“If the army—”
“It’s not,” I interrupted. We didn’t ring bells for the army.
“You should—”
“Shut up.” I held up a hand to silence him. To listen. And sure enough, I knew that frantic ringing, though it’d been years since we’d heard it last. A few seconds later it was echoed by others. Bells on porches, from open windows. Iron clanging against iron. The sound sent shivers down my back. “It’s a hunt.”
And then I was running for the door.
five
I barreled out of the store full tilt and near knocked straight into Tamid.
“I was coming to find you.” He was out of breath and resting heavily on his crutch. “You should go back inside.”
“Is it—” I started.
“A Buraqi.” He nodded. My heart jumped in excitement.
A desert horse. A First Being made in the days before us mortal things, from sand and wind. That could run past the end of the world without tiring. And worth its weight in gold if you could catch one. Like hell I was going back inside.
I squinted past the edge of town. Sure enough, I could see the cloud of dust and men getting closer, herding the thing in with iron bars. It must’ve sprung one of the old traps.
“It’ll be on account of the fire in Deadshot,” Tamid said in his preacher’s voice. “First Beings are fond of fire.”
I saw a crooked nail sticking out of the porch and yanked it out. Used to be, folks in this desert made their whole living gathering the metals from the mountains and sending daughters out into the sands with iron gloves to trap and tame the Buraqi. To turn them from sand and wind to flesh and blood so that the men could take them into the cities to sell. Then the Sultan built the factory. The sand filled up with iron dust. Even the water tasted of it. Buraqi got scarcer, tents turned to houses, and horse traders turned into factory workers.
Iron could hold First Beings. Or kill them, same as it could a ghoul. Bind them to mortality. But the only thing that could turn them to flesh and blood long enough to bind them was us.
Tamid had read in some holy text that there were no females among First Beings. They didn’t need any sons. They could just live forever, unlike mortal things. They didn’t need us.
But if knowledge was power, then the unknown was the greatest weakness of immortal things. We all knew the stories. Djinn who fell in love with worthy princesses and gave them all of their hearts’ wishes. Pretty girls who lured Nightmares straight onto men’s blades. Brave merchants’ daughters who caught Buraqi and rode them to the ends of the earth.
They were drawn to us, but also vulnerable to us. We could turn them into flesh and blood.
Folks were pouring out onto their porches all around now, a nervous glint of excitement shivering through them. A Buraqi meant either a whole lot of gold for whoever caught it or a whole lot of blood. Or both.
The Buraqi surged into view at the edge of town.
Someone screamed. A few doors slammed. But most folks leaned forward, trying to get a better look. I hung off the edge of the shop, craning in with the rest.
It was putting up one hell of a fight.
For a second it looked like a mortal horse. The next it was pure sand. Shifting from bright gold to violent red, fire and sun in a windswept desert. A trill of excitement that belonged to a long desert bloodline went through me. The factory had changed our ways. We weren’t desert tribes hunting the Buraqi any longer. But we still filled the desert with iron traps. When one of the traps was sprung, everyone knew what to do.
A rattle of chains made me pay attention. The young widow Saira was hooking one end under the box of za’atar in her window while the other got anchored to the prayer house by the Holy Father. Half the town was throwing iron dust out of their windows, the same dust every household kept handy in case of attack by desert ghouls. It mixed with the sand and air until the whole town was a prison for a First Being.
The Buraqi reared with a cry. The men hemmed it in with iron bars, fighting to keep it from plunging back into the sand. The Buraqi’s hooves came down hard. There was a cry cut off by the crunch of hoof meeting skull. Blood splattered across the sand.
Gold and red like its coat.
Uncle Asid jabbed the Buraqi with the wicked point of his iron bar. The Buraqi reared back, the wound shifting to flesh just long enough to bleed. Long enough for the men to retreat behind the iron chains with everybody else. Their job was done.
The men got the Buraqi into town as one. But from there it was every woman for herself. If you caught the Buraqi and managed to hold it long enough to trap it in its mortal form, then it belonged to you, or rather to your husband or father. Or uncle, in my case. And the money from selling it belonged to him, too.
Not that I was planning on handing it over if I caught it. Hell, I’d needed a new way out of here. Well, here I had one. I’d just have to catch it.
The other women lingered on the edge of the iron chains. The widow Saira’s tongue flicked out across her cracked lips. Even Shira had come out of my uncle’s house. She seemed to be praying, her fingers laced through the iron chain. My heart was thumping through my whole body at once—stomach, throat, anywhere but where it belonged.
Two steps took me to the edge of the iron chain. This was my shot. My way out. “Amani—” Tamid called me. I turned to answer. A flash of pink khalat caught my eye. Aunt Farrah yelped Shira’s name as my cousin dodged under the chain and ran toward the Buraqi.
Damn her. Of all the times for her to decide to do something other than laze around. The Buraqi, which had been tossing itself frantically between sand and skin, turned and charged her.