A hiss of pain escaped through my teeth as I rolled over. Sand stuck to my hands where sweat had pooled under the ropes, clinging to my skin. Then Hossam grabbed me, yanking me to my feet. He hustled me inside, the gate clanging quickly shut behind us. It was almost like they were afraid of something.
A small crowd had already gathered inside the gate to gawk. Half were clutching guns. More than a few of those were pointed at me.
So my reputation really did precede me.
‘Hossam.’ Someone pushed to the front. He was older than my captors, with serious eyes that took in my sorry state. He looked at me more levelly than the others. He wouldn’t be blinded by the same eagerness. ‘What happened?’
‘We caught her in the mountains,’ Hossam crowed. ‘She tried to ambush us when we were on our way back from trading for the guns.’ Two of the other men with us dropped bags that were heavy with weapons on the ground proudly, as if to show off that I hadn’t gotten in their way. The guns weren’t of Mirajin make. Amonpourian. Stupid-looking things. Ornate and carved, made by hand instead of machine, and charged at twice what they were worth because someone had gone to the trouble of making them pretty. It didn’t matter how pretty something was, it’d kill you just as dead. That, I’d learned from Shazad.
‘Just her?’ the man with the serious eyes asked. ‘On her own?’ His gaze flicked to me. Like he might be able to suss out the truth just from looking at me. Whether a girl of seventeen would really think she could take on a half dozen grown men with nothing but a handful of bullets and think she could win. Whether the famous Blue-Eyed Bandit could really be that stupid.
I preferred ‘reckless’.
But I kept my mouth shut. The more I talked, the more likely I was to say something that’d backfire on me. Stay silent, look sullen, try not to get yourself killed.
If all else fails, just stick with that last one.
‘Are you really the Blue-Eyed Bandit?’ Ikar blurted out, making everyone’s head turn. He’d scrambled down from his watchpost on the wall to come gawk at me with the rest. He leaned forward eagerly across the barrel of his gun. If it went off now it’d take both his hands and part of his face with it. ‘Is it true what they say about you?’
Stay silent. Look sullen. Try not to get yourself killed. ‘Depends what they’re saying, I suppose.’ Damn it. That didn’t last so long. ‘And you shouldn’t hold your gun like that.’
Ikar shifted his grip absently, never taking his eyes off me. ‘They say that you can shoot a man’s eye out fifty feet away in the pitch dark. That you walked through a hail of bullets in Iliaz, and walked out with the Sultan’s secret war plans.’ I remembered Iliaz going a little differently. It ended with a bullet in me, for one. ‘That you seduced one of the Emir of Jalaz’s wives while they were visiting Izman.’ Now, that was a new one. I’d heard the one about seducing the emir himself. But maybe the emir’s wife liked women, too. Or maybe the story had twisted in the telling, since half the tales of the Blue-Eyed Bandit seemed to make out I was a man these days. I’d stopped wearing wraps to pretend I was a boy, but apparently I’d need to fill out a little more to convince some people that the bandit was a girl.
‘You killed a hundred Gallan soldiers at Fahali,’ he pushed on, his words tripping over each other, undeterred by my silence. ‘And I heard you escaped from Malal on the back of a giant blue Roc, and flooded the prayer house behind you.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ I interjected as Ikar finally paused for breath, his eyes the size of two louzi pieces with excitement.
He sagged, disappointed. He was just a kid, as eager to believe all the stories as I had been when I was his age. Though he looked younger than I ever remembered being. He shouldn’t be here holding a gun like this. But then, this was what the desert did to us. It made us dreamers with weapons. I ran my tongue along my teeth. ‘And the prayer house in Malal was an accident … mostly.’
A whisper went through the crowd. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t send a little thrill down my spine. And lying was a sin.
It’d been close to half a year since I’d stood in Fahali with Ahmed, Jin, Shazad, Hala, and the twins, Izz and Maz. Us against two armies and Noorsham, a Demdji turned into a weapon by the Sultan; a Demdji who also happened to be my brother.
Us against impossible odds and a devastatingly powerful Demdji. But we’d survived. And from there the story of the battle of Fahali had travelled across the desert faster even than the story of the Sultim trials had. I’d heard it told a dozen times by folk who didn’t know the Rebellion was listening. Our exploits got greater and less plausible with every telling but the tale always ended the same way, with a sense that, while the storyteller might be done, the story wasn’t. One way or another, the desert wasn’t going to be the same after the battle of Fahali.
The legend of the Blue-Eyed Bandit had grown along with the tale of Fahali, until I was a story that I didn’t wholly recognise. It claimed that the Blue-Eyed Bandit was a thief instead of a rebel. That I tricked my way into people’s beds to get information for my Prince. That I’d killed my own brother on the battlefield. I hated that one the most. Maybe because there’d been a moment, finger on the trigger, where it was almost true. And I had let him escape. Which was almost as bad. He was out there somewhere with all of that power. And, unlike me, he didn’t have any other Demdji to help him.
Sometimes, late at night, after the rest of the camp had gone to sleep, I’d say out loud that he was alive. Just to know whether it was true or not. So far I could say it without hesitation. But I was scared that there would come a day when I wouldn’t be able to any more. That would mean it was a lie, and my brother had died, alone and scared, somewhere in this merciless, war-torn desert.
‘If she’s as dangerous as they say, we ought to kill her,’ someone called from the crowd. It was a man with a bright yellow military sash across his chest that looked like it’d been stitched back together from scraps. I noticed a few were wearing those. These must be the newly appointed guard of Saramotai, since they’d gone and killed the real guard. He was holding a gun. It was pointed at my stomach. Stomach wounds were no good. They killed you slowly.
‘But if she’s the Blue-Eyed Bandit, she’s with the Rebel Prince.’ Someone else spoke up. ‘Doesn’t that mean she’s on our side?’ Now, that was the million-fouza question.
‘Funny way to treat someone on your side.’ I shifted my bound hands pointedly. A murmur went through the crowd. That was good; it meant they weren’t as united as they looked from the outside of their impenetrable wall. ‘So if we’re all friends here, how about you untie me and we can talk?’
‘Nice try, Bandit.’ Hossam gripped me tighter. ‘We’re not giving you a chance to get your hands on a gun. I’ve heard the stories of how you killed a dozen men with a single bullet.’ I was pretty sure that wasn’t possible. Besides, I didn’t need a gun to take down a dozen men.
It was almost funny. They’d used rope to tie me. Not iron. If ever there was iron touching my skin, I was as human as they were. So long as there wasn’t, I could raise the desert against them. Which meant I could do more damage with my hands tied than I ever could with a gun in them. But damage wasn’t the plan.
‘Malik should decide what we do with the Bandit anyway.’ The serious-eyed man rubbed his hand over his chin nervously as he mentioned their self-appointed leader.
‘I do have a name, you know,’ I offered.
‘Malik isn’t back yet,’ the same one who’d been pointing the gun at me snapped. He seemed like the tense sort. ‘She could do anything before he gets back.’
‘It’s Amani. My name, that is.’ No one was listening. ‘In case you were wondering.’ This arguing might go on for a while. Ruling by committee never went quick. It barely ever worked at all.
‘Then lock her away until Malik gets here,’ a voice from somewhere in the back of the crowd called.