We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya)

by Hafsah Faizal

  “Are you complaining?” she teased. Or tried to. Everything felt heavier with Yasmine’s words and the intent in Deen’s eyes.

  “Never,” he said, finding what he needed. He held up a heavy-toothed knife. “I’ll see you later?”

  “If the bride allows. You know how she is.”

  He laughed as he closed the door behind him, the fire crackling in the silence.

  She exhaled and looked up to find Yasmine leaning against the hallway entrance, half draped in shadows. Watching her.

  “One day, someone will bring color to those dead cheeks of yours.” She looked wistful.

  “Don’t count on it, Yasmine. I’ve never blushed,” Zafira said, suddenly tired. She arranged the cushions again, tracing a fading pattern with her finger. She didn’t see marriage in her future, or love. “Demenhune rarely do. You don’t, and Misk looks at you like he could light the entire village on fire.”

  Yasmine shook her head. “There are things a person knows. I know he’s out there, that someone. Probably as grumpy as you. He’ll look into those icy eyes of yours and make you blush and wish you could begin all over again. I just know it.” Yasmine’s forlorn tone didn’t match her hopeful words.

  Zafira’s mother once had someone like that. Umm had stood by Baba until his death, and now she existed without living. Alive, yet dead. It was thoughts of Umm and Baba that wrenched at Zafira’s soul and reminded her that she was nothing but a broken girl pretending to be someone else, trying to raise a sister in a place too cold for life. Her heart still struggled to pull the shattered pieces of itself together again, to make her whole.

  The blood that ran through her veins rushed with dispassion, not love, not a desire for life in a place where everyone smiled and laughed while the cold ate at their bodies and the lack of magic withered their cores. Where even the eminent Bakdash parlor was still open and bustling, serving iced cream to the people even as they shivered and craved warmth.

  Zafira gathered the shards of her broken heart. She lifted her hood, and Umm and Baba faded away. Yasmine was wrong. Zafira would never make the mistake of falling in love.

  There was no point to a feeling that fleeted. To a love she would be destined to lose.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nasir felt lighter, despite the new death on his growing list. He supposed he should feel guilt for killing a man whose only crime was curiosity. But he had killed for less.

  Afya seemed subdued on the ride back, as if she knew what act he had committed. They passed buildings and houses in a blur of dark sand and then a single flag bearing the Sarasin emblem, an eclipsed sun with a sword through its center, before they crossed the border between Sarasin and Sultan’s Keep. The difference was stark—the skies brightened, the sun heavied. The sands churned flaxen.

  The homes on the outskirts of Sultan’s Keep were cobbled together with tan stone and flat roofs, doors of dark wood with copper-accented arches desperately shrouding the truth of the slums. The inhabitants had flocked here to Arawiya’s grand capital for a better life close to the sultana, the immortal safi who had saved Arawiya from collapsing after the Sisters disappeared.

  The sultana was dead now, and her husband—Nasir’s father—was a monster. He was now a monster.

  Closer to the palace, the houses were fewer and larger, sprawling with their own minarets and pointed copper domes, latticed stone leading to immaculate courtyards. Nasir doubted the people who lived in them were any happier than those in the slums.

  His route didn’t take him through the sooq. A mercy, for the last thing he needed was the streets to fall silent and the overzealous to drop to their knees. This route was quieter, though he passed several roaming merchants. One barreled a wagon full of Pelusia’s bright persimmons and dusky grapes, sacks of olives running low. Another pushed a smaller wagon with wares of silver, his path set on the richer end of the sultan’s city.

  The familiar shadows of the Sultan’s Palace fell upon the road. Unlike the heart of the man sitting upon the throne, the palace was an object of beauty. It stretched in a mass of limestone and detailed carvings, trelliswork giving glimpses of the shadows within. The tan stone had been polished to a gleam, competing with the minarets rising to the skies. The golden domes were cut with rays of obsidian from the volcanic mountains of western Alderamin, their spires ending in curves shaped like water drops. A reminder that without water, the people were nothing but carcasses for the hungry sands.

