“They’re late,” Kifah deplored. “Two people—one of them wounded—against an entire caliphate.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Altair said wearily. Nasir was a hashashin. He wove through death like a needle through gossamer. He had to survive—they were only just starting to be brothers.
Kifah stopped pacing. “We need to discuss how we’ll proceed if they don’t arrive on time.”
Pragmatic as ever, except for the concern in her dark gaze.
But Altair had no alternative ready. That wasn’t how he worked. He chose the best for his plans, and counted on them to perform.
His mind—ordinarily endlessly calculating, plotting, scheming—had blanked.
He bolted upright when the door flew open, both he and Kifah rushing forward. But it was neither his mother nor Nasir or Zafira.
Only one of Misk’s runners, panting.
“The Great Library. It—it’s on fire.”
CHAPTER 89
Saving thousands of lives would never make up for the ones Zafira had taken with such violence, but it meant she was still there. That she had lost the guise of the Hunter, but the person her cloak had fashioned still remained.
To live is to falter, she thought to herself, and she would not stay down.
Light inundated her senses when she and Nasir crossed from Sarasin into Sultan’s Keep. Even Afya stumbled before her Alder eyes adjusted to the light. A commotion echoed from deeper in the city, and Nasir urged the mare faster.
Zafira spotted the palace soon enough. She wondered what Nasir saw when he looked at the glittering domes and the pillars lining the Sultan’s Road: his dead father, or his own throne?
When she looked at the palace, she saw—
Her stomach dropped. Sweet snow, was that smoke? The smell hit her next. Her surging panic was matched by Afya’s, and the horse wrenched to a halt with a neigh.
The Jawarat stirred from a slumber like a cat raising its hackles, eager for the unraveling chaos. But she sensed its struggle and hesitation, the need to match her emotions. It was trying.
People were running toward them, fleeing every which way as screams thickened the air.
“The Great Library!”
“It’s on fire!”
Zafira straightened in alarm. The library?
“Arawiya punishes us!”
Afya wouldn’t calm. Zafira almost fell from her back, grabbing a handful of her mane with a yelp.
“We need to dismount,” Nasir said.
Zafira slid to the dusty ground. The library. Baba. All that knowledge, all that history. The work of scholars, historians, poets, travelers—gone. She wanted to find the person who said there was nothing more powerful than the written word and shake him. Show him what was happening.
Not all were fleeing. The more level-headed people rushed toward the blaze two by two with buckets of water sloshing between them.
It’s useless, she wanted to say as smoke billowed into the skies, great wafts rising.
Nasir nudged her forward with one hand, still trying to calm Afya with the other. Zafira wrenched away. They should be helping, not running.
“Focus. We’re short on time,” Nasir insisted. “Afya, no!”
The fire tore a gash inside her. As they ran, she alternated between looking down at the ground and up at the smoke that berated the sky in angry undulations.
They stumbled past the gates of Aya’s house. As Nasir wrestled Afya toward the stables, Zafira saw men loitering in the courtyard. Demenhune. And there were a number of them. Good. One couldn’t put out a fire on one’s own.
“Zafira?”
“Not now,” she snapped. “We need to put out that—”
She turned when the voice registered in her head, the smoke in the distance doused by her sudden rage.
“So this is what cowards do when they lie to their wives,” she snarled.
Misk, beautiful and weary, had the decency to look ashamed. Laa, utterly and deeply saddened. He shook his head. “No—I did worse.”
The fight rushed out of her. Yasmine had said that he might never hold a secret from her again, and had Zafira been in her place, she would have found a way to forgive him outright. But Yasmine was different; her forgiveness did not come so easily. Especially when the ugliness of a lie was involved.
When Nasir returned with an unsheathed sword, looking for her, Misk’s eyes narrowed. “The Prince of Death is not welcome here.”
It was odd hearing him speak this way. It was odd seeing him at ease before a weapon, as if he were an entirely different person from the one Yasmine had married. He was a different person, she realized. Zafira had known him to be a bookkeeper, a man versed with scrubbing ink from his fingers, not blood. It wasn’t just a secret he had kept from Yasmine, it was a whole daama life.
“I didn’t ask.” Nasir studied him with a tilt of his head. “I’ve seen you before. In the palace. You’re one of Altair’s.”
Misk’s mouth tightened.
“Oi!” someone shouted, interrupting the tension. “Don’t loiter. Get—Nasir? Sultan’s teeth, it’s you! Kifah thought you were dead. Akhh, I’m hurt, habibi. You didn’t even spare me a goodbye.”
Zafira froze as Altair’s footsteps drew near, shadowed by those of another. Her chest was suddenly tight, but she forced herself to turn as Misk sprinted away. Kifah met her eyes and tipped her head in slow greeting. Altair gave her an apologetic half smile. Not a word was exchanged, yet relief flooded her.
You doubted the ones you love.
Zafira felt the urge to fling the Jawarat into the distance. You made me do it.
Altair’s features softened. “I was wrong to have left your side, Huntress. Forgive me.”
“Me as well,” Kifah said, stepping closer.
Zafira smiled around the swell in her throat, clamping her teeth against a mad laugh. She had judged others for less. She had judged Altair for less—for merely turning his back on them when Aya had.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said softly.
Kifah shrugged. “Eh, the old man had it coming.”
She knew that was not what Kifah really believed, which made her appreciate the words even more. Altair, Kifah, and Nasir lingered another beat, silence stretching amid the screams and blaze in the distance, before they began turning away.
“Wait—what about the fire?” Zafira asked.
“What about it?” Nasir asked.
“It’s quite a sight,” Altair said with a tilt of his head.
“Started just now,” Kifah said with a shrug. “Which means word will reach the Lion soon enough.”
Not one of them was concerned, or worried, or even upset at the decades of knowledge burning into the ether. Laa, they looked impatient. With confusion, Zafira remembered the Silver Witch at the inn, Nasir asking her to come to Sultan’s Keep, that he had left too soon to know the “exact timing.”
The daama Silver Witch.
“It’s … not real,” she realized aloud, slumping in relief.
“It’s an illusion,” Nasir said unnecessarily.
Zafira’s features flattened. “Thank you, my prince. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Altair snickered as Nasir’s ears burned red and Kifah rolled her eyes. Zafira immortalized this moment in her heart. This reminder that the zumra was still a family to which she belonged.