“Zafira!”
She sat upright at Deen’s shout, ducking her head in panic, and she had to remind herself there was no man here to shun her. No za’eem to marry her off.
“I wanted to see what it felt like,” she said, grasping her cloak.
“Please don’t test your mad notions here.”
Her hood obscured most of the withering look she gave him. “Row.”
He laughed. “But of course, sayyida.”
She realized then what the wall was for: to keep something in. A remnant of the prison fortress that once stood glorious and imposing. A world within itself.
A world Zafira was not sure she would outlive.
* * *
By the time they reached the shore, Zafira was soaked in her own sweat. She swayed when she set foot upon the sand. The grains shifted and sank, a living thing beneath her, swallowing all pockets of space.
There’s sand beneath my boots, Baba. Something stung in her eyes.
She stumbled forward, slowly understanding how to dance to the tune of the sand. The shift and the sink. Once that hurdle was over, the grains scorched her feet through her soles and her gloves suffocated. She shoved them into her satchel.
“You should remove your cloak, too,” Deen said, a hand to his brow as he surveyed the wall. He squinted at her. “This is just the beginning. If my understanding is correct, there’s a desert beyond the stone.” He handed her a vial with a questionable green tint, and she recognized the bottle from his parents’ apothecary trunk. “We’re not weathered enough for this sun.”
She rubbed the salve on her skin, thinking of Yasmine. Of Lana’s parting sob. Of the odd bout of nervousness that came over Haytham yesterday as he stared into the horizon in anxious anticipation. As if he were waiting for something worse than the Arz.
“Zafira.” Deen’s voice was soft. “Don’t start down that path. Not now.”
Not now. Not now. Not now.
“I’m trying,” she whispered.
The wall imposed in a cold, lifeless way, except for the brushwood sprawling at its base and the few wending palm trees fanning dark leaves against the stone.
“How are we supposed to get past it? We can’t scale it like daama hashashins,” Deen said. Zafira had half a mind to cross her arms and summon the Silver Witch. If she could be summoned.
Zafira didn’t trust her. Sometimes the most truthful words were merely elaborate lies. And if one was banned from lying, that was all the more reason to learn a new way of stringing words together.
A shadowed alcove cut diagonally against the structure. “There,” she said, pointing. “I think those are stairs.”
“What if we go up those stairs and find no entrance, Huntress?” Deen asked, looking skeptical. “Akhh, I wish we had a map.”
Zafira was the Hunter. She could find deer in absolute darkness and return home despite the odds. She had never needed a compass to find her way, and she certainly wouldn’t need a map now. She stomped past him to the foot of the stairs.
Something hummed beneath her skin, rushing alongside the blood of her veins. A boost of energy she couldn’t understand. She tamped it down and started up the umber steps, sand crunching beneath her footfalls.
And Deen, loyal as he was, followed.
CHAPTER 24
Nasir had no way of communicating with the phantom men as they anchored the ship at least a league from the island, but four of them stood beside a small boat waiting to be lowered to the sea, so he supposed that was where they were to go.
“I hope you can row, princeling,” Altair said, climbing in after him.
Nasir settled on the side farthest from the oars, making it clear he would do no such thing.
Altair sat on the other end and matched Nasir’s glare. The crew lowered them to the sea, and water lapped inside as the rowboat tipped with the weight of two.