We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

She frowned. The place was large, possibly two or three stories high, but bare in a way that shops were not. There were no tables heavy with trinkets, nothing fastened to the walls.

Sweet snow, the walls. Zafira averted her gaze from the depictions painted across the golden surfaces: men and women unclothed and deeply entwined in various positions.

A lazy titter drifted from upstairs, along with a deeper, rhythmic handful of sounds she hadn’t heard at first but couldn’t ignore now. Her splendidly slow conclusion cemented as footsteps whispered along the stone floor. A man dropped a beaded curtain and sauntered toward her with an indecent smile that would have made Altair blush. Possibly. Unlikely.

“Did I interrupt anything?”

Zafira whirled at Kifah’s slow drawl. The warrior leaned against the entrance, arms crossed, a single eyebrow raised as she looked between Zafira and the man.

“I can imagine it’s tempting, Alderamin being the caliphate of dreams and all, but—bleeding Guljul—try to stay focused.”

Someone might as well have flayed Zafira’s skin for the way it burned. She turned and halted the man’s languid, wandering gaze with a glare. “Stop looking at me.”

He froze. The lewd walls echoed with Kifah’s laughter, and Zafira eyed her with irritation.

“I heard a flute,” she snapped, as if that explained everything.

* * *

Zafira followed Kifah across the open market and down another alley, where a weathered old man watched. She shivered as they passed him, feeling his gaze on their backs until the walls pressed closer, swallowing the last of the light.

Kifah’s spear tapped a beat against her leg, quickening as they ventured deeper and stopped before a curtain, crimson and heavy. Zafira touched a hand to her dagger and followed her inside.

Bait ul-Ahlaam was smaller than Zafira expected. Darker, too. In fact, stepping past the curtain gave her a sense of unease vastly unlike her discomfort in the pleasure house. There, she had felt in control. Here, she was already losing something without knowing the price.

“Magic,” Kifah said as the hum of it stoked something inside Zafira, a fire that had begun to die. Dum sihr, for how else could magic exist in a place so dark?

Lanterns dripped from the ceiling, the four walls flickering with their light, wearied beneath the weight of all they contained. There were shelves laden with trinkets and contraptions. Tables tiered upon tables. Straw dolls with round shells for eyes, watching them more intently than eyeballs ever could. Sand that breathed in time to her heartbeat, ebbing and flowing yet contained by an invisible box. Vials that sputtered and grinned, the glass like teeth and the stoppers like mouths. Boxes and furs, fruits and books, lamps and jewels and a number of mechanisms Zafira had no knowledge of.

“Touch nothing. Question the authenticity of nothing, either,” Kifah murmured just as a voice came from everywhere.

“Marhaba.”

Zafira’s hand dropped to her jambiya. Kifah pursed her lips and gave a small shake of her head as a man stepped soundlessly from behind a table, his finely spun robes glittering dark green in the mellow shafts of light. His face was smooth and unbearded, ears round just beneath his jeweled turban. Strange. How could a human come into possession of what would have taken years to procure?

His dark eyes fell to where her hand rested, and sparked with interest. “May you find what you seek.”

Zafira opened her mouth to lie and say they weren’t looking for anything in particular, but the shop catered to those who searched for it, not to the random wanderer. Which led to another thought: If the shop and its keeper knew they were here for something, then there was no harm in asking after the vial, was there?

Kifah dug her elbow into Zafira’s side, telling her just what she thought.

The shopkeeper vanished behind another mound of oddities, and the lanterns flickered, darkening without their host to illuminate. The shadows whispered, crowding around them.

This was a place the Lion would adore.

Kifah left her side and began looking around, ghostlike in her calm. Zafira ignored the dark hum and did the same, wandering past a display of stained teeth. A shelf full of lamps. For wish-granting jinn. There was a shawl that seemed to change position every time she blinked, and a pair of cuffs that winked sinfully at her.

It settled a question in her stomach, leaden and dreary: What were they expected to offer in exchange for what they sought?

All the trinkets had one commonality: They were almost colorless, strangely bland, for they were not what she sought. No, what she needed was red, sparkling, housed in a silver vial that coaxed her as a bedouin to an oasis. And Zafira had found it.

Laa, it had found her. It was daama floating before her. The fine etchings on the casing caught in the light, geometric points housing a supple crescent moon in its center. She had seen that symbol before—on the silver letter she had found in her satchel so many days ago.

It wasn’t the blood of any Sister of Old. It was Anadil’s.

Next you’ll be calling me safin because I’m pretty, Yasmine drawled in her thoughts.

Was it too improbable a conclusion to assume the blood was the Silver Witch’s? She had been distraught at Nasir’s suggestion to come here for aid. Angry. She had spoken of the cost as if she had suffered the price.