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“I’m not either,” Zafira said, looking away with a barely restrained groan.
A safi narrowed her eyes as she passed them by; then another pair in turbans paused a heavy conversation to look at Kifah from head to toe, likely realizing that one of the Nine Elite of Pelusia was ambling down to the Zawia sooq.
Even if Zafira’s jambiya was nothing out of the ordinary—for nearly every Arawiyan carried one—the rest of their weapons weren’t as subtle. While others toted baskets of fruit and sacks of grain and fresh folds of bread, Kifah gripped her spear, the fire-forged point flashing. Zafira’s arrows knocked together lightly in a familiar song.
“Akhh, it’s not as simple as that, hmm?” Kifah said when Zafira didn’t speak. “I’ve never known love, but it’s hard enough between blood. Carving out one’s heart for a stranger and wishing for theirs in return is no easy feat.”
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t hard. She could open her mouth and words would fall as freely as sand from a loose fist. She would open her door and welcome him without a second thought. Talking to him was easy, even when he was silent. Touching him, tasting him, sharing a slant of shadow with him felt like the most natural acts in the world.
It frustrated her.
How could she explain it to Kifah when she could make no sense of it herself?
It came with another thought: Had she acted too rashly, leaving without letting him explain himself? Had she destroyed whatever fragile thing they had begun to shape between them?
They paused at a crossroads, and a man coming from the opposite direction slowed his march, eyeing Zafira. Ever since she had lost Baba’s cloak on Sharr, the difference between stepping out as the Hunter, thought to be a boy, and stepping out as herself, a girl, was glaring. A man could be out alone on any number of business pursuits. A woman? Likely something salacious.
“Smile, fair one.” The man was beardless in a way that said he couldn’t grow hair on his face despite his best efforts.
Kifah scowled in his direction.
“Anything else, while I’m in a good mood?” Zafira called back. His watery grin left a bad taste in her mouth. “Should I sing prettily while I slit your throat?”
He took a few cautious steps back, and hurried down the street.
“Men,” Kifah said, snorting a laugh.
They paused at the top of the road.
“Well,” she said with some wonder, for it seemed everyone believed the perfect time to visit the sooq was just after the noon’s heat had begun to wane. Rickety stalls filled the center of the cobbled square, bustling with safin and humans alike and an array of smells that made Zafira in
creasingly aware of how little food she’d had since departing Sultan’s Keep.
Shops ran along either side of the jumu’a, each one vastly different from the one beside it, as if they had built one and then another, and then couldn’t stop. Curtains flanked their entrances, bright and lively, many drawn and pinned in welcome.
One moment Zafira was following Kifah’s sure-footed lead, and the next, the other girl had disappeared only to return with several neat squares of mutabaq. The combined aroma of juicy mutton and the crispy pancake holding it together made Zafira salivate.
“Could use a bit more sumac,” Kifah mused, making a face. “And less pepper. What? I know my food.”
Zafira expected nothing less from a stoic warrior who packed her own spices for a life-and-death journey.
“Where did you get that?”
“I bought it.” Kifah lifted a brow. “Not all of us are penniless villagers.”
Indeed. But Kifah rarely acted like the snobs who lived in Arawiya’s lavish capitals, so it was easy to overlook the fact. Zafira’s shoulders curled. She had left behind their dwindling purse with Lana, for they and the Ra’ads had always shared what they earned from the skins of Zafira’s hunts, and she hadn’t needed money. Not on Sharr, where there was game to be hunted. Not even in Sultan’s Keep, where Aya provided without asking for anything in return.
“It was a joke.”
Zafira looked away. Mockery, she could take, but it was sympathy she loathed. Pity led to embarrassment, and that led to anger, always. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her stomach growled audibly, forever at war with her will.
“Oi,” Kifah said around a mouthful. “Have you had nothing to eat all day?”
Zafira shrugged, pointedly glancing in the direction they’d been heading. Kifah ignored her and extended a hand. Three coins sat in her palm. Two paces away, a poet climbed a crate and bemoaned the poison of love.
“Keep them,” Zafira said, hating the bite to her words. “I’m not hungry.”
Kifah shoved the coins into Zafira’s hand. “They’re Seif’s. To pay for the rooms.”
