Triumph glowed in his gaze. “Now that is the reaction I was hoping for.”
Zafira huffed. Him and his extra words.
“You’re not in Alderamin,” he said. He gestured to their surroundings, where people bustled and the dry wind wove between the creamy buildings.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird cried. Zafira couldn’t breathe past the delight expanding in her chest.
Benyamin twirled his finger, and Zafira’s sight shimmered and settled again. She hadn’t moved—there hadn’t even been a stir in the air—but now they were on a balcony. Bereft, she reached for the cool, burnished railing and peered into the curtained room behind her, glimpsing a massive dining hall. Ornate chandeliers were lit with flames, the light amplified by mirrors. Engineering done by the Pelusians. Aesthetics by the artistic eye of the Demenhune. A majlis with cushions of deep red was flush with the floor, arranged around a gold rug, where a fancy-spouted dallah and cups sat on a tray.
She turned back to Benyamin.
“Then where—” She stopped. From their height, a scene from an artist’s canvas unfolded beyond the railing.
The sands glittered far below. Farther ahead, the sea—the Baransea, she realized with a start—lapped the shore with lazy waves. To her left sprawled a masterpiece of stone, a mosaic of blue pieced together to create domes that rivaled the clear skies. Slender spires ended in the diamonds she had seen throughout the landscape. One tower stood out from the rest, its stained-glass windows at the very top dark and forlorn without magic. The royal minaret.
“This is Almas, our capital,” Benyamin said wryly beside her.
Fitting that the Alder safin had branded their capital with a name that meant “diamond.”
“And this magnificence behind us is the calipha’s palace. Who happens to be my mother.” It was no wonder he carried himself in such a princely way. He leaned against the railing and tapped a finger to his head. “I cannot read minds, but what I can do is related to the mind.”
“Will you please stop baiting me?”
“Sabar, sabar,” he soothed, asking for patience. A breeze lifted her hair, the first time her surroundings reacted with her. “Not counting anomalies, you do know our affinities are generally classified into two groups, yes?”
She shook her head. She knew very little of magic, let alone the classifications of them.
“There are the Jismi, whose affinities pertain to the body and mind—seers, healers, miragis. Then there are the Ensuri, whose affinities pertain to the elements—firehearts, aquifers, blacksmiths. The wielders of light and shadow. Jismi use magic to pull from themselves, Ensuri use magic to pull from the environment. Like you, I am among the Jismi. I’m a dreamwalker.”
“A dreamwalker,” she echoed.
He nodded. “This is a memory, a fragment reconstructed in my mind with two additions: you and me. Minus the Arz. Seeing Alderamin tainted by those trees shatters my soul every time.”
That would explain why no one in the city was looking at her. “Sounds like a lot of mind work.”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Being able to find your way seems like a lot of mind work, too.” There was a gleam in his eyes when he leaned close. “That’s why it’s called magic.” He sighed happily. “I haven’t been able to session a dreamwalk in years.”
A bird soared across Zafira’s vision, feathers a dappled brown. A falcon. She had never seen a falcon before. She had never experienced true Arawiya at all, khalas. Yet here she was, in awe of a memory. The bird dipped behind a date palm, and her heart swooped with it.
She turned to Benyamin. “You said years. That means the last time you dreamwalked was when magic existed.” She stopped, eyes wide. “How old are you?”
“A little older than you?” he chanced, and shrugged when Zafira glared. “Twenty-three.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Plus, ah, one hundred.”
She stared. He twisted his lips and rubbed a hand across his stubble before growing serious again.
“You lived in a world where magic existed. You lived under the rule of the Sisters,” she murmured. That was more than ninety years ago.
“I was there for the Lion’s reign of darkness, too.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s been so long, I sometimes wonder if magic was a dream.”
Zafira could not imagine how life once was, if this was life in Alderamin now. “Why ‘truth’?”
“What?” He blinked.
