We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  “Usually, I would scale the walls, but—” He gave her wound a pointed look.

  She swallowed a twinge of embarrassment.

  They darted down the corridor and ducked into a tiny closet. He pulled aside a slab of wood, unveiling a steep staircase.

  “Makes it easier for servants during big banquets,” he explained, taking the steps two at a time. “There are two places our caliph might be.”

  She hurried after him, nearly toppling them both when he stopped at a narrow door and pressed his ear to the wood with utter stillness. With a slight frown, he eased it open, and she peered over his shoulder into a room.

  A bedroom. A jewel of a place she felt a surge of diffidence to behold. It was built beneath the curve of the main dome; the high, angled ceiling painted with a sea of stars interspersed by a mosaic of tiles and calligraphy that told the story of the Sisters of Old. This was her room, Zafira realized: the Sister who had claimed Sarasin long ago.

  Like a veil from a crown, the sheerest silver gossamer fell over the low and ample bed, another arch at its fore, recessed and ornate. The sheets were made of starlight and dreams, darkness plentiful despite the gold of the afternoon stretching shapely rays through the decadent mashrabiya. She’d seen her fair share of the enclosed latticed balconies, but never one so intricate, many of the carvings fitted with stained glass that told a story itself.

  Nasir was watching her. “He’s not here,” he said unnecessarily, in that voice that looped with the darkness and time spun once more.

  She had missed this. Her fascination being a thing to witness with rapt attention.

  A few steps away, he stopped again, and she knew. The ifrit who had stolen the face of Muzaffar was on the other side of this door. The newly appointed Caliph of Sarasin.

  “History repeats itself,” he mused, lifting his hand to the latch.

  The last time he was here, he had killed the mortal caliph. Everyone in Arawiya knew this, though Zafira couldn’t connect that faceless hashashin with the prince she knew now.

  Was this time any better? Could they justify the caliph’s death simply because he bled different? Yes, she told herself. The ifrit were the reason Deen had died. The reason she had nearly died. Fury ignited her blood, sudden and bright. She would kill them all. She would end the Lion and then make the streets black with their blood.

  A resounding shout reverberated in her skull.

  NO!

  She swayed and gripped Nasir’s arm, the taut bands of muscle flexing beneath her fingers.

  Then the Jawarat stole her away.

  Heady, intoxicating power crashed through her veins. Golden light shrouded her, attention scouring her exposed skin, silks against her limbs and jewels around her neck. She saw nothing. Only felt the sovereignty, the power, the superiority—something so foreign, she was lost to it.

  We learned power from the women of old. A dominion so great it forged a kingdom.

  The Sisters. In the Jawarat’s hazy vision, the Sister whom Zafira embodied sat upon a throne. Confidence dripped from her every shift, authority in her every word. Zafira saw, felt, heard, but she understood none of it.

  The vision cut.

  It was a desolate sort of darkness.

  Plink, plink, plink. The metallic stench of blood flooded her senses. She was drowning, somehow, without water. Anguish and the complete loss of power. Helpless. Alone. It drained every drop of her spirit, and when she heard the cry that slipped from her mouth—Baba!—she knew in an instant where the Jawarat had taken her.

  We learned vengeance from the boy of two bloods. A pain so deep it bred darkness and malice.

  Haider. The boy who had become the Lion of the Night. She was a tangle of chaos and pain, clinging to the edge of a precipice, the border of sanity, until she discovered purpose, singular and bereft of morals: vengeance. It burned bright in her blood, the end slowly but surely disappearing from sight.

  No sooner had she caught the pinprick of light at the end of the Lion’s memory, she was jerked into yet another vision. It was calmer, somehow. Less frantic, less disembodied, as Demenhur’s familiar cold stung her nostrils. Like a container upended by an eager child, the calm was ruined by a sense of failure. The pain that crowded her skull was edged not in darkness, but something else. It was almost as heady as the Sisters’ power. Almost as flooding as the Lion’s malice.

  We learned compassion from a girl. A sentiment so profound it altered our spirit.

