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“Only a fool would leave it lying about. Only a fool would know its worth and value and let another steal it away.”
The words were a double-edged sword, a shame Nasir was no stranger to. He could only imagine Altair’s reaction had he known how they’d lost the Jawarat.
“Both of them are with him,” Altair said, annoyed.
So why, then, had he been left to his own devices?
“How is our mother, by the way? Dead?”
Nasir’s wrists pulsed against his gauntlet blades, sand sinking beneath his footfalls along the side of the house. This wasn’t the Altair he knew. This wasn’t the Altair he had come to save. Nasir himself had been angry at their mother, disgusted even, but not this. Never so callous.
“Dying,” Nasir bit out. “Is that what you wanted to hear? The Lion attacked her with his black dagger, robbing her of magic so that she has no chance of healing herself. And there’s little chance of anyone else healing her, either.”
Something sparked in Altair’s gaze. Not remorse, but revelation.
As if that had given him a daama idea.
Nasir turned away with a growl. Altair had always been apt at needling Nasir, but, rimaal, this was an extent he never thought possible. Swords clashed, arrows flew.
Perhaps, if he had been his old self, if he had not allowed emotion to fester in his soul, Nasir would have been more focused as he and Altair made their way to the front of the house. He would have been quicker.
He wouldn’t have let an arrow strike his heart.
CHAPTER 40
Zafira’s heart stopped when Nasir doubled over. She turned in the direction of the ifrit that had fired at him, but Kifah got there first, spear dripping black. Get up, she pleaded to Nasir’s fallen form. Skies, she was angry at him—she didn’t want him daama dead.
Across the gauzy black, he straightened and wrenched the arrow free, and with relief, she recalled the layer of mail attached to the underside of his robes.
Then he turned to something behind him. Someone.
There, like the golden figurehead of a dark ship, was Altair. The sight of him threw her back to Sharr, Benyamin by her side and Altair’s raillery keeping them afloat. Her heart lurched to her throat. At some point, she had come to care profoundly for the general who had killed Deen by accident.
“Bleeding Guljul,” Kifah rasped.
Nasir looked at Altair with barely contained irritation. Just like old times. “Find a weapon and help us.”
Zafira paused. Perhaps a little more aggressive than old times.
“Focus,” Seif spat, ripping his scythe across an ifrit that had come dangerously close.
Zafira nocked another arrow and backed away, scanning her surroundings. The din was reminiscent of a stage—scores of discreet witnesses to the Lion centered upon an expanse, ifrit stationed around him. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be locked in battle with the beings of smokeless fire.
There was little chance of slipping into the house for the heart and the Jawarat now, but she was the compass in the storm—she felt her quarry draw near when the Lion did. The frenzied pull of dum sihr subsided in her veins, and she knew: neither the heart nor the book would be inside the house.
Laa, they were with the Lion himself.
When the ifrit converged, Zafira took down one after another, making her way toward him. The heat of their staves stung her nostrils, shadows winding around her arms and the bare skin of her neck. She caught sight of Aya’s pink abaya as she and Seif cornered the Lion, her pale staff coming up between a stave and catching the Lion off guard. Yes. Now all Zafira needed was to get in a single shot. Throw the Lion off-kilter to allow Aya time to thieve the heart and Jawarat from him.
“Fair Aya,” she heard the Lion say. “I had hoped to see you.”
Zafira stiffened but could barely see, despite her height. A ladder was propped against a narrow building rising like the chimneys in Demenhur. She threw off an ifrit and hurried up the rungs. What was Aya that the rest of them weren’t? Safin? Whatever she said made the Lion produce a laugh, demeaning and bereft of mirth.
“You’ve come to kill me.”
The fighting came to a jarring halt. The ifrit seemed to coalesce. Zafira held her aim, breathing down her arrow’s shaft as silence spread.
A healer. She remembered Lana’s eerie recollection of the boy who lay supine after the attacks in Demenhur, a boy she had brought back to life—Aya was one of the best, even without magic.
