We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  She came over to him, and after a beat of hesitance, trailed her fingers up the inside of his left wrist and bare arm. He stiffened, instantly growing wary. He should have moved. Wrapped a hand around her slender neck and demanded an answer.

  The tattoo around her eye stopped him. Hanan. Only she would have chosen a word that encompassed so much.

  “I’ve nothing left, sadiqi,” she murmured. “My son is gone. My husband is gone. Am I not deserving of a new life?”

  “You had me,” Altair said hoarsely.

  He thought of his visits to Alderamin years and years ago, when he’d take her the flowers she loved most, soft hues that she began to adapt in her clothes. When he had strung pearls in her silken hair beneath the whisper of the moon. And later, when he had called her his friend, his sadiq, because what she had wanted of him was what Benyamin had wanted of her far longer, and Altair would never take that away from his brother by choice.

  He remembered the way Benyamin spoke of her with boyish diffidence, loving her from afar for decades. He remembered the letter he wrote in Benyamin’s name, the piece of parchment that made the longing in her eyes shift from him to Benyamin.

  He remembered, as vividly as yesterday, when Benyamin and Aya had wedded beneath the fanning leaves of the date palms. The way his heart had wept with loss and joy at once, bittersweet and beautiful.

  “Was I not enough? Was my friendship too heavy a burden?” he asked, his voice soft.

  “The Lion will win, sadiqi,” she whispered, cupping his face. Her hand was cold. All those servile dramatics, and the Lion hadn’t told him anything about Aya. Altair hadn’t known she was a part of his plans, and he certainly didn’t know why. But he wouldn’t wait to find out.

  “For once,” she said, “I will not be on the side of loss.”

  He stared into her eyes, wide and innocent and bereft of reason, and he turned his head to press a kiss to her palm. One last gift. One final farewell.

  For the next time he touched her, it would be with a blade through her heart.

  CHAPTER 45

  The feast was this evening, and Zafira was on edge. More dignitaries had arrived, chests puffed as if they were sultans themselves, hauling treasures to sway favors. She hadn’t seen Nasir since he’d been told of his impending wedding, nor had she sought him out. Her fingers still buzzed from reaching for him, and her heart still stung from when he pulled away. If he wanted to see her, he could come to her. Otherwise, she would have her answer: She truly had been the most interesting thing on Sharr, and they were on Sharr no longer.

  Always so hasty, Yasmine tsked in her head.

  I learned from the best, Zafira retorted.

  She supposed the voice in her head that sounded like Yasmine had a point, however. Since she’d woken this morning from a restless sleep, her attention had been in demand. Seamstresses came and went. First for her, then for Lana. Servants barged in and out. Maids with clean sheets and others pulling dusty curtains.

  On the one hand, Zafira was secretly grateful, for the constant company gave her more time to find the right words to tell Lana what had happened yesterday. On the other, she was beginning to wonder if the sultan was purposely keeping the zumra apart.

  At last, her door closed and remained closed, and with Lana in the adjoining bath, Zafira quickly grabbed her shawl and darted into the hall, coming face to face with Kifah.

  The Pelusian raised an eyebrow. “Off to see your lover?”

  Zafira scowled, and then her scowl deepened when her mind conjured an image of Nasir, his shirt on the floor, her fingers on his skin. No, not hers, but the girl in the yellow shawl’s. “If that’s who you think you are.”

  Kifah’s laugh was cut short by her somber mood. “Seif is expecting a runner any moment now, with updates on the Lion’s—and Aya and Altair’s—whereabouts. I thought you might want to be there.”

  Zafira trailed after her, elbowing her way through the bustling halls and deeper into the palace, tiles cool beneath her feet, the breeze stirring the curtains warm and dry as bones. Kifah barely glanced at the guards as they passed, but Zafira’s skin itched with their probing gazes.

  When she made to open the door to the war room, Kifah rolled her eyes.

  “What?” Zafira asked.

  “Watch,” Kifah taunted, and a guard, stoic and elegant, opened it for them. “See? It’s like magic. No heart required.” She winced. “A bit too soon to be joking about this, eh?”

