Later, the stories would say that the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the Foreign Prince would fight many more battles for their country. And their adventures would be recounted to children around campfires at night. And the stories would say that when death finally came for them again, at the end of very long lives, it would claim them together, side by side, in a desert they had fought for.
But they would never tell that the Foreign Prince kept his promise to the Blue-Eyed Bandit and taught her how to swim. The stories would forget the small moments that she would remember: the way his fingers felt on her spine when he lifted her against him in the water of the baths in what used to be the harem. That it always made him smile when he kissed her and she tasted of salt. That she fought to learn for his sake, even though she felt like a flame being doused in water. The stories would only tell of the day the Blue-Eyed Bandit was on a ship in a storm and how she leaped from the deck as it sank and swam her way to the shore. And that from there she sent a wave of sand to save the sinking ship. But no storyteller would ever think to wonder how a girl from the desert learned to swim.
Every story of the rule of Prince Ahmed would speak of his goodness and the prosperity he brought to his country. They wouldn’t ever know of the long nights burning oil making difficult decisions, the days that the Blue-Eyed Bandit would storm out of his chambers because she thought he was making a mistake. Or the nights he would spend sleepless, worrying the same thing.
Everyone would know that when he stepped down from the throne after ten years, the country elected another prince, one of his half brothers who had grown up in the harem. Then, the storytellers would drop their voice as they recounted what came next: though this man shared blood with the Rebel Prince, he could not have been more different from his brother. And it was not long before he tried to seize power for himself and began taking the lives of those who disagreed with him. And soon he declared that he would rule not just for a decade but for his whole life, just as his father had.
But – the storyteller’s voice would rise now – one night as the usurper prince sat gloating at his victory in his palace, a knock came at his chamber door. When he opened it, he found the Beautiful General standing there. He was shocked, for he had sent an assassin for her and believed her to be dead. But the assassin had failed; the general had killed him instead. And when she discovered what was happening, she marched her army through the night and took the city back as he slept. And she had done it without firing a single shot or even drawing her blade. But she drew it now, as she stepped into his chambers and ended his tyranny.
That was a story that every girl who signed her conscription papers to the join the Mirajin army certainly heard as a child.
But no one would know that on the eve of that bloodless battle for Izman, eight people would gather together for the first time in many years. And they would remember every time they had done this before, when they were younger. The Foreign Prince would ask, Didn’t we already win this war? And his brother would wonder out loud if they might always be fighting for freedom against men who desired power. And then the Beautiful General would clap her hands together and say, Okay, here’s the plan. And the Blue-Eyed Bandit would laugh because she hadn’t heard that in a long time.
The stories would only tell that a new election followed the dethroning of the usurper. And it was the Beautiful General who was chosen to rule the desert next. She became the first Sultana elected in Miraji, and she would defend her country for another ten glorious years.
And when she stepped down, the boy known as the Demdji Prince would be chosen by the people to rule. He was the adopted son of the Rebel Prince, though by blood he belonged to the blessed Sultima. Some stories even said that he shared blood with the Blue-Eyed Bandit, too. Though most said that was an absurd fabricaton. But they all agreed that his rule had been prophesied even before he was born, and that his great lineage meant he was destined to be a great ruler.
But the Blue-Eyed Bandit, who remembered where he and the Blessed Sultima had both come from, knew that the Demdji Prince had not been made great by his bloodline. He was kind because the Rebel Prince would pick up his son and soothe him when he fell and scraped his knees instead of chastising him for weakness. And the Foreign Prince taught his young Demdji nephew that he didn’t need to share blood with anyone to call them family. The Blue-Eyed Bandit herself would teach him how to shoot and when to think instead of pulling a trigger. And the legendary commander of Iliaz would show him how to sit a horse and remind the young prince that soldiers were owed respect, not just orders. The Demdji princess and the legendary Demdji twins would be the first to help him understand, when he was very young, the powers his father had left him. The Beautiful General would teach him to strategise instead of fight his way through a problem. And those near him would know the truth that the stories didn’t tell, that he was a great ruler because he was the best parts of all the men and women who raised him.
And no stories would ever tell how one day, when the Demdji Prince was still a child, the Blue-Eyed Bandit would find herself far in the south, sitting on a stone warmed by the sun, next to a Holy Man who had only one leg. Both of them watching the young prince play in the same dust they had grown up in, with cousins who shared his blood but who would never really understand what his life was like in a palace far away. When the boy’s grandmother picked him up, the Holy Man said that he reckoned this would have made the Blessed Sultima happy if she could have seen it.
The tales would be imperfect; the legends would be incomplete. And each and every one of us standing in the garden that night would take an entire universe of stories with us when we died, the accounts of every small moment that did not seem grand enough to storytellers, which would disappear in smoke when our bodies were burned.
But even if the desert forgot a thousand and one of our stories, it was enough that they would tell of us at all. That long after our deaths, men and women sitting around a fire would hear that once, long ago, before we were all just stories, we lived.
Ahead of us, in the garden, a fire flickered to life.
And the storyteller began.
Acknowledgements
First, to my parents. I could write a million books and thank them at the back of every one and it still wouldn’t come close to being enough thanks for the last three decades. You’re still the best parents any girl could ask for.
I will always be grateful to Molly Ker Hawn, who goes above and beyond what it means to be an agent. I am beyond lucky to benefit from her passion for books every day. Amani wouldn’t be where she is without her.
To my editors Kendra Levin and Alice Swan. I would have given up, lain down on the floor and stayed there a dozen times over if it wasn’t for them. I am completely indebted to them for their patience, their energy and their belief, especially when I had run out of all three. Thank you for helping me get to the finish line.
My thanks to Ken Wright, Leah Thaxton and Stephen Page for being so supportive of me and this trilogy over the past three years. It means the world.
Thank you a thousand times to my publicists extraordinaire, Elyse Marshall and Hannah Love, who are both filled with boundless energy and optimism and enthusiasm and make everything look effortless even though I know how hard they work.