I dropped to my knees, ignoring the screaming pain in my body, as I searched through the glass for the biggest shard. It had worked; I could hear footsteps through the door, someone coming to investigate. My hand closed around a piece of glass the size of my thumb, shattered to a sharp point. I curled my hand around it just tight enough not to draw blood, staying in my crouch, back flat to the wall by the door – ready for whoever came through. It had worked in Saramotai and I didn’t believe the Sultan’s guards were any brighter than Malik’s.

The door swung open. I stayed low, heart pounding. All I saw was a flash of pale grey fabric before I moved. I slashed towards the back of the knees. It sliced through thin linen, gouging straight for the soft flesh underneath.

Instead, the glass scraped noisily off something hard.

A wound gaped in the fabric of the trousers where my makeshift weapon had struck, revealing gleaming bronze joints underneath.

For a second all I could think of was Noorsham in the bronze armour designed to control him. Heavy words in his Last County accent echoing around inside a hollow shell. But the voice that came now was a different one.

‘Careful!’ It sounded familiar, although it wasn’t talking to me. I tipped my head back slowly, looking up at the man staring down at me dispassionately. ‘She’s armed.’

I thought I was ready for whatever I was facing here. I was dead wrong. Because in the doorway, with a new slice in his clothes, carefully parted hair stuck to his forehead, was Tamid.

The world tilted out from under me even as a guard in uniform stepped around him, weapon drawn. He grabbed me, ripping my meagre glass weapon out of my hand. It was already stained red from where I had opened my palm with it, gripping it in shock.

I didn’t even feel it. I didn’t even fight as the guard wrenched me back to the middle of the room, forcing me against the cold marble slab where I’d woken up.

I twisted in his grasp. Not to escape. But because I couldn’t stand to lose sight of Tamid.

Tamid who I’d grown up with. Tamid who, after my mother died, had been the only person in all of Dustwalk I’d cared about. Tamid who’d been my only friend for years. Who I’d last seen bleeding out in the sand while I rode away on the back of a Buraqi with Jin.

You’re dead. The words shot from my brain to my mouth and stopped short. The untruth couldn’t get any farther. Because he wasn’t dead. He was alive and stubbornly collecting the broken glass from the floor. Like he didn’t even know me. Only the slight furrow between his brows betrayed that he was focusing far too hard for such a simple task. Avoiding looking at me at all costs.

He wasn’t using a crutch, I realised. Last time I’d seen Tamid, Prince Naguib had put a bullet straight through his twisted knee when I wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted. I’d seen Tamid fall to his side, screaming. My fault. I’d seen men take lesser injuries than that and lose a leg, but here he was standing on two. I heard a small click as he moved, metal on metal, like the repeating system in a revolver. Through his torn trouser leg I saw what looked like a joint made out of brass. My heart lurched. One flesh-and-blood leg and one metallic leg.

‘What should I do with her?’ the soldier asked.

‘Tie it down to the table.’ Tamid picked up the last piece of glass. He’d called me it. Like I was less than a friend he’d chosen to turn into an enemy. Like I was less than human.

The soldier’s hands pressed painfully into my bandaged skin as he tried to hold me. I cried out without meaning to. The noise startled Tamid into looking at me.

‘Don’t—’ he started, drawing the guard’s attention. I saw my opening.

Make the first hit count.

I slammed my head forward. My skull connected with his, sending a crack of pain through my head. ‘Son of a bitch!’ I cursed, as the soldier stumbled back, clutching his forehead. I rolled off the table and made for the door. But I was too slow – the soldier was already grabbing the front of my khalat, raising his fist, angling for my face. I turned away like Shazad had taught me, aiming to catch the fist with my shoulder.

The blow never came.

Weighty silence fell over the room.

I looked up. A man was holding back the soldier’s fist. For a sliver of a second I thought it was Ahmed. Sunlight still danced blearily across my vision after days in darkness, edging his profile with gold. Dark hair with the hint of a curl in it fell over a proud desert-dark brow. Sharp, determined dark eyes smudged with a sleepless night. Only his mouth was different. Set in a steady, sure line, it didn’t wear the soft uncertain question that sometimes hovered on Ahmed’s.

But he was cast from the same mould. Or rather, Ahmed was cast from the mould of this man. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sons tended to take after their fathers.

‘You should know when you have been bested, soldier,’ the Sultan said, keeping hold of his fist.

The soldier’s hand unwound itself from the front of my shirt quickly. I pulled back, out of reach. And just like that, all of the Sultan’s attention turned on me.

I’d never figured the Sultan would look so much like my prince. I’d imagined him like every faded colour drawing in the storybooks about cruel rulers who were overturned by clever heroes. Fat and old and greedy, and dressed in clothes that cost enough coin to feed a family for a year. I ought to have known better. If I’d learned anything from being the Blue-Eyed Bandit, it was that stories and the truth were rarely the same thing.