She swallowed her gasp and gritted her teeth. Deen’s throat would never bob again. Because of him. Because of this murderer beneath her.
The trees of the oasis waited with bated breath. But Zafira’s entire focus honed on the gleaming metal against his throat.
Don’t be an equal to the ones who hurt. Deen’s words, when Zafira had taken it upon herself to challenge the yellow-toothed boy who had broken Deen’s nose during a game of kura years and years ago.
Zafira stared into those gray eyes, and the ashes inside them scattered beneath her stare. She lifted the blade.
Not a flicker of surprise shone on his scarred face. Zafira swallowed her scream with a growl.
“Three things. Wahid, don’t touch me. Ithnayn, don’t look at me. Thalatha, don’t even think about me.” Zafira stood, relishing his hiss of pain as she dug her knees into his legs just for good measure.
He rose and mock-saluted her with two fingers across his brow. “As you wish.”
She ran her gaze across the others before pinning him with a look of ice. “If wishes came true, you’d be dead.”
CHAPTER 48
Nasir still felt the cool kiss of metal against his neck, like the phantom of a burn.
The last time a woman, or anyone for that matter, held a blade against his neck, Nasir had been in training. After that, after his mother ensured he was no more than a whisper in the dark, no one could get close. But the Huntress had no training. That wildness took hold of her, jarring his calm, and she tripped him like they were children in a daama schoolyard.
His neck might have still felt the kiss of metal, but the rest of him felt the heat of shame.
“Akhh, I love when a good sparring session ends with … other things.” Altair grinned when the Huntress handed his scimitar back without a word.
“What now?” Kifah asked. The hilt of a knife danced across her knuckles, and her gold cuff shone like a beacon in the sun. “Shall the rest of us begin dueling to our deaths?”
“No more dueling.” Benyamin sighed like an exasperated mother. His gaze kept darting to their surroundings, where the world had darkened a shade further, despite it being no later than noon.
“Yes, listen to our beloved safi. If we kill one another now, who will we use as bait when the ifrit come knocking?” Altair exclaimed.
“You, maybe?” the Huntress asked as she straightened her clothes. Nasir wondered if he imagined the barest hint of color on her face. “You’re big enough to keep them busy for a while.”
Altair adjusted his turban, a gleam in his eyes. “I’m big enough to keep anyone busy for a while.”
Nasir gagged and Kifah sputtered. The Huntress merely looked confused at their reactions. Cloistered.
Benyamin gave Altair a look but let the remark slide. “We need to start moving.”
“We’re not going anywhere, safi,” the Huntress said, steel in her voice.
He turned to her. “You say it like I’m vermin.”
“Maybe you are.” She shrugged and Kifah barked a laugh.
He looked incredulous. “Your people would be bowing before me.”
“My people also have snow for brains. What of it?” she retorted. “We’re not leaving until I have answers.”
Benyamin nodded. “Soon, dearest Demenhune. The trees bend close, and the shadows have a master. We will converse when the time is right.”
She shivered at his words, and the others fell silent. Sharr seemed to grow even more ominous.
Somehow, Nasir knew this master was not the Silver Witch, and it certainly was not Ghameq, for his father’s reach could not extend this far. This master had created fear on Altair’s face that night in the tavern.
This master made Sharr into the monster that it was.
The Huntress disappeared into the palm trees after a murmur from Benyamin, who stepped after her, beckoning with a quick “Yalla, zumra.”
Let’s go, gang.
Nasir held back. A hashashin’s strength lay in stealth and solitude. Nothing was going as planned: His cousin had shown up, Altair breathed, the Huntress was a girl—laa, woman.
If there was anything other than shame he had felt when she fell upon him, it was that she was wholly woman. Nasir loosed a very slow breath.
And now Benyamin was warning of a greater threat.
Altair looked back at Nasir when they were alone for the first time since Benyamin and Kifah had arrived. “Well?”
