We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  The beautiful. The burdened. The girl who had grown up without Zafira knowing it.

  “I saw the sultan,” Lana said, turning the coin over in her hands. “When you think of him, Okhti, do you ever want to kill him?”

  Zafira hid her surprise behind a blink.

  “It wasn’t he who killed Ummi,” she said carefully. She had told Lana about the sultan being steered like a puppet by the Lion. “You know this.”

  Lana’s eyes were ablaze. “If being controlled was his mistake, then it was his mistake all the same.”

  Lana, the girl with murder in her lungs.

  “Nasir said the sultan doesn’t want us using dum sihr,” Zafira found herself saying.

  Lana’s brow furrowed. “Oh? Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”

  It took Zafira a moment to realize Lana was speaking of Nasir. Was she that obvious? Why did she have to be the one to forgive first? Skies, she felt like an old married woman. She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that.”

  “I see,” Lana said, a laugh in her voice. “But you will, won’t you? Use dum sihr?”

  Zafira nodded as she changed out of her tunic.

  Lana flopped on the bed. “You’re being rebellious. I like it.”

  “I’ve always been rebellious. I hunted in the Arz—”

  “For years, yes, I know. You’ve only repeated that a thousand and one times. But you were never rebellious. You were secretive. If the caliph had forbidden you from hunting, you wouldn’t have gone.”

  Zafira considered her words as she threw open the window. A crop of orange trees ranged outside, tender white flowers in bloom reminding her of Yasmine every time she inhaled.

  “See? You’re changing.”

  But it wasn’t about rebelling against the man who had murdered their mother. It was the act of dum sihr itself, something strictly forbidden for good reason. Lana didn’t know about the Jawarat’s vision and the force of Zafira’s newfound rage. About how it seemed to be draining the good out of her, leaving only the vilest paths to follow.

  She was changing, but it wasn’t for the better, and when Lana flashed her a grin, Zafira couldn’t smile back.

  * * *

  There were claims that the Lion had been seen in Sarasin, asserting he was climbing the Dancali Mountains, heading for Demenhur with a horde of ifrit at his back. A few had seen clusters of darkness racing for the ether, blanketing whole villages and creating havens for his ifrit kin. Others swore they saw a black lion bounding through crowds, leaving behind bloody entrails.

  How the people knew the Lion of the Night was here at all, alive and well, Zafira couldn’t tell. She wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors could be traced back to the tiny Zaramese captain. Secrets were like mold, Zafira had learned. They found a way to spread no matter how diligently they were contained.

  “I don’t trust any of it,” Zafira said airily as she and Aya waited for the others. Night had steeped across Arawiya long enough for the sky to brighten, and she had spent most of it in her room, hearing a soft knock every so often only for disappointment to flood afresh when she found the hall empty.

  Aya’s sky-blue abaya was out of place in the war room’s dark dressings. Lana was dozing on the majlis with a papyrus in hand, the sheaf detailing some mixture or another that stanched the flow of blood. Apparently, the materials could no longer be found, but Lana swore she had seen them in Umm’s cabinet in Demenhur.

  Aya studied Zafira. “You know the Lion well for such a young mortal.”

  Something weighted her dreamy tone. Envy.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Zafira said dryly.

  Aya stared at the vial. “The whispers escalate. They claim he is here to help us.”

  They had more to worry about than crazed claims, but Zafira could see how they were made logical. With the freeing of the hearts came the Arz’s disappearance, and Arawiya was returning to what it once was: Sarasin’s darkness was receding, Demenhur’s snow melting. The Lion had only to seize opportunity.

  She fastened the vial’s chain around her neck and opened her mouth, about to ask how dum sihr worked. Aside from knowing it was forbidden and required the slitting of one’s palm, she didn’t know much else.

  “‘He will fix our broken world’ they say,” Aya murmured.

  Zafira paused, brow furrowing. She remembered what Aya had said in that moment of hysteria, when she’d protested dum sihr. What he wants can never be as terrible.

  “The Lion wants vengeance,” Zafira said, as if Aya didn’t know. “And the knowledge that brings power.”

