We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  Nasir knew how people eager for coin worked. They lined their pockets and turned tail, regardless of whether or not their employer had died on a villainous island.

  “Who are you again?” Kifah asked.

  “Seif bin Uqub,” he replied. With that, his almost nonexistent amiability disappeared altogether. “Step back, Prince. You may have royal blood in your veins, but I’ve decapitated worse.”

  The silence pounded with the promise of bloodshed. And bloodshed there would have been, had Nasir not trekked to Sharr. Had he not found himself a brother there, and friends, and a certain blue-eyed huntress, who stared at him with a command in her gaze. He gritted his teeth and lowered his blade, giving the safi one last glare before stepping back between Kifah and Zafira.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Where is Altair al-Badawi bin Laa Shayy?” Son of none.

  What did a safi want from Altair?

  “You mean Benyamin?” Kifah asked, finally drawing a reaction in his unnerving eyes. They were the palest gold, so light that they eerily blended into the surrounding whites. “The tattoo,” she explained, spear still raised. “Benyamin had one, too. You’re part of his circle of safin.”

  “High safin,” he corrected as if any of them cared about Arawiya’s oldest families—rich, influential, and knowledgeable. “We are of old blood. Headed by Benyamin, we protected Arawiya’s secrets and counseled Alderamin and beyond, until we disbanded when he brought a traitor to our fold. The High Circle formed once more, quite recently, at Altair al-Badawi’s behest.”

  Something stuttered in Nasir’s chest.

  Altair had brought them together? That meant Benyamin had gone to Sharr because of Altair, not the other way around as Nasir had assumed. That meant Benyamin was Altair’s spider. As was the girl in the tavern, Kulsum—possibly even Jinan.

  For a moment, Nasir’s mind blanked, making way for memories of Altair acting like no more than an inebriate and philanderer. He almost laughed at his ignorance, at these feelings crushing his lungs.

  Of course it was Altair. No one else had a prime position beside Arawiya’s throne. No one else was a general with the freedom to traverse the caliphates. Altair had been pulling the strings from the very beginning. He had spun a meticulous web of secrets and lies under carefree grins and silver-tongued words. There was no one else whose every exhale was deliberate.

  Altair had planned it all, down to being a thorn in the sultan’s side to ensure he was sent with Nasir to Sharr. Nasir fought the surge in his throat—who was he to feel pride for an oaf such as his half brother? You love him. He rent that thought in two.

  Rimaal, and they had left Altair and his endless volley of secrets with the Lion of the Night.

  “Even so, neither are present, and you, Prince, are not a welcome sight.”

  “Last I recall, you attacked me and brought me here. So spare me your hate,” Nasir said, voice low.

  “Seif,” a new voice warned.

  A second safi swept into the room in a flurry of pale pink.

  “Marhaba, my loves,” she said with a small smile. “I am happy to have you.” Her voice was something out of a dream, abstract and melodious. Her wide brown gaze would have looked innocent, if her elongated ears and the defining tattoo around her left eye hadn’t spoken of her ancientness. Sharp cheekbones framed her face, unbound bronze hair threaded with pearls. She was the most beautiful being Nasir had ever seen. “Your little companion left once we had paid her dues. She journeys for the Hessa Isles now, with Anadil.”

  Someone had changed plans, it seemed, but Nasir admitted he could breathe easier knowing the ship’s captain would be taking his injured mother to the Isles.

  “It is unfortunate that I do not have the resources on hand to cure an injury inflicted by cursed ore, or I would have performed the recovery myself,” she added.

  Nasir lifted his brows, but there wasn’t a hint of pride to her voice, only a pragmatism uncharacteristic of safin.

  “Forgive us for the way you were received. The city is no longer safe, and discretion is of utmost importance.”

  “Was Sultan’s Keep ever safe?” Kifah asked, and Nasir shot her a look. Ghameq was many things, but never a fearmonger. It was why an assassin like himself was so useful.

  “Safer than this,” the safi ceded. “The sultan has announced a sharp increase in taxes, and there is talk of rebellion as people grow restless. The Sultan’s Guard loiter, and the city holds its breath. Even Sarasin fares better as of late.”