Nasir tipped his head. “I’ll take care of the Pelusian—”
Altair snarled and shoved him into the trees. Sunlight vanished behind the dark boughs. Nasir shot to his feet and turned with clenched teeth. His vision burned black as he drew his scimitar.
Anger blazed in Altair’s eyes. “Change of plan? Going to kill me first, is that it? This is no longer about finding the Jawarat and traipsing back to your beloved father, you fool.”
Nasir struggled to control his breathing, but the darkness had amplified, and he could barely see beyond the surrounding trees. Trepidation pulsed against his heart.
“Call for help, spider,” Nasir said, voice low.
“Are you jealous I whisper in someone else’s ear? I told you—whatever I do, I do for the good of the kingdom.”
Nasir didn’t care. “I could slit your throat before you even lift an arm.”
Altair lifted his hands, livid. “By all means.”
In his mind’s eye, Nasir saw himself raising his sword, hefting it back, swinging it forward. He saw a horizon of red across Altair’s neck and those eyes of azure fading. The ripple as his soul fled free. He saw it, he did. Along with the Huntress’s corpse.
But his blade was too heavy now.
It pulsed in his hands, and perspiration trickled down his spine. Benyamin nearly tripped on his rush back to them, dread tugging his lips when he came into view. The Huntress and Kifah shadowed him.
“Your mother’s son is still in there, Prince,” Benyamin said cautiously, as if Nasir were an animal he was afraid to startle.
Had it been anyone else, Nasir would have cut him down, but Benyamin had a claim to the sultana. Nasir held Altair’s gaze and slowly sheathed his scimitar.
“Let him take a look around. Let him see that we are allies by circumstance, not enemies, and let him give murder a rest. Let him open his heart to trust. Perhaps there is more to your quest than what you came for.”
The strange string of the safi’s words reminded Nasir of the crimson compass.
Something rustled in the bushes, sand shifting beneath feet. Nasir froze, and the others slowly turned to the browned palm trees. The unmistakable scuttle of eyes pebbled Nasir’s skin as the swoosh of something rushed past.
And shadows swarmed from the trees.
CHAPTER 49
Zafira had come to expect a lot from Sharr. But she had never expected to see Yasmine drifting toward her in all her ethereal beauty, sand beneath her bare feet.
A strangled sound escaped her throat. Not Yasmine, too.
Benyamin touched the skin of her wrist and Zafira wished for her cloak, her gloves. His voice was garbled by her ear.
“Huntress, look at me.”
Zafira blinked and saw Deen, pierced by an arrow. Baba, crawling from the trees on hands and knees. Dirty. Bloody.
Dead.
Benyamin shook her. “Huntress. Look. At. Me.”
She hated the sympathy in his eyes, the way he spoke to her as if she were a child.
“That’s it. Breathe, slowly. That’s not who you think it is. Do you remember? Are you listening?”
Yasmine. Yasmine. Yasmine.
“It’s not him,” he continued gently.
Him? No, this was a her. This was sweet Yasmine. Foul-mouthed Yasmine. Married Yasmine.
“Breathe, Huntress. Easy now. It’s not real.”
Only then did she notice there wasn’t just one Yasmine. There were many. And as Zafira’s gaze darted from one to another, eerie against the fat trees, she saw the faces shift.
>
“Ifrit,” she whispered. Sweet relief buckled her knees, and she gripped the nearest trunk as the world spun back into focus.
Benyamin held her up with a hand around her shoulders. “I need you alert.”
“Tamim?” Kifah’s voice cracked. Was she seeing a lover? A brother? A friend?
The ifrit continued to shift, slowly surrounding them. Lana, Deen, Umm, Haytham, Baba. At the one that looked like Baba, Benyamin stiffened.
“Do you see him, too?” she asked, willing the tremble from her fingers. She could no longer see the end of the oasis. The sun seemed to have disappeared altogether.
“I see someone, but not the same person you are seeing,” Benyamin choked.
It was an obscene thing, reaching into a soul to pull out the face of a loved one. One ifrit could portray a hundred faces at once—it was all in the eye of the beholder. Unless the victim was strong enough to see past the tricks. Then one would see nothing at all.
