Triumph glowed in his gaze. “Now that is the reaction I was hoping for.”
Zafira huffed. Him and his extra words.
“You’re not in Alderamin,” he said. He gestured to their surroundings, where people bustled and the dry wind wove between the creamy buildings.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird cried. Zafira couldn’t breathe past the delight expanding in her chest.
Benyamin twirled his finger, and Zafira’s sight shimmered and settled again. She hadn’t moved—there hadn’t even been a stir in the air—but now they were on a balcony. Bereft, she reached for the cool, burnished railing and peered into the curtained room behind her, glimpsing a massive dining hall. Ornate chandeliers were lit with flames, the light amplified by mirrors. Engineering done by the Pelusians. Aesthetics by the artistic eye of the Demenhune. A majlis with cushions of deep red was flush with the floor, arranged around a gold rug, where a fancy-spouted dallah and cups sat on a tray.
She turned back to Benyamin.
“Then where—” She stopped. From their height, a scene from an artist’s canvas unfolded beyond the railing.
The sands glittered far below. Farther ahead, the sea—the Baransea, she realized with a start—lapped the shore with lazy waves. To her left sprawled a masterpiece of stone, a mosaic of blue pieced together to create domes that rivaled the clear skies. Slender spires ended in the diamonds she had seen throughout the landscape. One tower stood out from the rest, its stained-glass windows at the very top dark and forlorn without magic. The royal minaret.
“This is Almas, our capital,” Benyamin said wryly beside her.
Fitting that the Alder safin had branded their capital with a name that meant “diamond.”
“And this magnificence behind us is the calipha’s palace. Who happens to be my mother.” It was no wonder he carried himself in such a princely way. He leaned against the railing and tapped a finger to his head. “I cannot read minds, but what I can do is related to the mind.”
“Will you please stop baiting me?”
“Sabar, sabar,” he soothed, asking for patience. A breeze lifted her hair, the first time her surroundings reacted with her. “Not counting anomalies, you do know our affinities are generally classified into two groups, yes?”
She shook her head. She knew very little of magic, let alone the classifications of them.
“There are the Jismi, whose affinities pertain to the body and mind—seers, healers, miragis. Then there are the Ensuri, whose affinities pertain to the elements—firehearts, aquifers, blacksmiths. The wielders of light and shadow. Jismi use magic to pull from themselves, Ensuri use magic to pull from the environment. Like you, I am among the Jismi. I’m a dreamwalker.”
“A dreamwalker,” she echoed.
He nodded. “This is a memory, a fragment reconstructed in my mind with two additions: you and me. Minus the Arz. Seeing Alderamin tainted by those trees shatters my soul every time.”
That would explain why no one in the city was looking at her. “Sounds like a lot of mind work.”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Being able to find your way seems like a lot of mind work, too.” There was a gleam in his eyes when he leaned close. “That’s why it’s called magic.” He sighed happily. “I haven’t been able to session a dreamwalk in years.”
A bird soared across Zafira’s vision, feathers a dappled brown. A falcon. She had never seen a falcon before. She had never experienced true Arawiya at all, khalas. Yet here she was, in awe of a memory. The bird dipped behind a date palm, and her heart swooped with it.
She turned to Benyamin. “You said years. That means the last time you dreamwalked was when magic existed.” She stopped, eyes wide. “How old are you?”
“A little older than you?” he chanced, and shrugged when Zafira glared. “Twenty-three.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Plus, ah, one hundred.”
She stared. He twisted his lips and rubbed a hand across his stubble before growing serious again.
“You lived in a world where magic existed. You lived under the rule of the Sisters,” she murmured. That was more than ninety years ago.
“I was there for the Lion’s reign of darkness, too.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s been so long, I sometimes wonder if magic was a dream.”
Zafira could not imagine how life once was, if this was life in Alderamin now. “Why ‘truth’?”
“What?” He blinked.
“Haqq,” she said, gesturing to his bronze tattoo. There had to be a reason why an immortal would ink his own face, knowing full well he’d live with the inscription for eternity. “What’s it for?”