We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  Memories, emotions, rarities acquired by ill means: This was what Bait ul-Ahlaam dealt in. That was why Seif had been reluctant to come here. Why the Silver Witch had been angry at the mere mention of its name.

  “No,” Zafira said with finality. She had lived this long without dum sihr, without doing what was forbidden. She had hunted and found and lived.

  She was lying to herself.

  Kifah made a strangled sort of sound. In it was her accusation: Zafira had chosen herself over Altair. Her old knife over finding the Lion and getting her daama book back.

  “It’s only a dagger,” Kifah hissed, siding with reason. “I can buy you a new one that looks exactly like it.”

  Zafira clenched her jaw. It wasn’t about coin, it wasn’t about how her dagger looked. She didn’t care that the shopkeeper was steps away from them, clinging to their every word. “Then why do you think the kaftar wants it?”

  If Kifah understood, she didn’t care. “This is not the time to be sentimental.”

  Anger reared its head at a level birthed by the Jawarat, for never before had rage twisted words together, ugly and whole.

  What do you know of sentiment? it wanted her to say.

  But Kifah was her friend, and Zafira didn’t have to speak. She read her well enough. Her soft breath tore with her dark gaze.

  “Emotion is as potent as memory, isn’t it?” she asked the shopkeeper without a shred of feeling. “That’s why you want the dagger.”

  The kaftar had no reason to be guilty.

  Kifah smiled cruelly. “You can take the dagger of a peasant, or the spear of a former erudite turned Nine Elite and every emotion that led from one to the other.”

  The kaftar considered her afresh. One of the lanterns sputtered noisily, angrily.

  “In that case,” the kaftar mused, tipping the silver vial to and fro, “I will take both.”

  Zafira swayed. Her hand twitched for an arrow, anger engulfing her desperation, but it was Kifah who spoke first, her fury focused on the vial. “Keep it. May it shatter and defile this place forever.”

  Curses meant little to those versed in them. The kaftar set the vial back on the shelf, between a wicked knife and a camel-bone dallah, and turned away. With his back to her, anything was possible: her dagger in his spine, Kifah’s spear through the back of his neck. Another chance.

  Kifah was already near the door.

  Zafira’s pulse pounded beneath her skin, a drum born of disquiet. “Here.”

  The leather hilt fit snug in her grip. She felt every fiber against her fingers, she knew every snag and every little bump. The way the leather was loose at the hilt’s curve, the blade dull from use but sharp as the cleverest of wits. Baba’s gift to her. All that was left of him.

  The kaftar only looked.

  “You can’t have both,” Zafira said, keeping the tremor from her voice. “Nor will anyone else want the vial. Not when magic returns.”

  He took the dagger. She took the vial. The blood of the most powerful beings in Arawiya sat in her palm, and still she had lost.

  CHAPTER 33

  Nasir tossed the bloodied rag into the bin and swept a look across the room. Khara. He had forgotten about Zafira’s sister. A thousand scenarios flitted through his brain: She would have panicked. She would have unlocked the other door or thrown open the window and tried to escape at the first clash of weaponry. The men had only just dragged the last of the bodies away, a pair of guards leading—to Nasir’s relief—the tired sultan to his rooms. He hurried to unlock the door and paused against the doorway.

  Lana lay on the bed, eyes closed, chest rising too quickly to be asleep.

  A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth before he folded it away with a sigh and locked the door again.

  There was no chance of him sleeping. Not now, when his father was suddenly his father again, a concept he had last seen so long ago that he didn’t know when exactly Ghameq had begun to change. He recalled the Silver Witch’s words on Sharr, that she had never known true love until she met his father. The medallion had been her wedding gift to him, one of the last remaining artifacts from her life as warden of the island. She had not known it held a bit of its darkness, that it soon became a channel connecting the Lion to her beloved.

  There was a time when he had been kind, when lines would crease near his eyes as he smiled, when he would hold his wife in his arms, pride and love in the timbre of his voice. Laa, the Lion’s control was a gradual thing, deepening and worsening as the years progressed.

