Still, they hurried out of the oasis as soon as the task was complete.
“Sharr is upset we killed its kin,” Kifah said, looking at the sky. Zafira would have thought that Sharr should be happy it had more to feast upon, but Kifah’s dark eyes were void of mirth.
Swells of sand marched into the distance, the umber now a shade forlorn because of the gray sky. Aside from nicks and scratches and more than a few burns, everyone had made it out alive, if a bit weary. Altair shared strips of dried goat meat with them, and even Nasir begrudgingly accepted.
“Well, dearest Demenhune? Which way do we proceed?” Benyamin asked carefully. His voice slid eerily in the silence of death.
Zafira shook her head. She was tired of not knowing what was happening. “I need answe—”
“And you will get them,” he said before she could finish. “When we stop for the night.”
She opened her mouth to protest but remembered safin couldn’t lie. So she hooked her bow and relaxed her limbs, listing her head as she sifted past the chime of sand and the whisper of shadows.
There. A thread humming in her bloodstream, a murmur slithering through her veins. A frenzy drawing her forward. So many years of relishing that insisting hum in her bloodstream, and now she knew. This was magic.
She couldn’t summon excitement at the thought. Ever since welcoming the darkness during the attack, she had been feeling … a little less afraid but also a little less whole. As if the space she occupied was now shared with something else. Someone else. She exhaled and started toward the ruins fanning out to their right, and the others fell into step behind her.
“And now we’re off again, tagging along with the Demenhune Hunter and the Prince of Death,” Kifah said, giving the prince a long look. “A murderer.”
“I find ‘murderer’ to be a relative term. How many bugs have you killed with your feet?” Altair asked.
Kifah snorted, and Zafira heard the rhythmic thump of her spear against her leg. Nasir was silent. Zafira didn’t turn to see his face, but she wondered if it hurt, being called a murderer. It wasn’t as if it were a lie.
Her thoughts seized when something screeched in the shadows.
“I think I prefer a murderer on two legs than one I don’t know about,” Zafira said.
“At last, a voice of reason!” Benyamin exclaimed, ignoring a salacious comment Altair made about legs.
As they moved, the stillness of Sharr did feel like an accusation for killing so many of its own. She did not like to consider what would happen if they further wronged the umber sands and haunting ruins. She did not want to think of why the ifrit had ambushed them, either.
Yet … it hadn’t felt like an attack. It had been more of a test. One the darkness had watched from the confines of itself. One she had passed.
The shadows steepened when they reached the crumbling slabs of stone.
“We’re stopping here for the night,” Nasir said, and all sounds ceased. He didn’t implore, didn’t request, didn’t ask. His voice was an order, and no one questioned him as they began readying the camp.
* * *
They set up camp in the alcoves of the stone ruins beneath the moon, and Zafira wanted to climb to the highest point and curl beneath her glow. To make sense of the way the shadows called to her.
The others would likely follow her, worried their compass was going astray, so she settled before the fire with a sigh and rubbed her hands. The chill was nothing compared to Demenhur’s weather, but she found it odd how cold the relentless desert could become.
Weariness tugged on her bones, and she looked forward to resting—once she had her answers.
The others unfurled bedrolls around the fire. Kifah hunted down a trio of cape hares after eyeing Zafira, who didn’t make a move when Kifah asked who would hunt.
“I’m impressed, One of Nine,” Altair said, inspecting the hares. “Nothing can outrun these critters.”
“I’m not nothing, am I?” Kifah asked as she cleaned her spear. She barely looked out of breath for someone who had snared hares only a cheetah could outrun.
Altair skinned her catch, and Kifah roasted them to mouthwatering perfection. There was a certain thrum of excitement as Kifah cooked, and Zafira found it charming that the warrior whose restlessness was only thwarted in battle could be so happy while handling cuisine.
Kifah had even brought her own spices from Pelusia—a blend of cumin, sumac, cardamom, and other things Zafira couldn’t differentiate—which she rationed begrudgingly. The aroma carried Zafira away to Yasmine’s wedding, to Deen’s pinkie curling around hers.