  He might still want a home for his ifrit. He might still be driven by the pain of his father’s loss, but neither were as prevalent among his desires as his thirst for knowledge and the throne. Laa, that was greed.

  Aya hmmed and touched a hand to her tattoo, turmoil on her face, and Zafira realized the Lion she remembered was different from the one Zafira knew. He had to be, if Benyamin had welcomed him, befriended him when none of the other safin could look past their pride.

  The door opened and Nasir strode inside, Kifah and Seif at his heels. Zafira struggled to meet his eyes, nodding at Kifah and tossing a fleeting glance at Seif instead.

  “You’re not following me,” Zafira told Lana, who had bolted awake.

  She started to protest, but slumped back when Zafira lifted a brow. “Fine.”

  Zafira didn’t know if she’d be wholly conscious once she slit her palm and melded the bloods together. She didn’t feel particularly inclined to stoop low enough to ask Seif, or even Aya, who was still lost in her strange thoughts.

  “I’ve received word from Demenhur. The heart has been restored to the minaret there. Nothing from the others as yet,” Seif said.

  No one rejoiced. The marids’ hungry eyes flashed in her thoughts, but Zafira shoved them away. No word from the others only meant they were still on their way, she reassured herself. They were prideful creatures. They wouldn’t write letters detailing their whereabouts every half day.

  Two hearts had been restored, two more were on their way. It was the fifth the zumra needed to focus on. When Zafira said as much, Kifah nodded sharply.

  “We’re working on it,” she said, armed and ready.

  “Will it work?” Aya asked.

  “Did word of the Hunter not reach Alderamin?” Kifah asked with a raised brow. Zafira ducked under the sudden praise. “Not only will it work, but if all goes well, we’ll catch the Lion unaware. Now, shall we?”

  Zafira tightened her hand around the vial of si’lah blood. Kifah was right, this would work. It was the act of dum sihr that scared her. The line down her palm from when she had fortuitously slit it on Sharr was still pink, the skin barely knotted together, reminding her of the Jawarat’s vision. How much more of herself would she lose before this was through?

  A chorus rose in her veins when she gripped the knife Aya handed her, a barely contained excitement born from her bond with the Jawarat. But her hand shook with the weight of ten eyes boring into her, judging her. The tip of the knife meandered across her palm. Skies, couldn’t they leave? She opened her mouth, heat tight across her skin.

  Then her insides screeched to a halt when a hand closed around the knife.

  Nasir’s shadow draped over her, reassuring. He slid his palm beneath hers and brought the blade to her skin. Zafira forgot to breathe. Her heart forgot to beat.

  She relaxed her hand, as every part of her longed to lift her gaze up to the gray abyss of his. To remember what it felt like to be assessed by him. Watched. Revered. Understood.

  “Forgive me,” he said softly, and drew the knife across her palm with a flex of his wrist. She hissed at the sudden pain. Red swelled along the blade’s path.

  She heard voices in the hall, but they were distant and muffled, dreamlike. Perhaps she was dreaming and not tearing at the seams. Seif came forward and carefully measured out three drops of si’lah blood into her palm, murmuring something she couldn’t catch, before he
closed the vial and dropped it back against her chest.

  The effect was instant.

  Zafira swayed. A strange and sweeping cold rushed through her, a hundred things hurtling too fast and heavy to comprehend. Everything suddenly burned shinier, bolder, brighter. As if she had drunk something that had fermented too long. She was aware of every little piece of herself—the blood racing beneath her skin, pulsing at her fingers, throbbing at her neck, at her temple.

  Power.

  From somewhere far, far away, the Jawarat hummed in approval. She felt the cool press of it deep inside her. She felt full and free. She felt like herself. The wind from the open window tousled her hair, hurtling freely as a bird. If she closed her eyes, the looming trees of the Arz crowded around her, whispering limbs greeting her. She missed the whiz of her heart, pulling her in a direction she couldn’t see. She missed magic.

  “Huntress?”

