A thought struck me, and quickly I gathered a handful of sand towards me. I tightened the grains into a bridge that I arched to the next building. I ran across it without hesitation or fear that it might give out below me. And sure enough, not a grain of sand faltered as I dashed to the next building and then the next after that.
Finally I could see my target, the end of the road where the ground sloped up. And sure enough, men in gold uniforms were moving towards it in something that looked like retreat. I cut them off, a wall of sand halting their escape.
A little way off, Izz soared above the city. My heart leaped as I grabbed at the sand, sending it up in a burst in his path, trying to get his attention. Izz veered violently to avoid it, but he saw me standing on the roof, waving my arms at him.
He soared down towards me, turning into a boy and landing in front of me. ‘You’re alive.’ He grinned gleefully.
‘For now,’ I said. I didn’t have time to celebrate. I told him quickly what we needed, and in another moment he was gone again, launching himself from the roof, a boy plunging down into the streets.
A moment later a huge blue Roc rose back up, talons around one of the dead Abdals, their spark of Djinni fire gone with the release of Fereshteh. But the Zungvox was Gamanix technology, not Mirajin magic. I had to pray it still worked.
I caught sight of one of the Abdals lying on the street below me. I picked it up in a surge of sand, carrying it as far as I could, like a leaf on the wind, before I lost sight of it.
Izz returned, plucking another Adbal off the wall, narrowly avoiding a bullet as he did. We worked as quickly as we could, Maz joining us after he noticed what we were doing, dispersing the Abdals as far and wide as we were able. Scattering the Sultan’s mouthpieces across the city.
All the while, every passing moment that we didn’t hear Ahmed speak, I repeated the same thing under my breath over and over again.
‘Jin is alive. Shazad is alive. Ahmed is alive. Jin is alive …’ So long as I could say it out loud, it was true. So long as I could say it out loud, it meant they were still fighting their way through the crowd to the great prayer house.
And then I heard it on the air. Ahmed’s voice.
‘People of Izman!’
I glanced west towards the prayer house, relief crushing my chest. He had made it to Leyla’s invention.
‘People of Miraji –’ Ahmed’s voice carried through the thousands of fallen Abdals – ‘there is fighting on your streets. But we do not come as invaders. Instead, we come as saviours. My father has ruled you with fear and with foreign steel. He has turned you over to enemies and hung your daughters and your sisters from his walls. He has killed his enemies in cold blood. He has killed his own family, his father and his sons alike. He has taken this country from you and enslaved you. We are here to return it to you. And if you would fight with us, for your freedom and for your country, we would welcome you.’
It was as if the city shifted below me. Not in some cataclysmic moving of the earth, as Zaahir had done in the mountains, but in some way that was purely human. The First Beings might be all-powerful, but they had made us for the one thing that they could not do: to lay down our lives for what we believed in.
It was the shift of an entire city remembering what we were made for and standing up at once.
And we stood up and fought.
I wasn’t conscious of time as the battle for Izman raged on. Once I rejoined the fray, I stopped being one girl and melded with the Rebellion, like they were part of me. Moving obstacles out of the way, cutting a path to our enemy. From time to time I heard Shazad’s voice taking over the Zungvox, giving orders and guidance to a city that would fall to chaos without them.
The fighting carried on for hours.
Soldiers belonging to the Sultan clashed with our people.
Then there came a scream from the sky.
It was a hideous noise. And when I looked up, I saw a horrifying sight.
Izz was writhing in the air, high above us, thrashing amid flames. A lit arrow had caught his left wing. It was burning a violent mix of blue and red flames as his feathers ignited.
He screamed and plummeted his way towards the water to extinguish himself, trailing smoke behind him in a black train.
Cries went up around me. From somewhere a few streets away, Maz shot into the air after his twin, shifting shapes frantically, from kestrel to Roc to sparrow, looking for the place where Izz had landed. For a way to help his brother.
Suddenly it was as if I were watching it all from far away. As if only half of me was standing on the battlefield and another half of me was standing in a green palace garden on a warm day, a lake full of birds in front of me, pulling back an arrow to strike one down.
Except that I wasn’t the one holding the bow now.
I tracked the arc that the arrow must have come from. I was a good shot. I would find it. And sure enough, there he was.
I saw the Sultan before he saw me. He was standing atop the wall, armoured and dressed in uniform. I drew my gun and took aim. I knew it was impossible that he heard the click of my pistol, but his head turned my way. His gaze was hot, his stance cool. His head tilted ever so slightly as he drew his bow back, aiming for me now. His throat was just a little exposed.
I could make that shot. I dropped my pistol, gathering the sand to me instead.
I pulled my power backwards, like a bullet in a gun. Like I had just one bullet left and everything riding on it back in the pistol pit in Dustwalk.
I saw his hand tense to release the arrow even as the sand flew from my hand, heading for exposed skin, tearing towards my target with all the force of the desert behind it.
I was a good shot.
I didn’t tend to miss.
Chapter 47
The Rule of the Good Prince Ahmed
Once, in the desert country of Miraji, there was a prince who took his father’s throne.
Many people told many stories of that day.
They said that the Rebel Prince Ahmed fought a glorious battle against a cowardly opponent, his father, who hid behind his walls and let his soldiers fall in waves. They said that such was the Sultan’s cruelty the people turned on him as well. And that when the Sultan fell, his armies laid down their weapons at the prince’s feet and surrendered to their new ruler’s mercy gratefully.
They said that when the Rebel Prince Ahmed entered Izman, flowers rained from the windows, thrown by jubilant people grateful to be freed. His Demdji sister, Delila, who had begun this fight with her birth, blew kisses to the men as they passed, happy to at last be returning home to the palace she had been forced to flee. And the Blue-Eyed Bandit caught the flowers, weaving them into a crown for her prince as they advanced towards the palace.
But those were stories. They would never tell the truth of what I remembered of that day.
I remembered carnage on the streets, not carnations. The confusion after the Sultan fell, as men continued to fight. Good men, not wicked. Men who were just following orders given to them by a dead ruler. Men whose families would pour from their houses later to weep over their bodies. I knew how the Sultan fell, because I killed him, and I would have nightmares about that for months afterwards. And sometimes his face would change to Hala’s. Sometimes to Shira’s. Or Sam’s.
But the storytellers would never know that. No one would know that except for Jin, who would wake in the night when I did, ready to fight until he realised that the threat was in my mind and he couldn’t defend me from it.
Even if people had known the truth, they wouldn’t have been interested in telling it. Flowers pouring from windows like falling stars made a better tale.