“Haqq,” she said, gesturing to his bronze tattoo. There had to be a reason why an immortal would ink his own face, knowing full well he’d live with the inscription for eternity. “What’s it for?”
He brushed a hand across the word with a soft smile, followed by a flash of pain he quickly masked. “Each of the safin in my circle have a similar tattoo, a word for what we value most. For me, it is truth followed closely by trust—separate vines of value entwined at the root.”
He had a fondness for zumras, it seemed. Though she didn’t think the one he was trying to form on Sharr could compare to the majesty of a zumra of elegant safin.
A murmur carried from the balcony, the voice rising and falling ever so gently. Singing. It reminded Zafira of laughter beneath a bright sun. Of tears before a still soul. It was beautiful, despondent.
“Who is that?” she asked, repressing a shiver.
Benyamin turned to face the balcony, a rueful smile on his face. “My wife.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I would have invited you to our wedding, but you weren’t alive at the time,” he teased.
The tune changed. The words were rife with sorrow and Benyamin’s shoulders bunched. Zafira heard a rattling before he shook, and she realized he was crying.
She did not think vain safin could cry. It didn’t seem right.
“Don’t cry,” she said quietly, and it sounded like a stupid thing to say, but she didn’t know what else to do. “This is your dream, your memory. Your first dreamwalk in years.”
“There’s no greater curse than memory,” he said finally. He closed his eyes and tried to recollect himself, the tattoo on his face mourning with him. “Tragedies happen once, memories relive them eternally. You understand that, don’t you? You have floundered in loss.”
She had. She didn’t think she would ever stop seeing Baba’s face. His last word before he lunged at her. His final breath gasping from his lungs as he looked at the woman who killed him—and smiled.
“We get to choose which memories to relive. You brought me here to Alderamin without the Arz. You chose to relive a memory without its tainted trees,” she said. “Memories aren’t always bad.”
He shook his head. “My wife is the most beautiful safin Alderamin will ever behold, second only to one other.” She almost laughed at his certainty, but he was wholly serious. “My son. Did you know that until him, I had never seen a coffin so small?”
Zafira froze.
“Safin are immortal, Huntress; we heal quickly and never fear old age. We can die, of course, and though such a thing is rare, I have buried my fair share of safin—battle-hardened safin, fallen in war.
“But never a child—until my son. Whose hands were too small to carry a sword, whose teeth were too small to taste the sweetness of an apple. Whose laugh was the smallest I have witnessed, but the most bountiful sound—” Benyamin choked off.
She had seen small coffins in Demenhur. Umm would always say that no parent should have to bury their child.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and it felt cruel, saying those words.
“I am, too,” he murmured, because he understood.
The Baransea churned in the silence, and the gossamer curtains behind them billowed in the breeze. Birds called to the sun, and the din of the people below filled her lungs. Benyamin’s wife continued to sing for her dead son. It was melancholy. It was sad, but also not.
Benyamin inhaled and turned away, though rivulets of pain still shone in his umber eyes. “You
were never intended to make the journey to Sharr alone, Huntress. The Silver Witch guards her words for reasons you do not understand. We may not trust one another completely, but it is important we carry on as a zumra. It is important to remember that everything and everyone has the capacity for both evil and benevolence.”
Zafira scoffed. “Don’t tell me you believe the prince has the capacity for good.”
He held her gaze. “Everyone has a turning point. A breaking point, too.”
Those black scars flashed in Zafira’s mind.
“You know him well,” she said, softer this time.
“My knowledge comes from a mutual acquaintance.”
Altair. She doubted there was anyone else so close to the prince. Not by the way they acted around each other.
“In that vein,” Benyamin continued, “Alderamin is no better than the Sarasins in Sultan’s Keep. Neither sends delegations or attempts alliances. It isn’t merely the Arz that keeps us apart. Alderamin views the rest of Arawiya as a disease, so we’ve quarantined ourselves. Sarasin sees the world through the eyes of a vulture, as a feast of land to be had.”
