فصل 29

twenty-nine

A scream came instead of a gunshot.

I felt the cold metal of the gun leave my forehead. I grabbed the moment, flinging myself to one side in the sand. I ripped the sheema off my eyes as I moved. The sight that awaited me was horrifying and glorious all at once.

General Dumas was burning. Burning the way Bahi had. As he dropped to his knees I saw Noorsham behind him, one hand raised, like a Holy Father in the middle of a blessing. The Gallan soldiers turned their guns on him. Shots went off. Most bullets missed harmlessly, badly aimed in the frantic shooting. One or two hit his breastplate, leaving a dent but nothing more.

The Gallan soldier nearest me wasn’t rushing, though. He was taking his time, taking his aim. I could see the line of the shot. I could see it would be a clean hit.

His finger squeezed the trigger even as I whipped my hand up. The sand below his feet exploded, throwing him off balance. His cry drew Noorsham’s attention. A second later it turned to a scream of pain as the soldier burned.

One of the Gallan turned toward me, gun already halfway up. My hands moved on instinct, like they did with a gun. Like this was as familiar as the feeling of a trigger.

A body made out of sand surged up in answer. I twitched my fingers and its arms grabbed the soldier around the neck, yanking him down to the ground.

Another sand body formed itself and surged into the fight. A soldier fired, but the bullet passed harmlessly through its chest before the sand creature was on top of him, pulling the gun away. Then another sand creature, and another, until I had half a dozen of them clawing at the soldiers as Noorsham burned them one by one. I moved like a sandstorm, like I’d seen Shazad with a blade. Except the whole desert was my weapon, my feet spinning the sand moving with me. I dodged a blade and whipped my hand up, the sand scattering into the soldier’s face.

And then everything was quiet.

I looked around. In the chaos, I realized the fight had brought us into the walls of Fahali. The Gallan soldiers were gone. It was just me and Noorsham left. We were facing each other down an empty city street, cleared by the fight. Folks had retreated inside their homes. I saw a flash of movement in one of the windows. Someone watching us.

The sun glinted off his armor. There was a dent near his heart where my last bullet had hit him. It might leave a bruise.

With the rush of the sand gone, everything went too still, too quiet.

“What now?” Noorsham asked. The lilt of his words was Last County. Everything about him ached with familiarity. Of the town I’d left. Of the desert heat that lived in my very skin. Of our eyes that looked like a clear desert sky on fire. Of the bloodline we shared, which remembered a sky without stars and an ancient war.

I could hear the sound of running feet. We weren’t done here yet. Fahali was a border city. It had a large guard. Noorsham raised his hand, already starting to glow red.

“Noorsham! You don’t want to do this.” My heart was still rushing. He hesitated.

“Noorsham,” a voice from above called. We both looked the same way at once. Naguib was standing over us. He stood by the city’s gate. He’d extracted himself from the fight with the rebels to find his weapon. “You are not finished.”

Two dozen more Gallan soldiers burst into the street, surrounding us, guns leveled, shouting in their guttural language. I reached for the sand. Their general was dead. He couldn’t give them the order to shoot. But one of them would get trigger happy soon enough.

Naguib raised his hand. A bronze ring glinted there, the same stuff that Noorsham’s armor was made of. There were words marked on it. Noorsham’s true name, I realized. Like Atiyah’d had her Djinni lover’s true name. Like all the stories where a greedy merchant or too-proud ruler sought to control some Djinni he chanced upon in the desert. The secrets the Djinn guarded jealously but that had a way of slipping out to the women they loved.

And it was my true name, too, I realized. Our father’s name.

“Burn the city.”

Noorsham’s blue eyes turned back to me. I saw that we understood each other. He didn’t want to kill me. He raised his hands toward me, like he wanted to embrace me or bless me or burn me. The slightest gesture scalded the air close to my face.

I knew what I needed to do. And I had one shot at it.

There was sand stuck to my hands. I shifted my fingers ever so slightly. I felt the sand answer even as the heat coming off Noorsham built, even against his will, even as he tried to hold it back. The barrels of the Gallan guns swung between me and Noorsham uncertainly. His fire was inching toward me. Toward my feet. I gathered the sand in my fingers into a bullet.

The world came into that familiar focus. Like I was a desperate girl standing in the pistol pit in Deadshot all over again.

I had one last shot.

I had good aim.

I moved in one motion, whipping my hand forward like a gunshot. The sand went with it. Not a violent, uncontrolled burst this time.

One clean bullet.

It hit Noorsham’s face, sending him staggering back with a cry as the bullet burst back into dust and the heat faded.

I held my breath as Noorsham looked up. The lock on the side of the mask was loose. The force of the sand had knocked it open. I watched as Noorsham’s hands came up to his face, shaking. The bronze mask that encircled his whole head came off.

He looked terribly young without it. As young as he had when he’d been just a blue-eyed, smart-mouthed boy from the shop in Dustwalk. A kid I’d figured was fragile and human and destined to die.

I’d been wrong on all counts.

“This city’s not the one who ought to burn,” he said, raising his hand toward Naguib.

The heat rolled off him in one angry wave, rocking everything in its path. The Gallan guns leveled on Noorsham. I pulled both my hands up, dragging the desert with them. Shielding him from the bullets as his fire crashed toward our enemy.

Naguib screamed.