  It was her. The Jawarat was connected to her in ways it had never been connected to the Sisters of Old or the Lion of the Night, a bond no one could understand. Zafira wasn’t powerful, she wasn’t immortal. She was just a girl trying to find her place in the world. A girl inundated with emotions she was trying to sort through. Pain, sorrow, desire—the Jawarat had been witness to it all.

  “Why?” Zafira asked against the confusion caught in her throat, but she knew why.

  The Jawarat had wanted a soul to shape to its will, someone to enact the chaos it had absorbed on Sharr, and who better than one pure of heart? When she had refused, it had taken to the Lion, unaware of his iron will. He eluded its control and in turn tried to control it. But hilya were like people, and his abuse did not sit well.

  Something changed then, for the Jawarat had discovered it missed the one bound to it as much as she had missed it.

  Then, in atonement, once they were reunited, it took her to the door of the man she hated and amplified her anger, provoking her until she cut him in two. It had expected her to be pleased, for this wasn’t senseless chaos like the vision it had shown her, it was justice.

  How wrong it had been.

  It had not expected to upend the girl. It did not expect to find her empty when she woke, isolation and pain stretching as barren as the Wastes, as unending.

  Again, it tried to atone, this time with more hesitance and less violence, and she snuck away, intent on killing the Lion to earn back the trust of the zumra. To recover her soul, lost to time. It was along this journey that it mended the angry cuts of her heart, the pain and rage it had nestled in her veins. It found chaos without violence, in her moments with her gray-eyed prince, in her profound happiness and her desires for magic and justice and peace.

  You must understand, bint Iskandar. We are of you as you are of us.

  She had known that ever since the fateful moment on Sharr, when she had bound her life to it. “You used me, remember?”

  For which we are sorry. We tried to atone, and still we were wrong.

  That was the reason for its contemplation of late. For its contrition. For impelling her toward Nasir—because he made her happy, which in turn made it happy. It was chaos in a dose that pleased them both, and in this, it found a way to exist.

  From you we have learned, and so we shall impart. Must an entire creed suffer for the sins of a few? Must the body be destroyed for the failings of an organ?

  The ifrit. The Sarasins. Nasir was right: It was up to her to steer the Jawarat in a direction she chose.

  She tucked the book away.

  “What happened?” Nasir asked.

  “Don’t kill him.”

  Nasir frowned. “The plan—”

  “Forget the plan, Nasir. This time, we do what’s right.”

  He inhaled a careful breath, but before he could answer, the door swung open.

  She froze at the sensation of eyes scouring her skin. For ifrit were not like men. They were shrewd in a way humans were not, swifter—and their foe was ready.

  With a knife.

  CHAPTER 87

  The ifrit who had taken the form of Muzaffar moved quickly, his slender knife flashing in the light of a lantern set on the low table, but Nasir was no amateur. He swerved and parried, forcing the ifrit back into the room, and disarming him with ease. The knife clattered to the tile, the thin rug muffling nothing.

  Nasir pressed his dagger to the caliph’s neck as Zafira entered and barred the door.

  “The crown prince and the re
nowned Huntress,” the ifrit said, unperturbed by the blade. “At last.”

  He was stocky and well built, an exact imitation of the dead merchant, but the differences were there for those who looked—the celerity of his movements, the intermittence of his breathing, the occasional flicker of him as a whole, as if it required effort to exhibit a human face.

  “Is that you speaking,” Nasir hissed, surprised by his fluent Arawiyan, “or the Lion?”

  “Ifrit are not mindless servants,” he replied mildly. “The prerequisite to my accepting the Sarasin throne involved freedom of mind and wit.”

  A dark majlis spread behind him, where a platter of fruit sat beside an inkpot and several missives. Fruit, Nasir thought dumbly. Rimaal, what did he expect ifrit to eat—fire?

  “Let’s start with your name—what is it?”

  The ifrit smiled. “I’ve heard human brains are quite small. In the interest of keeping your affairs simple, Muzaffar will suffice.”

  Zafira lifted a brow. “And does your free wit justify the death of hundreds of humans?”

