We Free the Stars Read online

  Zafira had known the context behind that question, once. When she was an asset that needed protecting. A compass guiding his destructive path. What was the reason for his concern now that they had retrieved what they once sought, rendering her purpose—on Sharr, in Demenhur, skies, in this world—obsolete?

  Before she could find her voice, he was looking at the Silver Witch and gesturing to a dark trail on the floorboards that hadn’t been there before. Red stained his fingers.

  “So this is why the ship isn’t going any faster.”

  Waves crashed in the silence.

  “I can perform the mundane tasks any miragi can,” his mother said finally, “but time is an illusion that requires concentration and strength, neither of which I currently have.”

  “And why is that?” His tone was impatient, his words terse.

  The Silver Witch stood, and despite Nasir’s height, everything shrank before her. She parted her cloak to reveal the crimson gown beneath, torn and stiff with blood.

  Zafira shot to her feet. “The Lion’s black dagger. Back on Sharr.”

  Beneath the witch’s right shoulder gaped a wound, one she had endured to protect Nasir. It was a festering whorl of black, almost like a jagged hole.

  “The very same,” the Silver Witch said as another drop of blood welled from her drenched dress. “There is no known cure to a wound inflicted by cursed ore. The old healers lived secluded on the Hessa Isles, and if any of them still remain, my only hope is there.”

  “What of Bait ul-Ahlaam?” Nasir demanded.

  Zafira translated the old Safaitic. The House of Dreams. She’d never heard of it before.

  “You can easily cross the strait from Sultan’s Keep and find what you need there.”

  “At what cost? I will not set foot within those walls,” she replied, but Zafira heard the unspoken words: Not again. She had been there before, and it was clear the cost had little to do with dinars.

  The Silver Witch was not easily fazed, so the flare of anger in her gaze and the frown tugging the corners of her mouth was strange. Notably so.

  “Then you’ll leave us,” Nasir said, and Zafira flinched at his harsh indifference.

  “I will be a walking vessel of magic. Of no use to you, but of every use to the Lion when he inevitably gets his hands on me,” the Silver Witch replied. “With my blood and his knowledge of dum sihr, no place in Arawiya will be safe. There is only so much he can do with my half-si’lah sons.”

  Nasir looked down at his hands, where wisps of black swirled in and out of his skin. Almost as if they were breathing. His shadows hadn’t retreated like Zafira’s sense of direction had. He didn’t need the magic of the hearts when he could supply his own. He didn’t have to suffer the emptiness she did.

  Something ugly reared in her, choking her lungs, and Zafira nearly dropped the Jawarat in her panic. Just as suddenly, the rage cleared and her heartbeat settled.

  What— Her breath shook.

  “This mess began because of you.” Nasir’s words were too cold, and she had to remind herself that he was speaking to his mother, not her. “We left Altair in the Lion’s hands because of you.”

  The Silver Witch met his eyes. “There was a time when the steel of your gaze was directed elsewhere. When you looked to me with love, tenderness, and care.”

  Nasir gave no response, but if the tendrils of darkness that bled from his clenched fists were any indication, the words had found their mark. He loved her, Zafira knew; it was why his words manifested so hatefully.

  “I’ve taught you all that you know,” his mother said gently. “There is still time—I will teach you to control the dark. To bend the shadows to your will.”

  “Just as you taught him?”

  The silence echoed like a roar. Nasir didn’t wait to hear the rest. He turned and limped away, shadows trailing. Zafira made to follow, careful to keep her gaze from sweeping after him, for she was well aware that nothing passed the Silver Witch’s scrutiny.

  “Heed me, Huntress,” the Silver Witch said. “Always carry a blade and a benignity. You may never know which you will need.”

  Zafira felt the stirrings of something at her tone.

  “And you cannot return home.”

  Purpose. That was what she felt. Something dragging her from this sinking, burrowing sense of being nothing.

  “If you do, your entire journey to Sharr—including your friend’s death, Benyamin’s slaughter, and Altair’s capture—will have been in vain.”

