We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  Oh, how she’d missed the scorn the men of her caliphate directed at women.

  The last time he had seen Zafira—as she stood on the ship departing for Sharr and revealed her identity to all—rage had burned in his gaze. Now, the wrinkles on his face were more pronounced and the light in his brown eyes had dulled. The regard he had once shown when he’d thought her a boy was gone.

  She didn’t care. Laa, she pitied him and his too-small mind.

  “I retrieved the Jawarat, and this is how you look at me?” she demanded. “Did you not hear of the Arz falling? Of the sands of Sarasin turning gold again? Of the snow in Demenhur fading?”

  “And?” he asked.

  That tiny word drowned in a lifetime of prejudice.

  “And what? Did you stop believing in Arawiya’s restoration the moment you learned I was a woman?”

  The caliph didn’t move. “Destruction befell the western villages not long after your departure, Hunter. Not long after you dropped your hood.”

  Why was she trying to speak to him? Why did she think she could make him understand?

  Because that is who you are.

  Zafira froze, sharp pain splitting her skull. That voice wasn’t the Jawarat’s. It was Yasmine’s and Lana’s. It was Umm’s.

  No, bint Iskandar. There are those for whom reason does not exist. Do you weep the loss of virtue when we have given you power?

  The Jawarat was right.

  “Speak my name,” she said quietly, in a voice not entirely hers.

  He took a careful step back. “How did you get past the guards—”

  Zafira laughed. “Look at you. Pathetic. Afraid of a woman.”

  His fear was so tangible that she wanted to gather it in a bottle and relish later—laa. She was no monster. She didn’t toy with her prey the way a lion did with a mouse.

  “You took the future of a girl and did with it as you willed,” she said. Or perhaps it was the Jawarat that spoke. Her vision blurred.

  “Whom do you speak of?”

  “Your daughter. All of Demenhur’s daughters.”

  The caliph swallowed audibly. “Guards!”

  Zafira started to laugh before a pair of guards rushed inside.

  “Sayyidi?” they asked.

  Both of them stopped short when they saw her. Their swords flashed in the moonlight, uncertainty at the sight of an unarmed girl halting their blows. Perhaps she would have left. Perhaps she would have been sated by the scare she had made, if not for the satisfaction on the caliph’s face.

  The complacency of knowing she, a young woman, had lost.

  You wish to give a girl her throne, the Jawarat told her. Circumstance favors us.

  Pain seared her palm. Something bold and angry crowded her gaze, as if leniency were a concept she knew nothing about. She lifted her hand.

  With nothing but the moon as her witness, Zafira brought down her fist. Agony split the room, the throes a song in her skull. The night bled crimson, echoing with screams.

  This is man, bare to the world. Halved of his whole.

  She was the bladed compass, honed by the Lion and wielded by the Jawarat.

  She was ruin, she was havoc, and she reveled in it.

  CHAPTER 71

  Nasir and Altair barreled into the hall, frazzled by the scream. Lana came running from the opposite end, something clutched in her hand, but it was Kifah who shoved past them and threw open the double doors.

  Her stricken voice carried from within. “Bleeding Guljul.”

  Nasir halted the guard rushing to the room, apprehension settling on his shoulders. Haytham would be on their heels as soon as he checked on his son.

  “Allow no one inside. Not even the wazir,” Nasir commanded.

  The guard began to protest.

  “By order of the true sultan.”

  Ceding with a reluctant nod, the guard barred the doors as footsteps thundered down the corridors. Nasir pushed past Altair and Kifah and stopped short in the lavish bedroom.

  Blood. Matting the gray furs, staining the white rug, pooling on the wide tiles. Three men lay brutally mutilated against cushions meant for leisure. Fates worse than death.

  Despite it, he was relieved Zafira was not here.

  “They’ve been—” Kifah stopped with a gag, turning to Altair and doubling over. “Cut in half.”

  Something moved at the edge of his vision, and Nasir drew his scimitar as a figure stepped from the shadows and into the moonlight.

  Feeling drained from his limbs.

