Zafira barely had the mind to reprimand her when she saw the dead body at her feet lit by the sconces along the wall enclosing the entirety of the courtyard. She snatched the man’s quiver and drew Lana to her side.
“I’m afraid the worst isn’t over yet,” Kifah said, joining them. Zafira followed her gaze to the hall window, where the chandelier swayed as ghosts of the dead snuffed out wick after oil wick. The gilded window frame outlined the dark forms of ifrit awaiting a command.
“Whoever broke that window needs to die,” Zafira groaned. She nocked an arrow into her bow. The arrows of the rich were less amenable than those of the poor, but how could she complain?
“That would be me,” said Kifah sheepishly. “Bleeding Guljul.”
Ifrit spilled into the courtyard. Zafira and Kifah put Lana behind them.
“What were you thinking?” Zafira shouted as shrieks filled the air.
“I thought we could climb our way out, but no one wanted to hitch their robes. Not even the daama men,” Kifah replied.
On the sandy stone of the courtyard, the ifrit billowed and wavered, too strange to look at too closely. Zafira remembered when, on Sharr, they had taken Yasmine’s form, then Baba’s, then Umm’s. She couldn’t decide which was worse, but she knew with utmost certainty that she was tired and weary and ready to lie down and take a nap. She wasn’t battle-hardened like the others. She was a hunter who gutted an animal and called it a day.
But what did the world care if one was ready for it or not? She took her place beside Kifah. Slowly, the rest of the Nine Elite did the same, hashashin and silver-liveried guards joining them. Even Lana picked up a sword.
As the first ifrit began racing toward them, she comforted herself with the thought that though she might not be ready for the world, though she might die this night, at least she wasn’t alone.
In moments, the courtyard fell to turmoil. The gates had yet to be unlocked, and panic built a suffocating dome around them. She paused with every shot, ensuring the arrow she fired was spiraling not toward a human, but an ifrit. A tedious task, for some of the wily soldiers shifted into men only to come up behind the susceptible and slit their throats.
Kifah cursed, and Zafira whirled to her. “Ghada. I have to—”
?
??Go,” Zafira said after a beat, and though she herself had said the word, it felt like a betrayal when Kifah rushed to her calipha and the Nine Elite. Zafira watched her leave, surprised to see Ghada herself battling ifrit with not one but two spears in her hands.
Then the ifrit disappeared.
All around her, people straightened in disbelief. A little ways away, Nasir rose from a crouch and Altair went perfectly still, a young boy at his side. A tremor shook the ground, loose stones rattling. Another tremor followed, and a third, almost like—
Footsteps.
“Okhti…,” Lana dragged out, fear high in her voice.
An unseen hand doused the sconces, leaving only the light of the shrouded moon. But it was enough to allow them to make out the towering form of a creature, winged and beastly. Made of the same shadows as the ifrit.
“What—” Zafira’s croak died in her throat.
“Elder ifrit,” someone nearby said. She caught a flash of a tattoo. A High Circle safi. “Far more difficult to command, likely why the Lion never summoned any before.”
The elder shrieked, loud enough to awaken every soul in Arawiya, and took to the air. It landed in the center of the battle, crushing a hashashin beneath its claws. A horrific stench tainted the air, dank and acrid, like burnt flesh.
It lashed out, toppling people who were too slow to leap out of the way. Moonlight flashed on the black steel of its claws, and Zafira shoved Lana away. She looked back at her sister but shouldn’t have.
She should have trusted Lana to stay safe.
An ifrit flung Zafira to the ground, stave poised to impale. Lana screamed, and terror gripped Zafira in a fist. She threw off the ifrit with a kick of her legs and rolled away from the lash of a stave.
She was on her knees when a shadow slanted over her, stretched by the moonlight. It was followed by a second, a third, and a fourth. Ifrit surrounded her. She turned and rose with careful stillness. Through her peripheral vision, she saw Lana too far away. She saw Kifah racing toward her, and dared to hope before a scream made the warrior look back to the Nine Elite.
Zafira understood with a sinking, resigned certainty. This was the moment in which their allyship had come to an end. This moment, when Kifah had to choose.
We hunt the flame, Kifah had said. They had hunted the light, found the good trapped in the stars tethered to the shadows. Who was to free them if the zumra was no longer together?
We are. Together or not, they fought the same battle. For Baba, for Deen, for Benyamin, for the sultan who once was. Zafira tightened her grip and stared at her foe. She remembered her oath: to die fighting. She remembered Umm’s words. Be as victorious as the name I have given you.
“Victorious until the end,” she whispered, and unleashed her arrow, knowing it was her last.