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Muntadhir lunged against his chains. “You don’t say her name,” he seethed. “You murdered my mother. I know you stayed away on purpose when she was sick. You were jealous of her, jealous of all of us. You were probably scheming even then to slaughter all the djinn trying to be nice to you!”
“Trying to be nice to me,” she repeated faintly, sounding disappointed. “I had thought you cleverer than that. A shame that, for all the fondness you are said to have for the Daevas, you never saw through your father’s lies.”
Wildness twisted across Muntadhir’s blood-streaked face. “Nothing he did deserved the kind of death you visited on my people.”
“If you rule by violence, you should expect to be removed by violence.” Manizheh was curter now. “But it need not continue. Help us, and I will grant mercy to those Geziris who survived.”
“Fuck you.”
Dara hissed, still deeply conditioned on behalf of the Nahids, but Manizheh waved him off, stepping closer to Muntadhir. Dara eyed the emir’s shackles, not liking any of this.
“It isn’t only your mother I remember you visiting,” Manizheh continued. “For if I recall, you were always very polite to your stepmother, going so far as to shower her with gold when her first child was born. How sweet, the women said, the toy horse the emir brought his baby sister. The silly song he made up about teaching her to ride it one day …”
Muntadhir pulled at his chains. “Don’t speak of my sister.”
“Why not? Someone should. All these questions about your brother and wife and none for Zaynab? Are you not worried about her fate?”
A flicker of alarm, the first, crossed Muntadhir’s face. “I sent her to Ta Ntry when my brother rebelled.”
Manizheh smiled. “Odd. Her servants say she ran off with some Geziri warrior woman when the attack began.”
“They’re lying.”
“Or you are. Still eager to watch Daevabad fall into anarchy if your sister is out there somewhere, defenseless and alone? Do you know what happens to women in cities swallowed by violence?” She glanced back, speaking to Dara for the first time since they entered the cell. “Why don’t you tell him, Afshin? What happens to young girls who belong to families with so many enemies?”
The breath went entirely out of him. “What?” Dara whispered.
“What happened to your sister?” Manizheh pressed, not seeming to notice the raw anguish he felt stealing over his features. “What happened to Tamima when she was in the same position as Zaynab?”
Dara swayed on his feet. Tamima. His sister’s bright, innocent smile and gruesome fate. “You—you know what happened,” he stammered. Manizheh couldn’t really mean to make him say it, to speak aloud the brutal way his little sister had been tortured to death.
“But does the emir?”
“Yes.” Dara’s voice was savage now. He couldn’t believe Manizheh was doing this, trying to twist the single worst tragedy in his life into a crude prod to goad a Qahtani into talking. But Muntadhir did know—he’d thrown Tamima’s death into Dara’s face that night on the boat.
Manizheh kept going. “And if you could do it all over again, would you not have done anything to save her? Even assisted your enemy?”
Dara’s temper broke spectacularly. “I would have delivered every member of the Nahid Council to Zaydi al Qahtani myself if it meant saving Tamima.”
That was clearly not the answer Manizheh wanted. Her eyes blazed as she said, “I see,” with a new frost in her voice. But she turned back to Muntadhir. “Does that change your response, Emir? Are you willing to risk what befell the Afshin’s sister happening to yours?”
“It won’t,” Muntadhir snapped. The goad hadn’t even worked. “Zaynab isn’t surrounded by enemies, and my people would never hurt her.”
“Your people might feel differently if I offer her weight in gold to whoever brings me her head.” Manizheh’s flat tone didn’t waver at the grisly threat, and Dara closed his eyes, wishing he were anywhere else. “But if you’re not ready to discuss your sister’s safety, then why don’t we start with someone else?”
“If you think I’ll tell you anything about Nahri—”
“Not Nahri. Jamshid e-Pramukh.”
Dara jerked back to attention.
The emir’s face was blank, his anger replaced by a mask of coolnesss. “Never heard of him.”
Manizheh smiled and glanced at Dara. “Afshin, is your quiver close?”
