And more than that, they were expecting us to try that night.
The bullet would have torn straight through his heart if Sam hadn’t moved at the last second, unable to resist leaning back through the wall to where we waited, cloaked in Hala’s illusion, to toss some offhand sarcastic comment. The gunshot caught him in the shoulder instead. There was a lot of blood. Everywhere. Smeared on the stone of the wall as he stumbled out, with no retreat except into the open. On my hands when I caught him as he lost consciousness. On Jin’s shirt when he heaved him over his shoulder hastily. Soaked into the once-clean linen of the bed when we finally got him back to the Hidden House, still breathing. Barely.
Not that saving him did us much good in the long run.
But that was how we learned our lesson. We had to wait for a cleaner shot. Even if every second we waited meant the prisoners were getting further away from us. Meant they might be getting tortured. Might be killed. We had to wait.
The Sultim trials was the shot we’d been waiting for. So we had to take it. No matter how desperate it was.
Below me Izz spread his immense blue wings, riding an updraught from the sandstorm I was creating, letting it carry him over the palace, his huge shadow skimming easily over the walls and the gardens of the harem, then over the glass dome that crowned the Sultan’s chambers.
We couldn’t get in through the walls. Fine. We’d try something less subtle.
Izz dropped the explosives he was carrying, sending them careening down towards the glass. The dome exploded, shattering into a rain of shards that caught the sun like stars falling from the heavens. Jin and Maz plunged through the new entrance to the palace, straight into the Sultan’s rooms, even as Izz circled back for me.
He soared below me, and I took a deep breath, fighting to keep the sandstorm under my control even as I split my attention. The pain was distracting, but I had to trust that if I jumped Izz would catch me. So, bending my knees just a little, spreading my body flat, I leaped into nothingness. I landed on Izz’s back, and the impact knocked the air out of my lungs, turning my vision black. But I didn’t let go. I fought to hold on both to his back and to the desert as he soared upwards.
We didn’t have much time.
Hala’s illusions ought to work on the people of Izman, get them to believe Shira really had come back from the dead, but the Sultan would guess it was us easily enough. And it wouldn’t take him long to figure out that we were doing more than just whipping his people into a frenzy against him and his sons. He would come looking for us. I was going to have to buy Jin some more time.
Izz looped us around in the air until we were over the shattered dome. Jin and Maz had disappeared from sight, retreating to the Sultan’s study. I could just make out the edge of the table where the Sultan and I had once sat, eating a duck I had killed in his gardens while he needled at my mind, making me doubt Ahmed.
It was covered in shards of glass now.
Ignoring the shooting pain in my side, I pushed away from Izz’s back, so I could see the sand. I fought to keep my balance, even as the wind whipped through my hair, lashing it around my face, tugging at my clothes. I gathered the sand back towards us, tightening my grip. I lifted my arms like I would if I were clearing the sandstorm. But instead of letting it scatter through the streets of Izman, I whipped it in a great swirling vacuum towards us.
The sand shot past me, narrowly missing Izz’s wing, the force buffeting him upwards. I didn’t lose my grip as he beat his wings, frantically trying to regain his balance. I plunged every grain of sand I’d drawn from Izman’s streets down through the broken glass dome in a tightly controlled cascade, ignoring the twisting agony. I focused the sand towards the hallway that led into the Sultan’s chambers, flooding it, blocking the entrance like a stopper in a bottle, cutting off any access the soldiers might have to Jin.
I let go. The pain finally eased, going from a sharp stab to a dull ache as it retreated. I slumped on to Izz’s back as I looked down on my work. It wouldn’t last forever. It was sand; they would dig through it eventually. But it ought to be long enough for Jin to find what we needed. If it was even there.
With a few powerful beats of his wings, Izz carried us up and out of reach of gunfire from the ground. The palace spread out below us like a little toy model. Soldiers were already running towards the Sultan’s chambers. Men and women in the square dropped to their knees as the vision of Shira dissipated from their minds. The twelve princes stood in shock, one standing, sword drawn, with nothing to fight. Others fled the sandstorm and the sound of the explosion nearby and the sudden appearance of a giant Roc hovering above them.
And then I spotted a lone figure in the gardens of the harem, staring up at us. It was her stillness that caught my eye. I knew her on sight, even this far away, from the way she tied her hair and the slope of her shoulders. She was like a statue, as motionless as one of her Abdals before they moved in for the kill.
Leyla.
Our traitor princess.
Chapter 4
She looked tiny from up here. Like a mouse staring up at a falcon, too foolish to run from it.
I leaned down to Izz’s head, pointing past him towards her. He might be in an animal shape, but he could understand me just fine. I wanted him to take me down to her.
I felt him hesitate below me for a few huge ponderous wing beats. He didn’t want to enter the harem. It wasn’t part of our plan. I could almost hear Shazad’s voice in my mind. No, by all means, Amani, we only spent months trying to get you out of the harem. But go ahead, go straight back in when I’m not there to bail you out. If it were Ahmed, he would listen to her good counsel, like he always did. He would be cautious.
But Shazad and Ahmed had been captured. Because of Leyla. And that left me in charge of this rebellion, with no good counsel to listen to.
I voiced the command. ‘Izz, take me to the ground.’
This time he obeyed. I tightened my grip on his back as he plunged, diving straight towards the gardens of the harem.
Leyla realised she was our target far too late. We were on her as she tried to look for cover, the force of the air from Izz’s wings knocking her down. As she scrambled backwards clumsily, I slid off Izz’s feathered back, my feet landing in the harem for the first time since I’d escaped. Izz took the shape of a blue lion, springing for her before she could find her footing, front paws pinning her to the ground. She didn’t scream as he flattened her out on her back, razor teeth inches from her face, she just squeezed her eyes shut. Like she thought she was ready to die.
She was trying to be brave. She was good at it, too. She had spent several days with us, her enemies, pretending to be on our side, without so much as flinching. I might admire her if she weren’t our enemy.
‘Izz,’ I ordered, ‘let her up.’ He did what I said, pulling back his snarling face and slowly removing his weighty paw from her chest. As soon as she was released Leyla scrambled backwards, her shoulders bumping into the wall behind her, halting any further retreat. We were both silent for a long moment, Leyla breathing hard as she watched me. I pulled out my gun, deciding exactly what I wanted to do with her. I hadn’t thought that far when I’d plunged us down here.
‘So.’ I’d better start us off. ‘My guess is that we have your brilliant mind to thank for this –’ I glanced up at the dome of fire in the sky, looking for the right word, even as I pulled out my gun – ‘this whole mess.’ I opened the chamber of the pistol and checked how many bullets I had. Six whole shots. Good.