We Hunt the Flame(50)
Not now. Not now. Not now.
“I’m trying,” she whispered.
The wall imposed in a cold, lifeless way, except for the brushwood sprawling at its base and the few wending palm trees fanning dark leaves against the stone.
“How are we supposed to get past it? We can’t scale it like daama hashashins,” Deen said. Zafira had half a mind to cross her arms and summon the Silver Witch. If she could be summoned.
Zafira didn’t trust her. Sometimes the most truthful words were merely elaborate lies. And if one was banned from lying, that was all the more reason to learn a new way of stringing words together.
A shadowed alcove cut diagonally against the structure. “There,” she said, pointing. “I think those are stairs.”
“What if we go up those stairs and find no entrance, Huntress?” Deen asked, looking skeptical. “Akhh, I wish we had a map.”
Zafira was the Hunter. She could find deer in absolute darkness and return home despite the odds. She had never needed a compass to find her way, and she certainly wouldn’t need a map now. She stomped past him to the foot of the stairs.
Something hummed beneath her skin, rushing alongside the blood of her veins. A boost of energy she couldn’t understand. She tamped it down and started up the umber steps, sand crunching beneath her footfalls.
And Deen, loyal as he was, followed.
CHAPTER 24
Nasir had no way of communicating with the phantom men as they anchored the ship at least a league from the island, but four of them stood beside a small boat waiting to be lowered to the sea, so he supposed that was where they were to go.
“I hope you can row, princeling,” Altair said, climbing in after him.
Nasir settled on the side farthest from the oars, making it clear he would do no such thing.
Altair sat on the other end and matched Nasir’s glare. The crew lowered them to the sea, and water lapped inside as the rowboat tipped with the weight of two.
“Oi,” Altair said with a huff, and grabbed the oars, shooting Nasir a withering look before he started rowing toward the island.
Nasir was crown prince of Arawiya. He would do no rowing.
The closer they crept, the more desolate Sharr looked. The walls of the fortress were crumbling, and all they seemed to keep out were the sea and its breeze.
“I hope you can climb,” Nasir said.
“Do I look like a monkey?” Altair asked.
“That would be a disgrace to the monkey,” Nasir answered, and stepped out of the rowboat, ignoring Altair’s mock dismay.
When Altair finally followed, he carried one of the oars with him. Water trickled down the pale wood and sizzled on the sand. “You think we should keep this? Could be useful for thwacking our enemies.”
Nasir gave him a look. “We will not be thwacking our enemies. What are you, a child?”
“Fine. Don’t blame me if someone else comes equipped with one,” Altair called after him.
Nasir heard the sound of the oar clattering back into the boat. He certainly hoped no one else came. The Hunter would be enough.
“So what’s the plan, if it doesn’t include thwacking?” Altair asked.
Nasir stalked up the sloping plain of sand, studying the stone structure as he charted his northward path.
“We could just see if there’s an entrance,” Altair suggested.
“Might as well find us an inn while you’re at it, and roasted venison,” Nasir said. He wound his turban around his head before his hair could burn off. “We need to get beyond the wall, then head south.”
“South?” Altair asked as he followed Nasir, his heavy boots sinking into the sand. “What does the compass say? Is that where you think the Jawarat is?”
Nasir did not trust that compass any more than he trusted the Silver Witch. “No, but that’s where the Hunter will be.”
But it would be a good way to test out the magical compass. Which pointed south.
“And you know this how?”
“Because, you inebriate, Demenhur is south of Sultan’s Keep and they would have sailed here along the quickest, and that means straightest, path. Can you not calculate?” Nasir said.
Altair lifted a single brow and pondered this for a moment before he began to climb, more swiftly than Nasir would have expected given his hulking figure.
“Getting right to business, then, aren’t we, Sultani?” he called down. A vulture circled the cloudless sky, already awaiting death.
Nasir felt the grit of stone beneath his fingers.
Altair would get his turn soon enough.
CHAPTER 25
Zafira reached the wall’s top with a sense of satisfaction. One hurdle down, only a thousand more to go. Or considerably less, if the next hurdle killed her.
Deen made a sound behind her, and she whirled to him. To what he stared upon.
Sharr.
A desert spread before them, its horizon shrouded in a veil of dust. Uneven forms of stone rose in the distance, gnarled by the wind. Dunes the color of dark wheat rose and fell. It was a sea of umber, winking beneath a generous sun. It was sand, it was dead, yet Zafira’s heart soared at the sight.
Ruins unfolded directly below them. A menagerie of stone with carved arches, and columns with trellised windows. Minarets dotted the landscape. This wasn’t a prison—it was a metropolis. Living quarters, the tattered cloth roofing a sooq, wide steps leading to structures that may have once been beautiful.