That word—Huntress—was a thorn dragged across the wound, fresh pain gritting her teeth. She had always been the Hunter. She had always referred to herself as the Hunter. And though she was convinced she had imagined the silver-cloaked woman, the illusion was a reminder that no matter what she did, she could always be brought to blame.
Just like the Six Sisters of Old, who had staked their lives to bring daama Arawiya to fruition and now lay as parables of shame.
Had the Sisters been men, Arawiya would still have magic. Had the Sisters been men, the caliphates would not be cursed. Had the Sisters been men, everything would be as it once was. Or so the Demenhune caliph preached.
Zafira believed otherwise.
As she and Sukkar crested the last hill that stood between her village and the Arz, she wished, more than anything, that she could be herself. That women didn’t have to be the incapable creatures the men of Demenhur claimed them to be. The one solace she had was knowing that not all of the five caliphates held the same twisted views. In Zaram, women could fight in arenas, equal beside men. In Pelusia, a calipha governed alone, surrounded by her Nine Elite.
Zafira fingered her hood. If she escaped the confines of her cloak and the masquerade of a man, Demenhur would not praise her. Her accomplishments would shift into a cause for blame. A twisted foreboding of a predicament to come.
Gloomy thoughts for a wedding day.
A lone figure came into view, and Zafira had a fleeting moment of panic before she registered the soft features and sunlit curls. Deen. One of four souls who knew she was the Arz Hunter. He waited with a blade in his hands, unflinching against the cold winds.
Zafira dismounted and nudged his shoulder. “One day, you will venture the darkness with me.”
Deen smiled, eyes trained upon the Arz as he spoke his favored line. “But today is not that day.” Flakes of snow dusted his curls. His dimpled cheeks were pink from the cold, and his green coat bulged around his arms, muscled from his months in the army. “You were gone quite a while.” He wrinkled his nose. “Yasmine is going to have your head.”
Zafira scrunched the side of her mouth. “Not when she sees the deer I caught for the wedding feast.”
Deen and his sister, Yasmine, shared the same soft beauty—hair that shone like burnished bronze, rounded features, warm hazel eyes. He was beautiful, inside and out. Yet after his parents’ deaths, he had plastered on a smile that Zafira loathed, barely masking the torment floundering in his eyes.
A crease marred his forehead now. She knew he couldn’t see much of her beneath her hood and scarf, but his concern said he saw enough.
“Are you all right? Something happened in the Arz, didn’t it?”
“A little scare,” she said with a smile because he knew her so well. “You know how it is.”
He hummed and his eyes drifted to the dark forest again. “It’s getting closer, isn’t it?”
She didn’t need to answer. The Arz crept closer with each passing day, spearing their borders with bladed roots and swallowing the land. If the Demenhune thought they were dying with the endless snow, it was only a matter of time before the Arz swept across their caliphate—the entire kingdom—leaving them for the whispers of nightmares and monsters within the absolute black.
“Last night I dreamed I was on Sharr.”
Zafira froze at his words. Sharr. What were the odds, hearing the name of that forsaken place twice in one morning? It was an island of evil, a place warned of in the dead of night beneath the flicker of a lantern. A fear just out of reach because it lived beyond the Arz.
It had been a prison fortress before it had stolen the Sisters and magic. Now it was wild and untamed, with oases run rampant, and it reached for Arawiya with the Arz, each tree another sentinel in its army.
“In the prison it once was?”
Deen shook his head, his gaze distant. “I was trapped inside a massive tree. Darkness like smoke. Whispers.” He grimaced and looked at her. “So many whispers, Zafira.”
She did not tell him of the whispers that shadowed her every waking moment.
Deen sighed. “I don’t know what it means, but did it have to plague me today of all days?”
“At least today you’ll have a distraction to help take your mind off it.” She reached for his hand, and he slipped his gloved pinkie around hers.
“Dear snow, is that you being optimistic?”
She laughed and his face sobered as they turned back to the village, ice crunching beneath their boots.
“Do you remember Inaya?”
