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Among the shifting, flickering forms of the ifrit, Nasir met Zafira’s gaze. Her fingers slowly curled around her bowstring, the Jawarat tucked under her arm, before she dipped a barely noticeable nod.
Altair, too, was as perceptive as ever. He looked at the dignitaries—wazirs, caliphs, officials, and their families—wide-eyed and bleeding, and slowly rewound his chain. “I know I’m quite the vision, but I didn’t dash to your aid to be stared at. Yalla, Arawiya! Yalla!”
And despite the hesitation and suspicion breathing down Nasir’s neck, it felt right. Like old times.
He threw up his sword. Zafira unleashed three arrows in succession, felling ifrit as Altair swung his chain around another’s neck with an unseemly cackle that gave Nasir pause. A thud echoed behind him, succeeded by a gust of air from a twirling spear. Kifah.
Chaos had returned, a storm without reason. People screamed, charging toward the doors with ifrit at their heels, attacking without mercy. Men were fleeing, safin grasping vanity and failing in the face of death.
“Nasir.” Zafira was hurrying to him, the green of the Jawarat serene in the chaos. She shoved it into his hands. “Keep this safe.”
“Me?” he asked warily.
She lifted her hands, already nocking another arrow. “I’m wearing a dress.”
He stared down at the book, wondering if he imagined it judging him, and shoved it securely into his robes. The Lion shouted orders. Nasir sank his gauntlet blade into one of the silver-cloaked idiots who had joined the wrong side and melted into the surge of people escaping the palace.
Until he was yanked by the collar to a small column of space between the doorway and the corridor.
“All that time away, and you’re still shorter than me,” Altair remarked from the shadows. “How was the performance? Do you think my baba was pleased?”
The blood on his face was even more gruesome up close. Forget blood. The realization sank in: He had lost an entire eye.
Movement drew Nasir’s attention to a figure now clinging to Altair’s neck—a child, dark-haired and starved. The Demenhune wazir’s son. Rimaal, Nasir had completely forgotten about the boy they’d kept in the palace dungeons. Altair, on the other hand, had always been partial to children and their innocence.
“Was turning your back on us a performance, too?”
Or was it real? He couldn’t bring himself to ask, not when he knew in his bones that it was not. It could never be. Altair did nothing without a reason.
“I could have killed you,”
Nasir growled when he didn’t answer. Haytham’s son ducked his face into the general’s neck.
“What’s one more attempt?” Altair said.
There was an edge to his voice, a bitterness similar to the one Nasir had encountered in the Lion’s hideout. Chaos continued to unfold, screams continued to flay his sanity, and yet Nasir didn’t move.
He owed Altair an explanation.
“We didn’t want to leave you. On Sharr. By the time we realized you weren’t on board, we had already weighed anchor,” he said. “And we couldn’t risk losing the other hearts.”
He withheld the full truth. He couldn’t let their mother take the blame.
Altair considered him. If he read between the lines, he said nothing of it. “Just know that had I been in your shoes, I would have found a way to save both.”
Nasir didn’t doubt it. “That’s why I deal in death.”
“Only one of us could have the brains.” Altair’s eye closed and opened in what Nasir realized too late was a wink. He cursed himself when Altair looked away.
“Wink at me one more time, and you’ll wish you never came back,” Nasir said quickly, relieved when his brother sighed in his familiar mocking, exaggerated manner.
Nasir started for the crowd. Screams continued to split the air, shouts thickening.
“Wait.”
He turned back. There was a dagger in Altair’s hands, black from blade to hilt.
“Is that—” Nasir started.