It felt so far away now. A different life.
Altair had unraveled his turban and wrapped part of it around his neck against the chill. Oddly, Zafira had yet to see him without a turban at all, not even on that night when he had returned from the waters of the oasis without a shirt. He sat cross-legged beside her and gave his portion of hare a lick.
“I’m going to pretend this is a mighty leg of lamb, roasted with garlic and harissa,” he said wistfully as he tore the roasted skin with his teeth.
“What’s wrong with my spices?” Kifah asked with a scowl.
Altair looked like a startled deer. “They are most delectable. Slip of the tongue, not the fault of my brain.”
Kifah hmmed. “Which you seem to have misplaced.”
“Dearest Kifah Darwish, I find your many retorts endearing.”
Kifah appraised the general as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You remember my name.”
Zafira scrunched her nose. “I’ll have mine without the garlic.”
“You don’t like garlic?” Altair asked, eyebrows raised. “At least we know for sure you aren’t an ifrit.”
“Ifrit like garlic? What, you asked one?”
“Ifrit like everything that reeks,” Altair said matter-of-factly.
Zafira’s brows flattened. “So you acknowledge that it smells wretched, yet you crave it anyway.”
“I eat the food, not inhale it. It’s all about the flavor. Right, One of Nine?”
Kifah nodded as if this were a conversation of utmost importance, and Zafira turned away in exaggerated disgust. Benyamin leaned against a wall, one leg propped, a leatherbound book in his hand. Only a safi would find time to read on Sharr. The crackle of the fire shrouded the silence, and after a moment Altair continued with a list of what he would devour had he been in Sultan’s Keep.
“There’s this one dessert I’d kill every single one of you in a heartbeat for. It’s a pastry made of cheese and soaked in syrup and—”
“I know what kanafah is. We western village Demenhune might be poor, but we’ve had the sultan’s delicacies,” Zafira said.
“Oh, good. You looked forlorn there for a moment,” Altair said with a grin.
Zafira tossed a rock at him. “I don’t know if I’d kill for it, but I guess that’s how barbarians work.”
“You wound me, Huntress,” he mocked, a hand on his broad chest. Then he frowned and rubbed his arm where the rock had struck.
Zafira knew she shouldn’t speak to him. She knew he was cunning and would slowly glean information from her as well as she knew she was drawn to him. But when he spoke, teasing and heedless, Zafira gravitated toward him. The darkness stepped back, and his charming grins lifted a weight off her chest.
He reminded her of Yasmine.
She was beginning to forget that he was not her friend. This was not her zumra. They were allies by circumstance, nothing more.
Zafira suspected that Altair’s demeanor was what kept the prince glued to his side. Despite his growling and cool indifference, Nasir likely tolerated Altair’s taunts not because he couldn’t do a thing about it, but because he craved them.
For the thousandth time since that afternoon, she questioned her split-breath decision to save the prince from the ifrit. What had he done in return? Nodded. What had you expected, a kiss?
He sat on a fallen column a little ways away, ea
ting slowly, lost in some dark thought. Zafira barely made out his silhouette in the flickering light, but the gleam of his gaze was clear enough as it drifted among them. She felt it snag on her, too, and something raced beneath her skin in response.
Her mind conjured the moment she’d felled him during their own fight earlier in the day. His body beneath hers without the barrier of her cloak between them. His lips close to her skin. His depthless eyes dark and knowing. The way he had seized up, the way his breathing had quickened. Something crackled in her chest.
He’s a murderer.
And she was starting to forget that he was.
CHAPTER 52
Nasir watched the others enjoying themselves. It was only a trio of hares, meager meat for five famished. Yet they ate and spoke as if they were enjoying a grand feast. As if death weren’t lurking in the too-heavy darkness.
He had gathered his peasant-size share and taken it away from the small fire, seating himself in the shadows while Benyamin’s zumra clung to every word Altair uttered. The general started with food but drifted off to other things: journeys he had taken, sights he had seen, and battles he had won. He teased them, enraptured them.