“The thin baker’s daughter?” Zafira asked. No one baked bread in the western villages as scrumptiously as the thin baker did. His daughter was a soft-spoken girl with watchful eyes and a mane of hair as wild as a lion’s.
He nodded. “The baker took a fall a few days back, and it doesn’t look like he’ll walk again. So word spread that she was going to take the reins.”
Zafira’s stomach dropped.
“The za’eem’s men came this morning when she was opening shop.” Deen’s jaw was tight, and Zafira wanted to smooth the tension away with her fingers. “I was right there, selling skins to old Adib. One of them dragged her out. Another ordered some squat to take over and stand behind the counter, likely a man who’s never kneaded bread in his life.”
“And Inaya will be married in a few days to someone for whom she’ll make a good wife,” Zafira finished.
Deen murmured an affirmation.
This za’eem headed their village alone, but nearly every village head was the same. Everyone listened to the drivel of the caliph—drivel their useless sultan should have shut down but couldn’t care less about. Most days, Zafira didn’t even understand the point of the sultan if the caliphs were allowed to command so freely.
Worse, most villagers believed every twisted word—if the men, desperate in their need to pin blame, said the villagers would starve with a woman taking ownership of a bakery, they would believe it. The mere definition of superstition.
“Akhh, Deen, why?” Zafira’s vision pulsed red, and Sukkar snorted in concern. “Then there was that other girl last month, the one caught chopping wood in the Empty Forest, where every daama man and his grandfather chops wood. As if her hands would kill those trees any more than the snow does.”
Deen cast her a look. “Are you worried?”
“Worried?” Zafira almost barked out.
He smiled. “Sometimes I forget you’re not like me. Just be more cautious, eh?”
“Always,” she promised as they came to his and Yasmine’s house.
He nodded at the door. “She doesn’t know. Today doesn’t feel like the right time to tell her. Especially with that goat of a za’eem coming to the wedding.”
He was right. Yasmine would rip the za’eem to shreds herself. Zafira handed Sukkar’s reins to Deen, and he left to take care of the deer. She trudged up the two short steps, but before she could knock, her friend yanked open the warped door, worry and fury written across her face.
“I was hoping you’d be smiling,” Zafira said wryly, stepping inside.
Yasmine’s scowl deepened. “Oh, I’m smiling. Kharra, I’d be smiling even wider if you had missed the wedding altogether.”
Zafira clucked her tongue and shivered when the warmth of the fire touched her. “Such a foul mouth.”
“It’s nearly noon.” Yasmine pressed her lips into a flat line, never one for patience, unlike Deen.
“Sabar, sabar. I have a good reason.” Zafira thought of the baker’s daughter, Inaya, whose wedding would not be as happy as Yasmine’s. She dropped her hood and shook her dark hair free, rubbing her arms to loosen the cold that had rooted in her bones.
Baba had said the heat used to be sweltering once, with sand rising in dunes across the oasis-like caliphate. Snow had been a once-in-a-year treat, until the blizzards came and never left. It was the same day they, and those in the other caliphates, had lost the magic once housed in each of the five royal minarets
.
Zafira had never known that life. When aquifers once summoned water, healers aided the injured, and ironsmiths manipulated metal. Magic was as distant as a mirage now, and the lands lay in ruin, worsening as the Arz grew.
Each caliphate had been left with some sort of curse: snow for Demenhur, desolation in Sarasin, soil destruction in once-fertile Pelusia, untamable sands in Zaram. Only Alderamin lived as it once did, selfishly isolating itself from the rest of the kingdom.
Zafira accepted a warm bowl of shorba from Yasmine and stirred the soft lentils, settling before the fire. She rubbed at the ache in her chest that panged whenever she thought of the magic she had never had the chance to experience. Of the sand that had never trickled between her fingers or shifted beneath her feet.
Yasmine sat down and tucked her sweeping ankle-length gown beneath her thighs. It was unadorned and threadbare, but Yasmine glowed even in her rags. Zafira could only imagine how she would look dressed for the wedding.
Skies. This very evening.
“I’m expecting a believable reason for your delay, but guess what?” Yasmine asked as lentils melted on Zafira’s tongue.
