We Hunt the Flame(63)

“What happened to their shirts?” the Huntress asked, shrinking back.

“They aren’t wearing any,” Altair explained candidly.

“I can see that,” she sputtered, and threw Nasir a sharp glance when he drew his sword. “What are you doing? They’re human.”

“Safin,” Nasir corrected with a cant of his head. “And I can assure you, they are not the friendly type.”

Altair flexed his arms. “Safin won’t live here willingly, and the only unwilling reason to be here is if they were locked in cells, which I would bet a pot of qahwa they were. So grab an arrow, Huntress.”

Only Altair valued bitter coffee so much.

“Safin,” she murmured with a touch of awe. “Maybe they just want to go free. We don’t have to kill them.”

Was she really so cloistered?

“Kill or be killed,” Nasir contended. “There are three of us and five of them. Whether you help or not, they will die. I’m merely giving you a choice of involvement, and no one would be surprised if you stepped aside.” He allowed himself a smirk when he added, “Safin can be very scary.”

She unleashed a string of curses, damning him to the Wastes.

The laugh that crept up his throat terrified him.

“I could have you killed for that,” he murmured.

She looked stricken for no more than a heartbeat. “I’ve defied the odds long enough to know I won’t die for blaspheming a prince.”

Then she nocked an arrow and breathed down its shaft, utterly uncaring. It almost made him smile.

The five safin stopped before them, scimitars studded with the copper of rust.

Altair spoke first, his voice cutting the tense air. “You don’t happen to know where the nearest inn is, do you?”

“And here I thought you had come to save us,” the one in the center said. Though he spoke with the signature mocking tone of his people, his words lacked Alderamin’s annoyingly slow lilt.

“You were imprisoned here for a reason,” Nasir said, though he didn’t know the reason itself.

The safi to his right laughed, dry and mad. “Must a sin cost an eternity? Is that justice?”

“We’re sorry,” the Huntress said.

Nasir lifted his eyebrows as she lowered her bow. He was not sorry.

“Come with us,” she continued, “and when we find what we seek, we will help you.”

Nasir and Altair stilled when the safi stepped closer to her. She stopped breathing altogether, struggling to avert her gaze from his shirtless state.

“We do not take aid from mortals,” he rasped.

Then he lunged.

The Huntress was faster. She ducked beneath his grasp and darted out of reach, elevating her bow as the other four spurred into action. Nasir hurled a knife at one of them, then gripped his scimitar with both hands and swung at another, sure that his blade would rend the rusted one in two.

It did not.

Steel clashed and the safi growled, less elegant than safin normally were. Nasir leaped back, using the flat of his blade to parry the safi’s quick blows. The breeze picked up, tossing sand across his vision, and he ducked his mouth beneath the folds of his turban. The signature swoops and clangs of Altair’s twin swords echoed in the ruins.

The safin were weathered and hardy. Worthy foe, had they been equally matched.

As if in answer to Nasir’s thoughts, another figure leaped into the fray, a red sash at her hip. She twirled a spear in her hands, the gold tip gleaming in the fractured sunlight.

Human. Judging by her dark skin, red attire, and shorn head: Pelusian.

“Sultan’s teeth. One of the Nine Elite,” Altair shouted, his voice muffled by the wind. “You’re a long way from home, lady.”

“Aren’t we all?” she shouted back.

Nasir caught Altair grinning at her quick tongue.

“So lonely, too,” the general said.

She snapped her spear to her side, chin low as she sized up her opponent. “I like to travel light.”

Metal swung for Nasir’s head, and he focused on his attacker again, his reciprocating strike barely scuffing the safi’s bare arm. However one of the Pelusian calipha’s own elite warriors had gotten here, it seemed she would be an ally in this battle. To his right, the Huntress pulled back her bowstring, breathing down the shaft of a white-tipped arrow, the bottom half of her face tucked beneath her scarf.

Her aim was low, unfatal. Rimaal, this girl.

“Ogle later, princeling,” Altair shouted in his ear.

Nasir hurled another blade and then caught sight of the Huntress, who was—

Running?

Nasir swerved from the safi’s blade. She is going to get herself killed. He gritted his teeth and lunged. Swift, precise. He plunged his scimitar through the safi’s chest with a sickening crunch of bone and shoved him to the ground. The immortal choked, sputtered, and then breathed no more.

One down.

Nasir darted past the twin hisses of Altair’s scimitars and found the Pelusian locked in a losing battle.

“You should have stuck to your books, human,” the safi snarled at her.

The spear in her grip faltered, the safi’s scimitar bearing down on her as she gritted her teeth and pushed back. An angry gash on her left arm dripped blood. She was lithe, but the safi was brawny.