Nasir watched as the Huntress laughed at Altair’s words, the harsh lines of her face softening. He watched as the general’s eyes dropped to her lips and followed the curve of her smile. How did Altair feel, knowing he was the first to coax a genuine smile across her cold-hard features after the death of her companion?
She had molded too much of herself into cool marble, and he did not want her to shatter.
She withdrew into her own thoughts and her gaze drifted up, meandering across the slabs of stone until she found him. He remembered the softness of her body, the way she met his eyes as no one but Altair did, dismantling him as no one did. Fearlessly. Effortlessly. As if, perhaps, beneath every death and monstrous act he had committed, he was only flesh and bone—a human, nothing more.
He hadn’t been seen as a human in years.
He looked away, despite the fire between them. Why did she seek him out? Did she regret her decision to save him?
No matter. For now, she and the others could enjoy themselves. Soon enough, he would get back to the task of killing them off.
But a voice whispered a tendril of a word in his ear, the same voice that had made his credence waver when he had leveled his scimitar at Altair.
Liar, it said.
* * *
After the meal, Zafira turned to Benyamin and opened her mouth, but he only held up his hand, silencing her before he moved his stupid red rug closer. Altair stretched himself upon his bedroll, bare arms crossed beneath his head, ever shameless.
“I thought we weren’t going to talk,” Kifah said, rubbing a salve on the still-healing gash across her arm. “Whatever happened to ‘the shadows have a master’?”
Benyamin released a lengthy breath. “That was the plan, but Sharr has shown its hand. I see no reason for caution now.”
An uneasy silence weighed upon them. Beneath a sudden gust of dry air, the fire crackled like footsteps on the sand-studded stone.
“What a poetic way of saying one of us is going to die,” Kifah said.
“Are all Pelusians so bitter?” Altair asked, voice strained as he looked to the open skies above them.
“I’m not bitter. I’m realistic, and I see no reason for unnecessary optimism.”
“Akhh, Nasir might have finally found his soulmate,” Altair drawled.
Was the prince listening to their conversation? Was he plotting his next kill? Was he watching her? Zafira, you vain oaf.
“Where should I begin?” Benyamin asked, tucking his book aside.
“With you.” Zafira stretched, trying to will away her exhaustion and the ache in her back from their endless walking.
“I was born on—”
“I don’t think anyone wants to know about you, safi,” said Altair, and Kifah mumbled her agreement.
Benyamin sighed and straightened his keffiyah. “One day, my person will find esteem and all of Arawiya will desire my humble history. They will scribe poetry in my name and sing ballads of my triumphs. Mark my words, dear friends.”
Altair snorted, but Zafira couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m here,” Benyamin went on, “because, though she may not be able to lie, the Silver Witch can’t be trusted.”
“You came a long way to say something I already know,” Zafira said.
His lips quirked. “Oh, but I came a long way to tell you something no one knows.”
“Go on,” Kifah said.
That surprised her. Zafira had thought the Pelusian warrior knew everything. But it seemed she, too, had joined the quest with minimal knowledge.
“Have you ever wondered why the Silver Witch wields magic on a land where there is none?” he asked. “Have you ever wondered why the sultan keeps her close?”
“You sound like a merchant trying to sell trash,” Altair groaned, a hand over his face.
Benyamin held Zafira’s gaze. The fire crackled and the darkness settled in, waiting for his response as intently as she was. “Think, Huntress. There were only six beings who wielded magic from within. Who were vessels of magic as much as wielders.”
Six beings. Vessels of magic who imbued the five royal minarets with their limitless power. Only five minarets, because one of those beings had been here on Sharr, guarding the prison she created with her own power, born from the good of her own pure heart.
Zafira broke away from his gaze. Her heart was a drum.
No one can be that pure.
“Then—that means only five Sisters perished that day,” she whispered.
He nodded. She thought of Sukkar and Lemun, frozen solid. She thought of the Arz disappearing, and the phantom men aboard that unnatural ship. Magic when no magic should exist. Powerful magic.
