“Akhh, did I miss the party?”
Nasir closed his eyes at the sound of Altair’s voice, his real voice, so unlike the peculiar tone he’d adapted in the Lion’s hideout. The light waned, and as the ifrit chittered among themselves, Nasir finally saw him.
Only a day had passed, but it might as well have been years. Altair’s clothes were tattered and dirty, his wrists red and raw. A chain was wrapped around one fist, the end dangling.
Yet he stood as if he owned the land beneath his feet. As if there were a crown on his head and a procession in front of him.
Nasir pushed past a guard and froze.
“Sweet snow,” Zafira whispered.
A dirty cloth swathed Altair’s left eye. Streaks of red painted his face, as if he had wept blood. And Nasir saw in his one open eye what had not been there yesterday: Something in him had broken.
Altair, who loved the world and loved himself without humility.
“I told you,” said Kifah, a sob in her throat. “I told you he wouldn’t leave without just cause.”
Nasir ignored the pulse of his gauntlet blades, for a hashashin did not react to emotion. The Prince of Death did not react to emotion.
From across the room, the Lion threw away the two red-clad Nine Elite and settled once more on the Gilded Throne. There was something new in his aristocratic features, an agony Nasir hadn’t seen before. A torment.
The look of a man after a memory relived.
“Altair,” he said in greeting, as if surprised to see him. “How nice of you to attend my coronation.”
The rest of Altair’s brilliant light faded to nothing, and the ifrit abandoned their panic, fiery staves slowly crackling to life. The zumra needed to tread carefully, Nasir knew.
He knew it, and yet.
Something propelled him forward. Zafira hissed. Kifah stepped into the cover of the crowd as ifrit surrounded him, weapons raised. All Nasir saw was Altair and those bloody streaks. This time, the Lion was pleased.
“Weeks ago, you were ready to plunge your blade through his throat,” he mocked, though he lacked his usual certitude. “I merely moved mine a little farther north. Do you pity him?”
Pity was an insult to what Nasir felt. Rage. Pain. Bone-splintering grief and guilt for even allowing himself to believe that Altair had betrayed them.
Unless this, too, is a ruse.
No. If it was, he would rip Altair to shreds himself. Nasir was more than capable.
“Pity? The wound only adds to his daring character.”
The words were out of Nasir’s mouth before he could stop them. How Altair managed to goad and poke fun when in danger had once been beyond him. But now he saw how it worked. Altair’s face broke into the grin Nasir had been waiting for, relief easing his features. As if Nasir, with a scar down his eye and dozens on his back, would judge him.
“I’ve taught you well, princeling,” Altair called with a fake sniffle. Silence held, tension rising as the room readied for the next beat of chaos.
Among the shifting, flickering forms of the ifrit, Nasir met Zafira’s gaze. Her fingers slowly curled around her bowstring, the Jawarat tucked under her arm, before she dipped a barely noticeable nod.
Altair, too, was as perceptive as ever. He looked at the dignitaries—wazirs, caliphs, officials, and their families—wide-eyed and bleeding, and slowly rewound his chain. “I know I’m quite the vision, but I didn’t dash to your aid to be stared at. Yalla, Arawiya! Yalla!”
And despite the hesitation and suspicion breathing down Nasir’s neck, it felt right. Like old times.
He threw up his sword. Zafira unleashed three arrows in succession, felling ifrit as Altair swung his chain around another’s neck with an unseemly cackle that gave Nasir pause. A thud echoed behind him, succeeded by a gust of air from a twirling spear. Kifah.
Chaos had returned, a storm without reason. People screamed, charging toward the doors with ifrit at their heels, attacking without mercy. Men were fleeing, safin grasping vanity and failing in the face of death.
“Nasir.” Zafira was hurrying to him, the green of the Jawarat serene in the chaos. She shoved it into his hands. “Keep this safe.”
“Me?” he asked warily.
She lifted her hands, already nocking another arrow. “I’m wearing a dress.”
He stared down at the book, wondering if he imagined it judging him, and shoved it securely into his robes. The Lion shouted orders. Nasir sank his gauntlet blade into one of the silver-cloaked idiots who had joined the wrong side and melted into the surge of people escaping the palace.
Until he was yanked by the collar to a small column of space between the doorway and the corridor.
“All that time away, and you’re still shorter than me,” Altair remarked from the shadows. “How was the performance? Do you think my baba was pleased?”
The blood on his face was even more gruesome up close. Forget blood. The realization sank in: He had lost an entire eye.
Movement drew Nasir’s attention to a figure now clinging to Altair’s neck—a child, dark-haired and starved. The Demenhune wazir’s son. Rimaal, Nasir had completely forgotten about the boy they’d kept in the palace dungeons. Altair, on the other hand, had always been partial to children and their innocence.
“Was turning your back on us a performance, too?”
Or was it real? He couldn’t bring himself to ask, not when he knew in his bones that it was not. It could never be. Altair did nothing without a reason.
“I could have killed you,” Nasir growled when he didn’t answer. Haytham’s son ducked his face into the general’s neck.
“What’s one more attempt?” Altair said.
There was an edge to his voice, a bitterness similar to the one Nasir had encountered in the Lion’s hideout. Chaos continued to unfold, screams continued to flay his sanity, and yet Nasir didn’t move.
He owed Altair an explanation.
“We didn’t want to leave you. On Sharr. By the time we realized you weren’t on board, we had already weighed anchor,” he said. “And we couldn’t risk losing the other hearts.”
He withheld the full truth. He couldn’t let their mother take the blame.
Altair considered him. If he read between the lines, he said nothing of it. “Just know that had I been in your shoes, I would have found a way to save both.”
Nasir didn’t doubt it. “That’s why I deal in death.”
“Only one of us could have the brains.” Altair’s eye closed and opened in what Nasir realized too late was a wink. He cursed himself when Altair looked away.
“Wink at me one more time, and you’ll wish you never came back,” Nasir said quickly, relieved when his brother sighed in his familiar mocking, exaggerated manner.
Nasir started for the crowd. Screams continued to split the air, shouts thickening.
“Wait.”
He turned back. There was a dagger in Altair’s hands, black from blade to hilt.
“Is that—” Nasir started.
“Black ore,” Altair finished. “Why I turned back when you told me what had happened to our mother. It’s the only way to stop the Lion, and…”
“And?” Nasir prompted.
Altair gave him a thin smile, a beat of reluctance in his stance. “End him, of course.”