We Hunt the Flame

by Hafsah Faizal

  “Why?” Zafira asked.

  Kifah blinked. “Why what?”

  “Why are you offering me your food?”

  She shrugged. “You look like you could use some.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Zafira said, and Kifah knew it. She had been the one eager to spear Zafira to the ground.

  The flames reached fists of fury to the sky, trapped as they were on an island they couldn’t comprehend. Zafira could tell Kifah was carefully stringing words together in the silence.

  “I always thought the Demenhune Hunter was a fabrication. Not because I doubted you could venture and return, but because you had no name. You claimed no glory, no fame. People aren’t like that anymore,” Kifah said. “Then you saved my life. Honor meant something in this world once.” The fire drew her attention for a long moment, and Zafira had the sense that Kifah was elsewhere.

  “Is that why you came with Benyamin?” Zafira asked. “For honor?”

  “The Darwishes are born to be erudites. To sit with folds of papyrus and dole out brilliant ideas as cows dole out milk. I like words all right, but I prefer the power of the blade. Even when they shoved a reed pen into my fist, I wanted that pen to be a spear. I wanted the power that came with knowing I stand between someone and death.

  “My father’s a high inventor, and he hates nothing more than he hates magic. But I’m a close second, because he wanted all his children to be little copies of himself, and I refused. He made my siblings loathe me the way he did, but Tamim was different.” The warrior’s voice cracked at the name. “Had my brother not saved me from my own father in my own bleeding bedroom, I would have ended my life. My father punished him. He sent my beloved brother to the Arz. I followed, thinking I could save him, but they knew I’d come. They’d slit his throat first, the cowards.”

  Kifah laughed. A soft, bitter laugh. “My scholarly brother bled out in my arms, and I screamed. And in answer to my anger, the trees disappeared, if only for a little bit.”

  Zafira looked at her sharply.

  “Tamim called it love, just before he died. Its own form of magic. Now I know it was the Arz, letting me change those trees to leaves because I’m a bleeding miragi.”

  A miragi. An illusionist who could take one thing and make it something else entirely. That was how Kifah had hunted the cape hares. She didn’t need to outrun them; she only needed to illusion a trap.

  Kifah shook her head. “His body wasn’t even cold before I took a razor to my hair and used his cuff to fashion the head of my spear. They say no one joins the school of the Nine Elite so late in her years. Yet here I am, wicked world.”

  The fire curled and the moon held still as Kifah spoke her bladed words.

  “I buried myself with Tamim that day. There is freedom in knowing you’re dead. When you’re a specter no one can touch.” Her smile was a knife. “The calipha refused Benyamin’s call for aid, because ‘Sharr is a gamble.’ But the dead are bound to no one, laa? I took my leave and joined the prattling safi. Not for honor, but because there’s no revenge sweeter than bringing back what my father loathes most: magic.” Kifah met Zafira’s eyes. “Do you see now, why I believed honor to be dead? When a woman who founded our kingdom cannot be trusted? When a father can’t even be trusted with his own daughter?”

  Zafira didn’t know what to say. She knew the world was cruel, but she had never tried to perceive the limits of its cruelty.

  “Did he— Did your father—” She couldn’t finish her question.

  Kifah’s answer was a break in her stare, a parting of her mouth before she clenched her jaw and steeled her gaze once more.

  It was answer enough.

  “You and I are strangers, Huntress. Allies by circumstance. We may leave Sharr and never think of each other again. But in this moment, we are two souls, marooned beneath the moon, hungry and alone, adrift in the current of what we do not understand. We hunt the flame, the light in the darkness, the good this world deserves. You are like Tamim. You remind me that hope is not lost.”

  She fell silent when something moaned in the shadows. A gleam shone in Kifah’s eyes when she continued. “Together, we will raise dunes from the earth and rain death from the sky. Together, we are capable of anything.”

  Zafira didn’t think it was the fire that warmed a crevice in her chest.

  Kifah Darwish lifted her lips into a smile, and it felt like the beginning of something Zafira never hoped for.

