Zafira exhaled, and the world spun back into motion. Her fingers twitched to throw down her hood. Be proud, Yasmine had said time and time again. But she couldn’t be. She wasn’t proud. She was afraid.
She was afraid of being a woman. Yasmine’s disappointment settled heavily on her back.
Sweet snow below. A soldier had just ordered her to drop her hood, and the caliph had snapped at him on her behalf. Zafira watched from the corners of her eyes as Haytham led the group of soldiers away, shouting the entire time. His final command was followed by a reply of which Zafira caught a hiss: “He looks like a daama nisa.” Indeed, she was a “bloody woman,” and it was the Pelusian’s loss for not knowing any better.
“When the time is right, Hunter, you will know it. Until then, a hooded boy is fine by me,” the caliph said softly. Kindly.
She drew in a breath. She hated the rare moments when she had to speak, and now, in the presence of so many, she found it even harder. Even more so because Deen, Yasmine, and Lana were here, too.
“Shukrun, sayyidi,” she said, pitching her voice as low as she could. It rumbled from her throat, barely decipherable.
He stopped her before she could kneel again. Everyone knew the caliph had no royal blood in his veins—none of them did. Not even Sultan Ghameq, with whom the sultana had fallen in love and to whom she had handed the crown of Arawiya. The Sisters had never expected to die, and there was no one in line to succeed to their thrones when they had all but vanished.
Humans were nowhere near as powerful as the Sisters, and a council in Sultan’s Keep wasn’t enough. So in each caliphate, the people turned to the Sisters’ most trusted men. Here, it had been Ayman’s father. It was love for the old caliph that kept Ayman on the throne.
“Our minarets may light once again,” the caliph said, his voice low, the words meant for her alone. “We might finally be free of this curse. Do you assent to the silver invitation, Hunter?”
Laughter bubbled to Zafira’s lips and she swallowed it down. Why did she always want to laugh at the least opportune times? Her heart began rising to her throat.
Say yes. Yes meant undulating waves. Magic for the future. Every tale of Baba’s a reality. Vengeance upon the forest that stole him away.
My life forfeit.
A quiver began at Zafira’s fingertips. A tic in her neck danced to some frenzied tune. The upper half of her body tipped forward in assent, but the rest of her held back. The people that had gathered from the villages watched, not knowing what was happening, but Haytham’s gaze weighed upon her heavily from his place beside the caliph.
Conquering the Arz wasn’t enough. Skies. This—this was what she had been waiting for.
Zafira inhaled deep and felt the crash of her heart. She nodded. Sealing her life to a miserable cause. For the future of her people. For magic.
Haytham’s sigh of relief echoed the caliph’s.
She was going to do what no man had done before. It meant the people of Arawiya had a chance at survival. A chance to outlive the Arz, to feel magic roar through their veins.
But then.
Boots she knew as well as her own shuffled to her side, filling her with foreboding. She looked to her right as he looked to his left.
Deen.
CHAPTER 17
Zafira tried to straighten her shoulders, but she was stuck. Like the little birds she sometimes found in the snow. It’s strange what I’ll remember with a spoon of cocoa and an empty vial of honey.
Yasmine knew.
“Deen Ra’ad?” Haytham asked.
The question jerked Zafira from her thoughts. She didn’t know Haytham knew of Deen.
“Can I help you?”
“I’d like to join the quest,” Deen said, lifting his head.
His voice. His words. Every nerve ending that had frayed when Zafira nodded finally exploded.
“Why would a deserter want to go?” a nearby soldier shouted. It seemed they knew about the quest, too. Murmurs rose through the crowd, polluting the air with wrongful thoughts. “He’d sooner abandon his caliphate than—”
“Enough! He was discharged from our ranks with honor!” Haytham shouted.
Deen nearly had been a deserter after his parents’ deaths, but he was saved the dishonor when the caliph gave him a discharge that some felt he had taken too readily.
Haytham said, not unkindly, “Only the Hunter was invited.”
