Altair used that split-heartbeat of a distraction to lunge. He kicked down two ifrit and flung his arms, knocking two more to the floor with the weight of his shackles, buying him time when the fifth came for him with a stave lit aflame.
He tsked. “Baba never gave you permission to hurt me, did he?”
The ifrit arced the stave, uncaring or likely not understanding. Altair leaped out of the way, throwing up his arm when another stave came for his heart. It clanged against his right shackle before he wrapped his fingers around the ifrit’s neck.
Footsteps echoed outside the door.
Altair punched down the last of them and snatched the discarded scalpel and whatever other tools might prove useful as weaponry, pausing only to close Aya’s eyes before he crept into the hall.
And came face to face with Seif.
Altair wrenched the door closed on Aya’s dead body.
“Bin Laa Shayy?” Seif asked, pale eyes flitting to his missing eye and away just as quickly. “What happened to you?”
Son of none. Altair almost laughed. Akhh, do I have news for you, habibi.
“Seif!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Of all the places I thought I’d see you, the dungeons beneath the palace were not among them.” Seif was curt. “I came looking for—”
“I know. So nice of you to rush to my aid.”
Seif regarded him stonily. “You didn’t seem to be in need of rescuing when the Lion took Aya.”
Altair stopped prying at the seams of the cursed shackles. “Did you believe it? Did you truly think I would turn my back on my kingdom after all I’ve done?”
Seif’s scorn bled into his words. “What have you achieved? He stole Aya because—”
“Aya is dead,” Altair snapped. “And everyone else will follow soon enough if we don’t make haste. Now, stop scowling and help me get these off.”
“She’s dead?” Seif repeated numbly.
Altair ran his fingers along the black ore, trying to read the Safaitic engraved there. Trying to keep moving, because grief had a way of latching to the idle.
Seif only took one look at the shackles before he made quick work of them with his scythe and a few words. Altair stumbled when the ore fell away, revealing thick bands of red around his wrists.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” he mumbled before fire surged in his veins, threatening to erupt. He gripped the nearest surface and clenched his jaw to near cracking. His skin glowed, white light burning beneath like a torch. He would bring this place to the ground if he wasn’t careful.
Wahid, ithnayn, thalatha, he counted beneath his breath.
“Shall we?” Seif asked, but Altair had turned back to the Lion’s room, where he’d found what he needed, black and sharp, but hadn’t had a chance to steal.
“I have to get something first.”
* * *
After nearly a week on the road, the Tenama Pass finally widened to Demenhur, with its sloping hills and ablaq masonry, the technique of alternating rows of light and dark stone never a style he had liked. Snow still doused the land in white and cold, but the air felt different. Less biting than what Altair remembered. It tasted like change. Hope.
Hope, he had learned, arrived swiftly, seeking to bloom in the darkest of places and in the most harrowing of times. That was what he felt in Demenhur.
“We’re here,” Haytham’s son said softly, and fell against his chest wit
h a small tremor, the effect of a soldier come home. A gust of wind came at Altair’s back, and he was reminded once more of his twin scimitars, their phantom weights heavier than the blades themselves had ever been.
May you find hands as caring as mine, Farhan and Fath. He had overseen their forging, slipped the smith extra dinars so the man would carve bin Laa Shayy right above the hilts. He wasn’t just the son of none, he was a proud one.
Farhan and Fath had been with him through the thickest of battles. Farhan had won him a much-needed victory against the Demenhune army. Fath fitted well in a sharp-tongued huntress’s hands when she—