We Hunt the Flame

by Hafsah Faizal

  Nasir strayed to the stream, climbing the stones that overlooked Sharr’s ruins. He kept his gaze pointedly away from the Lion’s den far to their right. Everywhere he looked, the dunes glittered beneath the blanket of darkness, shrouding them, pressing closer and closer.

  He could see, now, as clear as day. His affinity was very much like the Lion’s, he realized. Maybe even the same. He was one with the shadows, like the wisps that curled from his fingers.

  At once, he knew he wasn’t alone.

  A flash of silver caught his eye and he leaped from the stone and drew his scimitar, the outcropping cutting him off from the others.

  The Silver Witch.

  The only living Sister of Old, warden of Sharr. Her bone-white hair gleamed in the darkness, and he felt the weight of her compass in his pocket.

  “Your blades can’t hurt me,” she said. She sounded tired, almost sad.

  “Run away, witch,” he said, unafraid. “Or was that another lie and Sharr won’t drain you of your magic?”

  “It is the truth—it drains me now. I only want to speak.”

  “About what? About how much you enjoyed watching my father disappear into himself every day you roamed the palace halls?” He stopped and reined in his anger. What had she come to speak of, knowing full well the risks?

  “About you,” she said, and she seemed to be struggling for words.

  An act. It has to be.

  “This is not the time nor place, but Arawiya worsens and I may never again have the chance.”

  “For what?” He did not sheathe his sword. He might be powerless against her, but with a blade, he had some semblance of control.

  She dropped her gaze to the dark water. “Did you bury the sultana by a stream that night?”

  Nasir narrowed his eyes. “That’s an odd thing to bring up.”

  “I’m merely curious,” she said, a hint of remorse simmering her tone. “I wanted to know who you buried and who you mourned, given that your mother is still very much alive.”

  “My mother was the Sultana of Arawiya. If she were alive, you would know it.”

  “I do know it, Nasir,” she said.

  He paused at the way she said his name. It reminded him of another time, another place.

  “I know how the people bowed to her, not out of fear but out of respect. How her son smiled at her, not out of duty but out of love. I remember the way he fit into the crook of her arm as a babe, and the ferocity of his eyes when he bested her on the training grounds. I remember the way he mourned me, as no son should have to mourn his mother.”

  She wavered before him like a mirage. There was a clawing in his throat that he thought he had long ago trounced.

  “I remember everything and more. Because I am the Sultana of Arawiya. Warden of Sharr. Sister of Old. But before all else, hayati, I am your mother.”

  CHAPTER 77

  Before the flicker of the fire, Kifah’s dark skin glowed as she gave Zafira a share of the roasted meat. Nasir was nowhere to be seen. Benyamin had drifted off to sleep. He had been a ghost of himself ever since she had put him on the spot. She didn’t know how to make amends. She was too tired to even think.

  Altair was in a similar state, eating in silence, glancing furtively at her every so often. The camp was despondent without his quips. She believed him, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak to him. Nothing he said would ever bring Deen back. Nothing anyone said or did would bring him back.

  But she didn’t want to lose another friend.

  Kifah settled down beside her. The cuff on her arm winked.

  “Are you all right?”

  Zafira had many, many words to say to that but settled with “I am.”

  “He said he’d wait for us in the pockets of zill and zalaam. Everywhere I look, I see him,” Kifah said, and nudged her shoulder. “Not that he’s hard on the eyes.”

  Zafira gave her a shadow of a smile. It sounded like something Yasmine would say. Yasmine felt everything so fiercely, she would have swooned at his feet. Just as she would cry when she heard of Deen’s death. Unlike Zafira, who had merely blinked when he had bled to death at her feet.

  Kifah was watching, and Zafira wondered if she could read her face as the others could. “I’m glad you’re finally free of that cloak. I’ve heard of your caliph’s bias, and it’s about bleeding time someone showed that old fool what a woman can do.”

