We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  Zafira considered that.

  “I see those gears turning, Huntress. I wasn’t always so certain. I used to think I hadn’t found the right person yet. To be with another is supposedly an inherent desire of us all, is it not? Something we’re meant to do. I … I have never felt that pull. That need. Laa, I thought I was daama broken. Heartless.”

  Zafira studied her. “But not anymore.”

  Kifah squared her shoulders and spurred her horse onward with a smile. “No, not anymore.”

  Zafira squeezed her thighs and her lazy horse whinnied again before following Kifah’s lead. It was a special kind of strength, knowing one’s heart as well as Kifah knew hers.

  What do you want? She had demanded an answer from Nasir, and yet she could barely piece together one of her own.

  Seif was waiting for them up ahead where the sand rose and fell in neat dunes. Pockets of shadow clutched the last of the night, sinking lower and lower as Zafira and Kifah neared, until the golden expanse deepened to azure, brightening and reflecting the sky, whispering a song quite different from that of the shifting sands.

  The Strait of Hakim.

  Yet another place Zafira had never thought she would see in person. Another place Deen, whose dream was to explore, would never see.

  She pressed her knuckles against the ache in her chest, fingers brushing his ring. There it is. The loss she thought she’d forgotten. The pain she thought she’d overcome. Yasmine’s face flashed in her mind, honey eyes dripping in sorrow.

  Kifah whistled. “If that doesn’t beg for a swim, I don’t know what does.”

  Zafira didn’t know how to swim. She didn’t know much of life’s delicacies or its simplicities. The waters were clear as glass, dragging the light of the waking sun to its depths and churning it into an alluring shade of blue-green.

  Seif surveyed the shores, the barrenness. “Trade flourished here, at a time. Rarities from the Hessa Isles. Goods moved from Sultan’s Keep to Alderamin and back. Marketplaces sprawled along both coasts.”

  Resentment seared his words, and Zafira wondered whom he blamed for Arawiya’s fall. If he blamed himself in any way, for it was, as every Arawiyan knew, the safin’s cruelty that created the Lion.

  “We’ll cross there.” He pointed farther up the coast, where a bridge stretched like a too-thin smile across the horizon. It was white wood, the kind they could harvest in Demenhur, or maybe even Alderamin, a terrain she did not know. Iron rivets sparkled intermittently along its length, vying with the water for attention. They were a tiny comfort, she supposed, for the bridge had to be at least a century old.

  “I’d much rather swim,” Kifah said slowly, running a hand along her bare scalp.

  Zafira would much rather take a boat. Seif didn’t care.

  “You might not care for your well-being,” Zafira began, realizing what a lie the words were when Kifah burst out laughing. It was a marvel how she could be both deeply concerned and full of delight in a single moment. “But we’re not crossing that bridge with the heart.”

  Seif didn’t even glance back. “Aya and I crossed it when we returned home to retrieve the remainder of the High Circle after the Arz’s fall, and she is worth more to me than all the magic Arawiya can possess.”

  The two of them exchanged a look at his solemn tone, and Kifah’s laughter disappeared as quickly as it had come. He must have sensed their silent contemplation, their piqued curiosity, for he turned back with his signature irritation in his pale eyes, tattoo shimmering against his dark skin.

  “Yalla, mortals.”

  The bridge looked even worse up close, but neither Zafira nor Kifah commented as they dismounted and led their horses across the damp sand. The white wood was speckled with rot, a neat rectangular view of the strait cutting through every so often where slats were missing.

  Well then.

  Seif prepared to go first, the silk-wrapped heart clutched to his side, and Zafira wondered if he’d ever held a child. It was less likely than if he’d been mortal, she realized. Safin paid for their immortality with lower chances of procreation. Very few safin ever gave birth—a blessing, they learned in school, for Arawiya would be overrun with the vain creatures otherwise. Having never met a safi, she’d had no reason not to agree with the biased texts she’d read.

  Now, having realized just how precious Aya and Benyamin’s child had been, the knowledge made her chest ache. It conjured a feline smile and umber eyes. Angry words from a mortal girl before his death. Did the dead know sorrow?