  Zafira.

  In her hands was the Jawarat, a wicked grin in the dark.

  The others froze, but she looked only at him, her gaze sliding from the disbelief on his face that he couldn’t mask quickly enough to the scimitar he should never have unsheathed.

  Understanding dawned in the wild ice of her eyes, and they were back where they began in the ruins of Sharr. She lifted her chin, baring her neck as if inviting his blade.

  Or challenging it.

  Blood trickled from her palm, and an empty silver vial lay by her feet. Dum sihr. Why? he wanted to ask her. The moment Altair had passed the Jawarat to her earlier today, Nasir had seen the brightening in her gaze, the buzz in her limbs. He knew it had used her voice to speak, but he had never expected this.

  Lana was the first to move. She darted forward and shoved a cloth to Zafira’s nose before she could react. Zafira fought back for barely a moment before she fell in her sister’s arms, eyes drifting closed, lashes fanning in the moonlight. Lana struggled against her weight, and Nasir eased her to the floor, laying her on the cleanest part of the room.

  Her breathing was calm, unlike the riot inside him.

  “I knew something was wrong when she walked away as if she didn’t even know me,” Lana said softly. She picked up her damp cloth with a trembling hand. “It’s why I brought this.”

  Nasir brushed the hair from Zafira’s face. He wanted to tear the Jawarat from her slack fingers and fling it into the fire. Instead, he turned to the others still rooted in shock. “None of this leaves the room.”

  “Are you mad?” Altair let out a smothered breath. “You don’t need to tell us. She’s our friend, too.”

  Nasir was surprised by the relief that belied his exhale.

  “But there is no denying what she’s done,” Altair added. “Killing a caliph of Arawiya is no small matter.”

  “I’ve killed a caliph.”

  Altair gave him a withering look. “In your right mind, you killed—”

  There was a wet slide and sickly plop as one of the guards’ entrails fell to the tiles. Nasir’s stomach rolled. Lana peered closely.

  “—a caliph,” Altair continued with a grimace. “In her right mind, she would never have done this.”

  “He was cut in daama half,” Kifah said, frenzied. “They all were.”

  “Pin the death on someone else,” Lana suggested, oddly calm.

  They turned to her.

  Lana didn’t back down. “After everything she’s done—”

  “We’ll fix the blame on an ifrit,” Nasir said. “One we disposed of before opening the doors. It’s violent enough that the guards will believe it.”

  It was far more believable than the truth.

  Lana touched the Jawarat pensively, as if listening for a tune none of the others caught. “And there’s nothing wrong with her mind. It was the Jawarat.”

  “Then we take it away from her. I’ll keep it,” Altair said.

  Lana held it close. “The only way to rid someone of a poison is with the poison itself. We can’t rip it away from her,” she stressed. “She’ll go mad.”

  “And until she learns to control it, she will be capricious.”

  “Until she learns to control it, she’s dangerous,” Kifah growled.

  Lana shook her head, staring unflinchingly at what remained of the caliph. “She was always angry. If you lived beneath his rule and lived the way my sister did, you would know that the caliph had invited thi
s upon himself a long time ago.”

  There came a pounding on the doors. More guards, no doubt.

  “I will never forget the day I first saw her, when I learned the selfless huntress was no ruse but who she truly is,” Kifah said with a shake of her head. “If that book is going to make her as unsalvageable as the heart the Lion stole might soon be, then I suggest we destroy it.”

  “At the cost of her life,” Nasir growled.

  Kifah paused as if she had forgotten that one, terrible fact, then said in a measured tone, “I would rather die at a merciful hand than live a monstrous life.”

  Nasir glanced at Altair, mortified when something akin to agreement shone in his eyes. She had done something wrong, horribly wrong, but if there was anyone who understood the desire for a second chance, it was Nasir. If anyone understood what it was like to wish they could begin afresh, unjudged and untainted, it was him.

  She had given that to him. She saw him as a boy when everyone else deemed him a monster. Even if the world and all it contained gave up on her, he would not.