  Before Nasir could ask why they should trust her, he saw it: the simple circlet of black at her temple. He’d seen it before, on a safi with a feline grin and sage umber eyes.

  CHAPTER 7

  The moment the melancholy tune had struck Zafira’s ears, she was there again, in that gilded balcony of Alderamin.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?” she asked, and felt herself relax for the first time since they’d left Jinan’s ship. “Benyamin’s wife.”

  “Don’t sully his name with your mortal mouth,” the safi named Seif snarled, and Zafira resisted the urge to snarl back. Beauty could take a person only so far. “Look at them, Aya.”

  “Would you rather I spell out his name when I speak of him?” Zafira snapped. She met Benyamin’s wife’s eyes. Aya’s eyes. “I heard your voice. In—in Benyamin’s dreamwalk.”

  “He walked with you?” she asked, canting her head in surprise.

  Zafira suddenly felt as if she had done something untoward. Benyamin was right: She was the most beautiful person Zafira had ever seen. There was something ethereal and dreamily distracted about her, too. As if she existed in a world apart from them.

  “Being able to dreamwalk again was all he spoke of when we left Alderamin. He and Altair were certain that magic and the reason for Arawiya’s downfall would be found on Sharr, for that was where it began. We parted ways in Pelusia—he remained there to seek aid from one of the Nine Elite; Seif and I rode for Demenhur, to find you, though we arrived after you had left. We were to reunite here in Sultan’s Keep once the Arz fell.”

  But he wasn’t here. He would never be here.

  Aya tried but failed to offer them a smile.

  Hanan, the old Safaitic of her tattoo said. It meant, most simply, “love”—warm and compassionate. Kind. The letters curled around her eye, at home on her skin.

  The tap, tap, tap of Kifah’s spear filled the sudden quiet, and Zafira couldn’t bring herself to speak, to answer Aya’s silent question, thinking of Umm and Baba. How would one take the death of the spouse one had loved for centuries?

  “He rests with the Sisters of Old,” Nasir said finally, and Zafira shivered at the tenderness in his tone.

  Aya let loose a soft cry. Seif went still, surprise freezing his stare.

  “He—he died a noble death.”

  “Noble?” Seif barked, and Nasir flinched, no doubt remembering why the safi had died. “Death is a mockery and an inevitability for your kind. Only mortals decorate corpses with titles. Do you hear how they speak of your beloved, Aya?”

  If Zafira had to guess at what Seif loved more than himself, it was the word “mortal.”

  “Do you remember how you spoke of him, Seif? How the High Circle shunned my love when he acted out of the good of his heart?” Aya asked quietly. Her eyes fell closed, and she drew a careful breath through her nose. “How? How did Benyamin come to die … a noble death?”

  Nasir floundered in silence, turmoil ablaze in his eyes. This time, Zafira answered. “He leaped in front of a stave of cursed ore.”

  She didn’t say the stave was the Lion of the Night’s, to whom Benyamin had once shown kindness, losing his people’s favor in the process. It didn’t seem right, when Seif clearly still loathed him for that reason. Laa, Zafira would not tarnish her friend’s legacy in such a way.

  “We couldn’t have made it through Sharr without his guidance, and we couldn’t have made it off the island without his sacrifice.” She bit her ton
gue. He was her friend. Her guide and mentor. She didn’t know how Aya was holding together when Zafira still trembled with his loss. “He sacrificed himself for Arawiya.”

  She ignored Nasir’s sharp intake of air, because it was true. Benyamin had trusted the zumra to see this through. He believed them capable, or he wouldn’t have done what he had, would he? For, like Altair, he did nothing without purpose, though it seemed his actions had more heart.

  She didn’t say Benyamin had died saving the prince whom Arawiya loathed and feared, either. The very one he had scorned for being a prince with no control over his life. In the end, Benyamin had seen something in Nasir. Something worth sacrificing his life for.

  Aya stifled a sob.

  “Altair still lives,” Zafira added, “but he is no better off. The Lion of the Night has him.”

  Seif shared a look with Aya. “Haider?”