  “Were you there for them?” she asked Seif.

  He cut her a look.

  “When their son died?”

  His features turned stony. “I was there for her when her husband was not.”

  “I can’t see Benyamin abandoning his wife,” Kifah said, voice hard.

  “The death broke them both,” Seif divulged, fixing his gaze in the distance. “Benyamin had the privilege of losing himself in his work, but Aya was still floundering from the loss of magic. It was her livelihood, for she was both a healer and a teacher of magic. Losing her son was hard enough, but losing Benyamin devastated her. He was there, of course. He loved her. But Aya needed more, and it was never the same.”

  So there was another reason why Seif was angry at him. It didn’t sound like Benyamin, to abandon his wife in favor of his work, but she had seen firsthand what death could do to a family. How it could drive knives between bonds, sharpen grief into weapons.

  Her thoughts flashed back to just before they left Sultan’s Keep, the girl in the yellow shawl vivid in Zafira’s mind as she laced her boots. Lana had followed her because Aya was at last out of earshot.

  “She needs me,” Lana had said.

  “She needs you?” Zafira hadn’t been able to tame her emotions. “Decades of life, and now she suddenly needs you?”

  Lana hadn’t flinched. “I remind her of her child. She’s broken, Okhti. And we know what it’s like, don’t we? We know what it’s like to be broken. We’re the same, she and us.”

  Zafira and Lana were sisters. The world had battered and bruised and torn them apart, and yet they had lifted themselves to their feet and persevered. They had powered onward. If Aya needed Lana because of the dead son she reminded her of, then laa, the safi was not the same as them. But Zafira had been too angry to make Lana understand, too raw from the sight of the girl in Nasir’s room.

  “Oi, Huntress!” Kifah called.

  Zafira blinked free of her thoughts. Up ahead, Seif cast her the same look of annoyance as when she’d given the Lion the Jawarat. Incapable, it said.

  She didn’t think twice before stepping onto the bridge and joining Kifah.

  It swayed beneath them, a low hiss rising from the wood. She paused. Hissing?

  Shrieking?

  Kifah released her horse’s reins and grabbed her spear. Seif drew two curved scythes, and Zafira surveyed their surroundings as she nocked an arrow onto her bow. Dimly, she realized she was waiting for something else. Not a foe, but the sound of a scimitar being drawn, a deathly silent assassin growing even more so in the face of danger.

  “Marids,” Seif murmured.

  And something flashed in the water.

  CHAPTER 25

  As they led their horses through the gates, the paved ground gritty with sand, the growing heat settled on Nasir like a fine cloak. The rooftops would be quicker, but for once, he wanted to be seen. He was expected, and he had no reason to sneak about.

  Posturing as your favorite brother, I see, Altair’s voice mocked in his head. Perhaps he was.

  Aya had insisted on accompanying him, which meant Lana did, too. She rode with the safi, eyes wide in wonder as Nasir led them past sprawling limestone constructions and their green-tinted pools. They could pass as mother and daughter if one ignored their ears, he realized. Their features were similar enough, eyes brown, hair barely shades apart.

  Lana turned to Aya with a smile far more innocent than he knew the girl to be—he’d heard
her daama hiss when Zafira protested being alone with him. But Aya’s gaze softened and grew distant, and Nasir remembered: Benyamin and Aya once had a child. That was what Aya saw when she looked at Lana, young and duteous.

  The morning was quiet until they reached the Sultan’s Road, a wide expanse of stone that left no obstacle to mar the view of the palace, shimmering with heat. Along either side of the road was a single row of date palms, akin to sentinels, leaves swaying in the early breeze, accentuating the beauty of the palace.

  He passed marketgoers and guards. Servants bargained for every bit of produce they placed in their baskets. Men passed on horseback and more on foot, several with camels ambling beside them. Some merchants dragged carts while others hefted goods over their shoulders, rousing dust as they shuffled in their sandals.

  The whispers were immediate, carrying on the dry breeze and straight to his ears.

  The prince is back.

  Behind me, my child.

