Across the gauzy black, he straightened and wrenched the arrow free, and with relief, she recalled the layer of mail attached to the underside of his robes.
Then he turned to something behind him. Someone.
There, like the golden figurehead of a dark ship, was Altair. The sight of him threw her back to Sharr, Benyamin by her side and Altair’s raillery keeping them afloat. Her heart lurched to her throat. At some point, she had come to care profoundly for the general who had killed Deen by accident.
“Bleeding Guljul,” Kifah rasped.
Nasir looked at Altair with barely contained irritation. Just like old times. “Find a weapon and help us.”
Zafira paused. Perhaps a little more aggressive than old times.
“Focus,” Seif spat, ripping his scythe across an ifrit that had come dangerously close.
Zafira nocked another arrow and backed away, scanning her surroundings. The din was reminiscent of a stage—scores of discreet witnesses to the Lion centered upon an expanse, ifrit stationed around him. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be locked in battle with the beings of smokeless fire.
There was little chance of slipping into the house for the heart and the Jawarat now, but she was the compass in the storm—she felt her quarry draw near when the Lion did. The frenzied pull of dum sihr subsided in her veins, and she knew: neither the heart nor the book would be inside the house.
Laa, they were with the Lion himself.
When the ifrit converged, Zafira took down one after another, making her way toward him. The heat of their staves stung her nostrils, shadows winding around her arms and the bare skin of her neck. She caught sight of Aya’s pink abaya as she and Seif cornered the Lion, her pale staff coming up between a stave and catching the Lion off guard. Yes. Now all Zafira needed was to get in a single shot. Throw the Lion off-kilter to allow Aya time to thieve the heart and Jawarat from him.
“Fair Aya,” she heard the Lion say. “I had hoped to see you.”
Zafira stiffened but could barely see, despite her height. A ladder was propped against a narrow building rising like the chimneys in Demenhur. She threw off an ifrit and hurried up the rungs. What was Aya that the rest of them weren’t? Safin? Whatever she said made the Lion produce a laugh, demeaning and bereft of mirth.
“You’ve come to kill me.”
The fighting came to a jarring halt. The ifrit seemed to coalesce. Zafira held her aim, breathing down her arrow’s shaft as silence spread.
A healer. She remembered Lana’s eerie recollection of the boy who lay supine after the attacks in Demenhur, a boy she had brought back to life—Aya was one of the best, even without magic.
“I merely wish to understand,” Aya said.
Zafira froze. There was nothing to understand. The Lion had strayed beyond reason. He had murdered and maimed and destroyed in pursuit of his madness.
“Do you think your husband thought of you when he leaped to save his zumra? Mortals whose lives will end just like that?” He snapped his fingers, and another ring of his dark soldiers formed, shadowy and volatile. This was a game to him. They were daama mice.
For all her dreaminess, Aya was strong. Resilient. She had lost her son and found a way to persevere. She had lost her husband and remained a member of this mission.
Lies. She was floundering, and Zafira knew it. She was troubled, and they should not have allowed her to come.
“How much longer will the old ways sustain us?” The Lion raised his voice, knowing full well he had an audience as malleable as they were curious. “How quickly the Sisters of Old abandoned their people, leaving behind despair and desolation.” He looked at Aya again, his voice almost tender as he said, “We are the broken ones. Victims of a world that continues to take, and take, and take. To what end, I ask you?”
Skies, the Lion was mad. He had been a part of the problem. It was because of him that Baba was dead. That Benyamin was gone. He had wronged others just as he had been wronged. The cruel cycle had no end.
And yet Aya brought her staff down against the ground. Zafira felt its thud in her soul.
“The time has come to shape the world into one of our own making,” the Lion said softly.
Zafira recognized Aya’s expression. It was the look of a person who finally woke up.
The Lion smiled at Aya as defeat crushed her shoulders. There was no cunning in it this time, only kindness. Not a single ifrit attacked her, and when the Lion extended his hand, Zafira saw her go still. Contemplative.
Barely three steps away.
“Aya, no!” Seif shouted.
Nasir was locked in battle. Altair was nowhere to be seen. Zafira sighted her aim. They were here for the heart and the Jawarat. Not—not this.
Two steps.
Zafira’s blood ran cold. The Lion’s mouth shaped more lies that Aya devoured like the starved.
One.
Aya smiled that dreamy smile and took the Lion’s hand in hers.
CHAPTER 41
Chaos spilled like a shattered water pot when Aya took the Lion’s hand in hers. Betraying them. Dreamy, beautiful Aya. Nasir saw it all, even from the distance the battle had carried him to. Disbelief and turmoil made it hard to breathe.
He threw up his scimitar, clashing with a fiery stave as it came arcing for his neck. He needed to get to Aya. Stop her. Immobilize the Lion and take back the heart. The hashashins unleashed arrows from their elevated positions, and bloodcurdling shrieks filled the vicinity. He combed the scene for Zafira, only to find her breathing down the shaft of an arrow of her own, leveled at the Lion.
Shoot, he thought.
She fired. The arrow soared, hope surging in him when it struck the Lion square in the chest. At last. A stroke of luck. He wasted no time. With a racing in his pulse that he was still growing accustomed to, Nasir fought his way forward. He heard Seif shouting, reasoning with her, but he was too far to signal. Nasir felled another ifrit and stumbled to his feet, wiping a smear of blood from his mouth as he ran.
The air stilled, alerting him to a presence, and he whirled to face Altair, whose mouth was set in contemplation as if he had a decision to make. Perhaps he did, for there was a stave gripped tight in his fingers.
And aimed
at Nasir.
The breath escaped his lungs, and the sword fell from his hand. His mind blanked. He couldn’t move as Altair let the stave fly.
It zipped past Nasir’s shoulder, lodging in the throat of the ifrit behind him.
Nasir’s breath rasped out of him, relief too far gone to summon. Shadows spilled from his palms, surrounding them. Not now. Altair looked at him strangely, eyeing Nasir’s fallen sword before he disappeared into the dark without a word.
“Wait—” Nasir began, but stopped short when a fine white arrow cut into an ifrit creeping close. Zafira. He couldn’t see past the thick veil of shadows. He couldn’t hear beyond the clashing swords.
“Altair?”
Nothing.
“Altair!” he shouted.
The snap of fingers came from a distance, and the ifrit vanished. Nasir stumbled, coming face to face with Kifah and her spear. Seif halted with his twin scythes in midair. The ground was littered with fallen ifrit and hashashins alike, a graveyard stretching between Nasir and the Lion.
The Lion.
Zafira’s arrow was in his hand, dripping black blood while he stood unaffected, almost unharmed.
To his right stood Aya. To his left was Altair.