He could barely look at her, much less respond, so instead he raised a hand. In a moment, a conjured quiver was there, twisting from a swirl of fire to reveal a glittering array of silver arrows.
“Excellent.” Manizheh plucked free one of the arrows. “It would be twelve arrows, correct?” she asked Muntadhir. “If I wished you to take two for every one that ripped through Jamshid when he saved your life?”
Muntadhir gazed at her, arrogance filling his voice again. “Will you bend the bow yourself? Because your Afshin is looking rather mutinous.”
“I don’t need a bow.”
Manizheh plunged the arrow into Muntadhir’s thigh.
Dara instantly forgot their argument. “Banu Nahida!”
She ignored him, twisting the arrow as Muntadhir cried out in pain. “Do you remember him now, Emir?” she demanded, raising her voice over his groans.
Muntadhir was gasping for breath. “You crazy, murderous—Wait!” he yelped as Manizheh reached for another arrow. “My God, what do you even want with Kaveh’s son? Someone else you can threaten into compliance?”
Manizheh released the arrow, and Muntadhir crumpled. “I want to grant him his birthright,” she declared, gazing at the emir with the same contempt he’d shown her. “I would raise Jamshid to the station he deserves and one day see him on the throne of his ancestors.”
Dara could not have described the look that came over Muntadhir’s face for all the words in the world.
He blinked rapidly, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Wh-what station?” Muntadhir asked. “What do you mean, the throne of his ancestors?”
“Remove your head from the sand, al Qahtani, and try to recall the world doesn’t revolve around your family. Do you really think I stayed in Zariaspa when you were a child, risking your father’s wrath when he begged me to save his dying queen, merely to spite him? I stayed because I was pregnant, and I knew Ghassan would burn down my world if he found out.”
Muntadhir was trembling. “That’s not possible. He doesn’t have healing abilities. Kaveh wouldn’t have brought him to Daevabad. And Jamshid … Jamshid would have told me!”
“Ah, so we’ve gone from not knowing his name to the two of you being so close he would have shared his most dangerous secret?” Anger finally broke through Manizheh’s cool facade. “Jamshid has no idea who he is. I had to bind his abilities and deny him his heritage to keep him from being enslaved in the infirmary like I was. I only tell you because you’ve just made very clear how much family means to you, and you should know there is nothing I won’t do to keep my son safe.”
Anguish twisted Muntadhir’s face. “I don’t know where Jamshid is. Wajed took him out of the city. He was to be some sort of hostage—”
“Some sort of hostage?” Manizheh cut in. “You let the man who saved your life be used as a hostage?”
Dara could barely look at Muntadhir—the bone-deep guilt radiating off the emir was too familiar.
“Yes,” Muntadhir whispered, regret thick in his hoarse voice. “I went to my father, but I was too late. The poison had already killed him.”
“And had the poison not taken Ghassan, then what?” Manizheh prodded. “What were you prepared to do?”
Muntadhir squeezed his eyes shut, seeming to breathe against the pain, his hands pressed around the arrowhead still buried in his leg. “I don’t know. Ali had taken the Citadel. I thought I could try and reason with my father, insist he release Jamshid and Nahri …”
“And if he didn’t?”
Wetness glistened in the other man’s eyelashes. When he spoke again, his words were barely audible. “I was going to join Alizayd.”
“I don’t believe you,” Manizheh challenged. “You, a good son of Am Gezira, were going to betray your own father to save the life of a Daeva man?”
Muntadhir opened his bloodshot eyes; they were full of pain. “Yes.”
Manizheh stared at the emir. “You love him. Jamshid.”
Dara felt the blood drain from his face.
Muntadhir looked shattered. His breath was coming faster, his shoulders shaking with the rise and fall. “Yes,” he choked out again.
Manizheh sat back on her heels. Dara didn’t move, shocked at the turn in the conversation. How in the Creator’s name had Manizheh learned about Muntadhir and Jamshid? Not even Kaveh had wanted her to know!
