The kaftar stretched his neck with a sigh. This time, his voice was smooth when he answered. A hot knife through butter, a keen blade through flesh. “One hundred and four years.”
Benyamin noticeably stiffened. Nasir’s grip tightened around his drawn bow.
“One hundred and four years since we’ve eaten a meal cooked to perfection. One hundred and four years since I’ve lain in a warm bed and held a woman in my arms. Kaftar must shift at sunset and at sunrise, but it has been one hundred and four years, Alder”—the man’s eyes burned murderous as he stalked closer—“since your kind cursed me and my brethren to the bodies of beasts, imprisoning us upon this island.”
“Not a step closer, creature,” Nasir said, voice low.
Surprise flickered in the murky pools of the kaftar’s eyes. “A Sarasin, defending an Alder? Arawiya must truly lie in ruin.” He lifted a hand to his beard.
Nasir held his breath as the kaftar’s fingernails lengthened and sharpened into claws. One move, and both sides would clash.
The kaftar set his gaze on Altair. “I smell a sweetness in his blood, Alder, and I wonder—”
“Enough!” Cold alarm crossed Benyamin’s face. The Huntress jumped. Kifah looked at Benyamin sharply. Very little ever fazed the safi, and they all took note.
“I can change you back into the monsters you were cursed to be and let them run you through with their weapons,” Benyamin continued, gesturing to the others, “or you may leave us and remain in human form.”
The tension crackled.
The hairs on the back of Nasir’s neck stood on end.
“Why have you come?” the kaftar asked.
“A shadow stirs,” Benyamin ceded. “Arawiya darkens.”
“You panic, Alder.” The kaftar stepped forward. His eyes glowed with barely contained savagery.
“The Jawarat will not remain lost much longer.”
This time alarm befell the kaftar, and Nasir felt a cold grip in his chest at the reminder: whatever tome this Jawarat was, it was more than an answer to the disappearance of magic. The kaftar stared longingly at Altair, inhaling deep, and Nasir nearly stepped between them, but Kifah moved first, crossing her arms.
After a long moment, the kaftar stepped back, and his brethren mimicked his movements.
“Take your leave, Alder. Whistle, and my pack might assist.” His gaze drifted to Kifah before it settled on the Huntress, roving across her form. Nasir wanted to cut him down where he stood. “But the cursed take no oaths and make no promises.”
CHAPTER 57
Nasir turned his back on the kaftar with heavy reluctance. He never left a threat breathing. He hardly left the innocent breathing. His blood still boiled from the way the lead kaftar had nearly undressed the Huntress with his wandering gaze.
Which was why, the moment they had distanced themselves from the wily creatures, something in Nasir’s calm snapped. He shoved Altair aside and flung Benyamin against a remnant of a wall, a plume of dust showering them from above.
Everyone froze.
Altair laughed. “I was waiting for this. Habibi Kifah, you owe me that spear.”
“The only way you’ll ever touch my spear is when I shove it through your throat,” Kifah snapped.
“Charming. Then you owe me that gold cuff.”
“Go sink yourself.”
Nasir brought his face close to Benyamin’s, who stared back without a hint of emotion. “First you convince everyone to traipse behind you, and then you befriend the foe of Sharr? Next you’ll be holding hands with ifrit.”
Benyamin didn’t answer.
“Ten paces down this very desert, the kaftar could be waiting to kill us for your kindness.”
The safi’s face turned mocking. “Like you? You know, I keep wondering when you’ll do the same, yet you continue following me around.” He worried his lip. “Laa, you just keep traipsing behind me.”
Nasir growled. “I’m not following you. No one is following you. Thanks to your big mouth, everyone is following the Demenhune.”
A small click of metal punctuated his words, and Altair yanked Nasir back, easing the gauntlet blade back down.
“Come now, Nasir. You’re ruining his keffiyah.”
Nasir shrugged him off but kept his distance with narrowed eyes.
“Why are you really here, safi?” Nasir said, voice low. “Your lot has evolved past magic. You can live perfectly fine without it.”
“I could ask the same of you. What need does Sultan Ghameq have for the Jawarat when the Demenhune intends to use it to return magic to the same kingdom he governs?”
Nasir gritted his teeth in the sudden silence. His neck burned.
Because he did not know.
He never knew. He was no more than his father’s errand boy. A prince kept in the dark. A pawn who moved without question. A jaban.
He did not know why the sultan wanted the Jawarat. He did not know why the Silver Witch—Sister of Old and warden of Sharr—wanted the Jawarat. He knew only that the Huntress bore no evil, not the way he did.
“Tell us, Crown Prince Nasir. What does Ghameq want with the lost Jawarat?” Benyamin repeated.
He didn’t think Benyamin bore evil, either, despite the knife of his words, cutting into Nasir’s chest.
Never had his father’s hate and disrespect mattered as much as they did now, here, with people from nearly every caliphate watching him. Never had the words I don’t know felt so damning. The ruins darkened, or maybe it was his vision.