“We’re surrounded.” Nasir’s soft murmur came from a little ways behind her.
Zafira knew what it was like to be engulfed by the darkness, but that didn’t stop trepidation from creeping into her heart. The tick, tick, tick going a little faster, a fever she couldn’t contain. An excitement.
She could survive the darkness; she always did.
But could the others?
They need you, a voice in her head said. They didn’t care for her. And there was a good chance that when she found the blasted Jawarat, they might all line up to kill her.
She could easily slip through the trees and escape into the desert.
Yet when she blinked, she saw a blade through Altair’s still chest. She saw Kifah’s unblinking eyes and Benyamin’s stomach ripped to shreds. She saw the prince’s sad gray eyes, colder in death. She couldn’t leave them, even if they might never repay the favor.
With one swift maneuver, she lifted an arrow and nocked it in her bow, familiarity settling between her shoulders as she pulled it back.
“Back to back,” Altair murmured, and Zafira wondered if the general had to bite his tongue to hold back further commands.
One of the ifrit hissed. Another one shouted, words garbled by the old tongue.
“In case you didn’t notice, there are more of us than you and your prince,” Kifah said, a crest to her voice, her restlessness thwarted by the adrenaline of a skirmish.
The five of them rearranged themselves in a ring, backs to one another. Zafira tried to ease into the calm of her hunts, but her thoughts wouldn’t settle. The world buzzed and she couldn’t think straight. More shadows slipped into the small clearing. Even Zafira found it difficult to see.
Still, she counted twelve ifrit against the five of them.
The one nearest her wore Umm’s face as it tilted its head, streaks of white in her hair, almost as if listening to an order. Not real, not real, not real.
Then the world became fire.
CHAPTER 50
The world burned, but at least Nasir could see. His lip curled at his optimism. Spending time with Benyamin was doing him no good.
He blinked against the remnants of the weighted darkness and took in the scene as it flashed in flares of orange. The creatures of smokeless fire appeared unarmed at first, until Nasir realized they were weapons. They darted between the palm trees and glided over the sands as if they were ethereal. Staves of fire appeared in their hands, flickering in the darkness. Heat sweltered and made it difficult to breathe.
From their reactions, it was clear the others saw the ifrit as people they knew, but Nasir saw them as they were: faceless beings, always disappearing from view. Just when he thought he saw one, his vision wavered. They were there, always there, but never in full sight. It was the gift of having a heart as dark and closed off as his.
Altair made a sound. Anguish.
“Do you see someone?” Kifah asked him softly. Her dark eyes glowed in the sudden flares.
“My mother, before she was murdered by the man I hate.”
Nasir didn’t know anything about Altair’s parents or the people he disliked other than Nasir. The general released a breath and fired his first arrow, which whizzed into the shadows. One day, Altair would learn he simply couldn’t be an archer.
Nasir twirled his sword as a howling wail pierced the sudden darkness. He calmed his thoughts and everything blurred, the others forgotten. A hashashin worked alone. A hashashin didn’t pay heed to anyone but himself. A hashashin put the mission before anything else.
A stave of fire came swooping toward him, and he ducked, knee brushing the sharp leaves littering the ground before he swung his scimitar up and to the left. It hissed through the air, the ifrit out of reach.
He darted forward, but the ifrit had disappeared. The heat of another stave kissed Nasir’s neck, and he turned, but only darkness blinked back. He caught a glimpse of gleaming hair, double scimitars raised to strike. Altair. But the general disappeared from his vision between one breath and the next.
A chill settled in Nasir’s spine, despite the heat and the burning air.
The ifrit weren’t only using their weapons to attack; they were using them to blind.
* * *
Zafira knew the game the ifrit were playing. Every time her eyes adjusted to the darkness, they flared their weapons of fire, attacked, and began the cycle anew.
They meant to intimidate, but she was the Demenhune Hunter. She knew the bleeding black.
