She was on a fishing boat. A dhow. The sails billowed in a breeze that teased her tongue with salt, a blood-red diamond centered on the beige cloth.
Ululations broke the hush of the azure waves, and Zafira swiveled to a fisherman reeling in a net full of thrashing fish. They slipped and slid, their slaps atop the polished wood a soundless scream for salvation. She had never seen live fish before, but she pitied them, for their suffering ended with suffocation rather than a hunter’s clean cut.
There were five shirtless men on board, plummy brown skin glistening with sweat, heads bound with sienna turbans. What was it with Arawiyan men and their shirts? They wore rough-cloth sirwal, muscled arms ten times larger than hers; they’d even put Altair to shame.
None of them looked at her—one stepped over the plank she sat on without a glance her way. It reminded her of the Silver Witch’s phantom sailors, and an icy finger trailed her spine.
“Yaa, land!” a fisherman cried. The others echoed his jubilation.
The land they’d sighted drew closer with every beat of her heart. Until it was there. Here. Before her.
And her heart clenched at the magnificence of it all.
Faceted domes gleamed in a gold that warred with the sun; diamond-tipped spires and minarets speared the cloud-dusted sky. The domes nestled buildings of creamy stone, doors welcoming, windows open. Some were connected with ropes in bursts of color, clothes left to dry upon them wrinkled and stiff. Date trees dotted the landscape, reddish clusters of fruit tucked amid the fanning leaves.
People roamed the streets, dressed in an array of colorful gowns and thobes, some with tunics atop sirwal, turbans or scarves embellishing their heads. Some guided grinning camels carrying rolls of cloth. There were people of every shade—the deep brown of Pelusia, the pale of Demenhur, the copper and olive of Sarasin—though the majority were shades of the desert, gleaming with the heat of the sun.
This was nothing like the sands of Sharr, which whispered of ruin and sorrow. This sand sprawled over the ground the way snow did in Demenhur. It churned with the feet wading through it. It clung to the alabaster walls. It was everywhere.
Where am I?
“I was beginning to think you would never ask.”
Zafira’s vision faltered before she could turn toward the voice. When it righted, she was no longer on the dhow but on land.
She turned a full circle, noting the people who shuffled along, some hurrying, others moving slowly and leisurely. No one acknowledged her existence.
It was almost as if she didn’t exist at all.
A camel chewing on a reed sauntered past, and Zafira searched for a flash of silver among the crowd, a cloak that hooded bone-white hair and a crimso
n smile, but her searching brought her to a different pair of eyes, umber, feline, and lazy. Half a fig in his hand.
Benyamin leaned against a date palm, dappled sunlight splotching his skin. He was overdressed as always: a black robe decked with gold over a white thobe, a checkered keffiyah on his head, calfskin sandals on his feet.
“You can read minds,” she said.
He tilted his head and licked the remains of the fig from his fingers. “That would be a silly affinity, laa? And quite a pain, if you really pondered upon it. Alas, you asked the question aloud, Huntress.”
Had she? She couldn’t recall. “Just tell me where I am.”
Benyamin carefully tugged at the keffiyah, adjusting it beneath a black circlet before he pushed away from the tree and sauntered toward her with sinuous grace. She found it surprising he didn’t have a tail to curl around his feet.
“This is the Arawiya of old. Before the snows blanketed Demenhur, before the sands of Sarasin darkened and Zaram was cut off from the sea. Before the ever-fertile lands of Pelusia were sickened, dulling their great minds.”
“This?” she whispered. It was a desert, it was almost exactly like Sharr, but it throbbed with life. The people were exuberant, the architecture astounding, and the climate warmed every fiber of her being. This Arawiya was alive. This was true Arawiya, before the Sisters’ final battle with the Lion of the Night swept aberration across the kingdom like a plague. “I’m in the past?”
He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Quite current, I’m afraid. This is Alderamin.”
She sniffed. “So you brought me here to shove your privilege in my face?”
He tilted his head again, this time meeting her eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask how you got to Alderamin?”
“That was my next question,” she snapped, suddenly annoyed.
She had merely momentarily forgotten. Because she was in Alderamin, the caliphate of dreams. Of everything everywhere else was not.
His question settled on her shoulders. Laa, it slapped her in the face, and her breath froze. “How did I get to Alderamin?”