She could hear Deen’s inhale. That shuddering draw she knew so well. The same draw before he had proposed. He was close enough to touch, to beg in a whisper, but the caliph stood before them, and every movement of hers as the Hunter took the strength of a thousand.
“Do you intend to send him alone?” Deen asked evenly.
It was clear Haytham hadn’t considered that. “There are many qualified men still in our service.”
Deen inclined his head. “They may be superior in strength, but their loyalties lie with Demenhur, with Arawiya.”
He spoke loudly, clearly, but Zafira knew that tone, the fear humming beneath the surface. “You need someone like me.”
“I don’t follow,” Haytham said slowly.
“Just as there is no man more likely to succeed than the Hunter”—he stopped, and there was another shuddering draw—“there is no man in Arawiya more loyal to the Hunter than I.”
In the silence, the shards of Zafira’s heart crumbled.
Fell.
Wept.
Drowned.
She watched as the wheels spun in Haytham’s head and the logic of Deen’s words struck. People murmured, their whispers buzzing in the air. She wanted to fall to her knees and scream.
Haytham inhaled. He opened his mouth, damning her. Damning him, the man who wanted to marry her.
“Very well,” he said. He sounded far off. The pound of Sharr, Sharr, Sharr in her pulse turned to Deen, Deen, Deen. “You may join the Hunter. Sayyidi Ayman, cast your eyes upon the two who will restore glory to Arawiya.”
The caliph smiled. Haytham beamed. Neither realized what had just been done.
Zafira felt the heavy silence of a tomb.
She turned away abruptly. Deen trailed her like a child’s rag doll, but she was afraid that if she started stringing letters together, she would end with her nails on his beautiful face, so she kept her mouth pressed closed. For here, where she was supposed to be a man, she could not afford mistakes. She stared at Yasmine’s tear-stained face and turned, heading to where the Arz had just recently stood on spindly trunks.
It was familiar. It was grounding. It terrified her.
A good distance away, the waves lapped lazily against the black stones, reaching and retreating. The ship tilted and righted.
She knew, then, why the Silver Witch had chosen that moment to arrive in the stable, when Deen and Zafira were together, secluded, thoughts and feelings raw. Pliable. She had sent only one invitation, but she had always intended for Deen to be a part of the journey.
She had promised that the sultan wouldn’t know, but there was no doubt he would learn an entire segment of the Arz had disappeared and that the notable Hunter had boarded a ship on the Baransea itself.
What other plans did she spin in her web of silver, deceiving without lying?
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” someone asked, stepping to her side. Haytham. A wicked sword hung from his side, the white hilt carved with words from the old tongue.
Could she describe the sea as beautiful? Yes, very much so. But was that a word a man would use? Her brain refused to think, so she settled with a nod.
This close, it wouldn’t be difficult to discern she was no boy, so she held herself carefully. Haytham smiled, his eyes darting a path across her face—her lips, her nose, the hood that concealed the rest of her. She was lucky her delicate features were a commonality in Demenhur, and that—
“You’re younger than I thought.”
She stopped breathing. I could pass for a young boy. Albeit a tall one. Haytham opened his mouth. Z
afira swallowed.
“The caliph is an old man,” Haytham said finally, and she exhaled in relief. “He is disheartened over the ruin of our lands and the whole of Arawiya. He appreciates what you do for the western villages, but he has not had a chance to reward you for your deeds. This was not how he wanted to meet you for the first time.”
Zafira kept her lips thinned and forced a smile. “That’s all right, effendi.”
“Please, Haytham will do,” he said.
Some ways behind them, the caliph hacked a cough that rattled down to his bones.
Haytham looked back at her. “Did you know there is an heir to our ice throne?”
Zafira blinked at his change of thought, and unease skittered across her skin. “I thought the caliph was childless.”
“As does the rest of the Arawiya,” Haytham said. “You see, the heir is a girl. Cast away by her father, because how can a girl take control of an entire caliphate?”