  “Indeed. Your good friend is alive and well,” Kifah said dryly, and when she noted Zafira’s furrowed brow, she murmured, “That’s the Lion’s true name.” She lifted a tattooed arm. “Half a scholar, remember?”

  Seif dragged a hand down his face. “I always knew this plan was too far-fetched. We should never have trusted Altair—”

  “Enough.” Nasir’s low voice cut him off. It amazed her, how far the prince’s sentiments surrounding Altair had come. “How long had he planned for? Years? No one expected the Lion of the Night to be alive and waiting. We found the Jawarat, and we found the hearts of the Sisters of Old. We fought a battle against Arawiya’s greatest foe, and all you did was traipse from one place to another, so I suggest, safi, that you watch your tongue.”

  Seif crossed his arms, and though he had to be older than a century, he looked like a petulant child.

  “Their hearts?” Aya inquired numbly.

  “The hearts were what lit the royal minarets and fueled magic,” Zafira explained. It seemed everyone knew the minarets were lit by something—they just didn’t know what. “And they’re dying.”

  Kifah looked to her sharply. “What?”

  Zafira told them what she’d learned from the Silver Witch.

  “Oi, wait. How were the Sisters’ hearts in the minarets while they were leading Arawiya?” Kifah asked, lines creasing her brow.

  Zafira would not have known, if not for the Jawarat. She startled at the sudden flood of memories that didn’t belong to her. “They didn’t need their hearts to live.”

  Laa, the hearts were like jewels to the powerful women. Adornments that made them powerful, nothing more. They did not need them to breathe, to live, to feel. Not like men and safin.

  They could remove them as easily as one would a thorn in a palm, and replace them just the same.

  “But by storing their hearts in the minarets, rather than their own bodies, they diluted their powers,” Zafira added, once more awed by what the Sisters had sacrificed for the good of the kingdom. “They were almost like us.”

  She wondered if the Silver Witch had ever removed her own heart. If she was like her sisters, or if she loved her power too much.

  Nasir didn’t seem to care about magic any more than he ever did. “Magic has been gone for ninety years. The hearts can survive another week. We go for Altair first.”

  Kifah set her spear against the wall, cream and ornate, and rubbed at her temples. “I want magic back for reasons no safin will understand, but I’m with the prince. Altair first, magic second.”

  Seif considered them. “The hearts may not last.”

  It is true, the Jawarat said. The hearts had two homes: the Sisters and the royal minarets created by them.

  “As Nasir said, they were fine on Sharr for nearly a century,” Kifah said.

  But they had still been within the Sisters. Those five massive trees on Sharr were what the Sisters had become, guardians of the Jawarat, protectors of their hearts, even as the organs sustained them.

  They needed to be housed in the minarets, or they would fade to dust. Still, Zafira held her tongue, afraid of sounding callous. She didn’t want to leave Altair in the hands of the Lion, either.

  “Their restoration is what Altair would wish,” Aya said, casting her vote.

  Kifah looked at Zafira, as if her answer would sway two safin from Benyamin’s ancient circle of high safin. Home. That was what she wanted, but she couldn’t bring that up now, when they were being selfless. Zafira had been selfless her entire life. What was another day or two?

  “What I didn’t say earlier,” she said instead, “is that we have only four hearts. The Lion has the fifth.”

  Seif’s brows angled sharply, instantly irritating her. “You lost the fifth heart.”

  “We, Seif. And we lost more than the heart of a Sister,” Aya reminded softly, before Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah could simultaneously snap his neck. Sweet snow. She looked from one of them to the other. “It was not your fault.”

  “Never thought it was,” said Kifah, affronted.

  “Restoration is important,” Zafira continued calmly, “but four hearts won’t give us the upper hand.”

  Aya released a long breath, making the connection. “Magic for all or none.”

  “Even if it were possible, none of you know how to use magic,” Seif muttered snobbishly.

  Zafira did. She’d been using her magic long before she even knew what it was.

  “Every fireheart will incinerate the surrounding mile,” Seif went on.

  “I might not have been alive when magic was around, but even I know magic is innate,” Kifah said. “We’ll need to perfect it, but it’s not like we’re all going to be wandering Arawiya with loose bladders.”

