Except in the past six months I’d gotten used to coming home. I knew everything about the camp. I knew the faces that waited here and the scars they wore. Both the ones that brought them to our war, and the ones they’d gotten fighting for us. I knew which tents were slightly lopsided, and what the birds sounded like in late afternoon from the bathing pools, and that the smell of fresh-baked bread meant Lubna was on cooking duty for the day.
I half expected to see Jin sauntering toward me, like he had the last time I’d gotten back from a mission I’d been sent on without him. A smile on his face, his collar loose so I could see the edge of his tattoo, sleeves rolled up to his elbows so when he pulled me to him, making my own shirt ride up, the bare cool skin of his arms pressed against the desert-flushed heat of mine.
But it looked like he still hadn’t come home.
Shazad was arguing with Ahmed over the details of who to send to Saramotai and how many, leaving me to take charge of our new refugees. I gave Imin and Navid instructions to get them settled. Take the sick and wounded to the Holy Father. Get everyone else working. Navid didn’t need instruction; he’d been on the other side of it himself. But he still smiled genially as I gave it. When I was done, Imin started to help him guide the women to the other side of camp.
I caught Ahmed’s gaze over Shazad’s shoulder as she kept talking, with Mahdi interjecting every so often. Ahmed’s eyes flicked pointedly to Delila. I understood. He didn’t want her any more involved than she already was in this. ‘Delila,’ I said, catching her attention, ‘would you go with Navid and Imin and make sure they can keep their hands off each other long enough to settle everyone?’
Delila might be naive, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew what I was doing. I thought she might make one last stab at standing up for me and Shazad. But she ducked her head, pushing her purple hair behind her ears with false brightness, before following Imin and Navid and their gaggle of women from Saramotai.
Ahmed waited until she was out of earshot before he started. ‘What were you two thinking?’ He hadn’t taken his eyes from his sister’s back. ‘Delila’s a child and she is not trained to fight.’
‘Not to mention that your plan almost wound up getting you shot in the head,’ Mahdi butted in.
‘Your total lack of a plan got you locked up in a jail cell, so I wouldn’t point fingers if I were you. You know what they say: those who point fingers wind up with them broken so badly they point straight back at them.’ Shazad had even less patience for Mahdi than I did. She’d known him longer. From the days before the Sultim trials in Izman.
‘I’m pretty sure that’s not a saying,’ I said.
‘You almost died,’ Mahdi said again, like we might be too stupid to understand.
‘You say that like it’s the first time I’ve ever had a gun pointed at me,’ I retorted as Shazad rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not even the first time this month.’
‘My sister is not as accustomed to near death as you two.’ Ahmed started walking, an unspoken signal that we should fall into step.
‘We wouldn’t have let anything happen to her, Ahmed,’ Shazad said as she and I dropped into pace easily on either side of him, leaving Mahdi trying to elbow his way in.
‘Besides, Delila’s as Demdji as I am.’ We passed out of the glaring sun at the edge of camp and into the shade of the oasis trees. We were headed towards Ahmed’s pavilion. I was trying to remember just when I’d gotten quite so comfortable talking back to royalty. ‘She wants to help, same as everyone else here.’
‘That’s not why you took her, though, is it?’ Ahmed didn’t look at me as we walked. ‘You took her to prove a point.’
He was talking about Jin.
It’d been two months back that I’d gotten shot and nearly died while Jin and I were on a mission in Iliaz. I’d been lucky to survive. When I woke up, back at camp, stitched and bandaged, Jin was gone. Ahmed had sent him to the border while I was unconscious. To infiltrate the Xichian army, which had been gnawing at Miraji from the eastern border, trying to get a foothold in our desert ever since the Sultan’s alliance with the Gallan had shattered.
I wasn’t so petty as to drag his sister into danger just because he’d sent his brother into it when I might’ve been dying.
But then, I wasn’t sure I could say that out loud, either.
‘We can need her and prove a point at the same time.’ Shazad stepped in, taking the bullet for me. We’d nearly reached Ahmed’s pavilion as he halted, turning to face us. I staggered to a stop and for a moment, all I could see was the Rebel Prince facing me, outlined by the gold sun on his pavilion, standing half a pace above us like he could bring justice down on our heads at any second. Like he was our ruler instead of our friend.
It was then that I noticed the entrance to the pavilion was closed. That was why I could see the sun stitched into the tent flaps radiating from Ahmed like he was stepping straight out of the sun. I’d only ever see those closed when Ahmed was holding a war council. Something was wrong. Shazad realised it the same second I did.
‘Hala’s back,’ Ahmed said. Something had to be wrong to get him to drop the subject of his sister so quickly. ‘She got back from Izman just before you. Maz spied you on the horizon from the air, so we thought we’d wait, to … talk.’ His eyes danced to Mahdi, and then away so quickly I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching him so closely.