  Zafira opened her eyes to startling clarity. Kifah and the others watched her warily. In her mind’s eye, she saw Altair’s grin. She saw the bloody mass of the final si’lah heart, beating faintly.

  She smiled. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Nasir had devised a thousand ways to express his apology, and instead he’d held her hand in his and cut her daama open. Sultan’s teeth, he was pathetic.

  Don’t steal my curses, princeling.

  I’m the prince, Altair. I’ll do as I like.

  Despite his preference for working alone, Nasir wasn’t fond of their plan. Particularly the portion where Zafira would be on her own as she searched for the heart while he searched for Altair and forbidden magic blasted through her veins. They didn’t know if the Lion would be there, but there was every likelihood he would be, since Zafira had confirmed both the heart and Altair were in one place.

  She had only addressed his protests icily. “Do you truly believe you’re a better match for the Lion than I am?”

  In one fell swoop, he had successfully ruined the fragile peace he’d nurtured between them only heartbeats ago. One day, he would learn not to voice concerns about her safety when she was adamant about getting herself killed.

  “No, I … Just remain on guard.” He bit his tongue the moment the words left his mouth. Perhaps it was time to begin life as a mime.

  “Yes, your highness,” Zafira had seethed as they left the palace.

  Now, as dawn bled shades of blue across the sky and the remainder of the zumra traversed the streets, Nasir dropped to a flat, open rooftop and made the harrowing leap from the palace to the surrounding wall, a contingent of hashashins on his tail. If he could call anything his favorite, it was this: hurtling across air, with death mocking, taunting, reaching from all sides.

  Sand stirred with the early risers, plumes of brown and gold painting the horizon. It clung to Nasir’s gloves and gritted his grip. Rooftop hatches swung wide as guards took over shifts, silver cloaks shimmering in the soft light.

  He tracked Zafira and the others, once more awed by the way she moved as the Huntress. Light on her feet, fluid as the sands, alert as a gazelle. She came alive with magic. Nasir knew how much she loved it, how much she had risked for it, yet it was something else entirely to see how it transformed her. Strange, too, how the thing he hated was what she adored.

  A sigh heaved out of him.

  He’d thought her return from Alderamin would fill the emptiness her time away had wrought, but it was somehow worse, now, with her in reach. He felt everything more acutely—the way her gaze skimmed over him, bereft of something more. The way she deliberately chose to stand closer to Kifah, as if unsure he wanted her near. He wanted to speak to her, truly speak to her. Apologize. Force the words in his head into one straight line, unravel the knot in his tongue.

  “At long last!” a man cried. “Our troubles have come to an end!”

  Nasir lifted his eyebrows, peering over the side of the scalloped edging to the square.

  “From deep suffering comes great triumph. The skies of Sarasin veer blue. The snows of Demenhur melt like sugar,” the man called, clad in black robes, and Nasir stared in disbelief as one uninterested listener became two enamored. A crowd filled the jumu’a, and the man stepped on a crate. “The curse the Sisters left upon us nears its end!”

  Merchants set their carts down, and people gathered with baskets against their hips and basins by their feet. Did they not see the riots happening across these very streets? Did they not hear the winds whispering of the Lion?

  I hope you die of thirst, Nasir thought, darting to the other end of the rooftop. The madman carried on with his drivel, echoing a nearby falcon. To his right stretched the Sultan’s Road. Below to his left, one row of cramped houses away from the gathering crowds, the zumra followed Zafira’s lead. Kifah’s spear glinted in the gloom. Seif and Aya flanked her, and Nasir wondered if they were unprepared—the five of them and a handful of hashashins against whatever stood between them and Altair.

  Namely, the Lion.

  “We can’t very well march against him,” Kifah had said.

  “Nor are we going to tell the sultan,” Seif had commanded, leaving only this contingent of hashashins Nasir could order without his father’s knowledge.

  As much as he wished he could tell his father, he saw no need. They couldn’t march against the Lion. Stealth was far more imperative, for not only were they trying to free Altair, but they needed to find the heart, too. The fifth si’lah heart. And if they had thought themselves capable of fighting the Lion on Sharr, they were still five strong now. Even if no one could replace Altair. Or Benyamin.