  The guards surrounding the black gates leaped to attention when the sentry announced Nasir’s arrival. He swung from Afya’s back and dropped his hood, running his fingers through his unruly hair to clear it of sand before tossing the reins to whichever man scrambled forward to catch them.

  “Ensure she’s tended for.”

  “Yes, my prince,” the guard hurried to say.

  Nasir stepped through one of the pointed arches and into the tiled courtyard. Out of habit, he dipped a finger into the fountain in its center, staining the waters pink. Why the sultana had commissioned a fountain in resemblance to a lion, Nasir never knew. He had never questioned his mother, only appreciated her existence until she was taken from him.

  He paused before the double doors and noted the undulation of the guards’ throats as they grasped the copper handles. Fear. Carefully cultivated, easily sustained.

  Inside, the air was still and his footsteps echoed. Darkness wrapped a suffocating cloak around him. On the gilded balcony above, maids and servants bowed and scurried away like the rats they were, darting in and out of rooms. The palace was so dark, one couldn’t tell the difference between rat and man anyway.

  The only refuge from the shadows were dim torches lit along the way, and nothing stood in the light for long.

  Nasir made his way to the stairs as a servant ambled from the opposite corridor, carefully balancing a platter of qahwa. Surprise struck the servant’s solemn features when he saw the prince, and the tray tipped. Too late, the man pitched forward to steady it, crashing into Nasir in the process.

  The servant dropped to his knees and whimpered—whimpered—beside the tarnished silver platter. Dark qahwa bled from the brass dallah.

  A thousand memories flickered through Nasir’s mind, flashes he had long since filed away. Coffee spilling. Cups shattering. A burning slap. He swallowed and blinked—a weakness, there and gone between heartbeats.

  “Forgive me,” the servant half squeaked.

  Nasir’s thoughts stumbled to a halt. Don’t think, mutt, he imagined the sultan saying.

  “Silence. Get this cleaned.” His words were low, carefully neutral, but his pulse had quickened like a spooked child’s. Two nearby maids hurried to help, and Nasir stepped over them. He didn’t have to look back to know that the starved servant was nodding, eyes closed in gratitude—gratitude that Nasir hadn’t ordered to have him beaten for the heinous act of spilling coffee. He clenched his jaw. Every daama time a servant associated him with the sultan, he only loathed himself more.

  “Nasir! You have returned so soon,” a cheery voice called. Nasir screwed his eyes shut before cooling his features. When did that damned staircase get so far away?

  Sultan Ghameq’s prized General al-Badawi wore a wolfish grin, oblivious to the servants mopping at the floor.

  “Did you enjoy seeing the children in the camel races?” he asked, dusky blue eyes bright in the dim foyer. Anger feathered his jaw, revealing how he felt about those helpless children thrown atop the camels. At last, rage for something that wasn’t Nasir’s doing.

  “I don’t have time for this, Altair.” Nasir turned to leave.

  “So excited to see the sultan, eh? No doubt eager to put your tongue to his sandal.”

  Nasir wanted to tear Altair’s carefully styled turban off his hair—which brushed the back of his neck as Nasir’s did, the copycat—and shove it down his pretty throat. He was a person one would call beautiful, but the parts of his interior that bubbled to the surface were hateful. As if he had been born to hate Nasi
r.

  But Nasir couldn’t hate Altair back, for his hateful words tended to hold truth.

  “Another word and you’ll find my sword at your throat,” Nasir growled.

  “Easy, hashashin,” Altair said, raising his hands. “Speaking of hashashins, the ones your father sent to bring back the Demenhune Hunter failed miserably. They never even returned! Who knew the Hunter was a cold-blooded murderer much like yourself?”

  “So I’m to retrieve him?” Nasir’s lips dipped into a frown. He had never been tasked with bringing back the people he found. He killed them.

  Altair shrugged and placed a hand on the dagger at his waist. He couldn’t have been much older than Nasir, but he acted as if everything were a jovial affair. “The sultan has moved on to plan ba and wants to see you. Something about a man named Haytham?”

  This was how their every conversation passed: with gibes Nasir ignored as best as he could. If it was his status Altair hated him for, Nasir would have given him princedom with a smile.