  Seif and Nasir were already seated at the low majlis. A map stretched on the table in the center, fine lines etched on tanned leather. Yet another masterpiece only the rich could afford.

  Zafira sat to Seif’s left, Kifah to hers. Nasir pressed his lips closed, a minuscule reaction only she would notice.

  “I received word early this morning that the Zaramese heart has been restored,” Seif said.

  “Good, good,” Kifah said, but it was almost as if what wasn’t important to the Lion was no longer important to them, either. “Let’s hope that’s only the beginning of today’s good fortune.”

  “Isn’t it odd that the Lion still hasn’t gone for them?” Nasir asked suddenly.

  Seif shook his head. “He knows they are useless to us without the last, and he knows we won’t destroy them. His plans merely take precedence.”

  “I mean the old adage,” Nasir said slowly, testing his words. “Magic for all or none … My mother has her magic. I have a fraction of it. Altair, too. What if … Well, he could have found a way to do the same.”

  “How?” Seif asked unkindly.

  Nasir had no answer. Zafira remembered what the Lion had said on Sharr—his desire to be like the Sisters themselves, vessel and wielder.

  The tension withered when the runner arrived, a missive in his sweaty grasp. Seif snatched it away, and it took the boy only a single glance at the safi’s elongated ears before his outcry faded and died.

  “You can leave now,” Kifah said with a pointed look.

  The door closed after the runner, and no one breathed as Seif slit the scroll open. His pale eyes skimmed the damp papyrus, revealing nothing. Surely someone would have seen the Lion, with the thick strokes of a bronze tattoo across the side of his face. Aya, more beautiful than any other in Sultan’s Keep. Altair, who could claim the attention of the vicinity with only his presence.

  Seif sat back.

  The cushions sighed beneath him. “Nothing.”

  Nasir’s reaction was a slight narrowing of his eyes. Zafira dropped her fist on the map, right in the middle of Demenhur. Kifah was so still Zafira feared she would break.

  “There’s still blood left,” Zafira said, clutching the vial around her neck. She had lost her dagger for this vial. For the heart. For Altair. Something burned in her chest. “I can find them again.”

  Kifah looked reluctantly hopeful, but offered nothing.

  “Benyamin always claimed the price of dum sihr to be great.” Seif’s tone was disinclined. A losing general delivering an armistice. “He was right. Perchance Aya was, too.”

  Zafira stared at the rhythmic cuts of filigree in the ochre walls and saw Aya’s slender fingers in the Lion’s hand. Altair turning his back on Nasir’s pleas.

  “It’s worsening out there,” Kifah said helplessly. “Sarasin is still without a caliph. Riots are endless because of these damned taxes and the sultan’s ignorance. And he’s still doing nothing.”

  “The feast is tonight,” Nasir said, finally opening his mouth.

  “And?” Kifah asked wildly.

  “Someone is bound to make mention of the need for a Sarasin caliph. Or of the taxes.” And then he must have realized how the words sounded, how useless and incapable they made him sound. “In any case, his focus is on the feast. Once it’s over, we’ll implore him again. And we’ll petition more aid and renew our efforts.”

  Seif looked unconvinced but kept quiet. It was as if without Aya to reprimand him for being uncivil, he was suddenly less so.

  Or perh
aps it was the opposite. Perhaps losing her had made him lose hope, and he could summon nothing else.

  * * *

  Zafira didn’t ask why Kifah was following her back to her rooms, silent and stiff. She didn’t need to, because she understood. Sharr had bound them in a way not unlike her bond with the Jawarat: They were tethered more tightly than even family and lifelong friends could be. Circumstance had brought them together, and the wounds of the island still haunted them, clutching them in an iron fist.

  They had been five, and now they were three. She didn’t need to hear it from Kifah or see it in Nasir’s eyes to know: They were afraid one of them could be next.

  Zafira paused awkwardly for a guard to open her door while Kifah absently tapped her spear against her leg.

  “Are you going to come in?” Zafira asked.

  “Only for a moment.” Kifah brushed a hand across her bald head as she entered the room. “The Nine Elite are here—well, eight of them. As is my calipha. I haven’t seen her since disobeying her orders and trekking across Arawiya, but I’m going to pay my respects.”

