He shifted his hand in mine, and I thought he might be pulling away, but instead he slipped Ahmed’s compass into my grip.

‘We need a new plan,’ he said.

Chapter 17

The Beautiful General

Once, in a desert always at war, there was a great general who wished for an heir. Finally, after many years of prayer, his beloved wife grew great with child. But when she gave birth, it was not to a son but to a daughter.

The general put aside his disappointment, for he loved his daughter dearly, and she was a strong, healthy girl. And some years later the general’s wife bore another child, this time a boy. The general and his wife rejoiced. But quickly they saw that the child was not as strong as his sister. He was often sick, and he cried frequently, sometimes too quietly to be heard.

Years passed, and the daughter grew strong and beautiful, while the son struggled. Some days, when the general’s son was strong enough to go outside, his sister would sit and read to him. On one such day, another boy saw the general’s frail son and began to mock him and throw stones at him, trying to goad him into fighting back.

The general’s daughter stood up to fight back instead.

When the general broke up the fight, he found to his great surprise that his daughter had blood only on her fists, while the boy who had been throwing stones had blood on his face.

In that moment, the general saw his daughter for who she was. She was the heir he had prayed for after all, the heir who would defend his family and his country when he was too old and frail. And so in secret he taught his daughter to wield any weapon she chose, and he taught her how to win a battle. How to win a war, if she had to. But still he did not know what future awaited her.

Then, one hot day, as she walked through the market in Izman, the general’s daughter met the Rebel Prince. And she finally found the war that she was meant to fight. And in turn, she, too, became a general to a great ruler.

The Beautiful General stood up over and over again for those who couldn’t stand for themselves, and others stood with her. And she won every fight, one after the other, the way her father had taught her to.

Until the day she lost.

The general’s daughter was punished for daring to ask for a better world. She was sent deep into the darkness, hidden away, where a good death would never find her. Where she could not fight, for her jailers were not men of flesh and blood but creatures of metal and magic.

And for once she could find no escape, not even with her quick and clever mind. For the first time, the general’s daughter was forced to watch instead of standing to fight.

She watched, over and over again, as men and women burned in front of her eyes.

And then the unholy creatures of metal turned their eyes on the young princess, the Demdji sister of the Rebel Prince with the strange purple hair. The Beautiful General’s back ached from bowing it when she didn’t want to. Her eyes hurt from turning away when men and women burned. Her throat pained from being silent.

So the general loosened her tongue, opened her eyes, and straightened her back. And she stood up to walk into death in the young princess’s stead.

Chapter 18

I could feel time slipping away with every moment we weren’t up in the mountains, hunting for Eremot.

Juniper City was struggling to govern itself without the Rebellion or the Sultan. Neighbourhoods were carving themselves up. Men with guns were charging innocent folks for protection from men with knives. The Sultan’s army that came through didn’t care; they were just there to transport prisoners. Neither did the other soldiers who came through, foreign and Mirajin, heading into the mountains never to come back, according to the whispers on the streets.

Jin broke a man’s hand when he tried to rob us at the inn we stayed at overnight. That put an end to any sign of trouble for us, though we still took turns keeping watch through the night. As if we were back in the desert and not safely behind walls.

In the morning, we were woken by a group of men preaching loudly in the streets that it was the end of times. That death was coming for us from the mountains. That any who ventured out beyond the city and did not go with pure hearts would find death.

I didn’t know if our hearts were pure, but we were going to have to head out of the city one way or another. We had to find what was left of the Rebellion and we had to find it quickly. Every passing day was another day Ahmed or Delila or Shazad or Rahim might be dead.

Except we had a stop to make first. I’d made a promise, after all.

*

It was less than a day to Dustwalk from Juniper City as the shape-shifter travelled. Less than a day between the place Tamid and I were born and the city that had seemed impossibly far away my whole life. I wasn’t sorry to get out of Juniper City, to finally be on the move, but I reckoned I could live another hundred years and never see Dustwalk again and be happier for it. Only we’d promised to take Tamid back home if we could. And Demdji kept their promises. Besides, I could feel Ahmed’s compass heavy in my pocket, reminding me we didn’t have any clear direction anyway.

I knew when we were getting close to Dustwalk. The landscape didn’t change. It was all barren desert flatland outside of Juniper City. But it was something I couldn’t quite explain. A shift in the air, like it was wrapping itself around me, pulling me back. The accusatory glare of the sun on my neck, like I’d done something wrong by leaving. And then, suddenly, there it was in the distance, etched against the perfectly blue desert sky like a shadow against the day: the godforsaken place that had raised me.