“I don’t know if I should play this on your wedding day,” Zafira said. They’d been preparing for weeks, but she still wasn’t ready to see Yasmine with another, with beautiful half-Sarasin Misk Khaldun. There would be no sleeping over when the loneliness in her own house became too heavy to bear. There would be no curling herself against Yasmine’s side like a lost child.
“Such a bore. I pity anyone who dreams of the mysterious Hunter every night.”
“I am not a bore.”
Yasmine barked a laugh. “Sometimes.” Then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Most times.”
Zafira scowled.
“I hate it when you play safe, old woman. But,” Yasmine teased, “rumor has it the caliph is in the House of Selah. So close to us!”
“I don’t see how that’s exciting,” Zafira said. In fact, her blood started to boil when the murmur of the silver-cloaked woman’s voice echoed in her head again. Huntress. Along with the thought of the baker’s daughter. Had Ayman, the Caliph of Demenhur, heard of the Hunter? It wasn’t as though anything exciting ever happened in Demenhur that might overshadow her.
Yasmine pushed her shoulder. “Oi. What if he’s here for the wedding?”
Zafira laughed at that. “Yes, I’m sure the old man traveled all the way here to watch you get married.” She leaned into the fire, inhaling the warmth.
“And if he— Wait. What happened?” Yasmine fixed Zafira with her feline stare, laughter diminished.
Zafira sat back with a blink. “What do you mean?”
Yasmine leaned closer, burnished bronze hair shimmering in the firelight. “Your face is like Deen’s terrible meat wraps; you can never hide anything. What happened?”
Zafira licked her lips. The Ra’ad siblings knowing she was the Arz Hunter came with its own headaches, like the one forming right now.
“I caught a pretty large deer. Should feed more people tonight if we can get it cooking.” Zafira downed her shorba and slipped her tongue out to catch the last of the lentils. Yasmine shouldn’t have to worry on her wedding day. “Let me help Deen.”
She started to get up, but Yasmine pulled her back down with a sharp yank on her cloak, and Zafira sat with an exaggerated sigh.
“You never help Deen when you get home—he must be taking care of it right now,” Yasmine snapped. “Tell me what happened.”
“Let’s talk about something else. Like Misk,” Zafira suggested hopefully.
Yasmine snorted and pulled a cushion onto her lap. It was one of three, worn and holey. They once belonged to Yasmine and Deen’s parents, apothecaries who had died years ago when the Sarasin caliph launched an attack on Demenhur’s borders. He was always leaving behind leagues of dead, or ghostly homes, their inhabitants stolen as prisoners of war. Yasmine and Deen’s parents had been of the former group.
Deen had fallen in the depthless between. He was a ghost of the living, a prisoner who roamed free.
He had been a soldier then, but never since. Watching loved ones die would make even the worst of men desert an army destined for death. Not that he had deserted. Not that the rest of the army cared.
“Zafira, please,” Yasmine said, the ache in her voice pulling a cord in Zafira’s heart. Firelight cast shadows on her face. “You know we might not get a chance like this for some time. To sit here side by side. Alone.”
Zafira squeezed her eyes closed. Skies, she knew. Yasmine madly loved Misk, and he promised a life far better than this. Zafira didn’t envy their love; she had learned to accept it during the many moons Misk spent courting Yasmine. But a wedding was different. Final, somehow, and she just didn’t know how to continue without her friend being hers alone anymore.
She opened her eyes. Yasmine was staring, waiting.
“I know, Yasmine. I know.” Zafira bit her lip and picked a handful of words. Lying wasn’t her greatest asset, so the short truth would have to suffice. “I was ambushed by a couple of Sarasins on monstrous horses that made Sukkar look like a dog. So I … led them into the Arz and escaped. I don’t think they’re dead.” Yet.
Yasmine’s eyes glowed like Zaramese honey in a ray of light.
“You escaped and they didn’t? That’s it? Why were they even there? They could’ve been assassins, Zafira.”
She doubted that. “They seemed a little too big for hashashins.”
