We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

“All right?”

  “All right,” Zafira replied with some disappointment. She didn’t need a sitter. She needed a bow and an arrow.

  Staves flashed without end. Misk’s men fought valiantly, making full use of their rough-edged swords and jambiyas, the pride of their fathers. But they needed to power ahead, to push past Aya’s house and make for the palace. The ifrit would only keep coming.

  A shout rang out to her right, another to her left, this one older. For the rebels weren’t all spry young men, but those who had lost enough to fear death a little less. Altair deftly saved the first rebel as Misk sprinted toward the older man.

  Zafira didn’t know why she watched him, why she was paying heed to the half Sarasin, half Demenhune who had stolen the heart of her dearest friend.

  Until one of his archers shouted a warning that Misk didn’t hear.

  And a stave pierced him from behind.

  Zafira forgot to breathe.

  The ifrit pulled the stave free and pierced him again, higher now. Misk choked. Zafira felt as if the stave were ripping her own heart. Sound became pulses. She stumbled.

  Stole someone’s bow. Nocked an arrow and fired as pain tore through her mending wound. The ifrit fell. Her bow fell.

  Misk fell.

  Misk, Yasmine’s husband, the man she spoke of with anger and happiness and love. He had lied and he had withheld, and yet he had loved her just as much.

  “Zafira,” Misk murmured as she sank to her knees beside him, yelling for help and knowing nothing could be done in time.

  Someone screamed. Zafira looked up to find the doors flung open and Yasmine racing through the dark haze, a bundle of blue as bright as the sky. Too late, too late.

  He sighed when he saw her. “Yasmine.”

  “Time apart, Misk. Time apart,” she breathed. “Not an eternity, not life and death.”

  Misk brushed his hand down her cheek, his smile tender.

  “Forevermore,” he whispered. “In life, and in death.”

  Zafira’s face was damp.

  Yasmine placed her hand on his heart as a shadow fell over them. Nasir crouched, his mouth pursed. Death fell like rain around them, soldiers of smokeless fire, rebels of bone and blood. Misk rasped another breath, ragged and wet. Blood trickled from his lips, his eyes losing focus.

  But he slowly inclined his head in respect. “Sul … tani.”

  Zafira’s throat constricted. Yasmine sobbed when the last beat of his heart thrummed against her palm. For a moment, neither of them could move. She didn’t think Yasmine breathed.

  From the folds of his robes, Nasir withdrew a dark feather and touched it to Misk’s blood. He sighed as he brushed his knuckles down Misk’s open eyes. Eyes Yasmine had loved, had spoken of in barely restrained adoration.

  “Be at peace, Misk Khaldun min Demenhur,” he murmured.

  Yasmine wept, then. Terrible, brutal sobs. A jewel of blue in the shadows of the city. With a strangled sound, she bundled Misk into her arms, lifting him, fumbling. Falling. Zafira stared numbly.

  “Let me,” Nasir said softly.

  He hefted Misk against himself, and Zafira guarded his path toward the house, holding Yasmine close. Around them rang the shouts of wounded men and the clang of metal. It was death in full garb, a resplendent chorus. Misk was not hers, but her heart was connected deeply enough with Yasmine’s that she felt her pain, inexplicable and uncontrollable.

  “He did not die for you to follow,” Nasir told Yasmine when he lowered Misk’s body to the floor in the foyer of Aya’s house. He pressed a dagger into her hands. Misk’s dagger, with a moonstone in its hilt. “Stay inside. Stay safe.”

  He left. Zafira wavered between following him back to the battle and remaining here with her friend. Once orphaned. Now widowed.

  “Go, Zafira,” Yasmine said, hollow. “Kill them all.”

  CHAPTER 91

  “Who was that?” Altair asked when Nasir returned to his side, wiping his blade free of black blood. “I only saw her hair. I’ve never seen a shade so brilliant.”

  “Misk is dead,” Nasir replied. He didn’t particularly feel for the man, but the death had shaken something in him. It was the sight of Zafira’s friend and the hollow in her eyes, the shatter of her soul that bled into her sobs.

