We Hunt the Flame

by Hafsah Faizal

  “I never asked for your name,” she said, giving him a look. She couldn’t seem to stand still for more than two beats, a restless energy pulsing through her limbs.

  “Which is why I’m being the gentleman,” he said pointedly. “I am—”

  She rolled her eyes. “Kifah Darwish, and I don’t care.”

  Benyamin sauntered around, one hand on the pouch belted across his middle. He was pathetic and weaponless. Kifah stayed close to his side, even when he stopped in front of Altair and canted his head, something passing between them in the silence. Nasir narrowed his eyes.

  The Huntress murmured something beneath her breath and angrily yanked an arrow into her bow. The others turned to face her.

  “Akhh, time for another interrogation,” Altair said cheerily. “I think—”

  “Don’t think,” she snapped.

  Nasir flinched at the words that had been directed at him countless times before.

  Altair lifted two fingers to his brow with a wicked grin. She shifted her aim across the four of them.

  “Who sent you.” Her voice was a staid monotone, not a question. There was courage in the slight lift of her chin. Confidence in the press of her mouth.

  Benyamin gave a slight shake of his head. “No one did.”

  “Then how did you get here?”

  “On a ship,” Kifah said smugly as she wound fabric around her arm. Benyamin smirked.

  Nasir could see the Huntress’s patience wearing thin, but there was only one way to deal with safin: by challenging their pride.

  And it seemed the Huntress had come to that realization herself: “Did you crawl through the Arz on your hands and knees, then?”

  Appall flashed across Benyamin’s features, and Altair smothered a laugh. Nasir lowered his head to hide the crack of a smile.

  “Caravans make their way through the Wastes every so often. I joined one of them and stopped in Pelusia to ask their calipha for aid from one of her esteemed Nine. Together, Kifah and I journeyed to Zaram, tracked down a willing sailor, and crossed the path of the Zaramese Fallen. We arrived in time to save your lives, and now I stand before you, perfection incarnate.”

  “The last part is debatable,” Kifah said.

  “Ah, but not downright negatable.”

  So he hadn’t received the same favors Nasir and the Huntress had. No disappearing Arz, no phantom ship. His cousin had gone through terrible lengths to get here, which meant he had good reason to.

  And by recruiting the help of a Pelusian and a Zaramese crew, he had ensured that all five caliphates would become entwined with this island.

  “You ventured this far to save us from two rogue safin,” Nasir said flatly.

  Benyamin’s demeanor turned cold. “An added bonus, depending on how you view it.”

  “Very few know of the mission,” Nasir pressed. “News couldn’t have reached Alderamin in time for you to have crossed the Wastes, Pelusia, and Zaram.”

  “Befriend enough spiders, and one will garner enough gossamer,” Benyamin mused.

  The words slapped Nasir with sense.

  Altair.

  Altair was one of Benyamin’s spiders. Altair, whose every action was painstakingly deliberate. Nasir remembered the server girl and the scrap of papyrus—Altair didn’t even step into a tavern for the sole purpose of a drink. How much of Arawiya spun in a direction the sultan did not order?

  He should kill them. Kill them and take the Huntress. It was the right thing to do—in the sultan’s eyes.

  Nasir hadn’t looked through his own eyes in a very long time.

  Benyamin watched him closely, and Nasir noted a shift in the safi’s umber gaze. Something had softened in them.

  “At ease, Prince. I’m afraid we have a lot to talk about.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Zafira held her distance as Benyamin led them past an outcropping, all jagged points like a crown. She kept expecting Nasir to do away with the safi, but the hashashin seemed docile for once.

  An expanse of stone widened in a circle, the soft gray vaguely familiar and equally out of place among Sharr’s many shades of brown.

  “A jumu’a?” Altair asked.

  That was where she had seen it before. It was nearly identical to the one on which Yasmine’s wedding had taken place. Zafira didn’t know the Sisters had laid jumu’a stones on Sharr, too.

  “Indeed. We passed it on our way to save you,” Benyamin said.