  “Oh. Do you want me to come with you?”

  Kifah looked surprised by the offer. “Laa. But you should know that Ayman is here, too.”

  Zafira froze. Ayman al-Ziya, the Caliph of Demenhur.

  “Oi, don’t look like that. Don’t you have something to gloat about?”

  No, Zafira didn’t have anything to gloat about. She had gone to Sharr, she had returned whole, and then everything had fallen apart. They’d lost one of the five hearts and the book needed to restore them. They’d lost Aya, Benyamin’s wife. Altair had betrayed them. The sultan’s medallion was broken, but the people were restless. Magic was still gone.

  So is the Arz, Yasmine reminded her.

  Zafira’s response to Kifah withered and died when she saw Lana, freshly bathed, listening to the conversation and wearing an expression that further coiled dread in her stomach.

  “Go see the caliph, Okhti,” Lana said flatly, a tone she had clearly obtained from Yasmine. “You didn’t hear what he said after you left for Sharr. He deserves to die as much as the sultan does.”

  Zafira frowned hesitantly. “Your murderous tendencies are getting to be a little too much.”

  Lana shrugged. “I’m only talking. It’s something people do, right? When they care for each other?”

  That tone again. Zafira winced. Kifah gave her a look that said she was all on her own, and left, closing the door behind her.

  “I’ll see him later. At the feast,” Zafira said to Lana.

  “When were you going to tell me?” Lana asked as she sat back down in her nook with her notes and little vials of liquids. The mat she had dragged beneath her was the same hue as her moss-green dress.

  Zafira took her time removing her shawl, deciding to play the fool. “About what?”

  “Ammah Aya. What happened to her?” Frustration stressed her words. “You’ve been avoiding me all morning. Where—where is she? I knew I hadn’t seen her come with the rest of you yesterday, but then I thought she was busy, or didn’t want to see me. That’s not true, is it?”

  Zafira settled on her knees beside her.

  “Only a dastard wouldn’t want to see you,” she said gently, weighing her words. She picked up a tiny sprig of dried thyme. “Remember when you said that we’re broken?”

  Wariness pinched Lana’s gaze. She latched her fingers together in answer, knuckles tight.

  “When the world dealt its blow, we snatched up all our pieces and kept moving. We knotted our fraying ropes and kept climbing. We didn’t stay broken, you and I. But Aya did. She couldn’t let go of her son, and so she saw him in you. She couldn’t forgive the truth, and so she saw it in the Lion’s drivel. Aya didn’t climb that rope. She let go.”

  Zafira bit her cheek, seeing Aya’s hand in his. The look in her eyes.

  “She’s gone, Lana. She joined the Lion.”

  Lana made a sound, small and startled. A rabbit in a snare, hope vanishing in a strangled breath, silent and trembling for a long, long moment before angrily swiping a hand across her eyes and staring at her work, at her notes scrawled beside Aya’s neater ones.

  Zafira reached for her, but Lana held stiff. The last of her blood. Zafira wouldn’t let the Lion take her away, too.

  Lana shoved her little table aside, jerking to face her. “I’m a healer, Okhti. I’m—I’m—”

  “You’re what?” Zafira asked softly.

  “What if I become like her?” Her whisper cracked. “What if I become like her? It’s as you said, I—I want to kill people. I don’t know how, but I want them to die. I get angry.”

  She stared at her hands. Zafira gripped her tight, shaking her head with vehemence.

  “No,” Zafira vowed. “Emotions don’t define us. It’s what you do with them that’s important. You’re stronger than she is. Better. And you have me, do you understand? You will always have me.”

  Lana said nothing, but Zafira knew her thoughts were elsewhere. Burrowing beneath her every moment with Aya, reliving them through a new light, another facet of a crystal crumbling in her hands.

  Both of them looked up when a knock sounded, soft and inquisitive. Zafira’s chest became a drum, for there was only one person who knocked that way.

  “Do you want to see him?” Lana whispered, swiping at her face again.

  Him. As if she, too, had memorized the way he knocked.

  “No.”

  “Right,” Lana said with a shaky bark of a laugh. “Let me get it.”