  This time, Zafira’s smile was real. “If I get off this island, I intend to do just that.”

  “You will, Huntress,” Kifah said, sinking her teeth into her food. “You will.”

  “I thought you weren’t one for optimism.”

  Kifah grinned. “I pick my battles.”

  The whisper of a sound curled Zafira’s toes, and her mind blanked. She was in that corridor again, with those crawling, weeping shadows. The lilt of a voice crept through the dry trees. Laa. Not one voice—many. The air stilled and the shadows held their breath.

  She latched her fingers around Kifah’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

  “The sound of my own breathing? Yes,” Kifah said, giving her an odd look before gently pulling away.

  No. Whispers.

  Whispers in an ancient tongue, words crawling from the depths of someplace unseen. She slowly made sense of the words. Safaitic. A multitude of voices, begging, calling, reaching. They tugged at her hair, at her arms, her fingers.

  She stood as a chill settled in her bones, worse than any the cursed Demenhune snow could cause.

  The voices called to her. Nothing like the Lion and his welcoming. This was a plea for help. A cry of ruination.

  “Huntress?”

  A tremor in Kifah’s voice heightened Zafira’s pulse. Her blood reveled in the sound of the Pelusian’s trepidation.

  “Zafira?”

  Come. Free us.

  Zafira took a slow step toward the voices.

  “Where are you going?” Kifah hissed, rising to her feet.

  Home. She was going home.

  “Let her have a moment,” she heard Altair say.

  “She’s not— Oi! Huntress!”

  Zafira stepped into the trees, where a path unfolded before her and closed behind her, the wood of the trees crackling and moaning, swallowing Kifah’s frantic calls. The light of the fire disappeared. Zafira crept onward, cautious but unafraid. Blackened branches wove away, entwining above in meticulous, pointed arches.

  Marhaba, marhaba, marhaba, the air pulsed. The debris littering the ground smoothed into the glister of marble, forbidding beneath her boots.

  There was no light here. But she knew what it was like to hunt without sight. To hear and know all. She picked up words of Safaitic in the whispers, pulsating against her eardrums, thrumming against her heart.

  We are the past.

  We are the future.

  We are history.

  We are destruction.

  Free us.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered to them, elated when they smiled back.

  CHAPTER 78

  Hayati. My life. One step above love. One word whispered in his ear when he had cried his nights to sleep.

  Liar, Nasir wanted to yell as the Silver Witch morphed into someone else, hair deepening to that familiar shade of gold, so dark it bordered black. Eyes softening. Ears sharpening.

  Into someone who existed for years and years without end.

  “Don’t.” He could barely enunciate the word past the hands closing around his throat. She shifted back into the witch. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “What need do I have to lie?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know, and I do not care.” Perhaps the Lion sent her, to toy with his head. “Why are you telling me this now? You’ve had years.”

  “I might die in this fight. I might never have the chance to tell you.”

  “You can flee Sharr now, exactly as you did all those years ago.”

  Her face shattered. It didn’t matter which face she wore—he saw his mother eit
her way.

  “It was not in my interests that I fled Sharr.”

  He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t care to know. The burn beneath his collarbone seared him afresh.

  “But my time in the shadows has come to an end. You are here; you no longer require my protection.”

  “I never required—”

  “I told him you were born out of necessity, because my wazirs demanded an heir. He never believed me, even after I dropped the crown and donned this cloak. He sent you and Altair here, a reminder that he held the upper hand, lest I do something in which the Huntress might go against him. He knew I would interfere before you left Sultan’s Keep, and I did. I aided you, I gave you the compass with which you could aid the Huntress, but I could not show my hand.”

  Nasir understood only half of what she said. He drew in a breath and knew the words he was about to utter would set him on a path that would not end well. “Prove to me that you are the sultana.” My mother.

  She shook her head, and he noted the pieces of his mother that had shifted into the Silver Witch. Or the pieces of the Silver Witch that once lived within his mother.

  “Show me proof, or take your leave.”