  “So would you like some?”

  Zafira stared at Kifah’s outstretched hands and took the blue pouch.

  Candy-coated almonds it was.

  CHAPTER 53

  Zafira remained alert long after Altair had drifted off to sleep. Benyamin had tucked himself so far into his book, she might as well have called him asleep, too. Kifah slept on her back, red sash beneath her head, spear across her body, a fierce maiden at rest.

  In this moment, we are two souls, marooned.

  That was life, wasn’t it? A collection of moments, a menagerie of people. Everyone stranded everywhere, always.

  Zafira rose and swept her gaze over the ruins. She couldn’t see the prince, which was for the best.

  She snatched a fresh tunic and dug out a bar of her favorite soap from her bag. She pulled her cloak over her shoulders, the weight familiar and foreign at once. Almost like a barrier, almost like a cherished blanket.

  She jerked away from scuttling beetles and hoisted herself to the highest point of the ruins, holding her breath when rubble crunched beneath her feet, and looked out. A small fold of trees dotted the landscape not too far from where she stood. If there was a stream, she intended to use it.

  The sands held their breath as she stole between the fallen stones and stepped upon the shifting ground. Marhaba, darkness, my daama friend.

  Marhaba, Huntress, our old friend, the sands whispered as they danced from dune to dune. The gibbous moon cast them in a tint of blue and black, a haze of shadow dulling her shine, steepening her cold to draw a shiver from Zafira’s bones. Ripples appeared across the dunes, deepening shadows that slithered like snakes. The wind moaned, cried, begged to be free.

  What are you?

  To define is to limit.

  Zafira released a slow exhale. First she thought the darkness was calling to her, and now the sands were speaking, too? She paused to look back: The fire was a glowing pinprick between the slabs of stone, but the stillness promised her presence wouldn’t be missed.

  She quickened her steps until she passed one palm, two, and then entered a glade of several. She brushed aside brittle vines, gliding between meandering roots and rogue stone.

  Tall grass settled to a shorter cover of plants. The stream was small, but it rushed from west to east, dusky blue beneath the still-heavy moon. Zafira grinned, never so happy to get clean.

  Until she heard it.

  Steel knifing the night. She breathed a string of curses and slipped back into the shadows.

  There. The glint of a curved blade, a little ways to her left.

  Against the moonlight, his profile gave him away: lithe and still. Uncovered, disheveled hair. Sharp nose. Barely parted lips. She imagined his bleak eyes churning a storm. He tipped his head up, and the length of his scar flashed.

  Nasir. Something simmered in her stomach.

  The prince lowered his head and leveled the scimitar ahead of him in slow movements. Zafira peered to her right but couldn’t see an opponent. He’s alone. She drew her eyebrows together as he shifted the scimitar ever so slowly, blade glinting in the moonlight, before it cut across the air in swooping crescents.

  He paused with his scimitar extended, and she followed the glister of the blade to his arm as he drifted elegantly through the grass. She had heard of the hashashins and their training, but she had never guessed their drill could be anything less than violent brutality.

  This wasn’t violent or brutal. This was a dance, graceful and lithe. A performance of finesse. He moved as if he were made of the w
ater beside him, with a stillness in his shoulders and the length of his back. She could only imagine how much smoother his motions would be if he were gliding through sand, rather than the uneven grass of the oasis.

  Lightning quick, he leaped, turning a full circle before slashing the scimitar down in a swooping arc. He finished with the flat of it against his other arm and exhaled.

  He lowered the blade, setting himself in a new angle. Her eyes flared at the sight of his bare chest, slight ridges along his stomach casting shadows on his skin. Lean muscles coiled and flexed in time with his breathing. A pair of dark sirwal billowed, low on his hips.

  When he turned to the water, her breath caught and her stomach heaved.

  Leeches covered his back. Fat lumps of black in neat rows, almost as if arranged. They started at his shoulder blades and continued down, stopping at the waistband of his trousers. He disappeared into the stream, which had to be larger than a stream if he could vanish within. Perhaps it was a river. How would she know? Zafira lived in Demenhur. They had only snow, snow, and more snow.

