Death wasn’t supposed to be so painful. Laa, it was supposed to be an end.
At least, that was how corpses made it seem. Yet Zafira wavered in pain even while she lay on her back, something sharp stinging her nose despite the warmth in the air. It reminded her of Demenhur, and how the cold never really left no matter how loud the fire crackled.
The only things missing were Baba and Umm and—
A string of curses echoed in her dead ears. Then: “If she doesn’t wake up in the next two beats, I’m going to slap her.”
Yasmine?
“I’m beginning to see why she keeps your company.”
She recognized that dry tone, the lightning-quick string of words: Kifah. Skies, the dead did dream. How else were her two friends conversing with each other?
“Aside from my looks?”
Dream Kifah barked a laugh, and a door thudded closed. Zafira couldn’t remember the last time a door had closed in one of her dreams. Perhaps the dead dreamed more vividly.
“I can see your eyeballs rolling around in there.”
Zafira opened one wary eye and then the other, blinking back against the onslaught of light. Only in Demenhur was light so white, so blinding. Everywhere else it streamed gold, glittering with enchantment.
“I—I’m not dead?” Her voice was hoarse.
A face framed by hair like burnished bronze pressed close, half hooded by a blue shawl. Warm eyes lit with emotion and
rimmed in kohl, rounded features cast in worry, beauty etched into every facet of her creamy skin. Zafira ducked her head, suddenly shy. Laa, fear prickled through her chest.
Because being daama dead was easier than facing Yasmine.
A sound between a sob and a laugh broke out of her friend. “You’ve always been a corpse walking. No one else could be so boring.”
Zafira looked down at herself, stretched on a mat, and remembered the shaft of the arrow protruding from her chest. The surprise she felt, even as her body succumbed to pain. How was she alive? How was she in Demenhur? Every thought tangled with the last.
“What am I wearing?” she asked.
Strips of gauze had been wrapped from the right of her chest to the opposite crook of her neck. The muscles in her back were strangely knotted, making it hard to ease herself up, but her dress was a bright hue of yellow, taut across her shoulders and a good length too short. It was no wonder she felt cold.
“You were ready to die, so I thought you might as well go looking nice. It’s mine. Khara, you’re as ungrateful as ever. I cleaned you up and washed your stinking hair. Cleaned your filthy nails. I should have left you out to freeze. That would have served you right.”
Zafira stared at her for a few breathless moments until she couldn’t hold back her grin any longer, yearning and jubilation and happiness because her friend was right there.
And then Yasmine began to cry.
Zafira choked on her pain when Yasmine wrapped her into her arms. Orange blossom and spice flooded her numb senses.
Yasmine’s sky-blue gown hugged her generous curves, accentuated her ample bosom. She looked regal. She had
always been regal in a way that everyone in their village understood. She was the sun in the gloomiest of days. The joy in the despondence of death. Life as a royal suited her, even if she was only a guest in the palace and leagues away from the suffering of the western villages.
“Lana sent me a letter,” Yasmine whispered, “and I came as fast as I could. You were—you were bloody and still, Zafira. So still. My heart stopped.” Her voice was small and shaky. “I stayed with you. Even when they said it was hopeless, I stayed with you.”
What was it Lana had learned from Aya? Only half of a sick man’s life was owed to a healer, the other to hope.
Zafira didn’t know when Aya had lost the ability to hope. “If the archer had been even half as skilled as you are, you
wouldn’t have stood a chance. You’re lucky you had Lana on the journey with you to stanch the bleeding and keep you alive until they got you here to the supplies she needed. She knitted you back together, commanding everyone like a little general. Poor thing collapsed from fatigue a little while ago.”
Of course it was Lana. Zafira felt a swell of pride, until Yasmine pulled away and she caught sight of the familiar walls. The basin in the corner with its chipped edge. The mirror with its fissure that always stretched her eyes too far apart.
This wasn’t the palace in Thalj. It was no palace at all— laa, it was a poor man’s house.
It was her room. She was home. “Why are we here?” she breathed.
“Apparently there was only one way to save you, and it was in your umm’s cabinet.”
Or in Alderamin, Zafira didn’t say. Aya was bound to have tenfold of their mother’s collection. Ya, Ummi. Before, Zafira
had lived with the guilt of not seeing her. Now every glimpse filled her with an aching, numbing emptiness.
The reminder that she was an orphan was a wound opened afresh.
“It’s strange being back, isn’t it?” Yasmine asked, misinterpreting her silence. “Like wearing an old dress washed one too many times.”