“How can a woman do anything at all?” Zafira bit out, anger masking her surprise.
“I have always wished for someone to take matters into her own hands,” he said, an odd tone to his words. He studied her as he spoke. “To prove to our caliph that a body is only a body and that a soul determines one’s actions. Yet here we are, aren’t we, Huntress?”
Panic gripped her, climbed her throat. “How?” she whispered.
“Experience. What better way to allow a woman before tutors of politics and battle strategy than to dress her as a boy?”
Zafira thought of that girl, the calipha-to-be.
“You have made a place for a man who does not exist,” Haytham continued. “I will do what I can, readying the caliph’s daughter for her role by right, but if you can find it in your heart to embrace what you are, the world will be better for it.”
Snow flitted from the skies, and anger burned her sight. How could he impose that responsibility upon her? Wasn’t she doing enough?
“May I borrow our esteemed Hunter, Haytham?”
The caliph. Haytham froze for the barest of moments before stepping away, and the caliph smiled as he took Haytham’s place by Zafira’s side. Deen joined them, trying to catch her eye.
She ignored him. One moment he had wanted to marry her and explore the world, the next he was ready to lie down and die like an old man.
But if Deen had a death wish, who was she to stop him?
She had one to match.
The caliph caught a snowflake in his weathered palm. “I have faith you will claim victory over the lost Jawarat. We may not have the brutality of the Zaramese, the cunning of the Sarasins, the wisdom and might of the Pelusians, or the experience of the Alder safin, but we have good intentions, good hearts, and the two of you.”
Two men handed Zafira and Deen each a satchel.
“Salves, dates, and preserved meat,” the caliph explained.
“I have a request,” Zafira said quickly, voice hoarse. “If I may, sayyidi,” she added.
He inclined his head, and she took it as permission to continue.
“I-I would like for our families—mine and Deen Ra’ad’s—to be given shelter in your palace.” She kept her voice in a careful rasp. “In Thalj. And care for my mother, who is ill.”
The caliph was silent.
Zafira felt she had overstepped. Skies, Zafira. Thalj? She worried her lip and flicked her gaze to Haytham, but he was a picture of nervous emotion now, looking into the distance as if he were expecting someone. Zafira looked away, before his jittery stance could transfer to her.
“Granting your families residence in the palace of Thalj is the very least I could do for saviors with the hearts of lions,” the caliph said finally. “And finding a nurse for an ill mother is a simple matter.”
She jerked a nod, tamping down her relief before it could twitch her lips into a smile. “There is one more thing. Without my hunts, the western villages won’t—”
“We will take care of that, too,” he said. “It will not be easy, but we will provide more grain from our stores, and venison when possible.”
Zafira exhaled.
“Rest assured, my fearless, we will take care of everything,” the caliph promised.
Everything. All she needed to do was get through the Baransea, venture across Sharr, and return with the book. Or die. Simple enough.
Zafira’s chest constricted. Deen returned to the others and bumped noses with Misk in farewell, then lingered in a fierce embrace with Yasmine, the look on her face crushing a weight against Zafira’s chest. He drew Lana into a hug, straightened her shawl, and gave them some last-minute instructions on caring for Sukkar and Lemun.
Zafira watched from afar, because she couldn’t step closer. She might never see them again. She might never grip Lana’s hands or hear Yasmine’s voice. But she didn’t know how to say goodbye. So she looked her fill and closed her eyes and breathed deep.
The caliph smiled, and Zafira wanted to tell him, laa, they weren’t fearless.
“Whether you return as heroes or succumb as martyrs, you will forever be in our souls.” His next words were directed at her. “May Arawiya be with you, lionheart.”
It was a kind dismissal. A farewell offered to a soldier not expected to return.
A plank connected the ship to the pebbled shore. Zafira looked back at Yasmine gripping Lana’s shoulders, Misk behind them. He held her gaze, despite her heavy hood, and gave her a small nod, the tassels of his turban fluttering in the cold breeze. There was a strange look on his face, as if he was just now seeing her for the first time. He knows who I am.