  She thumped her head against the nearest tree. She could almost feel Yasmine’s presence beside her, theories dripping from her friend’s lips like rose water at a wedding. A prince with leeches on his back, for what? Bad blood? Poison? Illness? He seemed healthy enough.

  For the fun of it?

  A muted splash interrupted her thoughts. Nasir emerged from the water, dark hair plastered to his skull, sirwal clinging to his legs and … She pinched her lips together and made a sound as her pulse quickened. Her neck warmed. But the leeches, Yasmine said in her head. You’re looking at him because of the leeches. Zafira added a touch of slyness to her friend’s voice for good measure.

  She raised her gaze as he ran a towel across his body, movements slow. He rubbed it along his back without a care and turned, his back to the moonlight.

  Shadows glinted and deepened.

  Sweet snow below. They weren’t leeches or lumps. They were scars. Charred and blackened.

  Zafira hissed a breath through her teeth.

  Nasir stilled.

  She did not move. She did not breathe.

  He tilted his head.

  She cursed, turned, fled. Skies. What was she doing, spying on the Prince of Death? She wasn’t sure if he would catch her, but she couldn’t leave the shelter of the oasis. She cursed the hindrance of her cloak when it snagged on the fringe of a palm, and she tugged it free before barreling forward. At the edge, she stopped and tucked herself into the trees, trying to catch her breath while she listened.

  Silence, except for the pounding of her heart. Not a single sound of pursuit.

  Until air compressed behind her.

  A hand on her shoulder, and she was thrown against the tree. Long fingers pressed against her chest. Her hood fell back and she bit her tongue against a cry of surprise.

  “You,” Nasir exhaled, his voice a tangled chord of chaos. Surprise flickered across his face. Water glistened in his hair, dripping onto a white linen qamis snug across his shoulders, sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms. Every nerve ending crackled and simmered low in her belly. He looked younger, dressed the way he was, without his hashashin’s garb. Almost innocent.

  It wasn’t just the clothes that had changed the prince but also the look on his face. The walls that had fallen, showing fear, surprise, that gaping unhappiness, and so many emotions Zafira couldn’t make sense of in the dark. His eyes swept across her face, snagging on her mouth, and her neck warmed again.

  “Yes, me,” Zafira breathed.

  That was all it took. Her voice, two words, and the walls returned, his mask firmly lifted back into place.

  She looked down at his hand against her chest, foreign in its bareness without that dark glove enclosing it. He had long, elegant fingers. What would he have become, if it hadn’t been for the dark calling in his blood? Her gaze snared on the inside of his arm. Ink. His breath hitched and he snatched his hand away. Zafira licked her dry lips, ignoring a flare of disappointment.

  “Hunting, Huntress?”

  There was that voice. The soft one, still and apathetic as it looped with the darkness. She knew it was deliberate. She knew he felt things but hid them.

  “Or spying?”

  Her heart wouldn’t slow. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer. It seemed to pound. His pitted scars flashed in her mind. What senseless torture was that? The word “murderer” faltered and fractured in two, giving room to doubt and … something else.

  Change.

  Her insides burned. A sweet sort of weakness trembled in her legs.

  “I was heading to take a bath, but it looks like you beat me to it.” If he was looking for proof that she had seen him, she wasn’t going to make matters difficult.

  His expression flattened at her self-satisfied grin, and he made a low noise in his throat.

  There’s the growling prince.

  “There are rules, Huntress,” he said, stepping closer.

  Zafira stopped breathing.

  “Wahid: Never sneak up on an assassin, unless you want to get caught.”

  And closer. Her heart climbed up to her throat.

  “Ithnayn: Never wander near a murderer, unless you want to be next.”

  He slipped even closer, and she had to tip her head up, slightly. She could smell him now, a hint of amber and a touch of myrrh. His breath was warm on her skin. She only needed to lean closer and—

  “Thalatha: Never watch a man undress, unless you want him to get the wrong impression.”