She kept talking. “You and I both know how devoted Wajed was to your father. I’ve heard he all but raised Alizayd as his own son.” She paused. “So what do you imagine Wajed and his men—his good Geziri soldiers—will do to Jamshid when they learn their king, their favorite prince, and all their kinsmen are supposedly dead at Kaveh’s hands?”
For all the enmity between Dara and the Qahtanis, the slow, awful panic that rolled across Muntadhir’s face made Dara sick to his stomach. He knew that feeling too well.
“I … I’ll send word to Wajed.” The emir had broken, and he didn’t even realize it. “A letter! A letter with my mark ordering him not to hurt Jamshid.”
“And how will we send word?” Manizheh asked. “We have no magic. No shapeshifters who can fly, no whispered enchantments to our birds. Nor would we even know where to send such word.”
“Am Gezira,” Muntadhir blurted out. “We have a fortress in the south. Or Ta Ntry! If Wajed finds out about my father, he may go to the queen.”
Manizheh touched his knee. “I thank you for that information.” She rose to her feet. “I only pray it’s not too late.”
It was Muntadhir who pursued her now. “Wait!” he cried, scrambling to stand and hissing as he shifted weight away from his injured leg.
Manizheh was already motioning for Dara to open the door. “Don’t worry, I’m just getting some supplies to see to your wounds, and then I’ll return.” She glanced back. “Now that you’re feeling more talkative, perhaps I’ll bring the ifrit. I have a great many questions I would like to ask you about Suleiman’s seal.”
She stepped through the doorway, leaving Dara in her wake.
Muntadhir stared at him desperately from across the cell. “Afshin …”
He is your enemy. The man who pressured Nahri into his bed. But Dara could summon no anger, no hate—not even a flicker of triumph for finally defeating the family that had devastated his.
“I will let you know if we learn of Jamshid,” he said softly. Then, leaving Muntadhir the floating globes of light as a small mercy, Dara left, shutting the door behind him.
Manizheh was already headed toward the corridor. “Zaynab al Qahtani is in the Geziri Quarter.”
Dara frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because that man is not nearly as clever as he thinks. We need to get her out.”
“The Geziri Quarter is fortified against us. Alizayd unified the Geziris and the shafit under his call and was preparing for a siege well before we arrived. If the princess is behind their lines, it is going to be hard to get her out.”
“We have no choice. I need Zaynab in our custody, preferably before her mother gets wind of what happened here.” Manizheh pressed her mouth in a grim line. “I had planned on Hatset being in Daevabad. We could have held her hostage to keep the Ayaanle in line. Instead, I have an angry widow with a sea to protect her and a mountain of gold to support her vengeance.” She turned away, motioning him to follow. “Come.”
Dara didn’t move. “We are not done here.”
She glanced back, looking incredulous. “Excuse me?”
He was trembling again. “You had no right. No right to use the memory of my sister like that.”
“Did I not speak the truth? Zaynab al Qahtani is absolutely at risk running around Daevabad with no protection. Forget whatever noble Geziri warriors Muntadhir seems to think are going to protect her. Her father brutalized people in this city for decades, and there are plenty who would happily take advantage of the current situation to get some revenge.”
“That’s not …” Dara struggled for words, hating how easily she seemed to twist them against him. “You know what I mean. You should have told me in advance you planned to mention her.”
“Oh, should I have?” Manizheh spun on him. “Why, so you could craft a better way to say you would have delivered my ancestors to the Qahtanis?”
“I was shocked!” Dara fought to check his temper, flames flickering from his hands. “We are supposed to be working together.”
“And where was that sentiment when you and Kaveh were whispering behind my back about Jamshid and Muntadhir?” Her eyes flashed. “Did you not think you should have told me in advance that my son had been carrying on a decade-long affair with Ghassan’s?”
“Are you spying on me now?” he stammered.
“Do I need to? Because I’d rather not waste our extremely limited resources, and I’d hope the safety of our people was enough to keep you in line.”
The entire corridor shook with his frustration, the air sparking.
“Do not lecture me as to the safety of our people,” Dara said through his teeth. “Our people would have been safer if we had not rushed this invasion and tried to annihilate the Geziris—as I advised!”