  “No one’s taking it away from her,” Nasir ruled.

  Lana was watching him, relief bright. “Nothing is without salvation, right?”

  CHAPTER 72

  Nasir nudged open the door with his foot and carefully set her down on the bed, uncaring that Lana was witness to him tucking a pillow beneath her arm and straightening her clothes. Lana clutched the Jawarat to her chest, and as much as he loathed entrusting it to her, she was right. She set the book out of reach and curled against her sister’s side without a word.

  It was only now that he noticed how distraught Zafira had been. As she slept, the groove between her brows was smooth, the harsh cut of her lips supple.

  His life was full of loss and pain, and he would not lose her again.

  In the hall, he came face to face with a girl—the one he’d seen at Zafira’s side before. She was as slight as Kulsum, her curves more ample, her eyes doe-like and heavy-lidded, the color of honey.

  She was not pleased to see him closing the door to Zafira’s room.

  “She’s asleep,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed in mistrust, for she didn’t yet know of the attack. Laa, she thought Nasir had been in Zafira’s bedroom for a reason other than laying her motionless body across her bed. If only.

  Her voice might have been melodic, if it was not full of the hate he was used to. “If you hurt her—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish. “If I hurt her, I will bring every weapon at my disposal and lay them at your feet for you to do to me what you will. If I hurt her, I will no sooner carve out my own heart than dare draw breath again.”

  She was silent. Her eyes were no longer narrowed.

  “Do you understand?” he prompted.

  “You love her.”

  She spoke the words like a subtle knife: rife with disbelief. As if it was impossible to comprehend that the Prince of Death would care for anyone.

  No, he did not love her. The word for what he felt for Zafira bint Iskandar did not yet exist.

  * * *

  When at last he stepped into the room where the others had gathered, conversation ceased for a beat. He paused with a raise of his eyebrows, but when he dropped the curtain behind him and joined them, they continued again as if nothing had happened.

  It took him a moment to note the tension. The stiffness of Kifah’s movements, the stillness in her restless limbs. Wariness tugged at Altair, haunting his one-eyed gaze.

  They were trying to continue as if nothing had happened.

  “I don’t think we can wait for her,” Altair said.

  Nasir leaned against the wall, knowing full well whom he spoke of. He agreed. “No, we can’t.”

  Haytham slid a look across them in the silence, and Nasir wondered how easily he’d believed the lie.

  Kifah unfurled a map across the table. “Haytham has received another report. Seems the Lion still hasn’t left the palace grounds, not even to visit the Great Library.”

  “Imagine the temptation,” Altair murmured.

  “But why not give in to it? Is he afraid?” Kifah mused.

  “Or preoccupied,” Haytham offered.

  Nasir remembered the haunted look in the Lion’s eyes, the pain. He wondered if that played more of a part than fear did. He was powerful and protected, and the Great Library was hardly a journey from the palace. His father had made the trip often enough. Nasir knew, because he would note Ghameq’s comings and goings to time his own excursions to the mollifying edifice. Each time, his father would return with a stack of—

  Only, that hadn’t been his father.

  “He’s gathered enough reading material for the time being,” Nasir said.

  “Perhaps,” Altair ceded with a tilt of his head. “But we can agree that standing within the walls is an entirely different experience.”

  True enough.

  “Let’s hear your plan, then,” said Nasir, catching the hope in Altair’s tone and clinging to it for dear life.

  His brother looked pleased. “We will, woefully, need to part ways, habibi.” He tapped the map with a finger, trailing two upward paths from their present position in Thalj. One path stopped in Sarasin’s capital of Leil, the other in the vicinity of Sultan’s Keep. There was a third path, too, crossing the sea. “Three parties. Kifah and I. A falcon in the skies. You.”

  And no mention of Zafira.

  “Your job involves doing what you do best,” Altair said.

  “Killing,” Nasir said, stepping closer to look at the plans spread across the table. It was what he did best. Still, it stung.

  Altair noticed, but his next words didn’t help ease daama anything. “You do have experience sneaking into the Sarasin palace and killing a caliph, so—”

  Nasir released a breath.