  Moreover, it was how acutely Zafira felt Yasmine’s pain. A knife to his skin.

  Altair turned to Nasir, barely reacting when a rebel barreled against his shoulder. “Dead?”

  “That was his wife.”

  “She’s here?” Altair asked, quieted by woe.

  Nasir’s tone matched his, knowing he would hear despite the din. “She saw it happen.”

  “Sultan’s teeth.”

  Kifah shoved her way between them, eyebrows raised, spear dripping blood. “Oi. What’s going on?”

  “Misk is dead.”

  “Oh.” A flash of amusement crossed her face. “I never did like the man.”

  Nasir pressed his lips thin. And he thought he was callous in the face of death.

  “You know,” Altair mused, goaded by Nasir’s look. “I think this is my first time charging into battle without a plan. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so … thrilling.”

  “It’s an ambush,” Kifah deadpanned, the gold tip of her spear flashing with each turn.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Nasir growled.

  “Please join the line, princeling,” Altair said gently.

  “What of your power?” Kifah asked.

  He arced his scimitar. “I don’t much feel like burning anyone to a crisp right now.”

  Nasir shoved him away from an oncoming stave, fixing him with scrutiny. “This has nothing to do with morality, does it?”

  Altair didn’t answer for the longest moment. In that time, Nasir killed three ifrit and got a hole burned in his sleeve, and Zafira had joined them, and they still hadn’t progressed much farther from the house. The plan hadn’t meant to proceed this way: They were supposed to be at the palace when the fire began.

  But Altair’s falcon had failed to deliver the note, and Nasir, who had left Demenhur before the plan’s final run-through, had only been able to guess at timings when he’d told his mother.

  “I’ve had magic for as long as Arawiya didn’t. Do you know what that feels like? To live every day with the knowledge that you might be the reason the kingdom suffers?”

  Nasir did know that feeling—to an extent.

  “I didn’t know our mother was a Sister of Old,” Altair continued. “I didn’t know I hadn’t stolen magic from Arawiya. So I never practiced. And on the occasion that I did, I’d return to the palace and learn you had another burn on your back. Light burns, doesn’t it? I thought you were paying for my wrongs.” He scoffed. “My mother’s perfect son.”

  In the exhale of the sun’s last breath, Altair’s blue gaze burned amber like his father’s.

  Zafira stilled. “What was that?”

  The ground trembled again and sinewy wings stretched across the horizon. Elder ifrit. Preceding them, in rows and rows more numerous and orderly than ifrit: men. Sarasin soldiers.

  Hope spiraled once more, and Nasir felt it. This was what Altair meant about wars banking on the sentiment. Archers and magic didn’t turn the tides—hope did. This was what the Lion had so often wanted to quell, using his father’s voice to flay him, inside and out.

  But what the Lion didn’t understand, what Nasir never understood until now, was this: Hope never dies.

  Hope was the beast that could never be slain, the light that blazed in every harrowing dark. A person without hope is a body without a soul, his mother murmured in his heart.

  “We may die,” Nasir said suddenly.

  Altair looked at him sharply, and so did everyone else. Rimaal, he was Arawiya’s future sultan, and if he couldn’t inspire a few dozens, how could he sway an entire kingdom?

  “I know death as well as I know the lines of my palm. He rides for us today. We can flee and let these streets run r
ed with our cowardice, or we can die with swords in our hands and zeal in our hearts. Be a force eternalized in history.”

  Nasir paused, his breaths coming hard and fast as murmurs passed among the men. What did the greats do with their hands when they spouted speeches?

  “We are all that stands between Arawiya and an age of darkness. An assembly of forty from different walks of life.” His eyes flicked to Zafira’s and away. “An archer without a bow. A general without an army. A warrior without allegiance. Villagers without homes.”

  The wind echoed his call, charged the air with its howl.

  “And you,” Altair added, his tone mellowed by what Nasir realized was respect. “A king without a throne.”

  How Nasir felt about his brother’s words made them no less true. He looked from one man to the next and breathed a heavy exhale.

  “That throne is ours. It is not only the Lion whom we must slay and an army we must end, but a horizon that promises no future. A darkness that promises no relief.”