One thing was certain: Control was only slipping further from his grasp.
Altair watched him, and he had the acute sense that the general was sifting through his thoughts. For once, Nasir didn’t know if his mask was in place, or if Altair could simply see past it.
You are weak. A mutt.
A lapdog.
“He doesn’t know,” Altair said.
To Nasir’s surprise, there was no mock or amusement in his tone. Only steel and the harsh edge of protectiveness. Shame penetrated Nasir’s every bone.
Benyamin laughed without mirth and adjusted his keffiyah. “Do you truly expect me to believe the prince isn’t privy to his sultan? Knowledge without action is vanity, but action without knowledge is insanity.”
Altair stared. “If you were son to the Sultan of Arawiya, safi, believe me, you wouldn’t be privy to anything. Laa, you’d be a husk, begging to be tossed to the rats.”
Nasir’s exhale trembled along with the tips of his fingers. Weakness. Cursed emotion. He clenched his fists, willing his control to return. He could feel the Huntress studying him and wished, for once, that he could vanish.
Altair sliced the heavy silence with the draw of his scimitars. He swooped them through the air and disappeared into the trees. When no one followed, his bored voice floated back, “Yalla, Huntress. Everyone moves only when you do.”
CHAPTER 58
Zafira hurried after Altair, steps echoing along the stone of the ruins. She couldn’t stomach standing with them any longer, where the air was rife with awkward tension. It was pride. Pride had sparked that ridiculous conflict no one had needed.
“You defended him,” she said, trying to understand.
Altair grunted, as grumpy as Nasir, and kicked at a pile of debris before barreling forward. They were in a hall of sorts, a maze of rooms where stone walls had collapsed. Zafira looked back, where the others were starting to follow. Altair was right: Everyone moved when she did.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you defend him?”
“Am I not allowed to defend anyone?” he asked with mock innocence.
Zafira scowled and followed him up a short run of crumbling stairs. “Why did you defend Nasir?”
“Why are you so adamant?”
“I just want to know,” she said, ducking beneath a dangerously unstable archway. She heard a hiss in the silence, a reminder that this was Sharr and they were never safe.
Altai
r stopped and pinned her with a look of anger she’d never seen on him. Was he angry he had defended Nasir? Or angry Benyamin had pushed Nasir to the point where Zafira saw fear in the prince’s dead gaze?
“If I hadn’t intervened, he could have wet his pants. Do you see any streams we can get him cleaned up in? Neither can I.”
Men can be such beautiful trash, Yasmine said in her head with a sigh.
“You care for him,” Zafira said, pushing for a reaction.
He raised an eyebrow and studied her before stomping ahead. Wasn’t she supposed to lead?
“I do not,” he said matter-of-factly when she caught up. There was an undertone of warning to his voice. “But careful, Huntress—I’m beginning to think you do.”
The others reached them before she could protest his choice of words.
Benyamin yawned loudly and stretched like a cat, ignoring the prince as if he hadn’t torn him apart. As if hyenas hadn’t shifted into men before their eyes.
“When I’m back in Alderamin, I’m going to say hello to my beloved and maybe my sister, and then I’ll take a very, very long nap. The longest one Arawiya has ever seen,” the safi proclaimed.
“Say hello for me, too,” Altair said. “To the calipha-to-be, not your beloved.”
“My sister does not want your hello,” Benyamin said with a scowl.
“I’m going to visit my father and gloat,” Kifah said, and Zafira knew she hadn’t imagined the bitterness in her tone. “Then I’ll celebrate with the biggest lamb the calipha’s kitchens can find.”
Altair hummed in agreement. “Akhh, have that lamb marinated to perfection with ras el-hanout. Roasted potatoes garnished with basil. Qahwa in the evening with date biscuits.”
“What’s ras el-hanout?” Zafira asked.
“The mother of all spice mixes. It hails from Pelusia,” Kifah replied, “but the Sarasin bastards stole it.”
“You can’t steal something that grows out of the ground. That’s like saying we stole sand,” Altair retorted.
Kifah shrugged.
“I’m going to take my falcon on a hunt. Poor thing probably misses me.” The general looked at Zafira. “What about you, Huntress? What will you do back in Demenhur? Without the Arz, you can finally stop hunting.”
Her step faltered. She hadn’t made that connection, that simple realization. Taking down the Arz that killed her father meant there would no longer be the Arz that made her her.
Skies.
She would no longer be the Demenhune Hunter. She wouldn’t be anyone. Something clawed up her chest. What was Zafira bint Iskandar, if not the Hunter?
Benyamin touched her sleeve.
“This is your chance for the Hunter and Zafira to become one,” he said softly. Her cloak weighed heavily in her bag. “Meld them. Become yourself. The Huntress. The girl who freed magic from the darkness and so freed herself.”
The Huntress. She bit her lip.
But the safi did not understand that freedom was sometimes a burden of its own.
