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Behind the sliding door, nails driven into the wall form neat lines. Hanging from knotted cords and metal chains, rows of tags glare at me with what little sunlight breaks into the room.
Secret identities? I wonder while images of Valdus in ridiculous disguises flash in my mind. A mustache glued over his upper lip, a sash tied over his right eye, a wig hanging limply on his head.
With a smile, I run my fingers over the tags. Age has turned letters into illegible lines on the first few. Only a thorny rose remains. One by one I turn the tags, but it’s only down in the second line that I discern a name.
Kiel of The Buried Creek
I pull my hand away. I know that name. Back in the palace, stories about him are exchanged in shushed whispers, each mention dripping with scorn.
Kiel, a man born into a house of a governor but turned rebel. His wild attacks on my father’s guards made him the enemy of the empire. While soldiers hunted him throughout the desert, rebels made him the first King, but his reign was a short one. He had led an attack on the factory in his hometown, and the explosive didn’t go off. The guards who caught him left nothing behind but a mess of bleeding limps of a lifeless body.
Each tag I turn reveals names I’ve heard in stories that taught me to fear them. To fear the rebellion.
Lij of The Light Pass
Th’an of The Wry Cliffs
Ezra of The Thorn Fields
Uli of The Salt Sea
Erik of The Broken Sands
Kings, Queens, and ordinary soldiers of the next dawn. These people gave their life for the rebellion. They left on a mission never to return. Their names will someday fade into history, erased by sand of this unforgiving desert. But not here. The King of Rebels will always remember their names.
The emperor teaches us to fear the rebels, but no one has hurt this desert—these people—more than him. I slide the door shut, wondering if maybe one day Valdus’s tags will take their place on another hook.
A breeze enters through the window and shifts the curtains to reveal a small cabinet with a crooked door propped against the wall. Silver coins of different values form stacks on one shelf, a dozen maps are piled on the other. Old and used, they don’t have a single hole or a crease of a fold. Inara must be repairing them as soon as it’s needed.
A detailed map of The Broken Sands includes every street and square and has circles and crosses in red marking the buildings erected or demolished over the years. Arrows point to abandoned houses where rebels might find shelter if need arose. Such as the one where they hold Rev now. Underneath, maps with the same level-of-detail show The Sour Peaks, The Dust Hills, The Veiled Rock, and every other town in the desert. Even a map of The Shadow City lays at the bottom of the pile. The palace is only a large square in the middle. No one on the outside knows what lies behind those high walls. Maybe, one day, I’ll tell Valdus everything I know about it.
Among all the maps, it’s the one of the empire with a few notes attached to it that catches my attention. Scribbles mark dates and names of cities, each leading to the passage of a train. Some have already passed and bear the symbol of a rising sun and ludicrous sums of silver the rebels must have snagged. Others are future targets already planned for months ahead. The next is only a week away.
A note with the distance to The Veiled Rock and a large question mark makes me furrow my brow. I slide my finger over the railway line to a place lost in the middle of the desert. A point in the sands with nothing on the horizon for days but Bonar’s hometown. The place where seven masked men stepped into the restaurant car with the governor’s eldest son and me. Where Lev has emptied his revolver, aiming at Bonar but wounding me.
The ceremonial convoy is a valuable target, but a dangerous one. Something else must have been at play that day for the rebels to take such a risk. I would ask Valdus, but I doubt The King of Rebels will reveal all his secrets.
A door bangs shut somewhere in the house, and I shuffle the papers back into the messy pile and dash across the room. My foot catches on the leg of the armchair, and it digs painfully into my thigh. I massage my bruised skin, but more noise makes me skip down the stairs.
A gentle breeze is the only thing that welcomes me back into the kitchen, and I sigh. I could never be a real a rebel on a mission. I can’t even rummage through the place I call home without driving myself to a heart attack.
With the glass of tea in my hand, I start toward the backyard.
Valdus appears on the other side without any clothing except black trousers hanging low over his hip. He ruffles his short hair with a towel and fills his lungs with a deep breath. A tattoo of the rising sun above his heart climbs a little higher over his toned chest.
Every rebel bears the symbol of the rising sun on their skin, but this King carries it closer to his heart than anyone.
As he takes another step, the sun dances on the raw filigree of scars. From deep purple to faint white, they fade just above his left elbow where his skin blends with metal. On the right side, there is nothing left of his shoulder. A series of complicated mechanisms have taken its place under artificial skin.
Pulling the towel down, Valdus finally notices me. He clears his throat. “I thought you went to the market with Inara.”
I swallow down the mouthful of tea. The liquid burns all the way down my throat, and I fail to string the words together to form an answer.
“Let me find a shirt,” he says, dashing toward the kitchen.
I settle on the bench, full in thought.
Endless hours of work at my father’s factory have molded Valdus’s body into a knot of muscles. Sharp tools and molten metal have nicked his skin, but the scars around his arms are a symbol of another torture. Some are so angry red that they can’t be older than a month or two, as if he had to take the prosthetics out. Those who did that to him set him up for a life of constant suffering. More than any other man in the desert.
