“You don’t look it,” I said instead.
“Not here. In Izman.” Mention of the capital struck too close to the bone just now, when I’d been so close to getting there last night. “Though my mother was from a country called Xicha. That’s where I lived most of my life.”
“What’s it like there?”
He was silent, and I was sure he wasn’t going to tell me.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a rainstorm,” he said, “so you don’t know that kind of heavy air that clings to your skin and gets its fingers under your clothes.” My eyes went to my own fingers against his naked back; his shoulders rose and fell as he spoke. “The air in Xicha is like that all the time. And everything is as green and alive as this country is dry and dead. The bamboo grows so fast, it might uproot houses someday. Even in the city. Like it’s trying to take the ground we’ve built on back from us. And it’s so hot, the women walk around with paper fans colorful enough to make the spirits jealous. We used to cool off by jumping in the sea fully clothed and trying not to get hit by any ships. Ships from all over the world. Albish ones with naked sea maids carved into them, and Sves ones built against the cold. And Xichian ones that looked like dragons, carved out of a single tree. Some of the trees in Xicha are taller than the towers in Izman.”
“Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here?” I asked. “If Xicha is so wonderful?”
“Don’t suppose I am,” he replied, wincing as the needle went through his skin. “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what made you lie to our friend Commander Naguib Al’Oman for me?”
“Don’t suppose so.” My needle paused in his skin. “Naguib Al’Oman?” They were both common names, but all the same. “He’s the Sultan’s son?”
“How is it you know that?” His head dipped a little, breath deepening as I pushed the last stitch in.
“Everybody knows the story of the Rebel Prince. And the other princes who competed in the Sultim trials.”
The story went that when Sultan Oman was still new to the throne, one of his prettiest wives gave him a son, Ahmed. A strong and clever boy, and even as the Sultan’s harem grew and more wives gave him more sons, Ahmed was much in the favor of his father. Three years later, the same wife gave birth to a daughter, but not to an infant, to a monster half human and half Djinni, with scales instead of skin and claws instead of fingers and horns growing from its purple head. Seeing that his wife had betrayed him by lying with an immortal Djinni, the Sultan beat her until she died. The same night the monster child and Ahmed disappeared.
Fourteen years later, the time for the trials came. It was the way the Sultim, the successor to the throne, had been chosen since Miraji began. As per tradition, the twelve eldest princes were to compete for the crown.
That was just over a year ago. My mother was still alive. And when news of the trials reached Dustwalk, even men who’d tell you gambling was a sin started placing bets on which of the young princes would win the throne.
On the day of the contest, the twelve sons lined up and the whole city gathered to watch. Then a thirteenth man joined the princes. When he pulled back his hood, he was the picture of Sultan Oman as a younger man and no one could deny his claim that he was Prince Ahmed, returned. No matter what suspicions surrounded the sudden return of the prince, the law of tradition was upheld. Prince Ahmed would compete, and the youngest of the twelve princes was expelled from the contest. That prince was named Naguib. I knew the name because when folks were betting on the Sultim trials, before the news about the Rebel Prince came, odds were that Naguib would get killed first in the trial. His prodigal brother might’ve saved Naguib’s life by getting him expelled.
Ahmed beat the other eleven princes in the test of intelligence, a huge maze full of traps built in the palace grounds, and the test of wisdom, a riddle posed by the wisest of the Sultan’s advisors. When he came to the test of strength, trial by single combat, Ahmed won every fight until only he and Prince Kadir, the firstborn of the Sultan’s sons, were left standing. They fought all day, until Kadir surrendered. Instead of executing his eldest brother Ahmed spared his life. He turned his back on him to face their father, to claim the title of Sultim. Behind Ahmed’s back Kadir raised his sword in a blow that would have killed his brother. At that moment Ahmed’s sister, the Djinni’s monster daughter, stepped from the crowd, throwing away her human disguise, and used unnatural powers inherited from her father to deflect Kadir’s blade so that he missed. Furious at this intervention, the Sultan declared Kadir Sultim and ordered Ahmed’s execution. But the young prince escaped into the desert with his monster sister, to raise a rebellion for his throne. A new dawn, a new desert.
I tied the thread and sliced off the excess with the knife.
The foreigner turned around, giving me my first view of his bare chest. I suddenly felt like I needed to look anywhere but at him. Which was stupid, because this was the desert and I’d seen every man I’d ever known without a shirt. But this man I didn’t know. And usually I didn’t notice the muscles in their arms or the way their stomachs rose and fell or the tattoo of a sun over their hearts.
He was looking at me in the fast-fading sunlight. “I don’t even know your name,” he said.
“I don’t know yours.” I looked up, shoving dark hair off my face with my knuckles so I didn’t get blood all over myself. I started to rub them on one of the rags that was still soaked with alcohol.
“Jin.” He’d given me a false name last night, though he didn’t know it. I wasn’t so sure he was giving me a real name now. It didn’t sound like any I’d ever heard.
“You sure about that?” I pressed.
“About my name?” His mouth quirked up as he rolled his injured shoulder. It pulled the bare skin of his stomach so I could just see the edge of another tattoo pull up above his belt. Suddenly I wanted to know what it was. The thought made my neck feel hot. “Fairly sure.”
My eyes flicked up to his face. “Sure you’re not lying to me?”
His grin spread. “Lying’s a sin, don’t you know?”
“So I’ve heard.”
Jin’s eyes danced across my face in a way that made me restless. “You know I’d be dead without your help.”
So would I.
But I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t joke that he should call me Oman like I wanted to. Or the Blue-Eyed Bandit, or anything else I wanted to say. “It’s Amani,” I said. “My name, that is. Amani Al’Hiza.”
It was damn hard to trust a boy with a smile like that. A smile that made me want to follow him straight to the places he’d told me about and made me sure I shouldn’t at the same time.