  “Once my Sisters … perished, I knew the people would turn to the safin for leadership first. The last person I murdered was the safi whose name I claimed: the then-calipha—Benyamin’s aunt. I slit her throat and buried her in the grounds of the palace, becoming her in both action and appearance. They appointed me, surprised the Gilded Throne accepted, for no one but that chair knew I was a Sister. I birthed Altair in secret, keeping him hidden in case the Lion escaped Sharr. Alone, I ruled as the safin sultana for decades. Until Ghameq—”

  He didn’t want to hear the rest. “I don’t want your tales.”

  She knew what he wanted.

  She knew, because he saw the havoc in her dark eyes as she lifted her hand to her left sleeve and drew up the silver cloth, unveiling a burn. A teardrop of black marring the skin near her elbow, from the first time she’d stepped between Nasir and the poker.

  “I could wear a thousand faces and don a hundred names,” she said, her voice soft, “but scars are eternal.”

  Nasir breathed past open lips. The baba he loved had become a monster. The woman he loved had used him, spied on him. Everyone else shied away, fear in their eyes, hate in their hearts. He had endured it all, every fabricated instance of love and respect and emotion.

  Because no matter what, his mother’s love had always been real.

  “You were all I had,” he said. “Everything else could fall to ruin, but you—even dead you were mine.” He tried to make sense of the way his fingers could not stay still. His voice rose in a way that it never had before. “But you didn’t even exist.”

  “The face I wore changes nothing.”

  Nasir gave a hollow laugh. The Arawiyans believed their beloved sultana had been safin. He had believed he was half safin.

  Yet another lie.

  “I had never known true love until I met your father. I had never felt true adoration until I birthed you. I gave him that medallion, hayati. My one last relic of Sharr. And through it, the Lion found his way to him, and when the Huntress set foot in the forest, the Lion knew the Jawarat could finally be sought. He had found me, and it wouldn’t have been long before he reached her. A sultana cannot leave her place, and you were in no position to lead. I granted Ghameq the crown. I fabricated my own death.”

  “Oh, you did far worse,” he said. He was crumbling inside. His tone was cruel. “You made me into the greatest hashashin alive and left me in his hands. You made me into a monster and handed him the leash.”

  She shook her head. “That was not my intent.”

  His head was tight. His vision burned dark, and only when he lifted his hand did he see the shadows rippling from his skin. “I know you immortals think long and far. Why did you do it, then? Why make your son a monster?”

  He didn’t think she would answer at first. She looked away, her silver cloak shadowed by the night. He wanted to grab her shoulders and demand an answer at swordpoint.

  But he heard a whisper then, despite their distance. A murmur in his head.

  Because the only way to end a creature who sees everything is with that which he cannot see.

  By the time the full force of her words struck him, she was already retreating into the night, pain wrought in her features.

  She had been grooming him to take down the Lion from the moment of his birth.

  “I am sorry, my sons,” she whispered. “Forgive me.”

  Nasir swiveled to where Altair watched from the shadows, silhouetted in gold against the firelight of the camp. When he turned back, the Silver Witch, the Sultana of Arawiya, was gone.

  CHAPTER 79

  Zafira wended her way on the path, listening to the whispers. In the benighted terrain, thoughts and memories rose to life. Baba and Umm. Lana and her books. Yasmine and Misk. Deen and his ring. The Lion and his promises.

  His words. About how she was merely a creature craving love.

  It didn’t matter in the end. She was Zafira bint Iskandar, with magic in her veins and a book of whispers calling her name, begging her to free them.

  She would do as they asked. For her people.

  But something warred within her, and when it raised its head, it said, Laa.

  She would do it for herself. For the voices.

  For zill and zalaam.

  CHAPTER 80

  She wanted Nasir to kill the Lion. His mother wanted him to kill the Lion. She believed he could kill the Lion.

  Altair studied him, surprisingly void of emotion.

  Nasir fisted his trembling hands. “You knew.”

