The darkness stirred the shadows in his blood. The Lion’s voice echoed through it, low and seductive, and Nasir could only think of Zafira’s laugh that night. Focus. He had two beats to decide: Go to her aid or adhere to the plan?
Disgrace her was the first option, really.
He secured his gauntlet blades and crept to the side of the rooftop. Sand slid beneath his hands as he flipped over the side and gripped the edge on his way down to the second story. He paused at the sound of Zafira’s voice, sharp and unrelenting.
Laa. No distractions. He dropped onto the balcony and stepped to the door. Locked from the inside. He looked to the inconveniently small windows on either side of the balcony with a sigh. Balancing himself atop the iron railing, he stretched to work the latch on one of the windows until it fell open with a satisfying clink.
He threw a glance to the nearest rooftop, where a hashashin waited just out of sight, tensed and ready. A flash of orange reflected off her dark robes, followed by the crackle of flames.
Ifrit had come, staves ready for battle. No sooner had he made the realization than the whiz of an arrow ripped through the din. The snap of a spear. Every vessel in his body begged to go to the zumra, aid them. Oh, how he had changed.
With a slow breath, Nasir leaped into the house.
The curtains rippled at the sight of him, stilling when he slipped the window closed. He was in an antechamber, neat and unlit. Dresses were piled atop a low table to the side, where they would remain untouched by the safi who had overseen their production. She was dead, Nasir knew.
He peered past the arched doorway and into a larger room, lit with faceted light from the narrow stretches of cutwork framing the large window against the back wall. And it was daama open. That would have been an easier entrance. A staircase wound down from the far end, but just before he could make his way toward it, movement halted him in his tracks.
A platformed majlis stretched against the wall beside the window, obscured at first by the curtains fluttering from a sudden gust of wind. It was occupied by a man, reclined and at ease, unchained and free to move about. His dark hair gleamed gold without his turban, his pointed ears proud. He looked different this way. Younger. Vulnerable. And not a single part of him appeared to belong to one who was imprisoned.
Laa, he was reading a daama book.
Nasir took a hesitant step toward him. “Altair?”
His half brother looked up. Surprise flickered across his face. Then his eyes narrowed with frantic urgency, there and gone before Nasir could comprehend it.
“Nasir,” he said. “Took you long enough.” He dropped his blue eyes to the sword in Nasir’s hand with a feeble smile. “Always so eager to kill me.”
“Now is not the time,” Nasir said around the rock swelling in his throat. Some weak part of him wanted to embrace the oaf.
“Oh, I see. I missed you, too,” Altair said, an ireful hollow in his voice as he rose. “You know, after you left me on Sharr, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
Nasir refused to wallow in guilt, not when the Lion or his ifrit could return at any moment. He glanced to the stairs. “I’m here now. Yalla. We need to leave.”
Altair didn’t move. “Do you remember when you walked into my rooms and I wasn’t alone?”
Nasir’s ears heated.
“They weren’t just any women. One was the daughter of a Zaramese merchant. The other a Pelusian wazir.”
“Good to know you’ve acquired a specific taste,” Nasir said as a sound cracked across the lower floor. He gripped the winding rail of the stairwell and gestured for Altair to follow, but the fool moved slower than a dying man crawling.
“When you have a reputation,” Altair said calmly, as if they were drinking qahwa on a majlis, “it’s easy to go unquestioned. Every Arawiyan I took to my room was an envoy.”
Nasir remembered the letters he had found sewn into the rug. How much Altair had done for the kingdom that had done nothing for him. “So you didn’t—”
“I’m many things, princeling, but a bore like you?”
Nasir heard the grin in his half brother’s voice, and, rimaal, he had missed it. “Right. Is there a reason this can’t wait until we’re back at the palace?”
Altair continued as if Nasir hadn’t spoken. “The Arz was destined to fall at some point, and I wasn’t going to stand by as it happened. I secured trade routes, forged alliances. As our mother struggled to hold the reins of our crumbling kingdom, I did my part in secret. She saw me as a failure—the culmination of her failures. I wasn’t going to be one, too.”
There it was again, the strange hollow that didn’t belong to Altair. He was trailing behind Nasir leisurely, despite the battle raging outside, and suspicion threaded Nasir’s veins. He had expected chains. Captivity and suffering. Ifrit keeping watch. Not Altair idling unattended with a book. Almost content. Almost annoyed to have been disturbed.
“To what end, Nasir? What was the point of all I’d done.
Hmm?”
The anger in his tone gave Nasir pause, but he said nothing.
He left the stairs and crept to the door he had seen directly beneath the upper-story balcony. It had been almost too easy, this rescue, this escape. Though there were sounds of life inside the house, he hadn’t come across a single person, or otherwise, besides Altair. He eased the door open and stepped outside to a flood of shadow and turmoil, stopping in his tracks when he remembered something.
The heart.
Zafira couldn’t slip into the house to search for it now, not with the Lion’s attention undoubtedly attuned to her, and as much as he wanted to hurry to her aid, he couldn’t waste this chance.
“Where are you going?” Altair asked when Nasir turned back.
“To look for the heart, and—” “The Jawarat?” Altair scoffed.
Nasir pressed his lips thin, holding still when the general leaned close.
“Only a fool would leave it lying about. Only a fool would know its worth and value and let another steal it away.”
The words were a double-edged sword, a shame Nasir was no stranger to. He could only imagine Altair’s reaction had he known how they’d lost the Jawarat.
“Both of them are with him,” Altair said, annoyed. So why, then, had he been left to his own devices? “How is our mother, by the way? Dead?”
Nasir’s wrists pulsed against his gauntlet blades, sand sinking beneath his footfalls along the side of the house. This wasn’t the Altair he knew. This wasn’t the Altair he had come
to save. Nasir himself had been angry at their mother, disgusted even, but not this. Never so callous.
“Dying,” Nasir bit out. “Is that what you wanted to hear? The Lion attacked her with his black dagger, robbing her of magic so that she has no chance of healing herself. And there’s little chance of anyone else healing her, either.”
Something sparked in Altair’s gaze. Not remorse, but revelation.
As if that had given him a daama idea.
Nasir turned away with a growl. Altair had always been apt at needling Nasir, but, rimaal, this was an extent he never thought possible. Swords clashed, arrows flew.
Perhaps, if he had been his old self, if he had not allowed emotion to fester in his soul, Nasir would have been more focused as he and Altair made their way to the front of the house. He would have been quicker.
He wouldn’t have let an arrow strike his heart.