  Altair watched with the eyes of a hawk, noting the exact moment his words struck, before he laughed and strode down the hall with the ease of a prince himself. The last Nasir heard was his rich voice calling to one of the few courtiers idling about.

  “Yalla, fetch my falcon. I’m hungry for a hunt.”

  * * *

  “Nasir.”

  Sultan Ghameq’s voice floated from the balcony above. Nasir looked to where emirs usually waited for entrance into the upper throne room, but there were no officials in sight now, only his father.

  Ghameq’s copper skin was shadowed by a beard shorter than his fist, whereas Nasir’s was cut close to his skin. The sultan studied his son, turban swallowing light. He had completed the job much too soon, hadn’t he?

  “You are getting better at this.”

  Much too soon, indeed.

  “Do you have another?” Nasir asked in a toneless voice that had taken years to perfect.

  “Bloodthirsty, are we?” the sultan asked, raising one dark eyebrow. A thousand answers rose to Nasir’s lips, but only silence stretched between them. This was the palace of Arawiya. The center of power for five caliphates and hundreds of thousands of people. But it was empty. Ghostly. It had been missing something ever since the sultana’s death.

  A glint caught his eye—the inscribed, rusted medallion that always hung from the sultan’s neck, partially shrouded by his layered black thobe. Nasir stiffened his shoulders against a shudder. He was a hefty man, the sultan. Bulked with muscle and strength.

  Nasir knew all about that strength.

  “Are you just going to stand there, mutt?” Ghameq watched for Nasir’s flinch, which never came. As disgusted as it made him feel, the word was practically Nasir’s nickname.

  “Wash the blood from your hands and fetch the boy. We have a meeting with Haytham.”

  Old news, Sultani. For there was one thing Nasir could always count on Altair to do: never lie.

  “I’ve received news a Sarasin contingent is missing,” Nasir said quickly, referencing a report he had received earlier that morning. He wouldn’t bother mentioning the men sent to find the Demenhune Hunter, a fool’s errand from the start. A contingent, however, was too big a disappearance to ignore.

  “And?” the sultan asked, nostrils flaring. That anger, increasing.

  “They were my responsibility,” Nasir said, limiting his words. “Now they are missing.”

  “Only you could lose an entire contingent of the greatest army in Arawiya.” More insults and not a hint of surprise. There wasn’t even a shift in the man’s features.

  He knows. Nasir exhaled. “Where have you moved them? We had no right touching Sarasin in the first place. Why haven’t you appointed another caliph? Do you intend to rule as caliph and sultan?”

  In the silence, a flicker of fear burned in Nasir’s stomach before he strangled it to death.

  Finally, the sultan spoke. “Do not question me, boy. They are my blood. I will do as I please.”

  “You lost claim to Sarasin blood the moment you sat on Arawiya’s throne.” Nasir clenched his jaw, knowing he had depleted his allotted words.

  “When will you pay heed to your own concerns?” the sultan thundered.

  Nasir kept his voice level. “I’m the prince, Sultani. An entire body of armed men gone missing is cause for my concern.”

  “No, scum. You are nothing.”

  Nasir touched two fingers to his brow and left to fetch the boy. Sometimes he wondered why he even tried.

  * * *

  No one had ever expected the Sisters to die—not even they themselves expected to. Had the sultana not arrived at that crucial moment of ruin, Arawiya would have collapsed entirely. She had lifted the ropes and held their kingdom together, ensuring some sense of order. She had been just, smart, wise. Strong. Yet Nasir never understood how Ghameq had forced her to leave him the crown that should have been Nasir’s by succession.

  Not that Nasir wanted it. He wasn’t ready for such a responsibility; he doubted he would ever be.

  Scarcely a year after her announcement of the succession, the sultana was pronounced dead from a grave illness that spurred the people into a panic, for safin were immortal. Their hearts slowed once they reached full maturity, and they didn’t die from mortal ailments.

  Safin rarely died without a blade to their throats.

  Nasir agreed, for he knew how his mother had breathed her last.

  And now more than Arawiya’s crown lay in the sultan’s grasp. A caliphate did, too.