  Oh.

  He pulled back, mouth pressed into a thin line. He backed away farther, mouth shifting, scar gleaming. Is he … Zafira’s breath seized. He was daama grinning. This wasn’t the hashashin prince she was coming to know. This was a boy she knew nothing about.

  Oh no. She wasn’t going to leave without a last word. But everything had slowed when he stepped so daama close, and everything she had built in her mind scattered like snow in a storm.

  She pushed away from the tree and dusted off her hands, ignoring the ricochet of her pulse.

  “Watching you undress would be a bore. I got there after,” she said. Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice. “For the good stuff.”

  His eyes dropped to her lips again, and Zafira knew he felt the same pull she did. It darkened his gray eyes. Trembled on his exhale. She thought she would explode—never had anything felt more thrilling. For the first time in her life, she wished she hadn’t worn her cloak. He lifted a hand.

  And let it drop by his side.

  “Run away, Huntress.” He sounded tired. “The dark is no den for a fair gazelle.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Nasir had been foolish. Mindless. He had been the mutt his father always called him.

  Now he had a blood debt, someone had seen his scars, and he had been seen without his mask. He knew she had seen him, because she was a daama open book herself.

  He had never cared about how those scars made him look until last night. He had never felt as much as he had last night. That soap still plagued his senses. Heady, sharp, stirred with a touch of femininity that sent his pulse racing. Sandalwood, dark oud, smoky rose. Rimaal. He cursed the portion of his mother’s training that had forced him to learn every scent there was.

  He didn’t know which was worse—the encounter with the Huntress or Benyamin’s smirk when Nasir had returned to the camp before she did, fresh from a bath.

  The river he had bathed in rippled beside them now, the sun beaming above. Nasir never thought he could miss the unwavering sun until Sharr. They may have a bleak future in Sultan’s Keep, but sun against sand was what made them who they were. Not this haze of shadow that obscured everything, darkening the world. Sentiments are for the weak.

  This journey was changing him.

  Kifah used a glass instrument to concentrate enough sunlight to start a fire. When she saw him watching, she shrugged. “My father made it. It works best when I imagine I’m lighting him on f
ire.”

  Nasir quirked an eyebrow.

  He knelt by the small fire and sharpened his scimitar, and after a moment she left him to taunt Altair, who was refilling their goatskins. Benyamin washed clothes, and the Huntress helped wring them. Nasir tightened his jaw at their camaraderie.

  It would be foolish to kill them off now when he could avail himself of the benefits of the zumra, particularly the comfort of knowing that the others had his back if ifrit—or worse—ambushed them again.

  “Careful, or you’ll murder the blade,” a voice said. He stopped his grinding and glanced at the worn brown boots that had stopped beside him. Smoky rose soothed his thoughts. Soothed?

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  The Huntress crouched beside him, sand dipping beneath her boots. “Iced cream. My best friend. A vial of honey. My sister’s smile. Don’t ask if you can’t provide.”

  It took him a moment to realize she was teasing. And by the time he did, she had moved on.

  “What’s on your arm?”

  Nasir paused. She had seen it and had the audacity to be curious. He felt a flood of shame because she didn’t fear him and a crackle of comfort because she didn’t fear him. What were these warring sentiments? The hissing of steel filled the silence as he resumed his grinding.

  “Cloth. Or a gauntlet and its blade. Teeth marks from an old lover since I tumble one every night. Depends on which part of my arm you’re asking about.”

  “Arrogance will get you nowhere,” she said.

  Her ring twinkled in the sunlight, blinding him even with his gaze pointedly down. Did you love him, fair gazelle?

  He had been so sure of so much, but now he wasn’t certain of anything anymore. He paused and met her eyes. If a poet were to describe them, he would say to look into her eyes was to see the sea’s first glimpse of the sun, drinking its reflection with endless ripples. Or something like that. Nasir was no poet. And though she held his gaze unflinchingly, some part of her had retreated. Did his scars repulse her? Did he repulse her?

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” he said.

  “This would be my definition of nowhere.”