Altair rested his elbows on the low table as he waited for food. Surprisingly, his father hadn’t bled him since he’d spoken, tentatively, of an alliance. Altair hadn’t seen much freedom either, with his chains hooked and secured to the wall.
When he had told Benyamin of his grand, far-fetched plans to restore Arawiya, he had known there was always the possibility that one day he might have to go through with them alone. He’d been prepared enough—until those damning days on Sharr. With Nasir, then Zafira. Kifah and Benyamin himself.
In that scant bagful of days, he had cobbled together a family and a place within it. People with dreams as insane as his own, driven by factors others would have laughed at.
At least, it was what he’d believed. Now the emptiness was gnawing through him, the loneliness a ball on a string he had swung far, far away, only for it to return in full force.
His one companion scuttled from a hole in the wall, looking for the scraps Altair usually left out.
“So kind of you to visit, Nasir, but I’m all out of food, you see,” he told the little rat as it went about in circles, searching for something that wasn’t. Akhh, Nasir to the bone.
The rat bolted with a squeak, and Altair stood as footsteps approached. The misshapen clay abode stank heavily of age, the corners of the room thick with cobwebs. It was battered and bruised and glaringly unsecure, yet the zumra still hadn’t found him.
If they’re looking for me, that is.
The Lion swept through the open doorway, followed by an ifrit with two bowls of shorba and warm flatbread. The food of peasants, not a shred of mutton in sight.
“Taken to talking to yourself?” the Lion asked as he sat on the cold, hard ground. The ifrit set down the food and left.
“Keeps the vocal cords young,” said Altair with a smile. He remained standing a beat longer before he lowered himself back to the floor. “I can take to singing, if you prefer.”
These were the moments that scared him. The ones in which his father sought his company for no reason other than companionship.
Moments that scared him because he enjoyed them. They carved new lenses through which the monster, cruel in his ambitions, became a man, curious and collected.
The Lion rarely touched the food he brought with him. It had given Altair pause at first, but if he kept fearing poison, he’d starve. A body like his didn’t maintain itself.
“You have my father’s eyes,” the Lion said.
Altair stopped with a piece of flatbread halfway to his mouth.
The Lion frowned as if he’d surprised himself, too. “I sometimes forget his face. Events, too. With the odd recollection that they were … pivotal somehow. Time has stifled the memories.”
Whatever the Lion believed had stifled his memories was not time, and Altair could see it bothered him, enough to bring a haze of madness to his gaze. The same glint from when he’d spoken of vengeance, as if he wanted it with an all- encompassing need but couldn’t fathom why.
“You loved your father,” Altair observed, and lifted his arms, flashing his shackled wrists. “Mine keeps me in chains.”
The Lion smiled. “I can remove them. Take you from captive to son. Ally. We will carve our names upon history, and we, too, shall live forever.”
Heavy words to be spoken in the height of the day’s heat. How easy it would be, Altair thought, to shift the work of decades over to the side of his father. He would accomplish the same: a new Arawiya untainted by the Arz, unfettered by the curses that magic’s absence had left behind.
He finished his bowl and slid his father’s, still untouched, toward himself.
“I won’t let you go, Altair, and they will not come,” the Lion said with certainty. “If they triumph because of the road you set them upon, what makes you believe you will garner credit? I’m no seer, but even I know what will come of it.”
“Oh?” Altair said when he shouldn’t have. The walls rumbled with the thunder of passing horses somewhere out on the streets.
The Lion looked at him, strangely intent, as if his son were a puzzle he was close to solving. As if he had solved him during the handful of meals they’d shared.
“You will be forgotten.”
There were words that warped shields and slowed quick tongues. Knotted strings around fingers and made them tremble, one, two, three, ten. Twisted inhales so their exhales shook.
Words like these.
Altair set down his bowl with too sharp a thud, avoiding his father’s gaze. He smoothed his hands down his arms, bare and suddenly cold.
A question tumbled out of him: “Have you found the zumra?”
The Lion tilted his head, as he did whenever curiosity struck. “I’ve sent for a scroll in the palace. It details a spell that will emulate the Huntress’s affinity. Why?”
We, too, shall live forever.
Altair dropped his fists on the table between them. Dust sprang from the little crevices. He latched his eyes onto the Lion’s amber ones, curious and staid.
No, Baba. He would not be forgotten. Not so long as his lungs moiled away. He had spent far too much of his life working for exactly the opposite.
“Unshackle me,” he said with careful reflection, “and I’ll tell you where they are.”