  When she opened the door, however, there wasn’t a sad prince framed in the pointed arch of the doorway, but two young women, one of them hefting a number of boxes stacked so high that Zafira could barely see her beneath them.

  “What—”

  The pair bustled past Lana, cheerful greetings lost in the rush, and dumped their packages on the already messy bed. The shorter of the two clapped her hands in excitement, the taller exhibiting a sterner countenance with a rosy smile that was complemented by her green shawl.

  “You are to wear an abaya!” the shorter one said, her eyes streaked with kohl. The other nodded enthusiastically. The curtains stirred, the near-evening breeze joining the excitement.

  “Am I?” Zafira asked dryly. “I was afraid I’d have to go naked.”

  Both of them, and Lana, stopped to look at her. You’re terrible, Yasmine cackled in her head.

  “Oh,” the shorter one said, her dark eyes wide. “We would never do something so—”

  “It was a joke,” Zafira said.

  The taller one canted her head. “You don’t look the funny type.”

  Zafira gave them a tight smile.

  The shorter one beamed. “I’m Sanya, by the way. You are very tall.”

  “And quite broad,” the taller one said as Zafira mouthed the words with her. Some things never changed. “My name is Reem.”

  They were here to get her and Lana ready for the evening’s festivities, a moment Zafira was dreading for more reasons than one. After downright commanding them to let her bathe on her own, she rushed out of the bath and they sat her down in a chair, chattering all the while. Lana knelt by her table and watched, arms tight around her legs, shaking her head with force when Zafira tried going to her. And then Zafira was lost in a whirl of brushes and ointments, her hair being tugged and her skin being rubbed while she stared at the scarring line in her palm, Lana slowly brightening as she watched the girls at work.

  Zafira had never been tended to in such a way before, not even for Yasmine’s wedding, and her mind became a riot of sound and thought and memory. Altair and Aya and the Lion. Nasir, who was to choose a bride but wanted more than he could voice.

  What do you want? She wanted to see Yasmine again. She wanted to relive the years in which she had pretended her mother did not exist. She wanted to taste the sweetness of Bakdash’s iced cream on her tongue.

  There was more she wanted, too. Things that made her fear h
erself: death and vengeance and magic. Stolen kisses. The rare smile of a boy with sad eyes.

  Death for the Lion. Vengeance for Baba. Magic for herself, for her people, for her kingdom. All fair desires, but it was the extent that she would go to get them that frightened her.

  She was young, still. She would want for as long as she could, and then some. To want was to live, was it not?

  Reem paused to tilt her head, birdlike. “You are pretty when you smile.”

  She made it sound as if Zafira were a corpse otherwise. But the oddly detached observation reminded her of Aya, and her smile vanished as quickly as it had come.

  The sun had begun its final descent when they slid a dress over her shoulders. The hem fell with a whisper, the fabric fine. Silky gray, edged in silver threads. She wrinkled her nose. Whose idea was it to dress her in ashes? She wouldn’t be surprised if it was the sultan’s.

  When she looked up from the dress, all three girls were staring.

  Lana’s eyes were wide, a slow smile transforming her face. “Not even the moon can compare.”

  Sanya clapped her hands again. “You are exquisite.”

  Reem nodded enthusiastically. “Come to the mirror.”

  Zafira ducked her head as they dragged her to the wide glass. She started at her feet, slowly roving from the embroidered hem and up the pleated length to the intricately beaded collar, studs like pearls glistening in the sun’s fading light. Her arms were visible through the gossamer sleeves, the fabric fanning like the delicate wings of a butterfly when she moved. The neck wasn’t as plunging as she expected, thankfully. It was modest enough to keep both Deen’s ring and the vial from being too conspicuous, though low enough that the birthmark above her collarbone was in full view. She warmed, remembering the brush of a trembling mouth.

  Remembering how little she saw of him now, even when they were in the same room.

  Twin strokes colored her cheekbones, a metallic shimmer on her skin. Diluted carmine smeared her lips with the barest of stains, and her unbound hair was as bold as the deepest night. Reem swept kohl with a practiced hand, dark birds taking flight, and finished with a touch of perfume almost exactly like the oud-and-rose of her soap.