* * *
The others settled into the silence of reminiscence. No one asked Nasir what he planned to do when he returned, making him realize he had never thought beyond this journey. He had no naps or rich meals to look forward to. When he returned to his father, he could not gloat.
He would only await his next summons.
He lived for his orders. For the mistake he made in not heeding them.
No, there was nothing for Nasir after Sharr. Nothing but tears and corpses and the next bleak sunrise.
CHAPTER 59
Zafira woke to the ground swaying beneath her and birds screeching in the distance. Sunlight burned her eyelids and a breeze brushed her skin.
Frowning, she opened her eyes and nearly scrambled off a plank. Her bare hands snagged on splintering wood. Breathe, Zafira. Then assess.
She was on a fishing boat. A dhow. The sails billowed in a breeze that teased her tongue with salt, a blood-red diamond centered on the beige cloth.
Ululations broke the hush of the azure waves, and Zafira swiveled to a fisherman reeling in a net full of thrashing fish. They slipped and slid, their slaps atop the polished wood a soundless scream for salvation. She had never seen live fish before, but she pitied them, for their suffering ended with suffocation rather than a hunter’s clean cut.
There were five shirtless men on board, plummy brown skin glistening with sweat, heads bound with sienna turbans. What was it with Arawiyan men and their shirts? They wore rough-cloth sirwal, muscled arms ten times larger than hers; they’d even put Altair to shame.
None of them looked at her—one stepped over the plank she sat on without a glance her way. It reminded her of the Silver Witch’s phantom sailors, and an icy finger trailed her spine.
“Yaa, land!” a fisherman cried. The others echoed his jubilation.
The land they’d sighted drew closer with every beat of her heart. Until it was there. Here. Before her.
And her heart clenched at the magnificence of it all.
Faceted domes gleamed in a gold that warred with the sun; diamond-tipped spires and minarets speared the cloud-dusted sky. The domes nestled buildings of creamy stone, doors welcoming, windows open. Some were connected with ropes in bursts of color, clothes left to dry upon them wrinkled and stiff. Date trees dotted the landscape, reddish clusters of fruit tucked amid the fanning leaves.
People roamed the streets, dressed in an array of colorful gowns and thobes, some with tunics atop sirwal, turbans or scarves embellishing their heads. Some guided grinning camels carrying rolls of cloth. There were people of every shade—the deep brown of Pelusia, the pale of Demenhur, the copper and olive of Sarasin—though the majority were shades of the desert, gleaming with the heat of the sun.
This was nothing like the sands of Sharr, which whispered of ruin and sorrow. This sand sprawled over the ground the way snow did in Demenhur. It churned with the feet wading through it. It clung to the alabaster walls. It was everywhere.
Where am I?
“I was beginning to think you would never ask.”
Zafira’s vision faltered before she could turn toward the voice. When it righted, she was no longer on the dhow but on land.
She turned a full circle, noting the people who shuffled along, some hurrying, others moving slowly and leisurely. No one acknowledged her existence.
It was almost as if she didn’t exist at all.
A camel chewing on a reed sauntered past, and Zafira searched for a flash of silver among the crowd, a cloak that hooded bone-white hair and a crimson smile, but her searching brought her to a different pair of eyes, umber, feline, and lazy. Half a fig in his hand.
Benyamin leaned against a date palm, dappled sunlight splotching his skin. He was overdressed as always: a black robe decked with gold over a white thobe, a checkered keffiyah on his head, calfskin sandals on his feet.
“You can read minds,” she said.
He tilted his head and licked the remains of the fig from his fingers. “That would be a silly affinity, laa? And quite a pain, if you really pondered upon it. Alas, you asked the question aloud, Huntress.”
Had she? She couldn’t recall. “Just tell me where I am.”
Benyamin carefully tugged at the keffiyah, adjusting it beneath a black circlet before he pushed away from the tree and sauntered toward her with sinuous grace. She found it surprising he didn’t have a tail to curl around his feet.
“This is the Arawiya of old. Before the snows blanketed Demenhur, before the sands of Sarasin darkened and Zaram was cut off from the sea. Before the ever-fertile lands of Pelusia were sickened, dulling their great minds.”
“This?” she whispered. It was a desert, it was almost exactly like Sharr, but it throbbed with life. The people were exuberant, the architecture astounding, and the climate warmed every fiber of her being. This Arawiya was alive. This was true Arawiya, before the Sisters’ final battle with the Lion of the Night swept aberration across the kingdom like a plague.
“I’m in the past?”
He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Quite current, I’m afraid. This is Alderamin.”
She sniffed. “So you brought me here to shove your privilege in my face?”
He tilted his head again, this time meeting her eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask how you got to Alderamin?”
“That was my next question,” she snapped, suddenly annoyed.
She had merely momentarily forgotten. Because she was in Alderamin, the caliphate of dreams. Of everything everywhere else was not.
His question settled on her shoulders. Laa, it slapped her in the face, and her breath froze. “How did I get to Alderamin?”
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.
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