If he thought Manizheh would be taken aback by the show of magic, Dara had underestimated her. She didn’t so much as twitch, the darkness in her black eyes suddenly deeper.
“You forget yourself, Afshin,” she warned, and had he been another man, he might have fallen to his knees at the lethal edge in her voice. “And you are hardly innocent in our failure. Do you not think Vizaresh told me of your delays with Alizayd al Qahtani? Had you executed that bloody sand fly when you first laid hands on him, Nahri wouldn’t have run off with him. She wouldn’t have given him Suleiman’s seal and fled from the city, ripping away our magic. Our invasion might have been a success!”
Dara bristled, but that was not a point he could refute. He might strangle the ifrit later for running his mouth, but not killing Alizayd had been a fatal error.
Manizheh seemed to recognize a hint of defeat. “Do not ever keep anything from me again, understand? I have an entire city to rule. I cannot do so while also worrying about what secrets the head of my security is harboring. I need my people loyal.”
Dara glowered, crossing his arms and resisting the urge to burn something. “What would you even have me do? We still have no idea where either of your children is, and you have made it clear I’m not allowed to risk our tribe’s safety by leaving to go look for them.”
“We don’t need to go look for them,” Manizheh said. “Not ourselves. Not if we send the right kind of message.”
“The right kind of message?”
“Yes.” She beckoned to him again. “Come, Afshin. It’s time I address my new subjects.”
5
ALI
From the time Alizayd al Qahtani was very small, he’d been blessed with the peculiar ability to instantly wake up.
It was an ability that used to unsettle others—nursemaids in the harem tiptoeing about when the little prince who’d been snoring abruptly spoke up, cheerfully greeting them; or his sister Zaynab, who’d go screeching to their mother when he snapped his eyes open, bellowing like the palace karkadann. That Ali slept so lightly had thoroughly pleased Wajed, who proudly declared his protégé rested like a warrior should, constantly alert. And indeed, Ali had seen firsthand what a blessing it was, saving his life the few times assassins came for him in the night during his exile in Am Gezira.
It wasn’t a blessing now. Because when Ali finally opened his eyes, he had not the mercy of a single moment of forgetting his brother was dead.
He was flat on his back, a low, unfamiliar ceiling before him. There must have been a window, for a few rays of sun pierced the warm air, dust motes dancing and sparkling before blinking out of existence. The grassy aroma of fresh-cut herbs, a steady rhythmic pounding, the clip of hooves, and the murmur of distant conversations were all signs indicating that Ali was no longer on an uninhabited bank of the Nile. He was cold, shivering under a thin blanket with the kind of clammy chill he associated with fever, and his body ached, weak in a way that should have concerned him.
It didn’t. Far more troublesome was the fact that Ali had woken up at all.
Was it quick, akhi? Or did it take as long as everyone says? Did it burn? Did the Afshin find you, hurt you worse? Ali knew those weren’t questions he should be asking. He knew, according to the religion he’d preached his entire life, that his brother was already at peace, a martyr in Paradise.
But the pious words he would have spoken to another in his place were ash in his mouth. Muntadhir wasn’t supposed to be in Paradise. He was supposed to be grinning and alive and doing something vaguely scandalous. Not falling against Ali’s chest, gasping as he took the zulfiqar strike meant for his little brother. Not touching Ali’s face with bloody hands, failing to mask his own fear and pain as he ordered Ali to run.
We’re okay, Zaydi. We’re okay. All those months of their stupid feud, weeks and days Ali would never get back. Could they not have sat and hashed out their politics, their resentments? Had Ali ever made clear to Muntadhir how much he loved and admired him—how much he desperately wished he could have ended their estrangement?
And now he would never be able to. He’d never talk to any of his brothers again. Not Muntadhir, who if the zulfiqar’s poison hadn’t taken him first, had almost certainly been tortured by the Afshin in his final moments. Not the men Ali had grown up with in the Royal Guard, now floating dead in Daevabad’s lake. Nor Lubayd, his first friend in Am Gezira, a man who’d saved his life and left his peaceful home only to be murdered by the ifrit. Had Ali ever properly thanked him? Sat him down and cut through Lubayd’s constant jesting to tell him how much his friendship meant?