It was true. Now that Zafira had seen the palace’s smooth walls and the sheen on its floors, she was painfully aware of her home’s every blemish. The dark veins of rot creeping from the broken windowpane she never had enough coins to repair. The armoire with its doors that didn’t sit right, cutting a shadowy gap that Lana refused to look at for fear of nightmares. The doorway that Baba would lean against as he wished his daughters good night.
Zafira cleared her closed throat. “Was it Kifah who brought me in?”
“If she’s one of the Nine Elite, then yes. They brought you here in one of those fancy Pelusian carriages that travel unnaturally fast. She’s the only one who stuck around, though.”
“And the others,” Zafira ventured. “Are they … are they here?”
“Others? It’s just us. I left Thalj to come here as soon as Lana’s missive arrived, and that was before Caliph Ayman returned from Sultan’s Keep. So I don’t know if he’s alive.”
No, not the old fool.
Altair, who had materialized in a halo of light to help them at the doomed feast after turning his back on them.
Seif, who wielded scythes like the silks of a dancer.
Nasir.
Nasir. Nasir.
Yasmine canted her head, her shawl sliding from her shoulder. “And here I thought I’d never see color on your cheeks. Are you all right?”
Zafira nodded meekly, unable to meet her eyes for more reasons than one.
“The snow’s still here, if you’re wondering.” Yasmine looked at her hands.
No, Zafira hadn’t been wondering. She was thinking of Deen now, which meant Yasmine was, too.
“It’s falling less. The elders hope the change will be gradual, or the caliphate could flood.”
Deen’s name rolled to the edge of Zafira’s tongue.
She lifted her eyes and met Yasmine’s gaze that was every bit Deen’s. Sorrow stirred her stomach.
“I know.” Yasmine’s voice was flat, the stiff line of her shoulders cutting. “I’ve known.”
Zafira held still, trapped in a case made of glass. How dare you feel sorry, guilt demanded. How dare she, when it was her fault?
“I came back here,” Yasmine began haltingly, “after you left. And I was … I was lost. I don’t know what got into me, but I went to the Arz, because I missed you so daama much, and I saw it. It—flashed behind my eyes. As if I were suddenly elsewhere. I saw Deen jumping in front of an arrow, and the golden-haired demon who fired it.”
Zafira’s brows knitted. The Arz didn’t present its visitors with visions—it fueled their affinities, which meant Yasmine was a seer. If magic was restored, Yasmine would be able to see snippets of the future.
The revelation made Zafira inhale deep, and she flinched at the sharp sting in her breast. At the change in the room. The charge that hadn’t been there before. She had expected it, but
she had not anticipated the amount of pain that would thrive upon it.
“I’m sorry,” Zafira whispered, and the chain around her neck heavied into a noose. “I’m sorry I didn’t love him enough. I’m sorry he died so I could live.”
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry. Who could have created a word so callous, so insignificant?
“I would never have let him marry you. You know that, right? If your hearts don’t beat the same, what does it matter?” Yasmine’s mouth was askance and razor-sharp, her tone dripping poison.
Zafira held her breath, waiting for the lash. “That didn’t mean you had to kill him.”
Zafira stared at her. Her friend, the sister of her heart. It took every last drop of her will to hold her features still and stoic, to keep from falling to pieces. Wars could wage and swords could cut and arrows could pierce. None of them compared to the pain of a well-poised word.
“A murderer,” Zafira said, void of emotion, surprised to learn her heart could indeed suffer more. “You’re calling me a murderer. This is a new low, Yasmine, even for you.”
Yasmine crumpled in pain, and that was somehow worse. Because it meant she knew it wasn’t true, but she was hurting and wanted Zafira to feel the same.
Couldn’t she see that Zafira did? She relived his death when the light bled gold across the desert, when a stranger on the street smiled without malice, when she passed stalls of colorful fruit.
“I didn’t take him,” Zafira said, her voice careful and slow and—sweet snow, she sounded like Nasir. It was easier than screaming, pretending she felt nothing. It was easier to ignore the burn of tears, the guilt she felt guilty to feel. “I didn’t even ask him. He stood on his own two legs and decided according
to his own daama conscience, and if you expected me to be his caretaker, you should have given me a wage.”
Yasmine was aghast. “And now you have the gall to mock him. To mock me and my pain.”
“Your pain,” Zafira repeated. “Your pain. He was your brother by blood, but he was mine by choice. Did you think I was happy when he died? Do you think I’m happy now? My best friend is dead. My parents are dead. My life as I knew it is gone.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Yasmine asked, voice rising. She threw the pillow aside and stood. “All I hear is me, me, me.”
“As if you didn’t marry and leave us both,” Zafira scoffed, heat rising to her face. Anger clouded her head and made her speak so uselessly.
