‘Captain,’ I spoke to the man at my elbow, ‘I know you’re not going to have a whole lot of reasons to trust me after today, but I’m going to give you some advice that I wish I’d had sooner. Don’t underestimate the Sultan. If you ever think you’re outsmarting him, chances are you’re about to be proved wrong in a very deadly way.’ Captain Westcroft raised his reddish brows at me curiously, but I kept my eyes straight ahead. They were foreigners; it wasn’t my job to protect them. But then, Sam was a foreigner, too. And here I was.

The robed man who had spoken to Sam crossed the short space back to us. He looked at me and then said something quick in Albish to the captain. ‘Your young friend’s final words,’ the captain translated, ‘were that he would like it noted that he was right: being heroic leads to death.’

The smile that danced across my face didn’t linger there. As the soldier moved away and the dozen men with rifles stepped forward, Sam suddenly looked terribly alone. And scared.

I felt my breathing turn shallow as the sun crested the mountain. The captain shouted an order in Albish. As one, the six soldiers in uniform clattered their gilded rifles to attention.

Sam flinched at the noise.

Silence came, and it seemed like all the soldiers watching held their breath at once. From overhead I heard the whistle of a bird, three short bursts. There was a whole lot that could still go wrong, but at least we were ready.

Another shouted order came. The guns pointed at him.

I readied myself to move, legs tensing in anticipation.

‘Ready,’ the shout came.

I rocked on to the balls of my feet, leaning forwards just a little.

‘Aim.’

Sam tilted his head back to catch the first rays of the sun, like he wanted to see it all one last time, even though he was blindfolded. Like he wished he’d known that yesterday was the last dawn he’d get. Maybe if he had, he would’ve watched it instead of spending the time in the dark under the tunnels of Izman, waiting to save my life. Maybe he wouldn’t be here at all.

In that second, his pale hair turned to pure gold in the sunlight.

‘Fire!’

Six fingers squeezed triggers at the same moment that I moved, running forwards even as the racket of shots sounded, filling the air with the familiar scent of gunpowder.

Gunpowder without any bullets.

I barrelled through the smoke easily, past the men averting their eyes against the sound and noise and sight of death. I plunged towards where Sam was standing, waiting for a bullet that would never come.

I slammed into him at full speed, pushing him towards the cliff edge. He staggered back to the edge of the ramparts, and then we pitched over into nothingness.

And, for just a second, we were in wide-open air, falling. Plunging towards the rocks below.

Then we hit – not jagged rocks, but cloth pulled taut, giving way beneath our bodies, bowing just enough to catch us. It was the sheets and blankets we’d smuggled out of Jin’s room, strung out between Izz and Maz as they surged upwards in the shape of two huge Rocs, bursting through the smoke from the gunfire. I heard surprised cries from below; their huge wings buffeting the assembled crowd violently as they flew higher over the mountains until we were out of range of both guns and any kind of air magic the Albish army could turn on us.

I was still trying to catch my breath as Sam struggled next to me, panicked and still blind. ‘Stop squirming!’ I shouted close to his ear over the sound of rushing air as we flew.

‘Am I dead?’ Sam asked too loudly in his own language, still twisting.

I yanked the blindfold off, and he blinked his startled blue eyes at me, taking in my face, the wings above my head that were carrying us to safety, and the endless open sky above that. His head jerked from side to side, seeing Jin on Maz’s back to our right, Tamid on Izz’s to our left.

‘You’re not dead,’ I shouted over the wind, as the enormous sling swung precariously in the wind. ‘Now stop moving before you kill us both.’ He did as he was told, lying perfectly immobile as we rushed over the mountains, up, across and down, until we were back over the desert. I could feel the sand nearby even before I felt solid ground as the twins landed, setting the sling down gently.

Jin slid off Maz’s back, pulling me to my feet, while Tamid stayed stubbornly seated on Izz. Jin checked me over quickly, looking for any new wounds. He wouldn’t find any. I didn’t grow up in the shadow of a weapons factory without learning a thing or two, like how to turn a bullet into a blank.

Sam let us haul him to his feet, but as soon as we let him go he collapsed back to sitting on the ground. ‘On second thought, I’m not going to do that.’ His words were calm, but his voice was shaking. ‘Standing seems a little ambitious right now.’

Jin dropped into a crouch across from Sam. ‘You all right there?’ he asked him as he set to work on Sam’s shackled hands. There was a note of tension in his voice, but Sam wasn’t going to notice it. He didn’t need to know what had passed between me and Jin last night about saving his life.

‘Well.’ Sam seemed to take stock of himself. ‘My legs don’t exactly seem to be working. And I have pledged my allegiance to so many different gods that I am not going to be able to be faithful to them all.’ He was babbling at a frantic pace. ‘I’m guessing being caught being unfaithful to a god is probably twice as unfortunate as being caught being unfaithful to a woman. And I’m still not sure I’m not hallucinating all this.’ He squinted up at me. ‘But other than that, I’ve had worse days.’