Skies.
“The Silver Witch—she was Sharr’s warden. She’s … she’s the sixth Sister.”
Benyamin’s silence was the only confirmation she needed.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Altair’s shaky laugh broke the heavy quiet, mimicking how Zafira felt.
“I’ve dropped many revelations in my day, but that, safi, tops all,” he said, but he sounded far off, as if this revelation struck him deeper than it did the rest of them.
“It is truth,” Benyamin said, spreading his hands.
“So the greatest of the Sisters turned evil,” Kifah said with a sigh. “Why am I not surprised? The best are always the worst.”
Zafira sensed years of resentment behind that line.
The Silver Witch was dark, powerful, something else. But Zafira didn’t know if she was evil.
When she said as much, Kifah gave her a look. “I don’t know what rock you live beneath in Demenhur, but the witch convenes with the sultan far too much not to be influential. Look what’s become of him, Huntress.”
There was an edge to Benyamin’s voice when he responded. “We are all flesh and blood, soul and heart. Capable of malevolence, just as much as benevolence. One wrong does not make evil.”
It could, though. Zafira was wholly aware that Benyamin didn’t answer Kifah’s implication. She supposed every creature that could not lie was adept at doling half-truths. Answering questions with more questions.
He had given them only a slice of the entire truth. Barely a page of a hefty tome stored in the library of his thoughts.
“If she isn’t evil, and she was here when it happened, why won’t she get the Jawarat herself?” Zafira asked. “She said she was trying to make things right. Why isn’t she helping us?”
“Sharr contains magic only because it drained the Sisters of theirs during the battle with the Lion of the Night. If she sets foot upon these sands, she will share the fate of the other Sisters. She escaped the first instance only because her power exceeded theirs, allowing her time.” Benyamin canted his head. “Then again, if she knew where the Jawarat was, she could merely materialize for
a trifle, grab it, and disappear. But I don’t believe that is how the Jawarat works.”
Zafira blinked.
“That is where you come in, dearest Demenhune, and the rest of us. We are stronger as one, more likely to succeed as one. As a zumra. You might have already perished had I left you to your own accord.”
“Shukrun for your vote of confidence,” Kifah said dryly.
“So once magic is free from Sharr, the Arz will fall?” Zafira asked.
Benyamin nodded.
Zafira continued, “Then chaos will break out across the kingdom. Only a few know of the quest.”
“Once the curse lifts and the Arz disappears, my runners will take to the streets, sending notice to the caliphs and their wazirs. Order will remain. See, I like to plan ahead,” Benyamin said with a smug smile, and Altair shot him a look.
Zafira was too impressed not to show it.
Altair interrupted. “Tell me something, One of Nine. How do you know of the silver woman?”
Zafira had wondered the same. She hadn’t known of the Silver Witch’s existence until the woman materialized before her.
“It’s not common knowledge, but I’m one of the Pelusian calipha’s trusted Nine Elite, no?” Kifah answered.
Zafira’s eyes strayed to the trees, where she swore she was being watched. Come, come, come, the trees seemed to chant, the call curling around her cheeks. It was as if the darkness had reached a frenzy when it heard of the Silver Witch’s identity. When it learned the woman who had controlled them still lived.
Or maybe it was magic. Zafira didn’t know. The island was rife with magic and darkness, entwined.
Skies, Zafira had met one of the Six Sisters of Old.
Somehow, the revelation allowed her to breathe a little easier. She had more questions, and she still didn’t know how or why Benyamin had come, but she felt her purpose had been reinstated somehow. That the Jawarat had been made more real.
The others dispersed into their own corners of the ruins. Altair hummed some ridiculous ballad, and Kifah dusted off her bedroll. Zafira remained by the fire, breathing in the soft rustles of the night and something else … water? The faint trickle of it sang in her ears, but because no one else pointed it out, she judged it to be farther away. She had been eating with hands smudged in dirt for days now. Getting clean would be nice.
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 24
