Hamilton Traitor to the Throne

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-32542-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 592 Seiten

Reihe: Rebel of the Sands Trilogy

The second installment of this highly-acclaimed trilogy, Traitor to the Throne throws the irrepressible Amani into a world of espionage, harems, and the Sultan himself. This is not about blood or love. This is about treason. Nearly a year has passed since Amani and the rebels won their epic battle at Fahali. Amani has come into both her powers and her reputation as the Blue-Eyed Bandit, and the Rebel Prince's message has spread across the desert - and some might say out of control. But when a surprise encounter turns into a brutal kidnapping, Amani finds herself betrayed in the cruellest manner possible. Stripped of her powers and her identity, and torn from the man she loves, Amani must return to her desert-girl's instinct for survival. For the Sultan's palace is a dangerous one, and the harem is a viper's nest of suspicion, fear and intrigue. Just the right place for a spy to thrive... But spying is a dangerous game, and when ghosts from Amani's past emerge to haunt her, she begins to wonder if she can trust her own treacherous heart. Praise for the series: 'Sheer escapism.'Guardian 'Winning.'New York Times 'Thrilling.'Booklist 'Hugely entertaining . . . breathless romance and show-stopping action sequences.'Bookseller

Alwyn Hamilton was born in Toronto and spent her early years bouncing between Europe and Canada until her parents settled in France. She left France for Cambridge University to study History of Art at King's College, focusing in on painting in the French Revolution. She then moved to London where she now lives and put her degree to use working for an auction house. She now writes full-time and REBEL OF THE SANDS was her first novel. @alwynhamilton on Tiktok.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hamilton, Alwyn

Leseproben

Chapter 2

I’d always liked this shirt. It was a shame about all the blood.

Most of it wasn’t mine, at least. The shirt wasn’t mine, either, for that matter – I’d borrowed it from Shazad and never bothered to give it back. Well, she probably wouldn’t want it now.

‘Stop!’

I was jerked to a halt. My hands were tied, and the rope chafed painfully along the raw skin of my wrists. I hissed a curse under my breath as I tilted my head back, finally looking up from my dusty boots to lock eyes with the glare of the desert sun.

The walls of Saramotai cast a mighty long shadow in the last of the light.

These walls were legendary. They had stood indifferent to one of the greatest battles of the First War, between the hero Attallah and the Destroyer of Worlds. They were so ancient they looked like they’d been built out of the bones of the desert itself. But the words slapped in sloppy white paint above the gates … those were new.

Welcome to the Free City.

I could see where the paint had dripped between the cracks in the ancient stones before drying in the heat.

I had a few things to say about being dragged to a so-called Free City tied up like a goat on a spit, but even I knew I was better off not running my mouth just now.

‘Declare yourself or I’ll shoot!’ someone called from the city wall. The words were a whole lot more impressive than the voice that came with them. I could hear the crack of youth on that last word. I squinted up through my sheema at the kid pointing a rifle at me from the top of the walls. He couldn’t have been any older than thirteen. He was all limbs and joints. He didn’t look like he could’ve held that gun right if his life depended on it. Which it probably did. This being Miraji and all.

‘It’s us, Ikar, you little idiot,’ the man holding me bellowed in my ear. I winced. Shouting really didn’t seem necessary. ‘Now, open the gates right now or, God help me, I’m going to have your father beat you harder than one of his horseshoes until some brains go in.’

‘Hossam?’ Ikar didn’t lower the gun right away. He was twitchy as all get-out. Which wasn’t the best thing when he had one finger on the trigger of a rifle. ‘Who’s that with you?’ He waved his gun in my direction. I turned my body on instinct as the barrel swung wildly. He didn’t look like he could hit the broad side of a barn if he was trying, but I wasn’t ruling out that he might hit me by accident. If he did, better to get shot in the shoulder than the chest.

‘This’ – a hint of pride crept into Hossam’s voice as he jerked my face up to the sunlight like I was a hunted carcass – ‘is the Blue-Eyed Bandit.’

That name landed with more weight than it used to, drawing silence down behind it. On top of the wall Ikar stared. Even this far away I saw his jaw open, going slack for a moment, then close.

‘Open the gates!’ Ikar squawked finally, scrambling down. ‘Open the gates!’

The huge iron doors swung open painfully slow, fighting against the sand that had built up over the day. Hossam and the other men with us jostled me forward in a hurry as the ancient hinges groaned.

The gates didn’t open all the way, only enough for one man to get through at a time. Even after thousands of years those gates looked as strong as they had at the dawn of humanity. They were iron through and through, as thick as the span of a man’s arms, and operated by some system of weights and gears that no other city had been able to duplicate. There’d be no breaking these gates down. And everyone knew there was no climbing the walls of Saramotai.

