Alderamin had lost its appeal and allure. The sooq clamored from afar, the poets as dire as funeralgoers, the town of Zawia as dull as the wares of Bait ul-Ahlaam. When Zafira and Kifah finally arrived at the caravanserai, Seif was nowhere to be seen.
The stained-glass window was in fact an entrance, wide enough for caravans, though there were no camels idling about. Travel had not yet begun—the Arz’s disappearance was too recent, word still spreading. The archway led to a courtyard, from which one could see the entrances to every room in the two stories of stone, carved and white. Columns set in a honeycomb of tiles glistened in the night.
Though camels were scarce, people still traversed within cities, and Zafira and Kifah pushed past the crowded courtyard to the second flight of rooms. Kifah stopped her with a fleeting touch to her shoulder.
“At least,” she said, gently enough that Zafira clamped her eyes closed, “our memories are still our own. The moments that made your dagger special.”
Zafira’s exhale quivered dangerously.
“How do you do it? How did you know that telling him about the kaftar on Sharr would help?”
“I didn’t,” Zafira said truthfully.
“Only few can look at a monster and see its humanity,” Kifah claimed. But she did not know the half of it: that Zafira had befriended the Lion of the Night. That she had seen Nasir’s tallied scars, proof of his kills, and didn’t feel disgust. Kifah rapped her knuckles against the wall, restless as always. “And I’m sorry. For forcing your hand.”
Zafira looked at her, still numb, but also a little bit warmer.
A little more ashamed. “I am, too.”
Kifah answered with a half smile and closed the door.
Zafira sank into the low bed, blind to the beauty of the room, to the moonlight probing through her window. The vial was theirs. All that was left was to slit her palm and find Altair. Find the Lion. Retrieve the last heart. Take back the Jawarat that was hers.
Footsteps paused just outside her door, and she stilled when she heard Kifah’s door open.
“Did you do it? Will it live?”
Even muffled and separated by a door, Zafira caught Seif’s inhale, his irritation at Kifah’s gall to question him.
“There is no way to know. Nothing happened when I inserted it,” he said. “I’ve secured a boat to cross the strait, so we’ll leave before sunrise. The blood?”
“Acquired.” Kifah’s voice was soft, and Zafira wished she had been stoic. It would have helped Zafira stay stoic. She said something more, followed by a word that sounded dangerously like “Huntress,” before Seif moved and her door closed.
Zafira slumped into bed, angry at the swell of loss inside her. She could barely care that one of the five hearts had been restored—they were still missing the fifth, and retrieving it would be no easy feat.
Her loneliness was complete now. Absolute. She removed her boots, then her bow, then her quiver, and then her empty, empty sheath. The Jawarat had kept her afloat, and it, too, was gone.
Skies. Her best friend had died in front of her eyes, her mentor had died without her forgiveness, her mother had died after years of suffering, and she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t shed a tear for a single one of them, and she was near tears now, because of a daama jambiya.
It’s more than that. More, even, than another piece of Baba. Every step away from home hadn’t been a footfall but a flaying. A careful removal of the Hunter she once was, the Huntress she had been. She would wear the cloak of the Demenhune Hunter no longer.
Her guise: gone.
The Arz: gone.
Her sense of direction: gone. Baba’s jambiya: gone.
It had been the last of it. The last peg holding the mysterious Hunter upright, for her bow had snapped more than once and her arrows never lasted more than a few days. Baba’s jambiya was her constant, the reminder that she was not meant to take the lives of her kills for granted. That she was but a traveler in this world, trying to leave her mark, trying to do what was right.
A sob broke out of her.
She thought of Nasir and couldn’t seem to care about the girl in the yellow shawl anymore. Laa, she missed him. His silent contemplation. His scarce words that were always precisely what she needed.
Unraveling—that was what Zafira was doing. She was a ball of thread slowly unspooling, and she was afraid nothing but a gaping emptiness would be left at the center of it. That same clawing nothingness that had struck with full force after magic had emptied from her veins.
Her father had died, and she had persevered. Her life had hardened, and she had powered onward, for she had purpose. What was she without the hunts that shaped her mornings and gave her that purpose? She had existed to help her people. To keep them alive, to sustain them. Care for them. Who was she without the arrows on her back and the cloak on her shoulders?
Empty, in a way she had never been. Alone, in a way she had never been.
When she had asked Nasir what he wanted, she was really only asking herself.