  Perhaps the witch had always known someone with the rare affinity of finding whatever they set their heart to—a da’ira—wasn’t needed for the job. Perhaps she saw in Zafira what Zafira could not see in her, but knew from the memories of the Jawarat to be true. Someone like herself, guided by a good heart and pure intentions, before she fell prey to a silver tongue.

  “The hearts are dying. They are organs removed from their houses, deteriorating as we speak. Restore them to their minarets, or magic will be gone forever.”

  CHAPTER 3

  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.

  CHAPTER 4

  Death began with a rattle before dawn. It was soon deafening, the hold quivering so fiercely that Zafira’s teeth were in danger of falling out. The swaying lanterns showed her shadows that looked like the zumra stumbling to their deaths. The hearts, crumbling to dust.

  She tossed the Jawarat into her satchel, gathered her arrows into her sling, and darted up the steps, nearly tripping on her way. It was almost as if she could think clearly only when the book wasn’t in her hands.

  Zafira had spent the past three days thumbing its worn pages, struggling and failing to focus on the old Safaitic, which made her think the book didn’t want to be read. It wanted to be held, for its pages to be parted, for the swift curves and trailing i’jam dotting the letters to be seen. It was a notion she found herself able to understand, as absurd as it was for a book to want such a thing. As absurd as an object being able to speak.

  And influence.

  She wasn’t daft; the Jawarat’s whispers toyed with her, she knew, and the more she listened to discern what it wanted, the more dangerous her every action would become. It made her wary, for she held more than a bow in her hands now: not just the fate of an unlucky deer or a hare, but the future of Arawiya. The hearts that once belonged to the daama Sisters of Old.

  The problem was, she couldn’t stop listening.

  On deck, the rough Zaramese shouts weren’t heightened by chaos or fear, and when the vibrations ground to a stop, she frowned at the abundance of beaming faces and tired grins.

  “What was that noise?” she asked over the wind.

  “The anchor,” Nasir said distantly as she set eyes on the reason for it.

  The hem of the sea wended lazily along an umber coast. Dunes billowed inland, sand painting the awakening horizo
n in strokes of gold that reminded her of Deen’s curls and Yasmine’s locks, ebbing and flowing with the breeze.

  She swallowed a mix of fear and longing at the reminder of her friends. She wanted to see Yasmine, to tell her she was sorry she could not save her brother. To say she was sorry she didn’t love him enough. But as desperately as she wanted to see her again—and Umm and Lana—she couldn’t deny her trepidation.

  “Sultan’s Keep. The city that belongs to none yet commands all,” Jinan announced.

  Every Arawiyan child knew of Sultan’s Keep. They studied maps in school, history from papyrus. Before the Arz had emerged, a bustling harbor bordered the city and life unfolded from the shores—stalls topped by colorful fabrics, windows arching one after the other, minarets spearing the skies.

  It was all there still, but duller and lifeless. Aside from the lazy falcon circling above, only ghosts lived here now.

  “The people chose fear of the Arz over fear of the sultan,” Nasir explained.

  Zafira could see it up ahead, life signified by the stir of sand far, far in the distance, where hazy minarets rose, the bustle of the day drifting on the breeze.

  “It won’t be long before the population drifts back here,” Kifah said as the Silver Witch joined them. “Now that the Arz is gone.”

  The Arz was indeed gone.

  It had left disorder in its wake—brambles and twigs, rocks and carcasses. Barely a week had passed since Arawiya’s curse had lifted, but sand was already swallowing the remains of the forest. The dark trees were nowhere to be seen, almost as if they had retreated into the ground, Sharr’s claws—or perhaps the Lion’s—now gone.

  “Not an animal in sight, Huntress,” Kifah teased. “I’m beginning to think you were a myth.”

  “They would have fled inland,” said the Silver Witch.

  Zafira had known the Arz was gone ever since they’d lifted the five hearts from within the great trees of Sharr. Ever since the Lion had stolen one and the zumra had fled, leaving Altair behind. Every forward surge of their ship had been a reminder that the Arz, that ever-encroaching tomb, that dark, untamable forest that had made Zafira who she was, had fallen.