We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

She looked away from the little crate with a surge of guilt. Was it selfish to think of her family? To want to see if they were safe? Was it selfish to choose the restoration of the dying hearts over her family?

“He who pays the coin turns the wheel,” Jinan recited, “and Effendi Haadi’s instructions were to come here.”

He’s also dead, Zafira didn’t say. She stepped into the boat with a sigh, and every bit of her came alert when Nasir’s knee brushed hers as he settled across from her. Pull yourself together.

They were going to Sultan’s Keep, where people would bow at his feet and a crown would sit at his brow. There was death at his hip and darkness at his command.

Still, her breath caught when the tender sun glossed his hair, when he gripped the oar as a lost memory ticked the left of his mouth up, crinkling his skin like the wrapper of a sweet.

And then he was looking at her and she was looking away, a flash of silver drawing her eye from the deck of Jinan’s ship as the boat began its descent into the sea. This was where they would part ways with the Silver Witch, she realized.

Anadil inclined her head, and Zafira was surprised to find she would miss her. Only a little.

The Silver Witch met her son’s eyes in farewell and Nasir seized, his mouth hardening. He kept every emotion on a tight leash, hidden behind the ashes of his eyes.

The longboat touched the gentle sea in the shadow of the ship’s figurehead. It basked in the sun, the curved beak of a bird drenched in gold, feathered wings curling into flames. A phoenix. Above the sails flew a sea-green banner, marked with Zaram’s emblem of a golden ax and three drops of blood. The oars turned rhythmically in the azure waters, lulling them until Jinan started up a chatter, her crew as eager as she was to talk about everything and nothing at all.

“How can someone so small talk so much?” Kifah finally asked with almost-comical exhaustion.

Zafira didn’t hear Jinan’s answer. As they crept toward land, a finger trailed down her spine. There was a heaviness in the air, a warning, and a hunter—a huntress—always listened to the signs of the earth.

“Something’s not right,” she murmured.

Kifah drummed her spear against her thigh and shook her head. “What have we to fear? We are specters, righting wrongs. We’ll let nothing stand in our way.”

“Fancy words never kept anyone alive,” Jinan pointed out when the boat lodged into the sand at shore.

“It’s a shame you’ve never met Altair,” Kifah replied.

Zafira stepped out first, but her unease only worsened with a smattering of goose bumps down her arms. She tugged her foot out of the sand with a wet pop as the crew began rowing back to the ship, their farewells loud. Jinan, as oblivious as her sailors, stretched her legs.

“There’s nothing I love more than the sea beneath my legs, but I’d be lying if I said this isn’t nice.”

“Akhh, little firebird. You sound like an old man,” Kifah said. There was an eagerness to her voice now that she was free of the ship’s confines. “Oi, why aren’t you going back with the rest of them?”

“I’m afraid you’ll be seeing a great deal of my vertically challenged self until I collect my silver. In the meantime, my crew will take the witch to the Hessa Isles and circle back. Not sure if a witch’s coin can be trusted, but the offer was too good to pass up.”

“What do you plan to do with so much silver? Buy yourself a stool?”

“Quiet,” Nasir said, and Zafira drew her bow in an instant, the taut string familiar and welcome. Kifah pivoted her spear as Nasir precariously hefted the crate under one arm and drew his scimitar with the other.

Sunlight winked through the shifting sands and abandoned edifices. Zafira didn’t see the hooded figures until something stung her neck, and the world fell dark.

CHAPTER 5

The lull that followed the deafening grounding of the ship’s anchor was infinitely worse than any silence Altair had heard before. Worse than the quiet that followed the anointing of a fresh corpse. Worse than the silence after an offer was refused.

Or maybe that was worse. How would he know? No one ever refused someone like him.

He recognized Sarasin’s dark sands and murky skies instantly. Though brighter now and the sands less black, it was the perfect haven for ifritkind, and foreboding laced with the hunger in his stomach. How had his mother felt when she fled Sharr after the Sisters had fallen and the Lion had been trapped, a new burden swelling in her womb? How had it felt to assume a new identity, to tell her sons that they were of safin blood, a heritage leagues beneath that of the rare si’lah?

Altair knotted the thoughts and trunked them.

He followed the Lion down the plank, swinging his arms to and fro and rattling his chains loudly enough to wake the dead all the way down in Zaram. The picture of abandon even as he scoured the decrepit houses looming near the shore, searching for aid while isolation sank into his bones.

Nothing. No one. They hadn’t arrived yet, or they would be here. Wouldn’t they? He knew Nasir and the others were due for Sultan’s Keep, but still. If he had lost one of his own, he would detour the world over to find them.

“They are not here.”