“Ah, but vultures feast on the dead for a reason,” Zafira pointed out with a twist of her lips. “Sarasin has the greatest army in Arawiya. I wouldn’t call them vultures.”
He nodded. “And now all of Sarasin’s strength lies in the hands of the sultan. A teetering shift in the balance of power.”
Zafira studied him. “You know why this is happening. Why a supposedly good sultan is now going mad, controlling a caliphate he shouldn’t be able to touch.”
“Indeed. I also know the caliphate with the second-greatest army is next on his list. Or was. I’ve been gone far too long to know,” he said callously.
Demenhur. Zafira’s pulse quickened. Yasmine, Lana, Umm, Misk. Skies. Bakdash, even. She was struck again with that terrible feeling she’d had on the witch’s ship, when the Arz had erupted between her and Demenhur. A wall keeping her out. A wall keeping them in.
A bird’s cry broke the hushed churning of the waves.
Benyamin studied her, brown eyes softening. “It is futile to worry. A shadow stirs, sinking its claws into every hold of power, one of which is the sultan. The Jawarat is the only way to bring this madness to an end.”
Futile to worry? She almost laughed. Or sobbed. She felt like the very heart of her was being torn from her chest. She forced herself to breathe.
“What shadow? Is it the master of Sharr?” she asked, struggling against her closing throat.
“The master of Sharr,” Benyamin repeated in a murmur, as if speaking aloud in even a dream would wake the monster he feared. “He is the reason for the Silver Witch’s obscurity. The reason I came to the island. The reason you came as well.”
Zafira ran a shaky finger across the railing.
“We can strengthen our bodies and fortify our minds, but the heart is a monster of its own. The Silver Witch was free of ill intent, once. Pure of heart—”
Zafira snapped her eyes to his. No one can be that pure. The Silver Witch had been puzzled, then. As if the very idea of doing something for nothing was unseemly.
“What is it?” Benyamin asked, studying her.
She shook her head. “What happened to her?” she asked. “What happened to her pure heart?”
“The Lion of the Night happened,” he said. “I always thought it strange he showed his hand so boldly when he had vied for the throne, all but allowing the Sisters to cut him down so effortlessly. But he did nothing without a plan—he wanted to be sent to Sharr, where he could rally the creatures of the island to his side. He was a maestro of words, and he preyed on the Silver Witch. He told her the Sisters stationed her on Sharr because they feared her immense power. He spun lies of love and loneliness, feeding on the insecurities she had not even revealed to herself.
“He wiled her into loving him. Into believing he reciprocated her love. Together, they drew the Sisters to Sharr and trapped them. Drained them of their magic. And by the time she realized her mistake—”
“Mistake?” Zafira scoffed. Any sympathy she held for the witch vanished. “She’s just as monstrous as I thought.”
Along with her anger, she felt a sense of relief, for she had always known that the Sisters hadn’t stolen magic. Now she had confirmation—they had protected Arawiya with the final beats of their hearts, despite how the Caliph of Demenhur had twisted it.
Benyamin continued holding her gaze. “I was there when she returned from Sharr. She was not a monster.”
“Does living past a century dull your head?” Zafira was beyond keeping her voice level now. “She’s a witch. She’s one of the Sisters of Old. If she can’t fake a look of remorse, skies, then I don’t know how she managed to keep an entire metropolis in order. If she escaped from Sharr all those years ago, then what has she been doing all this time? Sleeping?”
“Some secrets are not mine to give.”
“And until I hear of these secrets or see the amends you think she seeks to make, I won’t believe her.”
“She sowed enough seeds to ensure I would know to follow you. To assist you. Sharr is a dangerous place for a mortal to venture alone.”
“Are you trying to give me reasons to doubt you, too?”
He shook his head. “I want you to trust me. Allow me to assist you.”
This was the trust Deen had spoken of. Had he known Zafira would face this choice?
