As if he could glean the same wonder just by looking at her.
Her fingers fluttered at her side. Skies, she missed him.
“This is where we part ways,” Seif said, holding the heart with care. “See that caravanserai with the stained-glass window? We’ll meet there at sundown.”
The window was impossible to miss: it was massive, more akin to an entrance for a giant, florals made of stone holding the arching glass within interlacing clutches. Kifah brought the horse to a stop. “Is that all the time it’ll take for you to restore the heart in Almas and return?”
“Safin,” was all Seif said as he mounted the horse and turned in the direction of Alderamin’s capital. He had recovered every last drop of his vanity now that his robes were dried, and he eyed the road ahead with such indifference, it felt offensive. Safin were quick, but that quick?
“And Bait ul-Ahlaam?” Zafira asked as the locals began to take interest. The people here might hail from around the kingdom, but they lived here. She knew the ferocity with which a village looked after their own. She respected it.
Seif pursed his lips. “It must find you.”
And then the bastard left them.
“Oi! What does that mean? Come back!” Kifah snarled. More people had wandered out of their houses to watch them, curiosity torching the air. They had lived near the border, near the encroaching Arz. Visitors were rare, if any. Kifah noticed them and turned a slow circle, baring her teeth. “What?”
Mothers tucked children into their skirts. Fathers eyed the spear in Kifah’s hand and the arrows slung on Zafira’s back, Baba’s jambiya with its worn hilt at her waist.
“Maybe we should start moving,” Zafira said gently.
Kifah glared at her. “Oh? Where?”
Zafira looked about, as if the elusive shop would wave a hand and beckon her over. Wherever it was, they’d have to find it on foot, since their horses had been devoured by the marids. Skies, couldn’t Lana have told them more? Even a descriptor from the book she had found it in would have helped.
“The sooq,” a man said, stepping forward and gesturing up the road. He was human, his wide-knuckled hands gripping a bucket of water from the well the houses were clustered around. The woman with him, shrewd-eyed with a basket of wrung-out clothes clutched to her side, glared at him, as if there were ill to be had in aiding two weary travelers. Her eyes narrowed on Zafira, straying to her jambiya and then, strangely, to Deen’s ring.
“It calls to those who need it,” the man said, setting his bucket on a ledge.
“To those willing to pay the price,” the woman added sharply.
Several others clucked their tongues and murmured, whether in agreement to her words or in protest of her hostility, Zafira did not know.
She inclined her head, ignoring the cold fingers down her spine. “Shukrun.”
* * *
Kifah grew less enthused the longer they walked. The town was called Zawia, for the way it curved around the splendor of Almas. It was a charming place unlike the slums that typically surrounded capitals and other major cities. As Zafira gaped at every new street, structure, and scene, uncaring of the burn in her tired calves, Kifah’s gaze turned pensive, trained on the sands they stirred with their footfalls. She didn’t even look up when a girl in an abaya as red as her hair ran up to them with a shy smile and handed Zafira a white-petaled flower. The child’s ears were elongated, the points tender and precious, and Zafira stared as she skipped away.
“Did you see her?” she breathed. Sunlight lit the little safi’s hair aflame before she disappeared between two houses.
Kifah replied with a distracted grunt.
“What is it?” Zafira asked.
“If it calls to those who need it, I’m not sure it’s so great a place anymore,” Kifah replied without preamble.
Zafira paused, twirling the flower’s thin stem between her fingers. The petals cupped morsels of the sun. She had never encountered this Kifah before, weighted by uncertainty and quick to refute.
“Is this about your father?” Zafira asked.
The whip of her spear quickened, answer enough. Zafira remembered that Bait ul-Ahlaam was a place Kifah’s father had frequented. Did it call to monsters in need of its wares?
“I know how they work, people like him. They win the hearts of men, eat the souls of women. Flash a smile as sweet as milk here, rip fragile limbs apart there. Dote on one daughter outside, ruin another inside.” Kifah’s exhale stuttered.
As lonely as Zafira felt, she could not even begin to understand the depths of Kifah’s loneliness. To be abused by her father. To have her brother punished to death for protecting her. To own nothing but the spear in her hands and the desire for vengeance in her veins.
“Forgive me,” Kifah murmured.
“No,” Zafira whispered harshly. “You said you’re beginning to love our zumra the way you loved Tamim. Tell me.”
Kifah’s brow smoothed at the words. Her spear stopped moving. “That’s all there is.”
Zafira smiled, but she understood Kifah’s apprehension. It was why she’d felt a chill down her spine at the Alder woman’s ominous words. “I don’t think we’ll leave the shop describing it as ethical or virtuous. You can’t believe the Sisters filled vials with blood and labeled them for sale.” She gripped Deen’s chain and remembered the Silver Witch’s anger, Seif’s trepidation. “I have a feeling it calls to those ready to pay the price.”
Kifah was silent, and Zafira felt the sting of perspiration along her brow. Had she been callous? Too quick to brush away Kifah’s heavy words?
“You know what I hate?” Kifah asked, giving her a look. “When other people make sense.”
Zafira swallowed her relief, pulse still drumming in her ears. “A simple ‘Yes, my queen, you’re right,’ would suffice.”
Kifah cracked a laugh. “Already wearing the crown, I see.”
“What do you—”
Oh.
They reached the top of the street, where reed-thin buildings rose neatly to the cloud-dusted skies, windows cut in alluring latticework, stone shaped in eight-pointed stars. Beyond them, the sooq stretched in a patchwork of color and bustle as far as she could see.
Zafira hurried beneath the slanting shadows of the buildings to hide the burn of her skin. Whoever said Demenhune didn’t blush was a terrible liar. “I didn’t—that wasn’t what—” She gave up.
“I didn’t think you were serious,” Kifah assured, loping beside her. “But don’t tell me it’s as impossible a future as it was two moons ago. Being queen.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s the prince,” Kifah reminded her, though not unkindly. “And quite the eyeful at that. Tall, dark, brooding. Very fit.”
Zafira closed her fingers around Baba’s jambiya, knuckles white. “Do you think I’d abandon my life and my family for a jeweled chair?”
What life? a voice in her head asked. What family?
“That’s for you to answer,” Kifah said, grinning and unaware. “I’m not the one falling in love with him.”
“I’m not either,” Zafira said, looking away with a barely restrained groan.