We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

Could she describe the sea as beautiful? Yes, very much so. But was that a word a man would use? Her brain refused to think, so she settled with a nod.

This close, it wouldn’t be difficult to discern she was no boy, so she held herself carefully. Haytham smiled, his eyes darting a path across her face—her lips, her nose, the hood that concealed the rest of her. She was lucky her delicate features were a commonality in Demenhur, and that—

“You’re younger than I thought.”

She stopped breathing. I could pass for a young boy. Albeit a tall one. Haytham opened his mouth. Z

afira swallowed.

“The caliph is an old man,” Haytham said finally, and she exhaled in relief. “He is disheartened over the ruin of our lands and the whole of Arawiya. He appreciates what you do for the western villages, but he has not had a chance to reward you for your deeds. This was not how he wanted to meet you for the first time.”

Zafira kept her lips thinned and forced a smile. “That’s all right, effendi.”

“Please, Haytham will do,” he said.

Some ways behind them, the caliph hacked a cough that rattled down to his bones.

Haytham looked back at her. “Did you know there is an heir to our ice throne?”

Zafira blinked at his change of thought, and unease skittered across her skin. “I thought the caliph was childless.”

“As does the rest of the Arawiya,” Haytham said. “You see, the heir is a girl. Cast away by her father, because how can a girl take control of an entire caliphate?”

“How can a woman do anything at all?” Zafira bit out, anger masking her surprise.

“I have always wished for someone to take matters into her own hands,” he said, an odd tone to his words. He studied her as he spoke. “To prove to our caliph that a body is only a body and that a soul determines one’s actions. Yet here we are, aren’t we, Huntress?”

Panic gripped her, climbed her throat. “How?” she whispered.

“Experience. What better way to allow a woman before tutors of politics and battle strategy than to dress her as a boy?”

Zafira thought of that girl, the calipha-to-be.

“You have made a place for a man who does not exist,” Haytham continued. “I will do what I can, readying the caliph’s daughter for her role by right, but if you can find it in your heart to embrace what you are, the world will be better for it.”

Snow flitted from the skies, and anger burned her sight. How could he impose that responsibility upon her? Wasn’t she doing enough?

“May I borrow our esteemed Hunter, Haytham?”

The caliph. Haytham froze for the barest of moments before stepping away, and the caliph smiled as he took Haytham’s place by Zafira’s side. Deen joined them, trying to catch her eye.

She ignored him. One moment he had wanted to marry her and explore the world, the next he was ready to lie down and die like an old man.

But if Deen had a death wish, who was she to stop him?

She had one to match.

The caliph caught a snowflake in his weathered palm. “I have faith you will claim victory over the lost Jawarat. We may not have the brutality of the Zaramese, the cunning of the Sarasins, the wisdom and might of the Pelusians, or the experience of the Alder safin, but we have good intentions, good hearts, and the two of you.”

Two men handed Zafira and Deen each a satchel.

“Salves, dates, and preserved meat,” the caliph explained.

“I have a request,” Zafira said quickly, voice hoarse. “If I may, sayyidi,” she added.

He inclined his head, and she took it as permission to continue.

“I-I would like for our families—mine and Deen Ra’ad’s—to be given shelter in your palace.” She kept her voice in a careful rasp. “In Thalj. And care for my mother, who is ill.”