  “Oi, don’t be upset!”

  “And why are we killing him?” Nasir asked, apathetic.

  “As you said, the ifrit looks like the man the Sarasins admire. Therefore effortlessly controlling both ifrit and human armies. It’s simple. We get rid of him, we command in his stead. Short term, of course. Until we get rid of the Lion and appoint someone better suited for the task.”

  Perhaps it was because of Zafira and her honor, her rectitude a drop of white in the fabric of his dark world, but Nasir’s first thought did not involve killing the caliph, ifrit or not. It was odd how that change had come about within him.

  Kifah took his silence as acceptance. “Controlling a horde of ifrit will prove tedious, but this way, we will at least be able to restrain the mortal Sarasin army and use them to hold the ifrit in check.”

  Nasir looked at her sketch. “A blockade.”

  She nodded once.

  It was easy enough sneaking into the Sarasin palace when he was the rightful prince and no place was off-limits. Now, with the Lion eager for his head and ifrit to contend with? Nasir sighed. “All right. Consider him dead. Is Zafira not any part of this plan?”

  Kifah paused with chagrin. Altair looked regretful. “We’re leaving just after noon. Zafira needs rest, most certainly, but she also needs to return to herself. Laa?”

  “She’s still herself,” Nasir said quietly. “She hasn’t become some sort of wild beast.”

  It pained him to speak the words, and he was relieved to see it reflected in Altair’s eyes. Haytham tried to hide his confusion as no one filled him in.

  “If she’s stable tomorrow, she can join us. Yes?” Altair looked at Kifah.

  “Without doubt,” she said.

  For a long moment, the three of them stayed mired in Zafira’s absence until Kifah dragged her finger along the third path, returning them to the plans. “Then we have the falcon.”

  “Who will head straight for the Hessa Isles and deliver a note, which I’m still piecing together because the timing has to be right. We’re going to need the Silver Witch’s help,” Altair said without meeting Nasir’s eyes.

  If the wazir noticed
Altair’s hollow tone, he pretended not to.

  “Haytham remains here gathering intelligence,” the general continued. “Meanwhile, Kifah and I will locate the rebels in Sultan’s Keep while you ride for Sarasin. We won’t be able to communicate, so much of the plan’s success will rely on a schedule.”

  “It seems to me,” Nasir said, “that much of the plan relies on chance.”

  “Chance keeps us alive,” the oaf replied.

  “The chances,” Nasir gritted out, “of you finding my blade at your neck are currently quite high.”

  Altair flashed him a grin. “I love it when you speak so filthily.”

  Nasir’s ears burned. Kifah leaned back, eyes bright. Adversely, Nasir felt he could sleep forever after everything that had transpired.

  “And?” he asked, sensing there was more.

  His brother’s smile was wolfish. “Well, there is another thing. It’s more chaotic than my usual style, and it’s certainly not your style. It’s risky and dangerous. And, uh, flashy.”

  All things the general adored.

  “But it’s guaranteed to draw my—” Altair stopped short, remembering Haytham. “To draw the Lion out.”

  Nasir looked between him and Kifah with creeping dread.

  “So, Sultan Nasir, how do you feel about arson?”

  CHAPTER 73

  Zafira woke beside a warm body. Instead of limbs and skin and dark hair, she thought of blood and tendons and entrails. She was afraid to look. Afraid she wouldn’t see her sister’s smattering of freckles but the colorless bones of her skull.

  “Zafira?”

  Yasmine was perched against the low bed, worry scrunching her delicate features. She scooted forward and wrapped Zafira in a hug, wary of her bandages. She’s not afraid of me. Perhaps it was all a terrible dream, and she hadn’t split her caliph in two.

  “They said the ifrit nearly had you, too. The guards could barely look at Ayman.”

  Not a dream, then. The Lion felt less of a monster, compared to what she’d done. Her and Yasmine’s fight felt as insignificant as when they were twelve and they’d fought over her being gifted a dress Zafira had always wanted.