Under his philosophy, retrospect was the antecedent of wrinkles. Yet shackled and shoved into the dank bowels of the ship, Altair al-Badawi could do nothing else.
He had spent most of his life vying for his mother’s love, trying to atone for the curl of her lips every time she turned his way. Though it hadn’t taken long to understand that she saw him as the culmination of her failures, it wasn’t until Sharr when he learned the extent of it: that she was a Sister of Old and the reason magic was gone, that she had—
Altair halted the thought with a grimace.
It wasn’t often one learned he was the Lion of the Night’s son.
The sun crawled through the tiny excuse for a window, marking two days since he’d labored with the ifrit on Sharr to salvage the ship they now sailed in. And in the two days since, he’d been fed and given a chair to sit upon. Not bad for a prisoner.
If he wasn’t being milked like a prize goat.
Every so often, an ifrit would come to secure his chains to the wall, rendering him immobile before slitting his palm to fill a tankard for the Lion to get drunk on. He loathed being the fuel for his father’s dum sihr, forbidden magic that allowed one to go beyond one’s own affinity. But worse than the chains and the bloodletting, perhaps, were the shackles, spanning at least a quarter of the length of his forearms and suppressing his power. Heavy black ore wrought with words in the old tongue of Safaitic.
The odd push and pull in his veins was taking its toll. It slowed his mind, a thought more troubling than the loss of his
physical strength—for it meant the Lion would always be one step ahead of him.
Laa. Half a step.
A latch lifted, and he flopped back in his dilapidated chair, propping his feet atop the worn table despite the rattle of his chains, and when the Lion of the Night stepped into the hold, the flare of his nostrils pleased Altair far too much.
“Your horde is slow,” Altair announced as if he were speaking to his uniformed men. Simply because he was in chains didn’t mean he had to sacrifice dignity. The rich flaunted chains all the time. “We’re nowhere near shore, and with the Silver Witch on Nasir’s side, spinning illusions as well as you do shadows, they’re guaranteed to reach the mainland before you. Time is merely another mirage for her to bend. And when we dock wherever it is you plan on docking, my brother will be waiting.”
This was where Altair’s bluster faltered.
For his half brother was the same Prince of Death he had accompanied to Sharr, fully aware that his orders were to bury Altair upon that forsaken island. He had left him instead.
Nasir and the zumra, strangers who had become family, had turned and fled, abandoning him to their foe. Laa, he didn’t truly know if his brother would be waiting.
But if there was one thing he did better than look impeccable, it was bluff.
“Your freedom, Lion, will be short-lived,” Altair finished somewhat lamely. Akhh, valor was a fickle temptress as it was.
The Lion gave him the phantom of a simper that Altair himself had worn far too many times. Like father, like son. It was unnerving to think the man was his father when he looked barely a day older than him. Then again, Altair himself was ninety, the exact age of Arawiya without magic. More than
four times Nasir’s age, and if he was being humble, he’d say he looked a year younger than the grump.
“How should I begin?” the Lion asked. “Anadil will be dead in three days.”
Perhaps he could bluff as well as Altair could.
“And then, when your friends reach shore, you and I will take from them the Jawarat and the remaining hearts.” The Lion tilted his head. “See, I think long and far, Altair. Something you might find familiar.”
Altair’s long and far thinking had never been for his own personal gain, or for incomprehensible greed. Assemble a team, restore magic. A simple plan devised by him and Benyamin that became more convoluted with each passing day.
He refused to believe his mother was dying. He refused to believe the zumra was outnumbered, not when he’d ensured there would be allies waiting for them in Sultan’s Keep with dum sihr to protect their whereabouts. And more: Nasir had magic. Zafira had the power of the Jawarat bound to her blood.
It had to be enough. For the first time in a long time, Altair had to remind himself to breathe.
“Why?” he asked. That was what he could not discern— the reason for the Lion’s need. He refused to believe someone who shared his blood could simply hunger for power. There was truly no drive more boring.
