فصل 23

twenty-three

For the longest moment of my life, there was nothing but air between my fingers.

Then my hand clamped over Shazad’s wrist. Relief engulfed me as her other arm swung up and her fingers latched onto my arm, like some greater force was drawing us together.

One of Shazad’s feet caught on the narrow ledge, just enough for me to keep hold of her. Her weight battled between my grip and gravity as she tried to pull herself out of the dangerous backward lean that could turn into a fall if either of us loosened our grip.

My fingers shook with the will to not let go. She was shouting something that the wind carried away. “I can’t hear you!” I screamed back.

“More of you?” There was another voice on the air, like something spiraling out of a dark dream. I’d forgotten about the open door and the uniforms behind it, my back exposed to them so they could put a knife through it any second. “We’re practically invaded.”

I knew this voice. Sharp and northern and threatening to put a bullet straight through Tamid’s leg, holding me at gunpoint, speaking to the Gallan general in Fahali.

Commander Naguib’s laugh swirled on the wind.

My eyes locked with Shazad’s. I couldn’t look away, not even a little bit, not without letting her slip. The rails rushed by below her scrabbling feet, her sheema loose and whipping violently in the air. My arm trembled, trying to pull her back to standing.

But Shazad could see everything. She could see behind me straight into the carriage. She just didn’t have the gun.

“Someone drag them in,” Naguib ordered lazily.

Shazad’s eyes went to the gun on my hip and then over my shoulder. I knew exactly what she wanted me to do. I could pull my gun, swing around, and put a bullet straight into Naguib’s head.

Only I couldn’t do it without dropping her.

Let me go. Her lips shaped the words into the air.

She was willing to kill and die for this cause. Because if Commander Naguib didn’t die, we were all dead. From somewhere deep inside me I saw Tamid’s face. I wasn’t that girl anymore, the one who left people.

My hand tightened on her wrist.

Arms grabbed my waist, dragging me backward, carrying Shazad with me as we were pulled into the safety of the carriage. Well, safety wasn’t exactly the word.

Hands searched me for weapons. I pressed my forehead into the carpet, panting while they scoured my body. My legs were shaking so badly, I couldn’t have stood or fought anyway. It took Shazad’s hand on my elbow to help me up.

We were in one of the luxury private carriages. It was filled with neat uniforms and our own battered rebels. I counted about two dozen soldiers.

Two of them were holding Jin. He was on his knees and he looked like he was struggling not to slump onto the floor. But he gave me a weak, rueful smile, which I tried to return.

Hala had a gun to the back of her head, arms tied behind her. At first I didn’t see Bahi, and for one stupid second I hoped he had been smart enough to get off the train. Then I recognized him, shirt red at the collar from the blood gushing out of his nose. He barely looked like himself.

And standing by the polished wooden bar like the host of some demented party was Naguib. “Well, this is a sorry little mission.” His attention skimmed over me, then veered back. “And if it isn’t the blue-eyed bitch. Not allied with the traitor, you said?”

“Circumstances have changed.” I picked words Shazad would say, nice and sharp and clean, because if I used my own they might get me shot. “Nothing quite like a gun to the head to make you join the other side, Commander.”

“I’m sure.” Naguib stepped away from the bar in that unnatural nervous gait. “And I’m sure my brother here was very persuasive.” His foot lashed out into Jin’s ribs on the last word, doubling him over onto the thick red carpet. I didn’t react. I wouldn’t give Naguib the satisfaction.

“You know”—he straightened his cuffs—“you might as well tell me where my other would-be usurper of a brother is now and spare yourself a lot of misery. After all, I have seven of you, and I only need one of you to talk. In fact, I only need one of you alive at all.” He touched the pistol at his hip.

“You’re obviously a very poor gambler,” Shazad said. I reckoned it was her accent that made Naguib finally notice her.

“Shazad Al’Hamad?”

Shazad batted her eyes at him like we really were guests at a party. “You’ll forgive me, have we met?”

His expression curdled. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect the great general’s only daughter to notice one of the Sultan’s many sons. Though many of us noticed you.”

“I noticed the sons that mattered,” Shazad replied coolly.

I watched the words slice through Naguib the commander, hitting the boy underneath. “Your father will hang for this, you realize. Which is fine with me, since my father has promised that I will be general when he’s gone.” Naguib reached for Shazad’s face. “All thanks to you. But I think I’ll deal with you—”

“If you hurt her you will burn in hell.” Bahi’s voice was thick from the blood clotting his nose. “If you don’t believe me, the Demdji will tell you.” I realized he meant me. “She can’t tell a lie.” Naguib’s gaze went to me, finally seeming to take in my strange eyes.

“It’s true.” I spoke without hesitation. Bahi had warned me not to do it. Not to bend the universe by making truths. But now he was asking me to. For Shazad. To keep her alive and safe. “Touch her and you’ll die screaming.” The second the words fell out of my mouth, they were true. With Bahi’s warning, I’d thought it would feel different. That power would surge out of me as I felt my words rearrange the universe to make Shazad safe. But that was the danger. They were just words. They slipped out easily. Like any other words. “Begging for your life.”

Naguib’s fingers stopped just short of Shazad’s chin. Wary at whatever game we were playing.

Bahi caught my eye. “Lying is a sin, after all.” Jin snorted.

A laugh burst from my lips, even with the gun to my neck.

“What would you know about sins?” A hollow voice spoke from a corner, cutting off my laughter and sending a slow cold finger down my spine. I squinted into the dark, where all I’d seen was piles of weapons and helmets.

Then one of the old-fashioned suits of armor moved.

The man was made of pure metal. Bronze chain mail hands rippled when his fingers flexed, bronze joints clicked when he walked. Even his face was a smooth mask of copper that caught the sun that blazed through the train windows.

I didn’t like the way the soldiers gave him room, as if they were scared of him.

“Sit up straight, preacher boy.” The metal lips didn’t move when the man talked, but a hollow voice echoed inside the mask, tainted with an accent that sounded an awful lot like he was from the Last County. Bahi struggled to raise his bloody face until two guards forced him up against the wall, slumped and barely standing.

The bronze man reached out and took Bahi’s hands, one of them tattooed, the other blank. The metal man tilted his head like a curious bird. As he did, I saw the sliver of skin at his neck. Not a metal man, then. A man dressed in metal.

“Noorsham,” Naguib said, on the edge of giving an order.

Noorsham. And then I was standing back in Fahali. In the prayer-house-turned-prison. A boy with a slightly uneven smile chained up to a wall. I’m special, he’d told me.

Through the slits in the copper, all I could see was blue. Blue like the desert sky, like the oasis water. Blue like my own eyes.

“You are a traitor.” Noorsham’s voice was distant as he turned his burning blue gaze back on Bahi. So far removed from the desperate hopeful tone when he’d helped me. I strained against the soldier who held me. “Traitors should be returned to the arms of God. For judgment.”

He raised one bronze hand and rested it flat against Bahi’s forehead like he was blessing him.

Bahi smiled through bloody, swollen lips. “Sorry to disappoint. I think I’ve strayed too far to find my way—” And then he was screaming.

Shazad cried out his name.

Before I could move, heat rolled across the carriage in a violent, suffocating wave as I watched the hand against Bahi’s forehead turn as bright as an ember. Bahi’s skin sizzled and blackened as we all cried out.

The hold on my arms broke. I was two steps to Bahi before the heat was too much. I fell to my knees, gasping.

Bahi’s skin turned black and then white. I watched helpless as he turned from a boy into ash.

We’d found our weapon.