  Nasir folded his keffiyah, wound it into a turban, and eased the door closed behind him. The halls were silent save for the occasional drift of maids and servants who caught sight of him and disappeared just as quickly.

  Home sweet home, he thought dryly.

  Meaning to search for some sign of the Lion or Altair, he soon found himself in the latter’s rooms. They were ghostly without his riotous laughter and boisterous voice, and an ache began somewhere in Nasir’s chest. He trailed his hand along the table, the vases full of dates and sweets and candy-coated almonds. Every chair was draped with an ostentatious throw, and his gaze softened at the sight of a dallah on a low table. The faint whiff of Altair’s beloved qahwa clung to the air.

  Nasir pulled back the curtain and stepped into the bedroom. His ears burned as he remembered the last time he was here.

  He had always wondered why Altair’s rooms were different from the rest. Why he had been given first choice—the golden wall latticed in the most ornate of patterns; the sprawling platform bed, twice as wide as Nasir’s own; the circular skywindow cut into the center of the ceiling, providing an unhindered view of the sky.

  He knew now that it wasn’t for any reason other than Altair being alive to choose them. How did it feel to live on when the moons rose and fell without end? To see people born and age and wither and die while one still retained one’s youth?

  Sad.

  That was how it felt to even think it.

  It wouldn’t be so foreign a concept for himself, either. Nasir was half si’lah, and though his mortal blood would not allow him to live forever, he would live long enough to be glad of it. Unless he was killed, of course. Always so lively, Altair said in his head.

  Nasir tugged his already-lowered sleeve over the words inked on his arm. I once loved. Those years could be endless, or they could be nothing at all depending on how he lived them, and who he lived them with.

  He skimmed the bookshelf, four planks of insanity. Each book brimmed with life—random markers, loose sheaves shoved every which way. Nothing was arranged by size or color or any semblance of order.

  What can I say? I like my shelves messy and my lovers well fed.

  It was what Altair had to say when Nasir had remarked upon them. Before Sharr, when the oaf had been half-dressed and decidedly not alone.

  The reed pen rolled off Altair’s desk, and Nasir bent to fetch it, snaring on a bump in the wool rug. He crouched with a frown, tugging his glove free to run his fingers along a palmette the size of his hand in the corner. It was raised.

  With care, he peeled off the motif sewn onto the rug.

  Large enough to hide a stack of letters.

  Nasir paused, glancing from the worn folds of papyrus, earthy and rough-edged, to the doorway.

  “I’m becoming a nosy old crone,” he said to himself, and leaned against the bed beneath the night sky. Curiosity made him do this, for Altair was loud and shameless—and smart. He left no trail save for the one in his head. Why hadn’t these been burned? Perhaps there hadn’t been time during the rush of readying for Sharr.

  Nasir parted the first fold of papyrus. Then he flicked to the next, and the one after, ears burning hotter and hotter.

  They were love letters.

  Ours is the most fervent of love …

  I yearn for you endlessly …

  My days pass in waiting for you, my nights in dreaming of you …

  Not all were innocent. Some were scant—Does
your body ache for my touch as mine for yours?—while others were longer and detailed, the words stirring his blood. He was a prince, an assassin, a monster, but in the end he was still a boy.

  And that was when he saw it, tucked between the wanton words and indecent declarations.

  The road will be secured two days hence.

  Tariffs dropped between Pelusia and Demenhur. Validated by Nawal.

  Distribution at Dar al-Fawda. Pelusian provisions.

  Trade agreements. Treaties. Discussions. These weren’t love letters. These were fragments of Altair’s web, proof of his labors to unify the kingdom. Nasir could see him gathering ordinary people, arming them with bravery and courage, driving them with his wit and charm. Rousing hope in a way very few could, commanding men in an army and hearts of the common folk just the same.

  While Nasir murdered them. While he, the prince born with the obligation to care for and ensure their safety, killed them.

  The letters trembled in his hands. Wrinkled in his grip.