  The dungeon lock fell away with an echoing clang, and the door swung into a barren room where a boy of eight huddled against the wall. As Nasir’s eyes adjusted to the bleakness, he wondered if Altair knew of the boy shivering in the damp cold of the dungeons. Nasir hadn’t even known until a few days ago. Then again, Nasir knew very little about the royal agenda.

  When he stepped within the clammy confines of the palace dungeons, they fell silent. Despite the dark, they always knew when he entered, and no one breathed a sound.

  If he were truly his father’s son, he would have basked in their fear, but he was his mother’s son, too, and it only sickened him.

  He stepped into the boy’s cell, clenching his teeth against the stench of rot and feces. “Get up.”

  The young Demenhune eyed the lash in Nasir’s hand and stood, teetering on his feet. He had been here for half a moon, no more, but already his bones jutted, his hair lay lackluster, and his skin was duller. He shuffled forward, the grit of sand scraping stone loud in the hushed silence. Nasir threw a dusty cloak around his shoulders.

  “Baba?” the boy said.

  “You will see him,” Nasir replied softly, and in the harsh darkness, the curve of the boy’s small shoulders relaxed, content with the mere chance of seeing his father.

  Beside the door, the guard glanced at the boy’s cloak, then dared to flick his gaze to Nasir, who paused without turning his head.

  “Something wrong, guard?” he asked, looking ahead. He made the word sound like a curse.

  “N-no, my liege,” the guard murmured.

  Nasir cut his gaze to him, and the guard dropped his head. He waited a touch longer, until he caught the flare of the guard’s nostrils, fear reinstated. Then he tightened his grip on the lash and pushed the boy toward the stone stairs.

  Yalla, he wanted to snap as the boy’s palm slid along the onyx railing. At the top, Nasir removed the cloak and shoved it behind a cupboard. The boy’s small chest rose with a deep inhale before the door to the sultan’s chambers opened.

  The sultan was seated on the black majlis sofa that covered half of the main room. He was barefoot and cross-legged, his sandals a hairbreadth away on the ornate Pelusian rug. He looked less kingly, seated on the floor. A scribe was kneeling before him.

  Black scrolls were in the sultan’s hands.

  Every week, the scrolls were brought to the sultan, a new record of Arawiya’s dead. Most of the scrolls listed out the
men who had perished while mining in the Leil Caves of Sarasin because of a collapsed wall, a beating, or worse—the quiet deaths in which entire groups were attacked by invisible fumes that blocked their lungs, suffocating them until they heaved their last.

  Until this day, the scrolls had sat untouched in a basket beside the sultan’s throne, boiling Nasir’s blood. Now, he stilled at the impossible sight before him.

  The sultan tapped a finger on a scroll. “I want these fumes harvested.”

  “Sultani?” stammered the scribe, stilling his hand across the papyrus. Ink dripped from his reed pen.

  “These fumes. The vapors that suffocated these men,” the sultan said thoughtfully.

  The scribe nodded, jerky and fervent.

  “I want them harvested or replicated and then contained and brought to me.”

  Ah. That was more like his father.

  “I do not think we know how, Sultani,” the scribe said quietly.

  Disgust twisted the sultan’s face. “I know you’re all witless. Have ‘Uday take the coterie of Pelusians to the caves and give them what they need. I want this done quickly.” Nasir doubted the delegation of Pelusians living in Sultan’s Keep enjoyed being ordered about. “Now get out.”

  The scribe murmured his respects and hurried from the room, thobe shuffling.

  “Fumes,” Nasir said when they were alone. He wanted to pronounce the word as a question, but his pride refused.

  “Set the fire,” Ghameq said instead, and met his gaze when Nasir didn’t move at once. Nasir clenched his teeth, wanting to demand an answer, but the little boy was a risk.

  So after one lengthy moment, Nasir left him shivering by the door and lit the fire. Coward. Coward. Fool.

  There was only one reason for a fire in the midday heat. And the more Nasir played with magic, the more dangerous the line he trod. Rarely a day passed in which the sultan didn’t order Nasir to assist him with its use. Perhaps the magic that once lit the royal minarets was clean and good, but this anomaly was nothing near it. This was a hell of its own.