  “It’s only natural for one to reciprocate that which is received.”

  She gritted her teeth against his calm. “Any harm that comes to your kind is from the self-defense of ours.”

  Muzaffar regarded her. “You are young. What you know of the purge of ifritkind is what your schools teach. The Sisters of Old banished us to an island where not even a drop of water could be found. It was not until the warden arrived that we found ways to live. She fashioned systems in which our people were given food and water, housing. Tell me, Huntress: If you were exiled for the skin you were born within, would you not desire reprisal?”

  That warden was Nasir’s mother, and he felt a burst of pride. The Sisters were many things: saviors, queens of justice. They were also wrong. They had committed a grave mistake, and more than one race had suffered for it. Perhaps they, too, had even died for what they’d done.

  For the world gave that which was owed.

  “Then we stop,” Nasir said suddenly. Stop what, you fool?

  He felt the ifrit’s consideration in the way his breathing shifted.

  “What do you propose?”

  “An alliance. You control both the Sarasin army and the ifrit army. Keep them from going to the Lion’s aid, and we’ll spare your life,” Zafira said.

  Nasir cast her a look. For once, the book wasn’t in her hand, and the clarity in her gaze was startling in the gray light slanting through the wide window.

  Laa, this anger was Zafira’s alone.

  “An alliance is not synonymous with a threat, Huntress. If we are to discuss an accord, perhaps you can release me and we can talk in a civilized way.”

  The irony of his words was not lost on Nasir. He met Zafira’s gaze. After her barely perceptible prompt, he removed his blade from Muzaffar’s neck.

  Just as someone knocked on the door.

  Both of them froze.

  Muzaffar noticed, and like a fool Nasir realized how, in that one small gesture, he had allowed the caliph to see how easily he could thwart them. But the ifrit did not call for aid.

  “I’m busy,” was all he said, loud and crisp. “Ensure no one comes, please.”

  A courteous ifrit. Rimaal.

  He sat on the majlis and motioned for them to do the same. Zafira sat cautiously. Nasir remained standing.

  “Now,” Muzaffar said, flickering. “You wish for me to withhold both the Sarasin army and the ifrit army when the Lion summons. I do not control them all. I certainly have no command over those in Sultan’s Keep.”

  Zafira didn’t budge. “You have command over enough.”

  “You’re asking me to defy my king.”

  “A usurper,” Zafira corrected, then pointed at Nasir. “This is your king.”

  “Mm. The ifrit army, as you call it, is merely the sum of my people. We crossed the Baransea for the life that was promised, not to become soldiers.”

  “And you believe it is our fault that your people had to pick up swords,” Nasir assumed. At once, he understood the ifrit as he was. He was not like the Lion, bent on revenge. He truly cared for the well-being of his kind.

  “Is it not? The Lion of the Night clears entire towns for us to thrive in—”

  “You say ‘clear’ as if human lives were weeds,” Zafira growled.

  “I wish for my people to live,” Muzaffar said, though he had the decency to sound apologetic. “If there were an alternative—”

  “There is,” Nasir said, and he was surprised by the sudden fear in his veins. The heavy reminder of who he was, now that his father was gone. Every word he spoke held the potential for repercussions. He exhaled a shaky breath, for he feared winning this fight against the Lion almost as much as losing it.

  Winning meant he would sit on the Gilded Throne. He would hold the lives of an entire kingdom in his hand.

  “Aid us in returning balance and magic to the kingdom, and ifritkind will be free to live anywhere in Arawiya as they please. Should you need a place to hang shadows in lieu of the sky, I will give you an entire caliphate of your own as unique to your people as Alderamin is to the safin. One that doesn’t sit atop a graveyard.” For that was what Sarasin would soon become, if this fighting continued.

  Neither Zafira nor Muzaffar hid their confusion.

  “At the expense of whom, exactly?” Muzaffar ventured.

  “No one. Under the warden, ifritkind transformed Sharr into a haven where you thrived. You can do the same once more in the expanse of land between Alderamin and Pelusia. It is currently known as the Wastes, but with support, that barren land can be made into whatever you wish.”