  “Was there no other analogy?” Seif asked.

  Kifah rolled her eyes. “Prude.”

  “The Lion will come for the rest of the hearts,” Aya said, guiding them back to the matter at hand. “A single one is useless without the others.”

  It was sound reasoning, Zafira knew, but something told her the hearts were not a priority for him. Not yet. She pulled the Jawarat from her bag, running her fingers down the lion’s mane, instantly at ease. Even on Sharr, the Lion’s focus had been on the book—she doubted they would have escaped with as many of the hearts as they had otherwise.

  Your confidence astounds, bint Iskandar.

  “Arawiya knows next to nothing of the hearts,” Zafira pointed out. “The Sisters held the knowledge of them close.”

  “And now that knowledge is in the Jawarat,” Nasir gathered.

  Zafira nodded grimly. “He’ll come for the Jawarat first, if for no reason other than it being what he craves: knowledge.”

  Even if she hadn’t seen the tattoo curling around the Lion’s eye, the old Safaitic word of ‘ilm etched bold and bronze, she would have known this, for Benyamin had told them as much. It was what he valued above all else.

  Seif eyed the book and extended his hand. “Then it must be under strict supervision.”

  No, bint Iskandar.

  For an immortal book, it had a knack for sounding like a sulking child.

  “Do you think I won’t protect the thing that’s bound to me? If anything happens to it, I could die,” Zafira snapped. “I’m more than capable of keeping it safe.”

  Seif barked a laugh. “You bound yourself to a hilya?”

  Zafira had no notion of what a hilya was, but the look on the safi’s face was enough to make her resolve waver.

  He drew a breath, ready to spew more, but Aya spoke first. “That is enough. Protect it well, Huntress.”

  Zafira nodded once, uncertain if her smug triumph was her own or prompted by the book sitting gleefully relieved in her hands.

  Seif looked as if he had more to say, and from the way his pale gaze flicked to Aya, Zafira guessed it involved twistedly pinning the blame on Benyamin, the fallen safi who had spent the past nine decades blaming himself for the Lion’s betrayal, doing all he could to make up for the tragedy of his good intentions. It was clear he had even fronted Altair’s gossamer web to protect hi
m, for it couldn’t have been easy being a spymaster and the sultan’s right-hand general at once.

  Aya gripped Seif’s arm and drew him away.

  “There is one more thing,” Nasir said slowly, halting them, and Zafira could tell that whatever it was cost precious dignity. “The Lion controls my … father. If you’ve safin we can trust, it would be ideal to station them across the city. Near the palace, the Great Library, everywhere of importance.”

  Zafira’s heart stuttered at the mention of yet another place Baba had longed to see. It was history incarnate, scrolls and parchment preserving every last bit of knowledge that ever meant anything. She wondered if the Lion had made use of it through his control of Ghameq. It was likely. Greed had no limit.

  Seif pursed his mouth and spoke to Aya in low tones that not even Zafira could catch. Then he sauntered away without a backward glance.

  Kifah lifted an eyebrow. “Bleeding Guljul, if I thought Benyamin was vain, this one can’t even keep his clothes on.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to look,” Zafira returned, and Kifah shot her a murderous glare.

  “Seif is captain of Alderamin’s royal guard and will take care of everything. I am sorry he is not the most affable of us,” Aya said. She gestured to the crate with the hearts, clutched in Nasir’s hands. “Until we determine the best course of action, we will keep the hearts close and in constant movement. Change hands every half day. Never leave them unattended.” She paused. “Benyamin thought highly of you. He and Altair had done as much to keep Arawiya from crumbling as the sultana did, though it was never enough. He always said the world was meant to be salvaged by the ones it had wronged. Life makes a mockery of us, does it not?”

  Death, Zafira corrected in her head because she was mortal. Death makes a mockery of us.

  Aya pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, but not before a murmur slipped free. Roohi.

  Outside, the final stretch of the sun washed the world in deep gold. No one knew what to say in the silence. What was it like to be burdened by an eternity of sadness? They mourned Benyamin, but none of them could begin to understand how much his wife mourned him.