicked to Noorsham, “And this one?”
“Just a soldier who cannot obey a simple order,” Naguib said. Even I knew disobeying a direct order meant execution in the army. If I didn’t get Noorsham out, he’d be dead at dawn.
“Disobedient soldiers are a failing of their commander,” General Dumas said. Naguib’s jaw twitched. “It means they do not respect you.” The general drew his gun. The girl’s head was still pressed to the ground. General Dumas grabbed her hair, yanking her up. Her prayer turned to a scream of pain.
“Please,” she begged. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Unlock her fetters,” the Gallan general ordered. Naguib bristled at the command, but the general either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Naguib did as he’d been told, turning the lock on the girl’s manacles.
The moment the manacles dropped away something happened to the girl. The features in her face started shifting. Her chin changed to a longer point, her nose flattened itself, her eyes pushed further back into her head before dropping again. She was frantically going from one face to another, like she was shuffling through a deck, trying to find the right card to play to save herself. Was she a Skinwalker? She sure as hell wasn’t human.
The general watched with disinterest before he finally pressed the gun to her forehead. Her shape-changing stopped instantly, and she was frozen as a girl with round cheeks and a high brow, her hair still wrapped painfully around the Gallan general’s fist.