“Farewell,” she whispered, before carefully crossing the stones, entering what used to be the Arz. They slid beneath her boots, clattering like fresh bones. Even a quarter of the way across, they were surprisingly clean. Not even a leaf lay on them.
After what felt like forever, she reached the shore, Deen trailing her in silence. She leaned down as if to touch the water, but he guided her to the ship, eyes wide at her antics, and she jerked from his touch. The plank creaked beneath her weight, moaning a goodbye as she furthered from the place she called home.
The ship bobbed in welcome, and though she knew what it was like to be atop a beast that moved of its own accord, this felt different. Like her stomach had come untethered. She gripped the railing.
From the snow in the distance, dozens watched her and Deen. She was too far away to make out the glimmer of tears that shone in Yasmine’s eyes. Too far from her family already. She looked away, to the gleaming ship, unnaturally perfect. Zafira knew whom she had to thank.
That woman with a smile of ice, limitless in her power, effortless in her command.
A man carrying a trunk passed in front of them, and Deen nodded in his direction. “There’s something wrong with them. I mean, this ship can’t be real. It was the Silver Witch’s doing. Maybe the men aren’t real, either. We don’t have a reason for trunks and whatever else they’re carrying around. They’re moving about, doing nothing, and I have a feeling this ship will sail itself.”
Zafira didn’t like the idea of a mirage taking them across the Baransea. An illusion full of illusionary men. She suppressed a shudder, but she was still too angry to feel anything else.
Deen sighed after a moment. “You have no right to be angry at me. You decided to do this just as I did.”
“No, dolt. You decided to do this because I did!” she shouted.
For a long moment, they stared at each other, tensed breaths clouding the chilled air. Her eyes burned, tracing the curve of his mouth, always so quick to smile. The shadow of a beard, darkening his skin. The crease between his brows, now furrowed in anger. Those rogue bronze curls, slipping from his turban to catch the light.
He looked different without a thobe and the bulk of the coat he always wore. His loose trousers were tucked into his calfskin boots. A dark linen shirt complemented the indigo turban loose around his head.
An ax lay against his back—it had been a long time since Zafira had
seen him with his weapon of choice. He once prided himself in having been trained by a Zaramese fighter, for only they were skilled with the tabar. But that was before. The past Deen.
He was here now because of her. He had set aside his fears and pledged his daama life because of her. It was her fault.
The fight rushed out of her. “Don’t come.”
His answering question was immediate. “Why not?”
Zafira looked up at the sky, down at the ship, and then straight at him. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You cannot lose what’s already lost.” Deen shook his head slowly.
Zafira jerked back. “What does that mean?” she asked. Then she thought of his dream and said, “No, no, it’s fine. I don’t want to know.”
She crossed her arms over her chest as if her world hadn’t skidded to a halt and begun anew. The tales of Sharr were terrifying, but those of the Baransea were equally so. They told of creatures large enough to swallow ships and the sea itself. Of smaller ones great enough in number to eat away a vessel while its occupants idled unaware. The waters lapped lazily against the ship in false innocence.
“They’ll tell stories about us,” he coaxed.
She considered ignoring him, but they were in this together now. She begrudgingly cast him a look, pretending something didn’t lighten in her chest when relief flickered in his eyes.
“I never thought you vain,” Zafira said, raising an eyebrow.
He laughed. “That’s how men are.”
She smiled. “I see you’ve been reacquainted with your tabar.”
Something flashed across his features before he grinned, and Zafira knew this was the moment in which they forgave each other.
“Indeed. I see you’ve brought only, what, fifteen arrows?” He punched her lightly on the shoulder, and her heart warmed. “What if you miss, Hunter?”
“You know me, Ra’ad. I never miss.”
CHAPTER 18
The compass in Nasir’s pocket was his only proof that he hadn’t imagined the Silver Witch. He tucked his keffiyah into his bag and whispered in the gray stallion’s ear to find his way home.
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 13