  If only it were the general who had returned.

  Altair was every bit as much a murderer as Nasir, yet they doted on him. He kept them safe, they said. He smiled. He charmed.

  Nasir had shamefully joined the masses.

  Lana giggled at one of the more indecent comments, and they pressed on. The people stared at Aya just as much, awestruck and slack-jawed, for she was beautiful and graceful, her smile tender no matter who it was fixed upon.

  If curiosity lifted any of the people’s gazes to his, terror quickly glazed them. It awakened a surge of power in him, making the shadows in his bloodstream stir. Some part of him had missed the fear he deserved, but he hadn’t missed the reverence. He had loathed it when they dropped to their knees and lowered their heads with murmured respects.

  Now he felt Aya and Lana’s silence as they witnessed the way people looked at him, the Prince of Death.

  Amir al-Maut.

  The name undercut the meticulous changes in himself that he had cultivated upon Sharr.

  Then who am I? he’d asked on Sharr. Zafira had given him an answer then, quick and succinct. If only the truth were as easy.

  A falcon drifted across the horizon, dipping behind one of the palace minarets. Nasir slowed his horse to a trot and dismounted at the palace gates, their grandeur every bit as despicable as always. If the guards were surprised to see him, they didn’t show it. They even continued with their chattering, one of them stepping forward for the horse’s reins with a boldness Nasir did not like.

  He dropped his hood as he strode through the black gates, increasingly aware of his surroundings, from the beads cascading down the lip of the fountain shaped like a lounging lion to the angle of the desert breeze.

  At the palace doors, the two guards lowered their heads in solemn greeting, neither emitting the fear they usually did, and Nasir slowed his steps, touching a hand to his sword before counting again the throwing knives linked to his belt.

  Inside, the usually empty palace was a touch stiller. The dignitaries would not arrive for a few days still. Laa, this trap was for him, and he refused to fall within its grasp. Apprehension molded to his skin, the dark power in his blood aiding his sight in the gloom of the hall as it had done in the Lion’s palace on Sharr.

  Illumining the five men in the silver of the Sultan’s Guard.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Don’t move,” Seif commanded from the center of the bridge as Zafira sifted through Baba’s stories for details about marids. They were amphibious and fed on blood. They had the bodies of women and tails like fish and—

  “They see better beneath the surface,” Seif murmured.

  From the corner of Zafira’s eye, she caught more flashes in the blue-green water as the creatures circled below them, followed by a voice distorted beneath the strait. Her horse strained against her grip, sensing danger and ignoring her soft words. It wasn’t the sun that sent a trickle of perspiration down her neck.

  Then a deathly silence befell their surroundings. The waters stilled, and the horses calmed.

  Zafira’s exhale shook with relief. Ahead of them, Seif relaxed. His fingers brushed the leather satchel strapped to his side, feeling for the faint pulse of the heart. Only then did fear grip her. For the heart, the most powerful artifact in Arawiya, was also its most feeble.

  “Yalla,” Seif murmured without turning back, and the three of them crept forward again, dragging the horses along. Zafira winced as each clop of their hooves resonated like the snap of a bowstring.

  A splash rippled the water to her left. She and Kifah shared a glance but didn’t stop moving. Seif was nearly across, and nothing else mattered.

  Another splash.

  The heart, the heart, the heart.

  She couldn’t even swim. She couldn’t swim any more than she could survive a marid’s gnashing jaws, but all that mattered was the heart.

  Zafira yelped when something slammed against the underwater supports. The bridge groaned. She gripped the moldered railing, her own heart thrumming loud enough for two.

  Kifah whispered, “Our horses.”

  As if spurred by her voice, one threw back its head, yanking the reins. The other stamped its feet. The air thickened with their sudden snorts and protests. The water stirred with renewed fervor. Khara. Muffled shrieks drowned out Zafira’s pounding pulse.

  “Run!” Seif called over the clamor.

  “Are you mad?” Kifah snapped as he took off, sheathing his scythes and pulling his horse with him. She cursed beneath her breath. “At least ride the daama thing!”