  He nodded. “Sharr is full of revelations.”

  Nasir did not want to react to that, or he would tear Altair’s hair from his head.

  “I don’t know how to put this lightly,” Altair started, and his mock-cheerful tone made Nasir decide maybe he should tear the hair from his perfect head, “but our compass is missing.”

  “Zafira,” Nasir corrected before he registered the rest of what Altair said. He snapped his gaze to him. “Missing?”

  Nasir shoved past Altair and rushed into the camp, where Benyamin was pacing back and forth and Kifah was rubbing her arms, gold cuff glinting.

  He whirled back to Altair, who held up his hands and started with “Kifah—”

  Nasir had Kifah against the tree in a heartbeat. His voice was crisp. “Where is she?”

  Distantly, he heard Altair mumble, “What is it with Nasir and shoving people against things?”

  Anger flared Kifah’s nostrils, but Nasir didn’t care.

  “Start talking,” he said, voice low, “or I’ll knock out your teeth and you can use your blood to write your answers.”

  “Get your hands off me,” she seethed, but this time a flicker of fear touched her bold face.

  Panic struck him. He released her.

  She straightened her sleeveless blouse and hoisted her spear, a sheen on her black skin and bald head. “Next time you touch me, Prince, you’ll be without a hand.”

  “We have a more pressing matter, One of Nine,” Altair drawled.

  Kifah growled. “She heard whispers when there wasn’t a bleeding sound. And then she just started walking away as if I weren’t even there.”

  “Cut the gibberish, woman,” Nasir snapped.

  “All truth. Then she started whispering to the trees and said she was coming—and the bleeding trees moved, almost like a door was closing behind her.”

  Nasir turned to Benyamin, whose golden skin had lost its pallor. “The Lion?”

  The safi shook his head. “He isn’t strong enough. Not yet.”

  Not yet. “What does that mean?”

  Benyamin started going through the vials at his waist. “It means the lost Jawarat won’t be lost for long.”

  “Reassuring,” Altair said.

  “Can you walk?” Nasir looke
d to Altair’s leg.

  “Planning on carrying me, too?”

  Nasir sighed.

  “Worry not, princeling. Thanks to your tender care and my mighty strength, I’m good to go.”

  Mighty strength indeed. His blood flowed with that of the Sisters, too. Altair met his gaze, teasing eyes now staid, and Nasir knew what his half brother’s next words would be. They curdled in his stomach.

  “Will you kill her?”

  Nasir wouldn’t allow himself to consider that just yet. “I’m afraid she’ll kill us.”

  CHAPTER 81

  Nasir’s impatience had worn threadbare by the time they uncovered some semblance of a path. Zafira’s light tread was barely traceable until they reached a set of imposing doors. Odd that they hadn’t seen this structure before, a looming mass of marble whose only entrance was a set of heavy green doors, brilliant in the night.

  “The trail ends here,” Kifah said with a frown.

  Flickering torchlight cast eerie shadows across the zumra’s solemn faces. Darkness was creeping up the green surface.

  “How did she get past these doors?” Altair asked after pushing and pulling to no avail. He even pounded upon them for good measure until Benyamin asked him to stop.

  “If Altair can’t get them open, we’re all doomed,” Kifah said, using the tip of her spear to try to pry them open.

  “There must be a way around,” Nasir murmured.

  Kifah brushed her hands across an inscription on the stone beside the doors. “I don’t think so. There are words here. Safaitic? I don’t even know half of them.”

  Altair hurried to the inscription while Nasir tried to make sense of the writing.

  The color drained from Benyamin’s face. “There’s only one way in.”

  “Dum sihr,” Kifah said, a note of eagerness in her tone.

  Benyamin shook his head, the whites of his eyes bright in the darkness. “I told you, the price of dum sihr is always great. I can’t do this.”

  “We have no choice,” Altair said, and Nasir envied how easily he forgave the safi. “This isn’t a test of conscience.”