  Remain in the shadows and serve the light.

  He was no fool with romantic abandon. Death was irreversible, and he could never make amends for the wrongs he had done, but he was trying. He gave himself that much. He was trying to make things right, to be part of Arawiya’s change. To stop seeing people by the tendons he should slit and the number of beats it would take to kill.

  He would wear the crown of the Prince of Death no longer.

  He leaned back on his knees. What was he without the fear people looked to him with? Without the names in his pocket, and the missions that were his purpose? Monsters were created for a purpose, a destiny to be fulfilled. Who was he without the tally on his back and the weapons on his person?

  Nasir gathered the letters and tucked them away, securing the palmette back in place. He had freed his father, ensuring the dignitaries’ safety, but there was more to be done. He set Altair’s reed pen back on the desk and stepped away with a whisper.

  “Don’t die.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Alderamin had lost its appeal and allure. The sooq clamored from afar, the poets as dire as funeralgoers, the town of Zawia as dull as the wares of Bait ul-Ahlaam. When Zafira and Kifah finally arrived at the caravanserai, Seif was nowhere to be seen.

  The stained-glass window was in fact an entrance, wide enough for caravans, though there were no camels idling about. Travel had not yet begun—the Arz’s disappearance was too recent, word still spreading. The archway led to a courtyard, from which one could see the entrances to every room in the two stories of stone, carved and white. Columns set in a honeycomb of tiles glistened in the night.

  Though camels were scarce, people still traversed within cities, and Zafira and Kifah pushed past the crowded courtyard to the second flight of rooms. Kifah stopped her with a fleeting touch to her shoulder.

  “At least,” she said, gently enough that Zafira clamped her eyes closed, “our memories are still our own. The moments that made your dagger special.”

  Zafira’s exhale quivered dangerously.

  “How do you do it? How did you know that telling him about the kaftar on Sharr would help?”

  “I didn’t,” Zafira said truthfully.

  “Only few can look at a monster and see its humanity,” Kifah claimed. But she did not know the half of it: that Zafira had befriended the Lion of the Night. That she had seen Nasir’s tallied scars, proof of his kills, and didn’t feel disgust. Kifah rapped her knuckles against the wall, restless as always. “And I’m sorry. For forcing your hand.”

  Zafira looked at her, still numb, but also a little bit warmer. A little more ashamed. “I am, too.”

  Kifah answered with a half smile and closed the door.

  Zafira sank into the low bed, blind to the beauty of the room, to the moonlight probing through her window. The vial was theirs. All that was left was to slit her palm and find Altair. Find the Lion. Retrieve the last heart. Take back the Jawarat that was hers.

  Footsteps paused just outside her door, and she stilled when she heard Kifah’s door open.

  “Did you do it? Will it live?”

  Even muffled and separated by a door, Zafira caught Seif’s inhale, his irritation at Kifah’s gall to question him.

  “There is no way to know. Nothing happened when I inserted it,” he said. “I’ve secured a boat to cross the strait, so we’ll leave before sunrise. The blood?”

  “Acquired.” Kifah’s voice was soft, and Zafira wished she had been stoic. It would have helped Zafira stay stoic. She said something more, followed by a word that sounded dangerously like “Huntress,” before Seif moved and her door closed.

  Zafira slumped into bed, angry at the swell of loss inside her. She could barely care that one of the five hearts had been restored—they were still missing the fifth, and retrieving it would be no easy feat.

  Her loneliness was complete now. Absolute. She removed her boots, then her bow, then her quiver, and then her empty, empty sheath. The Jawarat had kept her afloat, and it, too, was gone.

  Skies. Her best friend had died in front of her eyes, her mentor had died without her forgiveness, her mother had died after years of suffering, and she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t shed a tear for a single one of them, and she was near tears now, because of a daama jambiya.

  It’s more than that. More, even, than another piece of Baba. Every step away from home hadn’t been a footfall but a flaying. A careful removal of the Hunter she once was, the Huntress she had been. She would wear the cloak of the Demenhune Hunter no longer.