  He was leaving them. Zafira had expected nothing less from a safi like him. All that matters is the heart, she reminded herself, but skies, it wouldn’t hurt to show some concern.

  Seif stopped and turned, and her fear returned with a vengeance when she saw the heart against his side within reach of whatever might lunge from the waters at any given moment.

  “Go!” Kifah yelled. “Now is not the time to be considerate, safi.”

  His pale eyes flashed, but he turned toward the shore.

  Too late.

  Something dark moved by his feet. Hands, hair—a face. He stopped when it leaped from the water, hissing and snarling and swallowing every last drop of air in Zafira’s lungs. A marid, though she could see little of it. Spindly arms lunged, blued by life beneath the surface, and clawed hands tore across the white wood, reaching for Seif. He whipped his scythes from their sheaths, murmuring to his horse, the only calm one of the lot.

  Before they could run to him, a face came up against Kifah’s, eyes wide and gaunt, hair clumped and dripping, dark mouth parted in a soundless scream, emanating a terrible hunger. Zafira couldn’t breathe.

  The marid was roughly the size and shape of a human, except for the tail thrashing in lieu of legs.

  Kifah shouted and dropped her spear, stumbling back into her horse.

  Unleashing turmoil.

  The horse screamed. It rammed into the rails of the bridge, cracking them, blinded by terror before it found direction and headed straight toward Alderamin. Straight for Seif. Water sloshed onto the bridge as more marids threw themselves against it.

  In her mind’s eye, Zafira saw only the pulsing red of the si’lah heart, fading to silence, crumbling to dust.

  Her own horse lifted itself on its hind legs and neighed, turning for Sultan’s Keep as two of the marids leaped from either side of the bridge with ear-shattering shrieks.

  Blood splattered Zafira’s face, hot and sudden. In the split-beat it took to level her bow, the marids tore open the horse’s body, its innards spilling free.

  Seif shouted above the clamor. Zafira whirled with a dry heave and spotted another marid crawling for Kifah. She fired an arrow with shaky hands, heaving again when it struck close to the monster’s webbed fingers. It turned to her with wide, hungering eyes.

  “Kifah!” Zafira lurched for Kifah’s spear, tossed it to her, and leaped away from an arm reaching blindly through a missing slat of the bridge. She fired another arrow as the marid
began crawling to her, and she feared her heart would flee from her chest and into its gaping mouth. The marid screamed as it retreated back into the strait.

  Water sloshed at her boots. She felt halved—worried for herself, worried for the si’lah heart. The bridge groaned again. Beneath the din, Zafira heard a sound worse than any other: a heaving splinter.

  “The bridge!” she cried.

  Seif’s horse frenzied, but the safi kept it safe, the heart clutched to his side. His scythes flashed as quickly as the marids’ razor-sharp gills in the water, and a mess of blue blood stickied the space around him.

  Zafira fired another arrow. The monsters were swarming now, more than she could count, dragging themselves up the Sultan’s Keep end of the bridge as the entire construction dipped. Their tails thrashed in shades of azure too beautiful for their horrible faces. She swallowed bile as her horse slid wetly toward the water, blood smearing, guts trailing.

  Zafira and Kifah sprinted for Seif, who was barely paces from the Alder shore. Another beam snapped, and the three of them stumbled. Seif’s horse panicked, kicking its hind legs, and the bridge sank another handbreadth. Kifah yanked Zafira away from a swipe of a marid arm, so thin and sickly blue, she almost didn’t see it.

  The end of the bridge was in sight—seven paces. Five. Zafira’s stomach dropped.

  “Seif!” she yelled as a marid clawed at his right. “The heart!”

  And then the bridge collapsed, swallowing her words and everything else upon it.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Marhaba,” said the leader of the five silver-cloaked guards.

  He was vaguely familiar, likely an acolyte who had run missives from one master to another a moon or two ago and now had a retinue of his own. Positions shifted as quickly as the sands in the Sultan’s Palace.

  Nasir met his gaze and grasped fleeting satisfaction when the man looked away.

  Monster. Altair’s laugh rang in his head.