We Hunt the Flame

by Hafsah Faizal

  The general stared up at him from the shadows of the cramped archway.

  Nasir forced words from clenched teeth. “Are you out of your mind? You nearly killed the Hunter.”

  Altair stretched a horrid smile across his face. “But I didn’t, did I?”

  They had been this close to losing the Hunter, their one ticket to finding the Jawarat—and the bastard was smug?

  Nasir grabbed the arrow protruding below the general’s shoulder and twisted. Altair heaved upward, teeth gritted in pain, hands trembling.

  “Fight,” Nasir said, and cursed. He wanted pain. He needed pain to help him remember and forget. Had the other Demenhune not intervened, the Hunter would have died. The entire mission compromised.

  Altair didn’t move.

  Nasir growled, reaching for the arrow again. Altair’s eyes flashed in the dark, and Nasir felt a spike of satisfaction when the general shoved him to the stone, dust clouding from the impact. The exertion sent blood spurting from Altair’s wound, and Nasir jerked his head from the dripping red.

  “Don’t touch me,” Altair snarled, breath warm on Nasir’s skin. Flecks of darkness swam in the blue of his eyes.

  “Go on,” Nasir taunted softly. “Inflict pain the way your heart begs to.”

  Altair’s massive hands closed around Nasir’s neck, fingers pulsing against his slick skin, tightening until Nasir felt a prickle of … fear.

  It was a welcome rush, a spike that heightened his senses. He nearly smiled.

  But then Altair blinked, remembering something, and fell back onto the stone as if nothing had happened. “I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

  Nasir sat up slowly, confusion dulling his senses again. He eyed the general warily. “That’s what happens when you unleash an arrow. Something will die. It’s no one’s fault you’re a terrible shot.”

  “Kill me,” Altair grunted suddenly, pressing the skin around his shoulder with a grimace.

  Of everything Nasir had expected from Altair—

  Altair breathed a mirthless laugh. “Did you really think I would come here oblivious to your father’s plans? I know about the Hunter and what Ghameq thinks he is. I know what he told you to do. Get it over with, Sultani.”

  He spat the title with vehemence.

  “You know nothing,” Nasir said, voice low. “You only assume.”

  Altair pulled the arrow from his shoulder with a hiss, and blood flowed freely. The shaft and fletching were crudely built, as nondescript as the ifrit had been. But why had the creature aimed at Altair and not Nasir? It wasn’t as though Ghameq had any control over Sharr.

  Altair’s mouth twisted into a snarl before he contained himself. “I … have eyes … everywhere.”

  He tossed the arrow among the debris and heaved to his side, pulling his satchel closer with his tongue between his teeth. The perspiration on his skin glistened with the light filtering through the small archway.

  “You mean to tell me you have a spy,” Nasir said.

  “Many,” the general huffed as he dug through his bag.

  Nasir thought back to that morning two days ago, when the sultan had summoned him. When he had knelt on the hard ground of Ghameq’s chambers, listening to orders about this trek. When a servant had swept into the room, a fruit tray in her hands. When she had lingered, lighting bakhour and filling the room with its sensuous scent.

  When she had been in Nasir’s rooms while he was at the Daama Faris with Altair.

  Rimaal.

  Kharra.

  It couldn’t be. Disbelief wrapped dark hands around his lungs.

  “Kulsum,” Nasir rasped. “She’s your spy?”

  Altair watched him. “Did you think she came to you of her own accord? Did you really think someone stolen from her family and enslaved to the likes of you could fall in love with a monster?” He scoffed and tore a strip of fabric using his teeth.

  Nasir felt something within him tearing the same way, jagged edges and limp remains.

  He knew he was a monster. Acknowledged it, even. But Kulsum …

  “You’re even dumber than your father says you are.”

  Nasir stared back dully. He liked to think he had taken care of the weakness that was emotion, after all that he had been through and all that he had shunned. But Kulsum. Kulsum was different. Kulsum was the one who had pulled him out of that endless despair.

  Kulsum had loved him. She had come to him, even after that wretched night when his father had gifted him that silver box.

