We Hunt the Flame(46)
CHAPTER 20
Nasir was seventeen when he had learned the sultan’s ways and the sultan had learned his. When Ghameq realized pain no longer worked, not when inflicted upon Nasir’s body.
For the sultana had ensured that her son’s body was strong, unbeatable, withstanding.
It was then that the sultan learned of the compassion Nasir could never shake, no matter how hard he tried. No matter how many times he murmured it, telling himself to believe it, waking up drenched in sweat, adrenaline pumping through him until he made sense of what he woke up repeating.
Compassion kills.
But nothing in Sultan’s Keep was easy, least of all death.
The first night after his mother’s burial, Nasir had suffered alone, telling himself that this internal, unseeable pain wasn’t endless.
The second night, he had sensed someone in the shadows, cursing himself for the hashashin training that made him so aware.
The third night, she had drawn near, the shadows one with her skin, her eyes aglow beneath a dim moon.
The fourth night, she had gathered her beaded skirts and settled beside him on the wall overlooking the desert dunes behind the palace. She, his servant, sitting beside him as an equal. He had been too shocked to say a word, or he would have said something he would still regret.
The fifth night, his lips formed her name. Kulsum. And that was when she parted her mouth and gifted him a sound so beautiful, a blackened heart such as his should not have been allowed to hear it. Soon, her lips parted for more than singing.
It continued until his father found them with her fingers in his hair, their lips breaths apart, her voice raw from the eerie tune she had learned from her own mother.
Everything after that, Nasir remembered only in flashes.
The two of them, stumbling down the wall. The two of them, first standing side by side, then one behind the other, master and servant. Dim torches, because his father loathed light. A blade, gold in the fire, poised to strike.
Her mouth parted. Eyes terrified. Body slack. Tears streaming.
Her tongue, in a silver box, gifted to him in the end.
* * *
The ship swayed as he made his way up the wooden steps. He had barely slept the night, lurching with the sea, tossing and turning, that ornate silver box burning behind his eyelids.
Love was for the weak, compassion for the burdened. If only he could rid himself of his heart and lose this infernal curse. It would make his father happy.
It could make his father love him.
He bent over at the rail, so engrossed by anger that his vision pulsed black. If his father wanted to starve Haytham’s son to death, so be it. If his father wanted Altair dead, Nasir himself would cut off his head. If his father wanted the Jawarat, he would find it soon enough, along with the Hunter’s corpse.
Nasir’s stomach churned with the sea, but he felt calmer. At ease.
The world darkened despite the early sun. The ship, the sea, the very air they breathed swirled with shadow. As Nasir tried to blink it away, the vessel lurched.
Altair shouted over the crash of the waves, and the world righted again, the shadows a figment of Nasir’s thoughts. It was rare for the general to rise before Nasir did.
“Oi! Nasir!” On the other side of the ship, Altair readied an arrow.
Nasir rounded the deck. The sea rippled in angry undulations, and his heart sped with a feeling he eagerly recognized: not belittling fear, but excitement.
Bloodlust.
The general didn’t know that his mention of Kulsum the day before was what had reminded Nasir of who he was and what he had been trained to do. That compassion would get him nowhere.
Altair studied Nasir before he spoke, and the cadence of his voice said he did know. “I think we’re meeting your dandan.”
A beast rose from the water, twice the height of their ship. It swayed, baring its teeth in a horrible smile.
Nasir smiled back.
CHAPTER 21
When Zafira was younger, the sky had been brighter, the snow magical. Baba’s stories would envelop her in warmth and wonder. Only now did she see the snow as a hindrance and the sky as a cage.
Even then, his stories were filled with blood and darkness, horrors and terrors. Whenever Umm scolded him with a teasing smile, Baba would say that lies would take his little girl nowhere. That was also what he had said when he put a bow in Zafira’s still-baby-soft hands and taught her how to loose an arrow. And so she was given the truth, even in the years when she would look upon everything with a veil of innocence.
He had told her of the Zaramese, who had worshipped the Baransea. They were sailors by trade, and being the brutes that they were, they believed nothing could stand in their way. So when the Arz stole the Baransea, a group of their finest men and women lifted tabars in their mighty fists and stormed the cursed forest. Arawiya laughed at their foolishness, but the Zaramese were determined.
They chopped tree after tree, the darkness thicker than any storm they had faced at sea. Some say the trees of the Arz rose even as the Zaramese felled them. But a will was all it took. They chopped and chopped. Felled and felled. Until they collapsed, triumphant, at the sight of the cerulean waters lapping Zaram’s blackened shores.
They never returned. No one knew if the darkness had driven them to despair or if they had dived into the sea out of relief. It was said that any who ventured along the dark path that had carved the Arz in two, intent on reaching the sea, could hear it: the screams and shouts of the Zaramese Fallen, courageous until the end.