Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(46)

I tried to remember how long it took for Nightmare venom to get through the whole body. A night? A day? Less?

Parviz scraped his knuckles across his beard. “We’re wasting sunlight.”

He was right. I moved to put my weight below Jin’s shoulder, to lug him to his feet. “Help me get him to a camel.”

Parviz frowned, like I might be simple. I supposed he thought I was, since I wasn’t a man any longer. “He’s as good as dead. The dead are just more weight.”

“Jin’s not dead yet.” I couldn’t help but feel they’d help me if they still thought I was a boy. “And everyone here would be if it weren’t for him.”

“And we’ll all drink to him in gratitude when we get to safety.” Parviz didn’t waver. “But until then we are mighty low on water, and it’s a waste of it to try to help a boy who isn’t going to live to see another dawn. You can stay with him and die, too, or you can come with us. You’d best decide quick, though.”

He was right. Jin was as good as dead anyway. And I’d sworn I wasn’t going to die in this desert, not on anyone’s account. I’d told Jin once that he wasn’t worth dying for. Not when I was so close to Izman.

It would be so easy.

No. It was Jin. It would be impossible. I’d been dreading Dassama because I didn’t want to take a separate path. I wanted to stay with Jin more than I wanted Izman. I liked what life felt like with him in the desert. Like we were equals. Like we fit together. Too tangled to pull apart so easily.

I thought of the ruins of Dassama. If Jin died there’d be no one to take news of what the Gallan were doing to his people. The desert didn’t give mercy and it didn’t deserve any. It left the weak for dead if it didn’t outright kill them.

But not Jin, who belonged to some other country. Who didn’t belong to this desert at all—at least not enough to die with it. Or whatever stupid thing he was trying to do. Who didn’t deserve to get left behind by a desert girl for her own life.

Like Tamid had. Like Noorsham.

“You can go to civilization or go to hell, for all I care.” And it felt like the sand was stretching around my feet until that was all there was in the world, until Izman crept farther and farther away. “I’m not leaving him for dead.”





sixteen


I pulled the knife out of Jin’s belt. There was mercy and then there was a coward’s escape, and the cowards had walked on. I pressed the knife against the wound and black venom oozed out across the blade. I wiped it on my shirt before laying it back against his skin. I did it again and again until my neck burned from the sun and more blood oozed out than black.

“Jin!” I slapped him hard across the face. His eyes squeezed shut tighter, so I hit him again. This time his eyes opened. “Jin!” I grabbed both his shoulders. “Don’t you dare fall back asleep.”

His eyes cracked open just far enough to see me. “Where . . .” he started weakly.

“They walked on.” I sat back. We needed to follow the Camel’s Knees’ tracks to civilization. Find help. Some medicine.

“And you’re still here?” Jin squinted at me, then started to laugh halfheartedly. “Either I’m dreaming or I’m dead.”

I had to keep him talking. “Dream about me often?”

“Dreams. Nightmares. Not sure.” Jin’s hand reached up like he wanted to check if I really was an illusion. I grabbed it as it grazed my jaw and swung it round my shoulder.

“Come on, dream yourself to your feet.” I braced my shoulder under his arm and heaved him up.

Jin said something to me in Xichian and then laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Oh, well—he might not be lucid, but he was upright. And when I put one foot in front of the other, he followed.

We’d been walking for a little while when the babbling started. Words in other languages. Names I didn’t know. One I did. Sakhr. Our old joke churned out by his mind made sick with the venom. I tried to convince him not to talk, but he was too far gone in some delusion. And so long as I kept him walking, I didn’t have it in me to worry about anything else.

The sun was straight above us when I realized we weren’t following the caravan’s tracks in the sand anymore. I spun around, confused. Had we gotten off course? Had they blown away already? The sun had risen to our right this morning. I wasn’t sure if we were still headed north—or anywhere at all.

“We’re lost.”

Jin was sitting with his head between his knees. He struggled to pull something that glinted in the sun from his pocket. The broken compass.

“Here.” He pressed the compass into my hand. “We’re not lost.”

He was delirious if he thought a faulty compass would do us any good. Something inside me was cracking. At this rate, we were both going to die. In the desert, lost meant dead. If the things in the dark didn’t get you, the sun did.

“Jin.” I dropped down next to him, trying to keep him awake. “Jin, this compass doesn’t point north. If we follow it, where is it going to take us?”

I could tell Jin was struggling to stay lucid, his body fighting against the Nightmare venom. “To help. We’re not far.”

“Not far from what?” I pushed. But Jin’s only answer was something in Xichian I didn’t understand. He was done making sense. I sagged onto the sand, holding the compass. The arrow pointed straight west now. Into the Dev’s Valley. In the haze of the desert heat I could see the place the sand ended: a sheer drop down a cliff face. What the hell; it didn’t matter what direction we died in.