  Or had that, too, been Altair’s doing?

  Nasir knew that finding a person he could love, who could love him, was near impossible. He knew, yet he had been too blinded by mere affection to see clearly. Fabricated affection.

  He fisted his hands and tugged at his already-lowered sleeves. Those years lay in the past for a reason. The words on his right arm had been inked for a reason. What mattered was now: He loved none, and none loved him. Love was a fantasy.

  Life, this terrible existence, would go on.

  “Get up,” Nasir said.

  Altair had finished dressing his wound and had paled from the loss of blood. For a beat, Nasir thought he should have helped tend to his injury. But the beat—like the panic that had gripped him when Altair was shot, like all else—passed, and he felt nothing again.

  The general tossed the remainder of the bloody cloth aside. “Decided you still need me?”

  Nasir wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction to his spying. To Kulsum. What’s there to spy about me anyway? “Still deciding.”

  Altair stood. He held his right arm rigidly, shirt stained red. “Don’t worry about me, Sultani. I heal faster than your unimaginative mind can fathom.”

  “Right. Because you’re some sort of legendary creature.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Nothing about you can surprise me.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he? The Demenhune,” Altair said. His tone was softened by something like regret.

  Nasir’s brow furrowed. “You knew him.”

  Altair answered with a half shrug. Yet another fragment of his mysterious knowledge that seemed to transcend caliphates. “He was”—he paused and shortened his answer—“involved in a rescue mission once. A good man.”

  “A rescue mission. You.” Nasir scoffed. And with a Demenhune? The rescue of what? Nasir bit his cheek against the questions.

  “I don’t kiss and tell, princeling.”

  Nasir mock-yawned.

  “Well,” Altair said with forced cheer. “It’s just the two of us again, and my, what a couple we make.”

  Nasir gifted him a look that could wither crops. “Keep up your endless yipping and only one of us will be left.”

  Altair grinned. “Ah, but I was already dead the moment I set foot on Sharr. Might as well have some fun along the way, laa?”

  Neither mentioned the fact that Nasir had saved Altair’s life. Or that an ifrit had made an attempt on it.

  Nasir didn’t know what had spurred him to shift his aim at the very last moment. To save the man whose words were spent belittling him. Who, against all odds, was his only ally in Sharr.

  Nasir was tired of talking. Feeling. Thinking.

  “The Hunter will be alert now, and we’ve wasted enough time with your indisposition.”

  The sun had dimmed and shadows had risen from the sands. Sharr, coming to life. No matter, Nasir’s task still stood.

  It was time for the Hunter to become the hunted.

  CHAPTER 29

  Zafira was being followed, but all she could think of was Sharr. Guzzling Deen’s blood and hungering for more, darkening the sands, scaring the sun.

  She clambered up stone steps, circled past broken columns, and wended her way through tattered stalls made of eroding wood. She would have taken a moment to contemplate the abandoned sooq of Sharr if she wasn’t being daama pursued.

  The wind howled, and she could barely see beyond the next five steps. Her cloak wrangled her, a
beast in league with the heat. But she didn’t want her pursuer to know who she was, and so she stubbornly swiped at the sweat with the back of her hand, cursing the desert.

  If you want something to do, go melt Demenhur.

  The shadows stirred, laughing.

  She stumbled once, twice—her boot caught on a step she couldn’t see, and she rolled down an incline of rough stone. She let out a string of curses only Yasmine would use, the words echoing in the ruins until the limestone spat her onto more sand, a handbreadth away from a scorpion spearing a lizard, tearing the breath from her lungs. She scrambled away with a hiss.

  And then: a rustle. From ahead. Not behind, where her pursuers should have been.

  She stood slowly with battered bones, clenching her trembling fingers. She was the daama Hunter—it wasn’t like her to be so shaken. Spotting a crevice between two trellised arches, she ducked into the hollow and waited, carefully sliding her jambiya free.

  She had killed animals, yes, but never a living, breathing human. Still, if she had to, if the other was a threat, then she was ready. Her father had taught her well.

