Oh, how she’d missed the scorn the men of her caliphate directed at women.
The last time he had seen Zafira—as she stood on the ship departing for Sharr and revealed her identity to all—rage had burned in his gaze. Now, the wrinkles on his face were more pronounced and the light in his brown eyes had dulled. The regard he had once shown when he’d thought her a boy was gone.
She didn’t care. Laa, she pitied him and his too-small mind.
“I retrieved the Jawarat, and this is how you look at me?” she demanded. “Did you not hear of the Arz falling? Of the sands of Sarasin turning gold again? Of the snow in Demenhur fading?”
“And?” he asked.
That tiny word drowned in a lifetime of prejudice.
“And what? Did you stop believing in Arawiya’s restoration the moment you learned I was a woman?”
The caliph didn’t move. “Destruction befell the western villages not long after your departure, Hunter. Not long after you dropped your hood.”
Why was she trying to speak to him? Why did she think she could make him understand?
Because that is who you are.
Zafira froze, sharp pain splitting her skull. That voice wasn’t the Jawarat’s. It was Yasmine’s and Lana’s. It was Umm’s.
No, bint Iskandar. There are those for whom reason does not exist. Do you weep the loss of virtue when we have given you power?
The Jawarat was right.
“Speak my name,” she said quietly, in a voice not entirely hers.
He took a careful step back. “How did you get past the guards—”
Zafira laughed. “Look at you. Pathetic. Afraid of a woman.”
His fear was so tangible that she wanted to gather it in a bottle and relish later—laa. She was no monster. She didn’t toy with her prey the way a lion did with a mouse.
“You took the future of a girl and did with it as you willed,” she said. Or perhaps it was the Jawarat that spoke. Her vision blurred.
“Whom do you speak of?”
“Your daughter. All of Demenhur’s daughters.”
The caliph swallowed audibly. “Guards!”
Zafira started to laugh before a pair of guards rushed inside.
“Sayyidi?” they asked.
Both of them stopped short when they saw her. Their swords flashed in the moonlight, uncertainty at the sight of an unarmed girl halting their blows. Perhaps she would have left. Perhaps she would have been sated by the scare she had made, if not for the satisfaction on the caliph’s face.
The complacency of knowing she, a young woman, had lost.
You wish to give a girl her throne, the Jawarat told her. Circumstance favors us.
Pain seared her palm. Something bold and angry crowded her gaze, as if leniency were a concept she knew nothing about. She lifted her hand.
With nothing but the moon as her witness, Zafira brought down her fist. Agony split the room, the throes a song in her skull. The night bled crimson, echoing with screams.
This is man, bare to the world. Halved of his whole.
She was the bladed compass, honed by the Lion and wielded by the Jawarat.
She was ruin, she was havoc, and she reveled in it.
CHAPTER 71
Nasir and Altair barreled into the hall, frazzled by the scream. Lana came running from the opposite end, something clutched in her hand, but it was Kifah who shoved past them and threw open the double doors.
Her stricken voice carried from within. “Bleeding Guljul.”
Nasir halted the guard rushing to the room, apprehension settling on his shoulders. Haytham would be on their heels as soon as he checked on his son.
“Allow no one inside. Not even the wazir,” Nasir commanded.
The guard began to protest.
“By order of the true sultan.”
Ceding with a reluctant nod, the guard barred the doors as footsteps thundered down the corridors. Nasir pushed past Altair and Kifah and stopped short in the lavish bedroom.
Blood. Matting the gray furs, staining the white rug, pooling on the wide tiles. Three men lay brutally mutilated against cushions meant for leisure. Fates worse than death.
Despite it, he was relieved Zafira was not here.
“They’ve been—” Kifah stopped with a gag, turning to Altair and doubling over. “Cut in half.”
Something moved at the edge of his vision, and Nasir drew his scimitar as a figure stepped from the shadows and into the moonlight.
Feeling drained from his limbs.
Zafira.
In her hands was the Jawarat, a wicked grin in the dark.
The others froze, but she looked only at him, her gaze sliding from the disbelief on his face that he couldn’t mask quickly enough to the scimitar he should never have unsheathed.
Understanding dawned in the wild ice of her eyes, and they were back where they began in the ruins of Sharr. She lifted her chin, baring her neck as if inviting his blade.
Or challenging it.
Blood trickled from her palm, and an empty silver vial lay by her feet. Dum sihr. Why? he wanted to ask her. The moment Altair had passed the Jawarat to her earlier today, Nasir had seen the brightening in her gaze, the buzz in her limbs. He knew it had used her voice to speak, but he had never expected this.
Lana was the first to move. She darted forward and shoved a cloth to Zafira’s nose before she could react. Zafira fought back for barely a moment before she fell in her sister’s arms, eyes drifting closed, lashes fanning in the moonlight. Lana struggled against her weight, and Nasir eased her to the floor, laying her on the cleanest part of the room.
Her breathing was calm, unlike the riot inside him.
“I knew something was wrong when she walked away as if she didn’t even know me,” Lana said softly. She picked up her damp cloth with a trembling hand. “It’s why I brought this.”
Nasir brushed the hair from Zafira’s face. He wanted to tear the Jawarat from her slack fingers and fling it into the fire. Instead, he turned to the others still rooted in shock. “None of this leaves the room.”
“Are you mad?” Altair let out a smothered breath. “You don’t need to tell us. She’s our friend, too.”
Nasir was surprised by the relief that belied his exhale.
“But there is no denying what she’s done,” Altair added. “Killing a caliph of Arawiya is no small matter.”
“I’ve killed a caliph.”
Altair gave him a withering look. “In your right mind, you killed—”
There was a wet slide and sickly plop as one of the guards’ entrails fell to the tiles. Nasir’s stomach rolled. Lana peered closely.
“—a caliph,” Altair continued with a grimace. “In her right mind, she would never have done this.”
“He was cut in daama half,” Kifah said, frenzied. “They all were.”
“Pin the death on someone else,” Lana suggested, oddly calm.
They turned to her.
Lana didn’t back down. “After everything she’s done—”
“We’ll fix the blame on an ifrit,” Nasir said. “One we disposed of before opening the doors. It’s violent enough that the guards will believe it.”
It was far more believable than the truth.
Lana touched the Jawarat pensively, as if listening for a tune none of the others caught. “And there’s nothing wrong with her mind. It was the Jawarat.”