  Her guise: gone.

  The Arz: gone.

  Her sense of direction: gone.

  Baba’s jambiya: gone.

  It had been the last of it. The last peg holding the mysterious Hunter upright, for her bow had snapped more than once and her arrows never lasted more than a few days. Baba’s jambiya was her constant, the reminder that she was not meant to take the lives of her kills for granted. That she was but a traveler in this world, trying to leave her mark, trying to do what was right.

  A sob broke out of her.

  She thought of Nasir and couldn’t seem to care about the girl in the yellow shawl anymore. Laa, she missed him. His silent contemplation. His scarce words that were always precisely what she needed.

  Unraveling—that was what Zafira was doing. She was a ball of thread slowly unspooling, and she was afraid nothing but a gaping emptiness would be left at the center of it. That same clawing nothingness that had struck with full force after magic had emptied from her veins.

  Her father had died, and she had persevered. Her life had hardened, and she had powered onward, for she had purpose. What was she without the hunts that shaped her mornings and gave her that purpose? She had existed to help her people. To keep them alive, to sustain them. Care for them. Who was she without the arrows on her back and the cloak on her shoulders?

  Empty, in a way she had never been. Alone, in a way she had never been.

  When she had asked Nasir what he wanted, she was really only asking herself.

  CHAPTER 35

  At first light, Nasir was in the throne room, where the Sultan of Arawiya was seated and already dismissing emir after emir, austere and stony as if nothing had changed. Nasir would have convinced himself that the events of last night had been a dream, if the space where the medallion once hung wasn’t glaringly empty and if this morning he hadn’t seized open his bedside drawer, seen the antique circle—broken, unassuming, and real—and slipped it into his pocket.

  Nasir had arrived with a single purpose: start afresh. He opened his mouth, determined to be the first for once, to ask after his father and how he felt, but when they were alone, all that came out was this: “Sultani.”

  Not “Father.” Not “Baba.”

  Something flickered in Ghameq’s gaze. “Ibni.”

  Nasir expected to be happier, freer. Instead, he felt like a cornered animal, uncertainty caging him, for his father looked exactly as he had yesterday, exact
ly as he had weeks ago, months ago. And that meant looking into his face and reliving years of pain.

  Perhaps worse than abuse was waking up to the fact. The realization, striking and unmooring, that the norm one had lived was not at all normal.

  Ghameq’s face fell at what he saw. “You are early. Have you eaten?”

  Eaten. A laugh broke out of him. His surprise must have been evident on his face, because the sultan’s face softened.

  “Yes.” Nasir swallowed, shaped his next question as if it were a matter of life and death. “Have you?”

  His father nodded. “We will dine together from here on out.”

  I would like that, Nasir thought but couldn’t say as the braziers crackled beside the dais. He closed his mouth.

  Ghameq smacked his lips, then reached for one of the missives by his side, waving it in the air. “The unrest continues. Tell me. What would you have me do?”

  Again, shock gripped his tongue, for it wasn’t like Ghameq to humor him in conversation. To ask his son’s opinion. To need it—or Nasir himself.

  “The taxes you have levied are far too high, and protestors grow bolder,” he ventured. And what’s your solution, fool? He scoured his mind. “Sarasin. They need a caliph. We can easily appease them by appointing someone like Muzaffar.”

  “Who?”

  Nasir blinked at his complete ignorance. “The merchant rising up in Sarasin since I left for Sharr. People like him. He’s well connected, and was village head a decade or so ago. Appoint him, and he may turn the caliphate around on his own, with minimal work from the crown.”

  “Mmm,” Ghameq said, dismissing him with a smile, and Nasir found it difficult to feign one of his own. “I was freed by your hand only a short while ago. There is much to undo of the Lion’s. Time will allow us the victory we require, Ibni. Sarasin is a pit as it is, and the Lion himself is of greater concern than any tax.”

  “Sultani,” Nasir said in appeasement, lowering his head. It seemed his insight hadn’t been required at all. True to form.