  “Don’t get too conceited, safi,” Nasir said. “We could have handled two more of your kind.”

  “Semantics,” Benyamin replied with a quirk of his mouth.

  Zafira froze when the ground shook—so fiercely, she felt its tremor in her jaw. The carvings along the stone deepened and undulated.

  “Kharra,” Nasir murmured, throwing a sharp glance at Benyamin, who shook his head quickly, denying all blame.

  Zafira never imagined the collected prince would curse, but she supposed even he had his limits.

  Altair chuckled under his breath. “You’re getting worse, Sultani. Next—”

  The gray stone flooded in darkness. Shadows. Wind battled with her clothes, tugged at her hair, and a scream cut the quiet. Zafira ducked as the night became impossibly black.

  A creature hurtled across the skies, long wings shifting like the waves of the Baransea, power rippling across razor-edged feathers dark as a falcon’s. A beak in the hues of sunset shaped at its mouth. Altair whistled.

  “A rukh,” Zafira marveled as it screamed again and lifted to the clouds.

  “It doesn’t need a name besides ‘gigantic bird with daggered claws,’” Altair said.

  “It helps to know what you’re facing,” she countered, referring to more than just the bird as she leveled him with a look.

  “She’s right,” Kifah said as the skies cleared. In moments, the rukh was barely a speck in the horizon, a black star in the dark sky. “But let’s hope we won’t be facing that thing anytime soon. I didn’t leave the calipha only to become fodder.”

  “The stories always described them as large and strong enough to grab an elephant in its talons. I never knew it was that big,” Zafira continued.

  “The stories also say elephants tromp in a mythical isle far east, but only you would find any of this interesting, Huntress,” Altair said with a yawn.

  They spent the rest of that night on the jumu’a. Zafira reclined against the surrounding outcrop, trying to stay awake while her eyes drifted closed. Benyamin claimed to be tired from his journey and slept right in the middle of the stone without a care for the murder blazing in the prince’s eyes.

  She had so many questions that needed answering. Too many questions. A safi wouldn’t come all this way based on a cacophony of rumors. Regardless, both Benyamin and Nasir were more capable than she was, so why had the Silver Witch sent her? The more she tried to make sense of it, the more her head spun.

  She would get her answers, even if she had to hold her jambiya to the safi’s perfect neck. Someone’s getting violent, Yasmine sang in her head.

  She must have dozed off at some point, because soon, light was skittering through the sparse clouds, the early sun’s miserly heat sending a warm shiver through her.

  It reminded her of chilly mornings in Demenhur, when Lana would place steaming harsha in her hands, buttery and grainy, the cake melting in her mouth as she readied for another day of hunting. She missed food that wasn’t dried dates and bread hard enough to knock a man senseless. She missed her sleepy village.

  The Prince of daama Death leaned against the outcrop on the other end, one leg folded, arms crossed. His head was tipped to the sky, eyes closed. He hadn’t attempted to kill anyone overnight, which likely meant he was scheming. He could easily slip into the ruins beyond and vanish, but more than once she caught him on full alert, scanning the jumu’a until he settled on her and his stance grew lazy again.

  Why would the Prince of Death seek her out if not to kill her?

  She rolled her should
ers and downed a trickle of water before climbing the stone. She pressed the cool metal of Deen’s ring to her lips and surveyed the terrain, quelling the grief bubbling up her throat.

  The ruins were scattered throughout the distance. Whole sections had been covered entirely by sand, dunes rising and falling in waves. She spotted the large oasis they had seen from the minaret yesterday, a patch of green and blue rippling beneath the sun.

  “Spy anything of interest?” Benyamin asked.

  She leaped down and dusted off her hands. Sand stuck to her palms.

  She still could not believe she had met safin—and killed one, she recalled like a fist to her stomach. He smiled at her scrutiny. To call him handsome would have been a lie, for he was utterly beautiful, with sculpted features and flawless golden skin accented by an artistic beard. The kohl surrounding his umber eyes was pristine, and the two golden rings piercing the top of his right ear winked. Skies, the Alder probably spent entire mornings in front of a looking glass.