  The murmurs had risen to a buzz now.

  “If we don’t fight for our kin and kingdom, who will?”

  The buzz became a roar. Fists rose in agreement, cheers echoing. For the first time in his life, Nasir gave himself up to an illusion, to the trick of hope in which their handful of fighters were suddenly tenfold more. Altair held his gaze and dipped his chin in a gesture that meant more to Nasir than he had ever imagined.

  “Big words from my brother who wasn’t made for battle.”

  Nasir gave him a lazy shrug. “I’m the future sultan.”

  Altair laughed, and it was almost easy to forget they were counting the moments until their deaths.

  Almost.

  CHAPTER 92

  Death wasn’t supposed to fill her with such a blaze, and yet, Zafira was brimming with pride, her heart a touch lighter. The careening sun lit the ash of Nasir’s eyes aflame as the breeze toyed with the end of his turban. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, the point buried in the sand beside him. He was the Prince of Death, breathing life into his words.

  Every bit the sultan he was born to be.

  It was a bittersweet thought.

  “You did well, Sultani.”

  He breathed a broken laugh. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? It was how you spoke,” she said. It hadn’t been the most moving of battle cries. It wasn’t full of bluster and swagger, which was more suited to Altair—she wouldn’t be surprised if Altair’s thoughts themselves strutted in such a way—yet for someone like Nasir, who had been forced to trim his words and hold back, back, back, it was a leap.

  The words he had strung together had taken far more courage than wielding a sword did, and it filled her to near bursting.

  “The night may not be lenient,” Nasir said, and she paused, warming at the crimson painting the tops of his ears.

  “It may not,” she said.

  He stepped closer. “We may not see the next dawn.”

  “We may not.”

  “The last time we stood in battle, I could only think of the things I didn’t say.”

  Tell me, she wanted to whisper.

  Altair called to them. “We need to disband. Kifah, with me. Nasir, you and Zafira head for the palace. At least one of us needs to be there when the Lion drops the barrier and leaves the grounds. We’ll join once we have the upper hand.”

  Nasir scoured the dusty ground and picked up a scimitar. Zafira held herself still when his hands cupped hers and closed her fingers around its hilt.

  “Later,” he said, answering her, but when he didn’t release her hand, she lifted her gaze to his, and saw that it was not a promise. The way he looked at her was the way the dying stared one last time at the sky, and so she knew.

  He had conveyed hope into the hearts of men, but had left nothing for himself.

  * * *

  When Zafira and Nasir finally stumbled from the narrow confines of the alleys leading to the palace, Misk’s archers covered them.

  The sinewy draw of bowstring after bowstring was a torment, a reminder of her weakness. Huntress Zafira. Orphan Zafira. Soldier Zafira. A peg in a makeshift army grasping at hope as their end drew near. She was stranded without her bow. Abandoned without the compass in her heart leading her forward.

  “Ifrit!” Nasir shouted.

  Zafira ducked beneath the arc of a stave and countered, not expecting the force to wrench the scimitar from her grip. She dropped to her knees, sand in her fists, perspiration dripping between her brows.

  The same stave came crashing down near her fingers, and she sprang away, her hand closing around a bow. Beside it, a Demenhune archer lay with his stomach ripped open, eyes wide and empty. Like Misk.

  What had her people done to suffer this way? Shunned, starved, gassed, murdered. She stumbled back, bile rising to her throat.

  Rise, bint Iskandar.

  She gagged and yanked the fallen archer’s quiver free. If she was going to die, it would be with a bow in her hands and intent in her heart. For Deen and Baba. For Benyamin. For Umm and Misk and Yasmine.

  The Jawarat hummed, urging her onward.

  They sprinted into the chaos near the palace. The Great Library was barely visible in the billowing smoke. Angry surges of orange and vibrant red swelled in the darkness, flames crackling and roaring. The library was as much a part of Arawiya as magic was. It was the culmination of all that they were.

  It’s not real, it’s not. But it smelled real, it looked real. The screams were real. It was all proof of the Silver Witch’s power, but with every single one of her senses goading her to drop to her knees and weep, Zafira couldn’t appreciate it.