“Oh, so you’re an expert on hashashin sizing now? Sarasins know what they’re doing.”
“If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have been trying to capture me for the sultan,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong to be persecuted.”
Yasmine’s eyebrows rose. “Kharra. Zafira, the sultan. Imagine if he had sent his son. You wouldn’t stand a chance against the Prince of Death.”
Zafira shivered. Whenever she wished the sultan would die, she was slapped with the reminder of his successor: the crown prince, whose death count was so high, he was said to have stopped washing the blood from his hands.
“Why?” Yasmine’s voice rose. “Why can’t you stop this foolishness? Stop pretending to be a man—stop hiding yourself. Meet with the caliph and his officials, show them who you are, and I’m certain they’ll send aid for the hunts. You’re helping your people. There’s no shame in that.”
“I never said there was,” Zafira lashed out. “But who’s a caliph to stop a sultan?”
Yasmine’s eyes flashed. “Who knows if the sultan actually sent the Sarasins? We don’t know what’s happening up north, now that the sultan has killed the Sarasin caliph. You don’t know what they truly wanted.”
Perhaps word was spreading of what she could do when so many could not. That a mysterious man was entering the absence of light and returning sane and in one piece. The fire hissed and shadows danced across the room.
“Do you really think the caliph will hate you for being a woman?” Yasmine asked.
This argument was one they’d had far too often, and Zafira was daama tired of it. Yasmine knew what happened in the villages—why couldn’t she understand that Zafira was no different from a girl baking bread?
“He won’t hate me, but he will twist my very existence. Do you think seeing a woman won’t make them rethink my every accomplishment? I’m no different than the scores of other girls frowned upon. Look at how they point fingers at the Six Sisters. Look at our women. They listen to this drivel that we are incapable, that we are to blame for every wrong, that we must lose all freedom when we marry—” Zafira stopped, skin burning.
She couldn’t shame marriage on Yasmine’s wedding day, not when the sister of her heart had wanted this for so long.
“I’m losing nothing by marrying Misk,” Yasmine said, voice soft. “I’m gaining something.”
But Zafira, and most women, didn’t have what Yasmine did: a man who loved her more than the word could express. A man who treated
her as an equal, maybe even more.
“I don’t know, Yasmine,” she whispered, digging her nails into her palms and leaving little crescent moons in her skin. She dropped her gaze to the henna curling along Yasmine’s arms, her smooth skin aglow in the firelight. This was what was expected of women. To look pretty, to be married. Not for them to hunt in the darkness of the Arz. Not for them to gut bloody meat and feed the people of her village.
Yasmine shook her head. “I do. It doesn’t matter what you are. You are your strength. Why must you prove the lie that they are better than us by deluding yourself and hiding beneath a man’s clothes? Think of all the women you can help by being you.”
Silence, and then Yasmine’s voice in a harsh whisper.
“What are you waiting for, Zafira?”
She grabbed the empty bowl and made for the kitchen. Zafira opened her mouth. The women Misk had promised to send to help Yasmine dress for the wedding would be here any moment now. She didn’t want the conversation to end like this.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for. But there was something, wasn’t there? Something more she needed to prove.
Conquering the Arz wasn’t enough.
Zafira wasn’t like Yasmine, who wore confidence like a second skin. Whose generous curves were the envy of the masses because she was proud of them. Zafira shied from pride; she shied from herself.
The door flew open.
“I’ve skinned the deer, Yasmine,” Deen called. He trudged inside and smiled when he saw Zafira by the fire. “Ah, you’re still here.”
His right sock was torn, revealing one of his toes as he crossed the scarred stone floor. “Akhh, Zafira. You look like you’ve been given Yasmine’s infamous mincing.”
Zafira’s laugh was shaky. His eyes sparkled and fell to her lips before he looked down at his hands. Her breath hitched.
“I just came to grab a few things,” he said. “The deer is a little bigger than usual.”
“Are you complaining?” she teased. Or tried to. Everything felt heavier with Yasmine’s words and the intent in Deen’s eyes.
We Hunt the Flame Page 3