Seemed like the only way into the city these days was by being dragged through the gates as a prisoner with a hand around your neck. Lucky me.

Saramotai was west of the middle mountains. Which meant it was ours. Or at least, it was supposed to be. After the battle at Fahali, Ahmed had declared this territory his. Most cities had sworn their allegiance quickly enough, as the Gallan occupiers who’d held this half of the desert for so long emptied out of the streets. Or we’d claimed their allegiance away from the Sultan.

Saramotai was another story.

Welcome to the Free City.

Saramotai had declared its own laws, taking rebellion one step further.

Ahmed talked a whole lot about equality and wealth for the poor. The people of Saramotai had decided the only way to create equality was to strike down those who were above them. That the only way to become rich was to take their wealth. So they’d turned against the rich under the guise of accepting Ahmed’s rule.

But Ahmed knew a grab for power when he saw one. We didn’t know all that much about Malik Al-Kizzam, the man who’d taken over Saramotai, except that he’d been a servant to the emir and now the emir was dead and Malik lived in his grand estate.

So we sent a few folk to find out more. And do something about it if we didn’t like it.

They didn’t come back.

That was a problem. Another problem was getting in after them.

And so here I was, my hands tied so tight behind my back I was losing feeling in them and a fresh wound on my collarbone where a knife had just barely missed my neck. Funny how being successful felt exactly the same as getting captured.

Hossam shoved me ahead of him through the narrow gap in the gates. I stumbled and went sprawling in the sand face-first, my elbow bashing into the iron gate painfully as I went down.

Son of a bitch, that hurt more than I thought it would.

A hiss of pain escaped through my teeth as I rolled over. Sand stuck to my hands where sweat had pooled under the ropes, clinging to my skin. Then Hossam grabbed me, yanking me to my feet. He hustled me inside, the gate clanging quickly shut behind us. It was almost like they were afraid of something.

A small crowd had already gathered inside the gate to gawk. Half were clutching guns. More than a few of those were pointed at me.

So my reputation really did precede me.

‘Hossam.’ Someone pushed to the front. He was older than my captors, with serious eyes that took in my sorry state. He looked at me more levelly than the others. He wouldn’t be blinded by the same eagerness. ‘What happened?’

‘We caught her in the mountains,’ Hossam crowed. ‘She tried to ambush us when we were on our way back from trading for the guns.’ Two of the other men with us dropped bags that were heavy with weapons on the ground proudly, as if to show off that I hadn’t gotten in their way. The guns weren’t of Mirajin make. Amonpourian. Stupid-looking things. Ornate and carved, made by hand instead of machine, and charged at twice what they were worth because someone had gone to the trouble of making them pretty. It didn’t matter how pretty something was, it’d kill you just as dead. That, I’d learned from Shazad.

‘Just her?’ the man with the serious eyes asked. ‘On her own?’ His gaze flicked to me. Like he might be able to suss out the truth just from looking at me. Whether a girl of seventeen would really think she could take on a half dozen grown men with nothing but a handful of bullets and think she could win. Whether the famous Blue-Eyed Bandit could really be that stupid.

I preferred ‘reckless’.

But I kept my mouth shut. The more I talked, the more likely I was to say something that’d backfire on me. Stay silent, look sullen, try not to get yourself killed.

If all else fails, just stick with that last one.

‘Are you really the Blue-Eyed Bandit?’ Ikar blurted out, making everyone’s head turn. He’d scrambled down from his watchpost on the wall to come gawk at me with the rest. He leaned forward eagerly across the barrel of his gun. If it went off now it’d take both his hands and part of his face with it. ‘Is it true what they say about you?’

Stay silent. Look sullen. Try not to get yourself killed. ‘Depends what they’re saying, I suppose.’ Damn it. That didn’t last so long. ‘And you shouldn’t hold your gun like that.’

Ikar shifted his grip absently, never taking his eyes off me. ‘They say that you can shoot a man’s eye out fifty feet away in the pitch dark. That you walked through a hail of bullets in Iliaz, and walked out with the Sultan’s secret war plans.’ I remembered Iliaz going a little differently. It ended with a bullet in me, for one. ‘That you seduced one of the Emir of Jalaz’s wives while they were visiting Izman.’ Now, that was a new one. I’d heard the one about seducing the emir himself. But maybe the emir’s wife liked women, too. Or maybe the story had twisted in the telling, since half the tales of the Blue-Eyed Bandit seemed to make out I was a man these days. I’d stopped wearing wraps to pretend I was a boy, but apparently I’d need to fill out a little more to convince some people that the bandit was a girl.

‘You killed a hundred Gallan soldiers at Fahali,’ he pushed on, his words tripping over each other, undeterred by my silence. ‘And I heard you escaped from Malal on the back of a giant blue Roc, and flooded the prayer house behind you.’

‘You...