“He didn’t die for me,” Yasmine enunciated. “He died for you.”
“And I wish he hadn’t, Yasmine! I lived five years of my life with the guilt of Baba’s death. Don’t think I’m a stranger to any of this. Altair—”
“Don’t,” Yasmine bit out. “Do not speak that name in my presence. I know it’s his. Misk told me enough to let me connect the daama dots.”
Zafira had hated him, once, because of the notion that he had killed Deen. But when she learned that it was true, she’d felt sad instead. When he’d turned away from them at the Lion’s hideout, she’d believed it with a sinking, drowning certainty, but when he’d come to their aid later, his face streaked red, wrists raw and chafed, she’d felt remorse and contrition.
She loved him in the way she loved Kifah, and she could not fault herself for it.
“He is my friend,” Zafira whispered. Not the way Yasmine was, not the way Deen had been, but enough that her heart could not summon hate, not anymore. “And I will say Altair’s name as I see fit.”
Yasmine whirled, but Zafira beat her to it, clenching her jaw against the sting of her wound as she rose to her feet and threw open the door, slamming it in Yasmine’s face.
Kifah lifted her brows from the hall, where she would have heard every last word. “Already bustling about, I see. It’s good to have you back.”
She tipped her head toward the other room, Umm’s room, and Zafira found Lana asleep inside, beneath a mound of blankets, the soft pink one Yasmine had gifted Umm tucked beneath her chin.
“Zafira?”
She paused. Kifah never called her by her name.
“I am bound by duty to the Nine Elite, but I am bound to you by honor. Did you think I’d forget you saved my life?”
The events of Sharr seemed far and foreign, a story rooted in the past, an adventure that seemed less wrought in danger than the reality they faced now. Zafira had forgotten it. Or she would have thought twice before firing her last arrow.
“My blade is yours. Until every last star is freed, we are bound.”
Zafira warmed at the ferocity in Kifah’s dark eyes, her promise a harsh line across her brow. “Does that make us friends?”
Kifah laughed. “A thousand times over.”
And though Zafira would never forsake her friendship with Yasmine for anything in the world, even now, when she had flung as much pain as Yasmine had flung back, it was a relief to befriend someone as carefree as Kifah, as if her vengeance
had encompassed her so deeply that nothing else was ever allowed to fester.
“What about the others?”
“You mean your prince,” Kifah said smugly. “I meant your general.”
“Oi, I told you,” Kifah protested, and Lana stirred at the bark of her laugh.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”
“Laa, and that doesn’t mean you don’t love his grumpy brother.”
It felt dangerous to let the words simmer without denying them. A refutation clambered up her throat, but she swallowed it back down. She hadn’t almost died to live a life bereft of danger.
Kifah sombered quickly. “I see those bloody streaks on his face every time I blink. You know what’s worse? My first thought at the sight of them was What if it’s a lie?” She looked down. “I’ve never felt such shame.”
Zafira pursed her lips. The two halves of herself were at war with each other. Half of her knew that Altair had dedicated decades to this cause. To Arawiya’s restoration. He couldn’t have climbed up the ranks to the sultan’s right hand without an atrocity or ten. His every act was deliberate, done for the good of the kingdom. She knew this, and yet the other half of her was trapped trying to decipher why he had turned away when he’d had every opportunity to aid them.
“No word from anyone,” Kifah continued. “Nor did I see either of them when we were escaping, only Seif, who told us to head for the palace in Thalj to recoup, though he didn’t know you were alive. We had to detour here, and we’re lucky we had Ghada’s carriage to quicken our pace, but we’ll circle back when you’ve recovered, and hope they’re waiting for us.”
The moments leading to Zafira’s near death still echoed like a terrible dream, but standing in her old home with the ghosts of her life was somehow worse. The emptiness yawned, hungry and cold.
Kifah followed her to the foyer. “The Lion hasn’t wasted any time. He dropped the taxes, and so the riots have stopped. There’s even talk of a new caliph being appointed in Sarasin soon. It’s only been four daama days.”
Her words made it harder for Zafira to breathe, but they made sense, didn’t they? The Lion had created those riots. He had raised taxes. He’d refused Sarasin a new caliph. All so he could take on the guise of being lenient when he became king.
She loosed a breath. Lana’s stack of books sat on the majlis, the latest pamphlet of al-Habib at the very top. Baba’s coat hung near the door, the hook beside it empty, and she felt her cloak’s absence acutely. Four days. Zafira snatched a shawl and her boots.
“Where are you going?” Kifah asked.
“Outside,” Zafira replied, not knowing it was worse.