She ran her gaze over the word curling around his eye. Truth. One of the two values he treasured most. He had given her enough of the truth to gain her trust, hadn’t he? And she did trust him, she realized. Enough to turn her back on him without fear of a blade through her heart, a tremendous feat on a place like Sharr.
She supposed that would have to be enough.
CHAPTER 60
Zafira thought of the dreamwalk as they continued onward the next morning. She thought of Alderamin and quelled the hope that rose when she pictured Demenhur the same way—alive, free from the Arz and endless snow. Yet every step solidified another realization: finding magic meant losing herself. She would need to bury a part of herself in Sharr before she left. If she left.
It wasn’t as easy as Benyamin had put it. What purpose would she have, if she was no longer the cloaked figure who fed her people the magic of the Arz?
The more she thought about it, the further she unraveled.
The darkness no longer simply called to her; it had opened a void inside her, gaping and hungry. Everywhere she glimpsed, she saw the kaftar’s roving eyes and the ifrit’s fiery staves. The glimmer of a silver cloak and the curve of a crimson smile. Zafira fought a shiver.
Is it wrong to seek redemption as any mortal might? The words could be taken a hundred ways. Everything the witch had said had been carefully worded, her emotions deliberately enacted.
Zafira did not trust her, she realized. But she did not distrust her.
“Are you all right?” Nasir asked.
He was likely concerned about his compass going astray. The hum she was beginning to associate with his presence started up again.
“I’m fine,” she said as she tried to make sense of their route.
“You don’t look fine.”
She turned to him angrily. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead. A smear of blood stained his cheek. What did he know about how “fine” looked? About how she looked?
“Then stop looking,” she snapped.
She had journeyed to Sharr with one purpose: to find the Jawarat. Now a thousand different paths had unfurled like intricately woven Pelusian rugs, and she wasn’t certain what she was doing anymore.
The idiot prince didn’t leave her side. Not even when she sidestepped a length of brushwood and changed direction. Still, she kept pace with him, because … because she didn’t want him to leave her side.
“Will there ever come a time when you won’t see me as a monster?” he asked suddenly.
She stopped at the softness of his ton
e, so unlike the unfeeling prince she had come to know. Some part of her wanted to reach for him, to smooth away the unhappiness creasing his face, to touch the scars that made him him.
“Monsters cannot become men,” she whispered instead, and the darkness hummed its agreement.
He exhaled through parted lips, and his unhappiness only increased. “Of course. That was selfish of me.”
That does not mean I cannot love a monster.
Where did that come from? I can’t very well say “like,” can I? Doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Zafira closed her eyes and dipped so far into her thoughts that when he spoke again, she almost jumped.
“You feel it, don’t you?” he asked.
He was standing so daama close, she could feel the heat of his body.
“The darkness. Luring.”
She pursed her lips against her surprise. He feels it, too?
“My mother once said that just as our eyes tailor to the darkness, so do our souls.”
This time, she couldn’t hold back her surprise. He was the last person she expected such a thing from.
He read her face and looked away, and her eyes traced the knotted skin of his scar. She knew that tone. The way he said “mother.” It was how she spoke of Baba. It was how they spoke of one who was but never again will be. His tone was rife with unspent love.
“You miss her,” she said, feeling guilty for thinking he was incapable of the sentiment. Was his mother the reason for the ink on his arm?
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t think he would, until some moments later, when he spoke.
“Sometimes,” he said quietly. “Most times.”
She couldn’t stop her smile.
His eyes dipped to her mouth, and the gray of his eyes turned liquid black. Like a fool, Zafira ran her tongue across her lips. Their gazes crashed, and she drew in a sharp breath, for there he was, a boy again, unmasked.
Still every bit a murderer as he always was. But. But what? Zafira didn’t know, except that a “but” had begun to slip into every thought related to the Prince of Death.
She couldn’t muster more than a whisper. “Who killed Deen?”
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 28