  “There’s an oasis not too far from here,” she said, averting her eyes.

  “We’ll head there next,” he said with a nod, and tilted his head at her. “I never thought the Demenhune Hunter was a Huntress.”

  She slanted her mouth. “Must have been hard trying to get a spider close enough.”

  “Oh, I had a spider on you, Huntress. I merely underestimated the loyalty of those around you.”

  Her throat constricted—there was only one newcomer to her circle in Demenhur. Only one who could have learned of her identity, had the sister of her heart shared the knowledge. Had Deen shared the secret with his new friend.

  Misk.

  She wouldn’t let Benyamin see her come undone. “Did you truly cross the path of the Zaramese Fallen?”

  “Indeed,” he said, regarding her. “I was lucky to have Kifah with me.”

  Her eyes strayed to his tattoo, the bronzed ink shimmering in the early light. It was Safaitic, she realized. A simple word of two letters, the curvature of the ha framing his eye while the qaf rounded off smoothly, its two i’jam like birds in flight.

  Haqq. Old tongue for “truth.”

  With his umber eyes and utter grace, the safi reminded her of a large cat. He slunk away before she could ask any more, cloak molding to his slender frame.

  He gestured for everyone to draw near, and Zafira’s eyes flared when Nasir stalked to them, confident in his stride, lithe in his step. Altair inclined his head toward him, whispering before sliding a furtive glance at her.

  Well, then.

  They were stronger than she was, the girl who hunted in the dark for rabbits and deer. Even the dead safin had been better fighters.

  But she had a mission. She had her bow and her jambiya and a chance.

  She would make it count.

  CHAPTER 43

  Nasir understood now why the sultan wanted Altair dead. He was Benyamin’s spider, but he’d spun his own web of secrets in Sultan’s Keep. Just how many secrets, Nasir did not know. He knew only that General al-Badawi had arrived here on Sharr with more than the knowledge of being Nasir’s next kill.

  He had thought, more than once, that the Huntress would flee. Her eyes would dart to the stone outcropping, the upper half of her body angling toward the jagged tops, her body at war with itself. She would take one side of her lower lip into her mouth, deep in thought.

  She would toy with the ring around her neck and slip it over her pale finger, once, twice, icy eyes pinched in torment.

  “I see you ogling,” Altair had sung beneath his breath yesterday.

  Nasir had ignored him. It was his job to notice such things.

  He told himself he watched to ensure she wouldn’t escape. But even when instinct told him she wouldn’t, he still found himself looking for her, studying her. The Huntress.

  The proud curve of her shoulders, daring him. The cut of her mouth, lips dark from her constant chewing on them.

  As if hearing his thoughts, she glanced up, eyes drifting past Kifah’s gold-tipped spear, past Altair’s bare arms, and alighting on him. She lifted her chin, barely, and it took a moment for Nasir to place the slight tilt for what it was: a show of courage.

  He knew, then, why he favored Altair’s company. Why his gaze sought her. Because neither of them looked at him through a veil of fear that deemed him a monster the way everyone else in Arawiya did.

  “All right, zumra—”

  A scream in the distance cut off Benyamin’s words. It wasn’t one of despair, or anguish. It was a roar of rage, promising vengeance. A reminder of the island—its vastness, its otherness. And that here on Sharr, Nasir was prey, not threat. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “Very few of the desert creatures we know remain on Sharr.”

  Altair made a sound. “Here I thought the growling prince was terrifying.”

  Nasir ignored him, and Kifah asked, “Zumra?”

  “It’s old tongue for gang,” Nasir said.

  “I can handle schoolroom Safaitic, shukrun,” she bit out.

  As he slid on his gloves, Nasir wondered, for the umpteenth time, why he ever bothered speaking.

  “I’m not joining any gang,” the Huntress said. “I work alone, and I will continue to—”

  “Trust, Huntress,” Benyamin said softly.

  Something shattered in her gaze. Remembrance. A memory. Her fingers drifted to the ring, and Nasir looked away.