She inhaled slowly. Baba’s voice was by her ear. She may have been the one to find her way in and out, but he had helped her become one with the darkness. Let it in, abal. Become what the heart asks of you.
In the chaos surrounding her—the shouts, the flickering flames, the stench of sweat and fear—Zafira found that vein of stillness where the shadows beckoned and whispered. Zafira breathed the darkness.
She was the darkness.
Marhaba, darkness, my daama friend.
She felt a swell of elation, despite the battle surrounding her. With each careful inhale, the world pulsed into focus, until Zafira made out the ifrit surrounding them.
Not two paces away, an ifrit swung a stave at Nasir, which he avoided in one fluid movement as if he were made of the darkness himself. Zafira shifted her focus to another ifrit, this one brandishing a stave. She had two, maybe three shots before they noted her ability to see, and she would make the most of it.
For a startling moment, she didn’t see the face of anyone she loved—she saw nothing. A faceless face. It turned to Kifah, whose skin glistened with sweat as her spear danced in her hands.
Before the ifrit could flash its stave, Zafira released her arrow, which struck the creature between the eyes. Its dying howl shattered the chaos.
Everything, and everyone, paused.
Steady now. She noted the pulsing ebb and flow of the darkness. Tendrils of black curled around her arms, nuzzled her skin.
She loosed another arrow, striking an ifrit dangerously close to Altair. That did it: the ifrit turned to her.
The others caught on. Benyamin pulled vials from the belt at his hip. He wound strips of something around needle-pointed knives before tossing them effortlessly. So that was how the slender safi fought without a fighter’s build. Banes. Poison.
He raised his head and flashed her a smile, which was notably directed too far to her left, tattoo ablaze in the firelight. Zafira bit back a grin. Despite his feline grace, he certainly couldn’t see as well as a cat.
On her other side, someone roared, likely Altair, and Zafira heard the quick swoops of a single scimitar that could only be Nasir. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kifah drop to a fighter’s stance, twirling her spear fast enough to create a moving shield.
Zafira reminded herself that they only needed her to find the Jawarat, and that no one was helping her because they cared. But she was grateful for them then, for the creatures’ focus had shifted away from her.
She nocked another arrow and fired.
* * *<
br />
Nasir knew the Huntress was skilled. He had seen her aim when she was in the midst of falling, when her Demenhune companion had taken an arrow for her. She was agile, lithe in war. But seeing it again: her rapid stream of arrows—each one finding its mark—made him feel … he didn’t like how it made him feel.
They were down to four ifrit when the creatures doubled their weapons to a stave per hand and even the Huntress began to grow tired. Nasir tore his scimitar through an ifrit and shoved Benyamin away from another’s oncoming stave.
It occurred to him that he was helping them. This was worse than not killing them.
Nasir swung his scimitar, locking with another of the fiery weapons. The ifrit brought its face close, meaning to intimidate, but Nasir saw nothing.
His will wavered when the heat licked at his hands like dogs starved of hydration.
And then his grip
began
to falter.
Laa. The word echoed deep inside that ever-moving dark mass he called a heart. He couldn’t have come this far only to lose his grip on his own sword.
He threw his weight behind the blade, and the sounds of battle rushed from around him as he lost focus. A roar, a hiss. The clang of metal. The rustle of movement, scuffles. Dark laughter, trickling into his ears.
And then, nothing.
He stumbled forward, the ifrit gone. No, not gone.
Twitching at his feet with a pristine white arrow through the head, as graceful as its owner. Kharra.
A blood debt.
Nasir released a breath. Kill or be killed.
Save and be saved.
Sweat trickled down Nasir’s neck. He sought her out, and despite barely being able to see, he felt their gazes lock amid the fray. And before his pride returned, he acknowledged her with a small tip of his head.
The Huntress nodded back.
CHAPTER 51
The moment Zafira felled the last ifrit, Altair went over them for one final cut across their unmoving throats. The air reeked of burnt flesh. At Zafira’s questioning look, Benyamin leaned back on his heels and said, “Only safin steel keeps them dead.”
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 23