We Hunt the Flame(91)

“A dreamwalker,” she echoed.

He nodded. “This is a memory, a fragment reconstructed in my mind with two additions: you and me. Minus the Arz. Seeing Alderamin tainted by those trees shatters my soul every time.”

That would explain why no one in the city was looking at her. “Sounds like a lot of mind work.”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Being able to find your way seems like a lot of mind work, too.” There was a gleam in his eyes when he leaned close. “That’s why it’s called magic.” He sighed happily. “I haven’t been able to session a dreamwalk in years.”

A bird soared across Zafira’s vision, feathers a dappled brown. A falcon. She had never seen a falcon before. She had never experienced true Arawiya at all, khalas. Yet here she was, in awe of a memory. The bird dipped behind a date palm, and her heart swooped with it.

She turned to Benyamin. “You said years. That means the last time you dreamwalked was when magic existed.” She stopped, eyes wide. “How old are you?”

“A little older than you?” he chanced, and shrugged when Zafira glared. “Twenty-three.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“Plus, ah, one hundred.”

She stared. He twisted his lips and rubbed a hand across his stubble before growing serious again.

“You lived in a world where magic existed. You lived under the rule of the Sisters,” she murmured. That was more than ninety years ago.

“I was there for the Lion’s reign of darkness, too.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s been so long, I sometimes wonder if magic was a dream.”

Zafira could not imagine how life once was, if this was life in Alderamin now. “Why ‘truth’?”

“What?” He blinked.

“Haqq,” she said, gesturing to his bronze tattoo. There had to be a reason why an immortal would ink his own face, knowing full well he’d live with the inscription for eternity. “What’s it for?”

He brushed a hand across the word with a soft smile, followed by a flash of pain he quickly masked. “Each of the safin in my circle have a similar tattoo, a word for what we value most. For me, it is truth followed closely by trust—separate vines of value entwined at the root.”

He had a fondness for zumras, it seemed. Though she didn’t think the one he was trying to form on Sharr could compare to the majesty of a zumra of elegant safin.

A murmur carried from the balcony, the voice rising and falling ever so gently. Singing. It reminded Zafira of laughter beneath a bright sun. Of tears before a still soul. It was beautiful, despondent.

“Who is that?” she asked, repressing a shiver.

Benyamin turned to face the balcony, a rueful smile on his face. “My wife.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I would have invited you to our wedding, but you weren’t alive at the time,” he teased.

The tune changed. The words were rife with sorrow and Benyamin’s shoulders bunched. Zafira heard a rattling before he shook, and she realized he was crying.

She did not think vain safin could cry. It didn’t seem right.

“Don’t cry,” she said quietly, and it sounded like a stupid thing to say, but she didn’t know what else to do. “This is your dream, your memory. Your first dreamwalk in years.”

“There’s no greater curse than memory,” he said finally. He closed his eyes and tried to recollect himself, the tattoo on his face mourning with him. “Tragedies happen once, memories relive them eternally. You understand that, don’t you? You have floundered in loss.”

She had. She didn’t think she would ever stop seeing Baba’s face. His last word before he lunged at her. His final breath gasping from his lungs as he looked at the woman who killed him—and smiled.

“We get to choose which memories to relive. You brought me here to Alderamin without the Arz. You chose to relive a memory without its tainted trees,” she said. “Memories aren’t always bad.”

He shook his head. “My wife is the most beautiful safin Alderamin will ever behold, second only to one other.” She almost laughed at his certainty, but he was wholly serious. “My son. Did you know that until him, I had never seen a coffin so small?”

Zafira froze.

“Safin are immortal, Huntress; we heal quickly and never fear old age. We can die, of course, and though such a thing is rare, I have buried my fair share of safin—battle-hardened safin, fallen in war.

“But never a child—until my son. Whose hands were too small to carry a sword, whose teeth were too small to taste the sweetness of an apple. Whose laugh was the smallest I have witnessed, but the most bountiful sound—” Benyamin choked off.

She had seen small coffins in Demenhur. Umm would always say that no parent should have to bury their child.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and it felt cruel, saying those words.

“I am, too,” he murmured, because he understood.

The Baransea churned in the silence, and the gossamer curtains behind them billowed in the breeze. Birds called to the sun, and the din of the people below filled her lungs. Benyamin’s wife continued to sing for her dead son. It was melancholy. It was sad, but also not.

Benyamin inhaled and turned away, though rivulets of pain still shone in his umber eyes. “You were never intended to make the journey to Sharr alone, Huntress. The Silver Witch guards her words for reasons you do not understand. We may not trust one another completely, but it is important we carry on as a zumra. It is important to remember that everything and everyone has the capacity for both evil and benevolence.”