The smell of rotting flesh came before I saw the bodies.

We passed under a narrow arch half covered by a carpet drying in the sun. The tassels brushed my neck as I ducked under. When I looked back up, I saw two dozen bodies swinging by their necks. They were strung together across the great exterior wall like lanterns.

Lanterns who’d had their eyes picked out by vultures.

It was hard to tell if they’d been old or young or pretty or scarred. But they’d all been wealthy. The birds hadn’t gotten to the kurtas stitched with richly dyed thread or the delicate muslin sleeves of their khalats. I almost gagged at the smell. Death and desert heat made quick work of bodies.

The sun was setting behind me. Which meant that when sunrise came the bodies would blaze with light.

A new dawn. A new desert.

Chapter 3

The prison almost smelled worse than the corpses.

Hossam shoved me down the steps that led underground into the jail cells. I had time to glimpse a long line of iron-barred cells facing each other across a narrow hallway before Hossam pushed me inside one. My shoulder hit the ground hard. Damn, that was going to bruise.

I didn’t try to get back up. I lay with my head against the cool stone floor as Hossam locked the jail cell behind me. The clang of iron on iron set my teeth on edge. I still didn’t move as the footsteps faded up the stairs. I waited three full breaths before struggling to my feet using my bound hands and elbows.

There was one small window at the top of my cell that gave just enough light that I wasn’t fumbling around in the dark. Through the iron bars I could see into the cell across from mine. A girl no older than ten was curled up in the corner, shivering in a pale green khalat that had gone grubby, watching me with huge eyes.

I leaned my face into the bars of the cell. The cold iron bit deep into the Demdji part of me.

‘Imin?’ I called down the prison. ‘Mahdi?’ I waited with bated breath as only silence answered. Then all the way at the other end of the prison I saw the edge of a face appear, pressed against the bars, fingers curling around the iron desperately.

‘Amani?’ a voice called back. It sounded cracked with thirst, but an annoyingly nasal, imperious note remained. The one I’d gotten to know over the last few months since Mahdi and a few others from the intellectual set in Izman had made the trek out of the city and to our camp. ‘Is that you? What are you doing here?’

‘It’s me.’ My shoulders sagged in relief. They were still alive. I wasn’t too late. ‘I’m here to rescue you.’

‘Shame about you getting captured, too, then, isn’t it?’

I bit my tongue. It figured I could count on Mahdi to still be rude to me even from the inside of a jail cell. I didn’t think a whole lot of Mahdi or any of the rest of the weedy city boys who’d come to the heart of the Rebellion so late. After we’d already spilled so much blood to claim half the desert. But still, these were the men who’d supported Ahmed when he first came to Izman. The ones he’d traded philosophies with, and first started to fan the spark of rebellion with. Besides, if I let everyone I found annoying die, we’d be mighty thin on allies.

‘Well’ – I put on my sweetest voice – ‘how else was I meant to get through the gates after you bungled your mission so badly that they put the entire city on lockdown?’

I was met with a satisfyingly sullen silence from the other end of the prison. It would be hard for even Mahdi to argue that he hadn’t failed from the wrong side of a prison door. Still, I could gloat later. Now the last of the daylight was starting to retreat, I was going to have to move quickly. I stepped away from the iron bars. Rubbing my fingers together, I tried to work some blood back into my hands.

The sand that had stuck between them when I’d pretended to trip at the gates shifted in anticipation. It was in the folds of my clothes, too – in my hair, against the sweat of my skin. That was the beauty of the desert. It got into everything, right down to your soul.

Jin said that to me once.

I brushed aside that memory as I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and pulled the sand away from my skin – every grain, every particle answering my call and tugging away from me until it hung in careful suspension in the air.

When I opened my eyes I was surrounded by a haze of sand that glowed golden in the last of the late afternoon sun streaming into the cell.

In the cell across from mine, the little girl in the green khalat straightened a little, leaning out of the gloom to get a closer look.

I sucked in a breath and the sand gathered together into a shape like a whip. I moved my tied hands away from my body as far as I could, shifting the sand with the motion. None of the other Demdji seemed to understand why I needed to move when I used my power. Hala said it made me look like some Izmani market charlatan of the lowest order. But she’d been born with her power at her fingertips. Where I came from, a weapon needed a hand to use it.

The sand slashed between my wrists like a blade, severing the rope. My arms snapped free.

Now I could do some real damage.

I grabbed hold of the sand and slashed my arm downwards in one clean arc, like the blow of a sword. The sand went with it, smashing into the lock of the cell with all the power of a whole desert storm gathered into one blow.

The lock shattered with a satisfying crack. And just like that, I was free.

The little girl in green stared as I kicked the door open, careful not to touch the iron as I gathered the sand back into my fist.

‘So.’ I sauntered down the length of the hallway, tugging away at what was left of the severed rope on my wrists. The rope came away from my right hand easily, leaving a red welt behind. I worked at the knot on my left hand as I came to a stop outside the cell that held Mahdi. ‘How’re those diplomatic negotiations going for you?’ The last of the rope on my hands slithered away to the floor.