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“Rebels?” Kifah asked, taking the soggy sheet.
“They may very well join us.”
Us. Altair liked the sound of that word from the wazir.
“Depends on what they’re rebelling against.” Nasir was as optimistic as ever.
“But an army nonetheless,” Altair said, spreading the missives across the table. He stared at the map pinned to the wall, gray lines and navy rivers. The silver streaks of palaces reinforced by might and magic, the curve of the Great Library.
The Great Library.
Altair straightened and grabbed a reed pen. “Gather round, children. I’ve got a plan.”
CHAPTER 70
There were men who deserved forgiveness and a second chance, and others who deserved only to suffer for what they’d done. Caliph Ayman of Demenhur, the Jawarat said, was one of the latter.
Zafira fought against this claim, for she was a huntress and a girl, an orphan and a sister. Not a judge.
Wrongs must be righted, the Jawarat crooned. We will help you.
It was a losing battle against a bottomless, gaping hunger, a craving that could never be sated. This was h
ow the Lion felt, she realized, when he desired knowledge. When he wanted vengeance for what his father had endured.
He dared to sequester a child in such a way?
Zafira didn’t know if the thought was hers alone or the Jawarat’s. Or if it had simply found the vial inside her that held everything enraging, and drunk it. The caliph had been wrong for years. His lies had spread across the caliphate, had permeated the very fabric of their lives. What made this moment any different? What made murder burn in their veins?
Their?
We are one and the same.
The double doors were locked, white wood as pure as her heart. She laughed at the analogy. Open them. Open them? It would be a waste of dum sihr to unlock doors. In her thoughts flashed Qismah’s shorn head. Her downcast eyes. Zafira’s own hunched shoulders.
A line of red ripped down her palm, and the locks came undone.
No longer will we wait for change. We will bring it.
Resolve hardened her. The doors flew open. Caution whispered from the back of her skull, that viper striking fear slithering close, and she—
“Qif!” Two guards leaped to attention, shouting in tandem, but what sort of fool would stop?
Sharp pain burst across her palm and she threw out her arms. The guards crumpled to the ground, dead. Dead? She froze in her tracks, blearily studying her surroundings as if suddenly awakening from a slumber. Her bandaged chest ached. Where was she? Where were Qismah and Lana?
The sentinels merely rest. Look at them, bint Iskandar.
Her lucidity vanished, and she felt as if she were watching herself from afar. The guards were lounging on the floor, chests rising and falling ever so slowly, asleep as the Jawarat assured her they were.
She was led by an invisible hand down one room and into the next, large archways like keyholes that would never find their match. Moonlight flooded the space, solitary lanterns lighting her path to a chamber.
And there, standing before a platform bed resplendent in furs, was the Caliph of Demenhur.
This is atonement for our abandon. Be pleased with this justice.
“You,” the caliph said in surprise. “The Hunter.”
Oh, how she’d missed the scorn the men of her caliphate directed at women.