  Nasir dragged her into the cover of a date palm. “Look. The gates.”

  Through the smoke, Zafira saw it: the iron gates swinging outward with twin groans. Another sound, low and bestial, rolled from its confines like the unsheathing of a sword, and something hummed against her skin. Magic.

  The Lion’s barriers were coming undone.

  ACT III

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  CHAPTER 93

  There were arches that led to the palace doors, and before them was the fountain Nasir’s mother had commissioned long ago, shaped like a lion.

  Its water ran crimson.

  The hairs on the backs of Nasir’s arms rose at the sight. The clamor of men and ifrit echoed from the streets, and from the deeper shadows along the palace walls, soldiers materialized, human in appearance, though the staves against their shoulders gave them away as ifrit.

  Nasir drew his scimitar. Zafira nocked an arrow in an unfamiliar bow.

  And a figure stepped from the arches. A place he had no right to stand in. A position he had murdered to obtain.

  The Lion of the Night. Perfectly poised and dauntingly dramatic.

  Laa—he was neither of those things. Not now. Panic painted his stance, glowed in his amber eyes, because that which he valued most was burning to cinders. He looked worn, surprised to see them; a strange sight, for the Lion was adept at masking emotion.

  Shadows gathered in his outstretched palms.

  Nasir sheathed his scimitar.

  If the Lion desired a game of shadows, Nasir would give him one. He mirrored the Lion’s movements, lifting his own hands, but he wasn’t quick enough. Darkness shot toward them, the fountain falling to pieces in between, stone scattering to the courtyard. Zafira fell with a cry. Nasir stumbled, but held his ground.

  The Lion didn’t wait. He dashed for the gates, abandoning them in favor of the Great Library, still engulfed in flames. Nasir watched, and though he didn’t consider himself petty, he took great pleasure in the Lion’s haste, and then in the way his delicate features morphed into horror, cementing him in place.

  As the fire, smoke, and every last ember in the air disappeared.

  CHAPTER 94

  Zafira loosed a relieved breath when the illusion disappeared. The Lion’s horror gave way to laughter, and she didn’t like how p
art of her reacted to the sound. In heartbeats, that relief would turn to anger when he realized he had been made a mockery of. He whirled, darkness in his palms.

  Nasir was ready.

  Both shadows clashed like thunder in a rare storm, rage igniting the courtyard. Zafira took a careful step away, shifting her bow to and fro as she tried to sight the ifrit, her wound whispering a warning everytime she moved. The shadows wouldn’t still, stirring debris and sand, whipping her hair about her face.

  “You think to end me.” The Lion’s voice carried over the chaos. “To take the throne you imagine rightfully yours.”

  Zafira looked to Nasir in alarm, but the words fell harmlessly.

  “Pathetic.”

  Nasir gritted his teeth, and the Lion, despite the distance between them, noticed.

  “You will never be enough. The people will never love you,” the Lion spurred in a tight drawl as he drove his shadows with all his strength.

  A rasp escaped Nasir, and she knew he saw his father. Heard him. Felt the weight of his dead body. Skies. She needed to do something, stop that monster’s mouth.

  “A killer,” the Lion goaded, and she flinched. “A scarred boy king with barely enough words at his disposal.”

  Nasir’s shadows began to waver, and she knew. The words themselves hurt less than the reminder that they were once spoken by his father.

  “How do you think to rule, mutt?”

  Nasir’s shadows disappeared.

  He dropped his hands, and the Lion’s shadows struck him, threw him. Zafira shouted as he was flung back against the metal gates. He fell without a sound.

  And didn’t move.

  She swallowed her cry, and fired. Her arrow whistled across the courtyard until the Lion snatched it in its deadly path.

  Her heart lodged in her throat, at the reminder of what she needed to do.

  “I’ve lost count of the sunsets I’ve witnessed, the men I’ve slain, and the books I’ve devoured—that is how long I’ve sustained upon this earth, azizi. Did you really think to kill me with a twig?” He snapped the arrow in half and caged her with a gust of darkness.