The story of Princess Hawa was one of my favorites growing up. It was from the very early days of humanity, back when the Destroyer of Worlds was still walking the earth. Hawa was the daughter of the first Sultan of Izman. Princess Hawa’s voice was so beautiful that it brought anyone who heard it to their knees. It was her singing that brought a Skinwalker to her, disguised in the shape of one of her servants. He stole her eyes straight from her head. Princess Hawa screamed and the hero Attallah came to save her before the Skinwalker could take her tongue, too. He tricked the ghoul and won her eyes back for her. And when Hawa’s sight was restored to her and she saw Attallah for the first time her heart stopped in her breast. What Hawa felt was so new and strange that she thought she was dying. Hawa sent Attallah away because of how much it pained her to look upon him. But after he was gone, her heart only hurt more. They were the first mortals to ever fall in love, the stories said.
One day, news reached Hawa in Izman that a great city across the desert was besieged by ghouls and that Attallah was fighting there. The city tried to build new defences each day, but every night the ghouls came along and tore them down, forcing the city to start again at dawn, when the ghouls retreated. On hearing that Attallah was almost certainly doomed, Hawa walked out into the desert beyond Izman and cried such agonised tears that a Buraqi, the immortal horses made of sand and wind, took pity on her and came to her aid. She rode the Buraqi across the sand, singing so brightly that the sun came into the sky as she rushed to Attallah’s side. When she reached Saramotai she held the sun in the sky, and the ghouls at bay, for a hundred days, long enough for the people of Saramotai to build their great, impenetrable walls, working day and night until they were safe. When the work was finally done, she released the sun and, safe behind the walls of the great city, she married her love, Attallah.
Hawa stood watch on those walls as Attallah rode back out into battle each night and returned to her at dawn. For a hundred more nights Attallah went beyond the gates to defend the city. He was untouchable in battle. No ghoul’s claw could so much as scratch him. She stood vigil every night until, on the hundred and first night of her watch, a stray arrow from the battle reached the walls and struck Princess Hawa down.
When Attallah saw her fall from the walls, his heart stopped from grief. The defences that had guarded him so well for a hundred nights fell away and the ghouls overwhelmed him, tearing his heart from his chest. But in the moment that they both died, the sun bloomed in the dead of night one last time. The ghouls could not fight in the sun. Instead they burned, and the city was saved with Hawa’s and Attallah’s last breath. The people of the city named it in her honour: Saramotai. It meant ‘the princess’s death’ in the first language.
I wondered if it was a Djinni’s idea of a joke to give his daughter, born in Hawa’s city, the same gift that she had.
But Hawa was human. Or at least that was what the story said. I’d never wondered about it before. Folks in old stories sometimes just had powers that came from nowhere. Or maybe Hawa was one of us, and centuries of retellings had buried the fact that Hawa was a Demdji and not a true princess. After all, retellings of the Sultim trials made gentle, pretty Delila out to be a hideous beast with horns growing out of her head. And some stories of the Blue-Eyed Bandit left out the small matter that I was a girl.
‘After Fahali we thought it would be safe for her.’ Samira pulled Ranaa closer to her. ‘Turns out even if they don’t want to destroy her, some folk want her for other things.’ It was stupid superstition that a piece of a Demdji could cure all ills. Hala, our golden-skinned Demdji, Imin’s sister, carried a reminder of that every day: two of her fingers had been cut off and sold. Probably to cure some rich man’s troubled stomach. ‘The rumour is even the Sultan is after a Demdji.’
‘We know about that,’ I cut her off, sharper than I meant to. I’d been more worried about the Sultan tracking Noorsham down than anything else after we’d heard that rumour. I’d figured the chances there was another Demdji out there who could match my brother’s pure destructive power seemed mighty slim. Even I couldn’t raze a city the way Noorsham had. Still, we’d been careful the last few months not to let word spread that the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the Demdji who summoned desert storms were one and the same. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t ever going to let the Sultan take me alive. But now I considered the tiny sun in Ranaa’s hands. It was harmless enough, cupped in her palms like that. It might not be so harmless multiplied a hundredfold. The Sultan’s chances were looking better now.
‘Your rebellion has kept him out of this side of the desert so far,’ Samira said. ‘How long do you think you can keep him out?’
As long as it took. I’d be damned before I’d let the Sultan do to any other Demdji what he’d done to Noorsham. Ranaa might be a cloistered brat who’d developed a big head from being told her whole life she was the reincarnation of a legendary princess. But she was a Demdji. And we took care of our own.
‘I can get her to safety.’ I couldn’t leave her here. Not when there was a chance they might find her and I might find myself staring over the barrel of a gun at her next. ‘Out of the city.’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you,’ Ranaa argued. We both ignored her.
‘Prince Ahmed wants to make this country safe for Demdji, but until then, I know where she can be protected.’
Samira hesitated a moment. ‘Can I come with her?’
My shoulders eased in relief. ‘That depends. Can you walk?’
Imin helped Samira, keeping her standing upright as she limped towards the stairs, Ranaa still clinging to her. I was about to turn away when Ranaa’s light grazed the far wall. The cell wasn’t quite empty. A woman in a pale yellow khalat was still curled in the corner, not moving.
For a second I thought she was dead, weakened by days in the dark cramped prison. Then her back rose and fell, just slightly. She was still breathing. I crouched down and laid a hand on the bare skin of her arm. It was hotter than it ought to be down here away from the sun. She was sick with fever. My touch started her awake, and wide wild eyes flew open. She gaped at me through a dirty curtain of hair, in panic. Blood and muck caked it against her cheek, and her lips were cracked with thirst. ‘Can you stand?’ I asked. She didn’t answer, just stared at me with huge dark eyes. She looked worse than anyone else I’d seen stumble out of these cells. She could barely stay awake, let alone make a run for it.
‘Imin!’ I called. ‘I need some help here. Can you—’
‘Zahia?’ The name was whispered almost as a prayer, rasping out of a throat that sounded bone-dry, a second before her head lolled backwards and she lapsed back into feverish sleep.
I stilled. Every part of me. I wondered if this was what Hawa felt when her heart stopped in her chest.
Suddenly I wasn’t the Blue-Eyed Bandit. I wasn’t a rebel giving orders. I wasn’t even a Demdji. I was a girl from Dustwalk again. Because that was the last place I had heard anyone say my mother’s name.
Chapter 5
‘What is it?’ Imin appeared at my elbow.
‘I—’ I stumbled over my words, trying to pull my mind out of the past. There were other women in the desert named Zahia. It was a common enough name. But she’d looked at me like she knew me and said my mother’s name. And that wasn’t all that common.
No. I wasn’t a restless, reckless girl at the end of the desert any more. I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit, and this was a rescue. I nodded towards the unconscious figure on the ground. ‘Can you carry her?’ My voice was steadier than I felt.
Imin, still wearing the shape he’d fought in, lifted the unconscious woman off the ground as easy as a rag doll.
‘This is ridiculous, Amani,’ Mahdi hissed, pushing through the crowd of freed women as I followed Imin out of the cell. They didn’t look so good, but they were alive and standing on two feet. ‘Freeing people is one thing, but you want us to escape while carrying someone out?’