His father’s gaze froze, brilliant amber trapped in glass, there and gone before Altair could comprehend it.
“Vengeance,” the Lion said, but the word was spoken in a tone accustomed to saying it. No vitriol, no vigor. Only habit. “And more, of course. There must be order. Magic must remain in the hands of those capable. Do you think the common man understood the extent of what the Sisters of Old had so freely given?”
Equality. That was what the Sisters of Old had given Arawiya, despite their faults.
“Akhh, the creativity of men when it comes to their vices,” Altair droned, unsurprised. “Order,” in this case, was only another word for “greed.” “But if that is indeed why you crave magic, then you, with your endless desire for knowledge, should already know the old adage: ‘Magic for all or none.’ There is no in between.”
Unless one was si’lah, like the Silver Witch. Like half of Altair and half of Nasir. Yet another revelation Sharr had given him—he’d spent his entire life thinking himself fully safin, thinking Nasir was half safin, despite the boy’s round ears.
He supposed he should be grateful he wasn’t too much like his father—the man didn’t even have a heart. The Lion opened the door leading to the upper deck. It was strange that he came so often to see Altair for seemingly no reason at all. His dark thobe caught the barest sheen of purple in the dying light, and despite himself, Altair didn’t particularly want him to leave.
The silence was too loud, the ghosts too real.
Altair’s mouth worked without permission. “Do you mourn him?”
How the living felt mattered little to the dead, but the longer he spent alone, the more he thought of the brother of his heart.
“I know all about Benyamin’s circle of high safin,” Altair continued, even as the words ripped through his ancient heart. “He took you into his fold against their wishes, and you butchered him with cursed ore. You know precisely how much pain he suffered in those final moments.”
The Lion turned back, cool and assessing. As if he’d been waiting for Altair to speak. “He should not have tried to save someone so worthless.”
Benyamin had never liked Nasir. Even in their years of planning, when Altair’s goal was to see Nasir on the throne, Benyamin had been against it. Somewhere on the island, that had changed. To the extent that the safi had decided Nasir was worth sacrificing his own immortality for.
“You truly are heartless,” Altair said with a tired laugh.
The Lion’s smile was sardonic. “I would need a heart to claim otherwise.”
For a long moment, he looked at Altair, and Altair looked back.
“The dead feel no pain,” he said gently, and Altair’s eyes fell closed of their own accord. Perhaps it was this show of emotion that made his father continue. “Your friends, on the other hand, knew precisely the pain you would feel when they left you. You put on your little light show, saved them, and for what? How does it feel to be abandoned?”
Altair stiffened. He liked to think he was prepared for anything. This, however, was still a sorely sore spot. He loosed a laugh, one of the many at his disposal. “You want me to talk to you about feelings.”
The Lion’s eyes glowed and the ship rocked, the slow creak of swaying ropes haunting in the quiet. “If anyone can understand, it would be your father.”
“I’m flattered,” Altair drawled, rattling his chains. He had filled this place with light the first night, before he’d learned what the shackles were doing to him. “But this is no way to treat your son.”
The Lion only looked at him. “They left you, Altair.”
Altair pressed his lips together. He would not give him the satisfaction of a reply, but the Lion, like his son, was dedicated.
“Knowing I would be your only refuge.”
Altair didn’t need to close his eyes to see them running for the ship. Sand stirring behind them. Nasir. Zafira. Kifah. His mother, who had never loved him. Not once did they look for him.
Not as the distance grew between them.
Not as they lifted the anchor on Benyamin’s ship.
“They took what they needed and left the rest,” the Lion said in his voice of velvet darkness as Altair bit his tongue against a response. “Without a glance.”
Not even as he was forced to his knees, shadows knotting his throat.
“Even Benyamin’s corpse.”
Altair finally snapped. “I was there. I don’t need to relive
it.”
The Lion did not smile. He did not gloat. No, he looked at
Altair with sympathy, as if he understood his pain. Then he left him in the dark.
Altair dropped his feet to the floor, and his head in his hands.