  The sand stirred and she held her breath as a man stepped from the haze of dust, looking back as she had seen him do so many times before, curls shimmering bronze. She thought of his pinkie twined with hers, of his ring at her bosom.

  Deen.

  She was going mad. She was the daughter of a madwoman, the daughter of a madman. Madness lived in her blood. That was the only explanation for this.

  But he looked solid, real, alive. She had seen him die, she had stared at his still form as Sharr had taken him away.

  No. Sharr hadn’t taken him away. Sharr had fixed him and given him back to her.

  She stood without a second thought, not bothering with silence. He turned at the sound of her boots.

  “Deen,” she said.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light that made him look strangely still. Maybe it was because she had spent so long staring at his unmoving chest that it seemed so even now. For who ever looked to make sure another was breathing?

  He lifted his hand, long fingers uncurling uncertainly. Something about the gesture made her pause, but he noted her hesitation, the way he noticed everything about her, and smiled.

  Deen smiled, the kind of smile that could war with the sun, and all was righted.

  CHAPTER 30

  Nasir almost growled aloud.

  The fool of a Hunter was mad. He witnessed the creature, ugly and dark, and sheathed his jambiya.

  Relaxed his defenses.

  Stepped closer.

  Nasir watched from a dilapidated vestibule, frustration making him jittery.

  The ifrit trod with caution. It was a creature of smokeless fire, imprisoned on Sharr by the Sisters. And with the darkening sky, it wasn’t just ifrit that would stray from the shadows.

  “Do you really think the Hunter sees the ifrit for what it is?” Altair asked, carefully rotating his shoulder.

  Nasir didn’t care. If he waited any longer, it would kill the Hunter and their only way to the Jawarat would die, too. Why was the man always in danger?

  He lifted his bow, the compass heavy in his pocket. He did not tell Altair that since they had climbed Sharr’s wall, the compass had changed direction, twice.

  That it had led him to the Hunter, twice.

  The beginning of a scream scattered Nasir’s thoughts.

  CHAPTER 31

  It was Zafira’s second time seeing Deen die. Surely such torture had an end.

  The arrow struck again below his heart. The same arrow as before, ebony with a tapered silver fletching. A look of rage twisted Deen’s features as it happened. A violence she had never before seen on his face.

  Yet as he fell, her heart took control of her voice and elicited half a scream before her brain made it stop. It wasn’t a sound she ever made.

  But.

  He was decaying before her eyes. Changing. His hair thinned until his head balded, his eyes darkened to depthless black as the body fell into the shadows of the sooq.

  She shrank back with a curse. Deen’s death had addled her so much that she had lowered her guard and fallen for Sharr’s trap. An ifrit. Creatures that fed on despair and grief. Sharr hadn’t buried Deen’s body, or even eaten it.

  It had stolen it.

  Something snapped behind her, and Zafira stilled. Another snap—a deliberate sound meant to be heard.

  Heavy boots on terraced stone. Whoever had saved her from the ifrit now and had killed Deen earlier. She reached behind for her bow and—

  “Freeze.”

  It was a cold voice, accustomed to giving orders without ever having to repeat itself, despite the low timbre of it. She froze, hand hanging above her head before she slowly curled it into a fist.

  “Don’t move, Hunter.”

  At that, she stiffened.

  “Your reputation precedes you.”

  Her eyes fell to the corpse of the ifrit, where the black-and-silver arrow taunted. Real silver, which meant it belonged to someone with means. Black and silver, black and silver. She racked her memory. She knew those colors. She knew where people spoke with that soothing lilt.

  Her breath halted. Sarasin.

  “Drop your rida’.”

  Rida’. Sarasin for hood. Sarasin, like the ones who had ambushed her at the edge of the Arz. Like the sultan himself.

  “I said, drop your rida’.”

  She weighed the odds of the man killing her from behind. A dastardly move, but not one she could discount a Sarasin from doing. He had, after all, nearly killed her before Deen—

  No, if she was going to die, she wanted to see who had stolen Deen from Arawiya too soon.

