water his weeds.
Safe? In a damp, cold dungeon that would kill him before anything else?
Haytham opened his mouth, to beg again by the look in his eyes, but the sultan threw a single black seed into the flames. The Demenhune and the fire disappeared.
“Take him back,” Ghameq said in the sudden silence.
There were a million things Nasir wanted to say. A million words and a hundred questions. “He will come prepared,” he managed finally. Haytham. Ayman. They weren’t fools.
The sultan didn’t even spare Nasir a glance. “He will come prepared for you, not for an entire contingent of Sarasin forces armed without blades.”
Nasir froze. Slaughter and suffocation. That Sarasin contingent hadn’t gone missing; Ghameq had merely given them a new order. He was already commanding the army he lawfully could not.
The Sultan of Arawiya planned to have them suffocate the innocents of Demenhur’s western villages and make sure the caliph was among them.
With the attack coming from a caliphate, rather than the sultan, there would be no more skirmishes for expanding borders. There would be war.
The caliphs existed to hold the sultan in check, just as the sultan existed to hold the caliphs in order. They were very nearly kings themselves, the sultan merely stewarding them all. A fail-safe left by the Sisters to ensure balance.
What was Ghameq trying to do?
Nasir opened his mouth, but he was an assassin, and his hands were steeped in blood—how could he argue against the death of innocents? He pressed his lips together.
And like the mutt that I am, I will do everything he says.
CHAPTER 5
Zafira’s house was the last in the village and closest to the Arz, making it easy for her to switch between herself and the Hunter. Still, she breathed a relieved sigh when she snapped the latch of her front door into place.
A fire crackled in the hearth, and Lana was sprawled across the cushions of their majlis, asleep. The village news scroll lay in her lap, along with the latest edition of al-Habib. The periodical was worn and tattered from the many hands that had perused it before hers. It was full of gossip, short stories, and the latest happenings from around the kingdom. The faltering caliphates and lack of magic meant the editions were few and far between, but that only made them more cherished.
Al-Habib was aniconic and abstract, rife with calligraphic art. Zafira never had the patience for them, but she had always wished for depictions giving faces to the names, if only so she had an image of the caliph and the sultan in her head to hate. The crown prince to fear. The immortal safin to understand.
Light freckles dusted Lana’s glowing skin, and the orange of the flames danced in her dark hair. If life were simpler, Zafira might have envied her sister’s beauty.
She slipped out of her boots and crossed the foyer, digging her heels into the little bumps so she could feel the stone. Hanging her cloak on the polished knob by the hall, she went to remove her satchel and froze. A square was tucked between the folds. Parchment.
Silver as a crescent moon, crimson as fresh blood.
She threw a quick glance at Lana and pulled it out with careful fingers. The silver winked in the frail firelight. It hummed. Beckoned like the Arz. Her breath escaped haltingly.
Open me, the parchment seemed to whisper. The dangerous curve of the silver-cloaked woman’s smile flashed in her mind, and she turned it over slowly. Angled creases and an unbroken seal—a letter, reminding her of a woman who did not exist.
The words bint Iskandar were wrought upon the silver. Daughter of Iskandar.
A hammering started in her chest, yet she held deathly still when Lana shifted on the cushions, murmuring something about Deen in her sleep. Zafira pursed her lips and broke the seal, brushing her thumb over the geometric emblem, the slender curve of a crescent moon in its center. Arawiyan script scrawled across the page.
Peace unto you, esteemed one.
You have been invited upon a journey of a lifetime. To an isle where nature has no limits and darkness holds all secrets.
Why should you desire to venture to such a place, you ask? Oh, dear one. For the retrieval of magic in the form of an ancient book known as the lost Jawarat.
Glory and splendor. The past once more.
Your quest begins two dawns hence, at the mouth of the Arz.
Zafira read it again and again, finding it harder to breathe with each pass. The words coiled in her, strangled her heart.