‘So, you are angry about Jin.’ Ahmed sounded tired.
‘We’re in the middle of a war.’ It would be petty of me to be mad about Ahmed sending Jin away while my life hung in the balance. I supposed I was petty, then.
‘We are.’ Somehow his calm made it that much worse. From the corner of my eye I caught one of Shazad’s looks. Only this one was traded with Hala instead of me, too quick for me to read. Hala shoved the last piece of the orange into her mouth, finally getting to her feet, stepping away so she was clear of me.
‘That wasn’t an answer,’ Ahmed said to me. ‘You think I was wrong for sending Jin to spy on the Xichian? When foreigners warring with my father are the only thing keeping him at bay?’
‘Well it doesn’t seem like it matters any more.’ I snapped. ‘The Sultan is back on our territory anyway, judging by all those dead soldiers we left in Saramotai.’ Damn, I hadn’t meant to say that. I tried a different track. ‘I just think there might’ve been another way.’ That didn’t come out right, either. Even if I had been thinking it for months.
Ahmed linked his hands on top of his head. The gesture was so much like Jin it made me even angrier. ‘You don’t think I should’ve sent my brother out for the good of the country for your sake?’
‘I think you could’ve waited to send him away.’ My temper broke, and suddenly I was shouting. Shazad drew forward like she was going to stop me from saying something I might regret. ‘At least until I woke up from being shot for your rebellion.’
I’d never seen Ahmed’s temper flare before. But I knew I’d pushed too far even before his voice rose. ‘He asked to go, Amani.’
The words were simple enough, but it took me a heartbeat to understand them all the same. Shazad and Hala had both gone still, watching the exchange.
‘I didn’t send him away.’ Ahmed’s voice wasn’t raised any more but it hadn’t lost any of its strength. ‘He asked me for something that would take him away from here and from you. I tried to talk him out of it, but I love my brother enough that I didn’t want him to have to watch you die, either. And I have spent the last two months lying to protect you, but I don’t have time to keep you from acting out some misguided defiance against me because you think it’s my fault he’s gone.’
Hurt and anger warred inside me and I didn’t know which one I wanted to pay attention to first. I wanted to call him a liar but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Everything he was saying sounded true. Truer than Ahmed sending Jin away with no care for either of us. Truer than Jin going against his will. I had almost died and Jin was going to let me do it alone.
‘Amani—’ Ahmed knew me as well as anyone. He knew my instinct was to run. And I knew it, too. I could feel the itch building in my legs. He went from ruler to friend again, reaching for me. Trying to stop me. But I was already out of his reach, pushing out of the stifling dark of the pavilion and into the mockingly bright sun of the oasis.
Chapter 8
Last time I’d seen Jin had been a few heartbeats before I was shot in the stomach.
We were in Iliaz, the key to the middle mountains. So long as Iliaz was in the Sultan’s hands, there was no easy way into eastern Miraji. Meaning there was no way to take Izman, and with it the throne.
It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission.
But it turned out we weren’t the only enemies of the Sultan to figure out that winning Iliaz could mean winning Miraji. Iliaz was under siege from both the Albish and the Gamanix armies. I didn’t know where either of those countries were, but Jin pointed out the flags on their tents as we lay flat on the mountaintop looking over their camps. And it turned out the young prince who was leading the army in Iliaz was a damn sight better as a commander than his brother Naguib had been.
He was holding his own in the mountain fortress against two armies at once, with minimal losses. Even Shazad was impressed. But she thought she could find a way through the siege all the same.
That was, give or take, how we wound up in the middle of a skirmish between the Emir of Iliaz’s first command and two foreign armies. And the Iliaz first command was a whole lot bigger than any of us had expected.
I didn’t remember much from that fight. Blasts of gunpowder sparking the night air from both sides, cries in tongues I didn’t know, and blood dashing across the dusty rocks. Shazad a whirlwind of steel cutting our way out of the fight, me with the desert at my fingertips, Jin levelling his gun at Mirajin and foreigner alike. A scrape of bullet grazing my arm, untethering my power with just one iron kiss. Seeing the knife that was about to go through Jin’s back a heartbeat before he saw it. A heartbeat that mattered in keeping him alive. Grabbing the pistol off my belt.
I stepped out of my cover and straight into the line of fire. The man with the knife went down with one pull of my trigger. Only there was another gun behind him, aimed at me by a dark-haired Mirajin soldier with a steady hand. His bullet tore straight through me. Like I wasn’t Djinni fire and desert sand at all. Just flesh and blood.
Everything I knew about what happened next were things I was told after I woke up. Jin had grabbed me as I’d fallen, cutting three men down between us as he went.
I was bleeding so badly it looked like half my life was already on my clothes by the time he got to me. Shazad carved a path out of the last of the fray with a few swings of her swords and they got me onto Izz’s back; he was shaped as a giant Roc, come to rescue us. Only there was no time to get me all the way back to our camp. I would have died first. They stopped at the first town they saw with a prayer house. It was on the Sultan’s side of the country. Enemy ground. Izz, back in his human shape, made the Holy Father swear he would heal me, not harm me, then repeated it to make sure it was true before they handed me over. Shazad dragged Jin away when he tried to make the Holy Father work with a gun to his head.