  “How much farther?” he heard Kifah ask.

  “If I knew, I’d chart a map for you,” Zafira replied.

  Nasir smiled and signaled to the hashashins, the familiarity of his missions sinking into his limbs, only this time, he wasn’t following orders. He wasn’t following Zafira because he had to but because he wanted to, and that fed a different sort of power into his veins.

  For Altair. He would brave the darkest of dens and the vilest of beasts if it meant hearing the fool’s laugh once more.

  “Alia,” he called to one of the hashashins and signaled to the left. “Split across. The rest with me.”

  Half the contingent followed Alia’s leap across the alley, dark robes fluttering as they hefted themselves up and down the rooftops rising in various heights. The others trailed Nasir.

  They pressed deeper into the city, leaving behind the bustle of the Sultan’s Road and the shine of the Sultan’s Guard. When Zafira paused, Nasir did the same, following her gaze to the end of the alley, which opened to a street, where a house sat behind a stretch of sand among a line of others. It was simply built, tan stone mostly smooth, dresses hung out to dry. He knew of the woman who owned it, or rather, the safi. She employed a number of tailors in the city.

  A murmur began in Nasir’s blood, a hum of darkness similar to whenever he neared magic. Not any magic, but dum sihr. Stronger than what Zafira had used moments ago. Movement caught his eye, and the hashashins froze with him.

  Men were stationed on the surrounding rooftops, some idling behind screened terraces, others alert with swords against their shoulders.

  A calm settled in his bones, and he knew. He would find no clothier safi inside that house.

  If Altair were beside him now, he’d find a way to make light of this moment. He’d look back at Nasir and stretch a grin. How much do you want to bet those are not men, but ifrit?

  I don’t gamble, Nasir would say, knowing full well Altair didn’t, either.

  Oh no. Leave it to you to be the most moral man in Arawiya, brother dearest.

  Nasir clenched his jaw. “Spread across.”

  He leaped to a minaret and rounded it to the adjacent wall, matching Zafira’s stride until they reached the end of the alley, where a guard was stationed atop the last building. The hashashins halted, slashes of shadow awaiting a command as Nasir crouched at the rooftop’s edge.

  The guard strode
from one end to the other, sandals on his feet, dark hair wavy beneath his turban, a mustache thick above his lip. Human in every way, except for the warning in Nasir’s gut.

  Nasir dropped, toppling the guard to the dusty rug unfurled across the rooftop. He could tell by the feel of the guard beneath him even before he dragged his blade across his victim’s neck and black blood oozed free like tar in the sun.

  Ifrit.

  CHAPTER 38

  Zafira hadn’t been prepared to hear the final, strangled breaths of the guards. Ifrit, Nasir had said as if in reassurance as he and his hashashins killed them. She closed her eyes as another thud echoed, another fallen soul.

  “Khara,” Kifah croaked, and Zafira’s eyes flew open in time to see Nasir leap from the building’s edge, hurtling through the open air of the street. The tips of his boots touched down on a suspended rope, propelling him to the rooftop on the other end. A blade shot out from his gauntlet while he was in midair, and the guard fell before Nasir landed.

  Half of his hashashins followed his lead, taking positions where the Lion’s guards previously stood.

  The Lion’s guards. The Lion’s hideout.

  She was here.

  Here.

  She closed her fist against the sting in her palm, the reminder of what she had done. Her skin still tingled from where he had held her, her heart still snagged in that moment. Dum sihr dizzied her, raced feverishly through her veins, tugging her forward. Toward this castle of a house sprawling along the crowded street across from them.

  It was wide and unsuspecting, windows shaped like eight-pointed stars rimmed in darker clay. The flat roof was furnished with a screen and a silken rug draped to dry, accenting it like a towel over a man’s bare shoulder.

  Like your prince’s? Yasmine asked in her head. There was an edge to her friend’s voice, cut from the death of her brother.

  Zafira bit her lip, forcing her focus. Somewhere inside that house was Altair, the Jawarat, and the fifth heart, and she intended to find them, the Lion be damned.