  Zafira sat back. Muzaffar’s brows rose. “A caliphate without magic.”

  Nasir’s brow furrowed. “The Wastes may not have a minaret, but when magic returns, it will flow across Alderamin and Pelusia and every city between. No place will be left bereft.”

  Muzaffar considered this for a while, but then his entire face transformed. “You mock me, Prince. You belittle my people into the fodder you believe us to be. You want the Wastes cultivated, and our labor is an economical choice.”

  That was not—khara. If there was one thing Nasir hadn’t realized yet about diplomacy, it was the way other minds worked.

  “Guards!” Muzaffar shouted, rising to his feet. Short man, short temper. His voice cut sharp as he faced Nasir. “Were you aware of the price on your head?”

  Zafira remained frozen on the majlis.

  “You praised the warden for changing your lives,” Nasir said, struggling to stay afloat. “She can aid you again. The crown will aid your efforts.”

  “The warden is dead,” the ifrit gritted out.

  Nasir barked a laugh. “The warden is alive—”

  The door flew open. Five Sarasin men hastened inside with three ifrit. Nasir didn’t flinch when a sword touched his neck.

  “—and I know this, because she’s my mother.”

  But he knew it would be a stretch for Muzaffar to believe him unless he saw her with his own eyes. No, Nasir needed something else. He studied him, the way he wore his skin with earnestness. His care for his people. The impeccability of his attire, either real or illusory, and the esteem with which he carried himself.

  And Nasir knew how to tip the scales in the zumra’s favor. He was finally neck-deep in Altair’s beloved chance, and he hated it.

  “And with the addition of a caliphate will come the addition of a caliph,” Nasir said, inclining his head even as the guard’s blade dug deeper, nearly drawing blood. “You.”

  CHAPTER 88

  Kifah’s pacing back and forth on the rug was driving Altair to the brink. He kept glancing to the door, as if Nasir and Zafira would materialize the longer he looked. He couldn’t bring himself to remove the note from Hirsi’s leg, as if ignoring it long enough would somehow make it reach his mother.

  “They’re late,” Kifah deplored. “Two people—one of them wounded—against an entire cali
phate.”

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Altair said wearily. Nasir was a hashashin. He wove through death like a needle through gossamer. He had to survive—they were only just starting to be brothers.

  Kifah stopped pacing. “We need to discuss how we’ll proceed if they don’t arrive on time.”

  Pragmatic as ever, except for the concern in her dark gaze.

  But Altair had no alternative ready. That wasn’t how he worked. He chose the best for his plans, and counted on them to perform.

  His mind—ordinarily endlessly calculating, plotting, scheming—had blanked.

  He bolted upright when the door flew open, both he and Kifah rushing forward. But it was neither his mother nor Nasir or Zafira.

  Only one of Misk’s runners, panting.

  “The Great Library. It—it’s on fire.”

  CHAPTER 89

  Saving thousands of lives would never make up for the ones Zafira had taken with such violence, but it meant she was still there. That she had lost the guise of the Hunter, but the person her cloak had fashioned still remained.

  To live is to falter, she thought to herself, and she would not stay down.

  Light inundated her senses when she and Nasir crossed from Sarasin into Sultan’s Keep. Even Afya stumbled before her Alder eyes adjusted to the light. A commotion echoed from deeper in the city, and Nasir urged the mare faster.

  Zafira spotted the palace soon enough. She wondered what Nasir saw when he looked at the glittering domes and the pillars lining the Sultan’s Road: his dead father, or his own throne?

  When she looked at the palace, she saw—

  Her stomach dropped. Sweet snow, was that smoke? The smell hit her next. Her surging panic was matched by Afya’s, and the horse wrenched to a halt with a neigh.

  The Jawarat stirred from a slumber like a cat raising its hackles, eager for the unraveling chaos. But she sensed its struggle and hesitation, the need to match her emotions. It was trying.

  People were running toward them, fleeing every which way as screams thickened the air.