  She turned and dropped her hood.

  There were two of them. Both young. Smoky kohl framed their eyes, and Zafira dimly thought of how highly Yasmine would approve. The larger was fairer and prettier, with the sun-kissed skin of Arawiya and an amused twist to his mouth. His turban was carefully mussed around his head, stray strands of deep gold peeking out. A patch of blood stained his right shoulder, hastily wrapped cloth marking a fresh injury, and a jewel-studded jambiya sat against one muscled thigh, his sirwal an opulent hue of purple.

  The other man was leaner, power rippling from the sharp cut of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. The hair dusting his forehead was as dark as the shadows weaving the island, his skin the deeper olive of the men who had ambushed her. A black-and-gray-checkered keffiyah circled his head, fringe whispering at his neck.

  He wore a suit that she hadn’t seen the likes of before, surprisingly void of weapons, though that was likely the point of it: to look unsuspecting. A scar slashed the right side of his face, from his forehead to the top of his cheek—it was a surprise his right eye was still intact.

  His eyes. They were a tumultuous gray like the dead ashes of a fire, adrift on a cold wind. He was the one with an arrow leveled at her heart, eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  It was new, to be assessed by a man when she was a woman. She was so used to people looking at her shadowed figure that she nearly folded into herself. But she felt the ghost of Deen’s fingers at her chin, and she straightened, allowing herself a smirk as the Sarasin struggled for words.

  “You’re a girl.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Nasir doubted his father knew the renowned Demenhune Hunter was a girl. He didn’t think Ghameq would even care what the Hunter was.

  “And you’re a murderer,” she retorted without missing a beat. Her words were shaped with the rugged lilt of Demenhur. She lifted her chin and met his gaze without a care for the arrow pointed at her.

  She was tall and broad-shouldered, both features that would have helped her facade of masculinity. She carried two satchels, her sirwal tucked into supple boots, leather sheaths hoisted on either leg. Her loose qamis was cinched with a sash of black, obscured by her cloak when she dropped her fist.

  He had met Demenhune before, but none like her. Everything a
bout her was harsh, from her cheekbones and the cut of her lips to the point of her nose and the starkness of the dark hair crowned in a hurried plait around her head. A profile of angles, a study of ice. Even her gaze was hard to hold, pale blue shards, cold and unfeeling, fringed with lashes that feathered her pale cheeks.

  She slid her gaze to Altair and then back to him, raising her slender eyebrows. “Go on.”

  Even her voice was ice. He lowered the bow, and her eyebrows flew even higher.

  “Don’t stop now,” she said. “You were aiming for me earlier, weren’t you? Take your shot, jaban. I won’t flinch.”

  Nasir’s grip tightened at the word “coward.”

  “He changed his mind,” Altair announced, striding up to her. Nasir pursed his lips as Altair plastered on the smile that usually melted the women he acquainted. “Altair al-Badawi.”

  Silence. She slid her gaze to Altair again. It was a careful slide, a cold, deliberate shift. Anger pulsed her jaw, sorrow weighted her features.

  “Does that work?” she asked flatly. The wind howled, throwing stray strands of hair across her face.

  “Hmm?”

  “Stepping too close and pulling that harebrained smile. Does it work?”

  Nasir bit down a snort.

  But Altair recovered as quickly as always. “Sometimes. But you’re one of a kind, aren’t you, Huntress?”

  She stiffened at the word and stepped back toward the blackened corpse of the ifrit. Nasir wasn’t sure an arrow to the chest would kill an ifrit, but he wasn’t about to warn her that the creature might still be alive.

  Her. The Hunter was a girl.

  “Do you want us to bump noses and be the best of friends now? After you killed”—she choked off, unsure how to label the relationship between her and the man who had stared after her with wanting she clearly hadn’t reciprocated—“my best friend?”

  Lies. She was a terrible liar.

  Altair crossed his arms. “I’m afraid there are better places to make friends than on Sharr. We’re here to propose an alliance … Since my companion and I are heading toward the same thing you are.”