  “We’ve all arrived on different counts,” the safi went on. “You, with a silver letter; the prince and the general, each with their orders; Kifah and I, with the notion of setting all accords right. You were told to hunt down the lost Jawarat, and here you are, like moths hunting a flame, blindly reaching for a mirage to break the decades-long curse over our lands.”

  Nasir pressed his lips together. Kifah folded her arms and tapped her foot.

  Benyamin looked between Nasir and the Huntress. “Both of you met the liar who cannot lie. Neither of you received the full truth. Yet you fell prey to the allure of her words.”

  The Huntress drew a sharp breath, and Nasir felt the weight of her gaze, slowly dismantling him.

  He had received his orders from the sultan, who had counted on the Silver Witch to aid him. Had he fallen prey to her words? To the compass she had pressed into his palm?

  It still pointed to the Huntress no matter how hard he shook it.

  “Do you know where magic went that fateful day?” Benyamin asked as the sun lifted higher into the sky, the beat of its rays quickening.

  “It disappeared,” the Huntress said.

  “You’d need magic to make something disappear,” Kifah pointed out.

  “Akhh, I love conundrums,” Altair said.

  “If you want us to hear the end of your story, safi, we need to leave, or only our crisp corpses will hear the last of your words,” Nasir said. He did want to hear the rest of the story. He wanted to understand before he continued on his father’s orders. But he would slit his own throat before he admitted that.

  Kifah chortled. “Who knew the crown prince had a sense of humor?”

  “Oh, he’s even funnier after he’s had a proper breakfast,” Altair offered.

  Something played at the corners of the Huntress’s lips before she looked at Benyamin. “We can get to the shelter of the oasis. Then I expect to know everything.”

  The safi flourished a bow. “But of course, sayyida.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Beneath the draping shadows of the palm trees, Zafira refilled her goatskin after Kifah reassured her that the water was safe. Sand drifted into her boots and pooled in the folds of her sash. She tasted its bland weight on her tongue and felt the grit of it against her cheeks. It was everywhere.

  A breeze whistled through the trees, and she reached for her hood before she remembered that her cloak was in her bag. Deen’s fingers ghosted her chin before she could fold into herself.

  Altair found a lone peach tree, where he gathered a slew of the fuzzy fruit and distributed
it among the five of them.

  Kifah drummed a rhythm with her spear, and Zafira steered clear of the Pelusian, watching as she tugged a small black blade from one of the several sheaths along her arm. A lightning blade, Zafira realized. Forged by nature’s wrath, with balance matched by none. Blood sharpened it; age strengthened it. The blades were rare, for blacksmiths had to lie in wait until lightning struck a mountain before rushing to collect the black ore beneath the roar of thunder and pelting rain.

  There were benefits to being one of the calipha’s Nine Elite, it seemed.

  Benyamin pulled a fold of cloth from his bag. Zafira knew safin were vain, but enough to bring a rug to Sharr? He carefully smoothed out the creases and gently brushed aside a beetle before sitting cross-legged in the center of the red weave, trickling sand from his fists as he waited for everyone. Nasir crossed his arms and leaned against a jutting stone, making it clear he wasn’t going to be a happy participant.

  “Magic did not disappear, zumra. It was relocated,” Benyamin started, skipping a peach pit across the blue waters. He called them “zumra” as if they were a horde of children, not a number of mismatched people wielding weapons against his thin, unarmed self.

  “When the warden of Sharr called for aid during the second battle against the Lion of the Night, the Sisters brought magic here. And with their demise, magic did not disappear, but it fell to Sharr, which happily bore the burden.

  “It swallowed the creatures of the prison—humans, safin, ifrit, bashmu—everything that stood in its path, and still, the island’s hunger could not be sated. It tainted the Baransea, it birthed the Arz. And the longer Sharr remains in control of magic, the farther the Arz will grow, and the worse our lands will become.”

  “For what?” Zafira asked. “What does Sharr want?”

  There was a glint in Benyamin’s eyes. “You, Huntress, are too smart for your own good.”

  She shrank back and nearly missed the look Altair and Benyamin shared.