Ali took a deep, rattling breath, but his eyes stayed dry. He wasn’t sure he could weep. He didn’t want to.
He wanted to scream.
To scream and scream until the awful crushing weight in his chest was gone. He understood now the grief that led people to pull out their hair, to tear at their skin and claw at the earth. More than scream, though, Ali wanted to be gone. It was selfish, it was contrary to his faith, but had he a blade at hand, he was not certain he could have stopped himself from carving out the ache in his heart.
Pull yourself together. You are a Geziri, a believer in the Most High.
Get up.
Still trembling and feverish, Ali forced himself into a sitting position, biting back a grunt of pain when every muscle in his body protested. He gripped his knees, black spots blossoming across his vision, and then touched his body, shocked by how frail he felt. His ruined dishdasha was gone, replaced with a soft cotton shawl that wrapped his shoulders and a waist cloth tied with what seemed like haste around his hips. He rubbed his eyes, trying to see straight.
The first person he spotted, lying unconscious on the floor, was Nahri.
Overwhelmed by worry, Ali lurched for her. He did so too quickly, nearly blacking out again as he crashed to his elbows next to her head. Closer now, he could see clearly the rise and fall of Nahri’s chest as she breathed. She murmured in her sleep, curling tighter into a ball.
Sleeping. She’s just sleeping. Ali forced himself to relax. He wasn’t helping either of them like this. He pushed himself back into a sitting position, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes until his head felt like it had mostly stopped spinning.
Better. So first, where were they? The last thing Ali remembered was feeling like he was about to die in a ruined mosque overlooking the Nile. Now they appeared to be in some sort of storeroom, an extremely disorganized one, packed with broken baskets and drying herbs.
Nahri must have gotten us here. He glanced again at the Banu Nahida. Her royal garments had been swapped for a worn black dress that looked several sizes too big, and the scarf tied around her head was doing little to contain her hair, the curls spilling out in an ebony halo. A few rays of dusty light striped her body, highlighting the curve of her hip and the delicate expanse of the inside of her wrist.
His heart skipped, and Ali was self-aware enough to recognize that it wasn’t grief alone spiking through him. Clever, stubborn Nahri who’d somehow kept him alive and gotten them from the river to wherever this was. She’d saved his life again, another debt in the ledger he knew she never forgot. She looked beautiful, sleep easing her features into a peaceful expression Ali had never seen before.
Muntadhir’s words from the arena stole through his mind. Abba will make you emir; he’ll give you Nahri. All the things you pretend you don’t want.
And now Ali had them, technically. All it had cost him was everything else he loved.
Ali swayed. Don’t do this. Not now. He’d already had to pull himself together once.
But before he dropped his gaze, he noticed something else. Scratches marred Nahri’s skin. Nothing serious, just the small gashes one might expect had they been dumped in a river and climbed through underbrush.
Except Nahri shouldn’t have had scratches. She should have healed.
Suleiman’s seal. Our magic. The memories tumbled through him again, and Ali instantly reached for his chest. The scorching, barbed pain that had driven him to his knees when they first arrived in Egypt was gone. Now Ali simply felt … nothing.
That can’t be. He tried to focus, closing his eyes and searching for something that felt new. But if there was some connection he was supposed to pull on to lift Suleiman’s seal, it was a power he couldn’t sense. He snapped his fingers, attempting to conjure a flame. It was the simplest magic Ali knew, something he’d been doing since he was a child.
Nothing.
Ali went cold. “Burn,” he whispered in Geziriyya, snapping his fingers again. “Burn,” he tried in Ntaran and then Djinnistani, raising his other hand.
None of it worked. There was not the slightest hint of heat, nor the shimmer of smoke.
My zulfiqar, my weapons. Ali looked wildly around the room, spotting the hilt of his sword poking out from a pile of filthy clothes. He lurched to his feet, stumbling across the room and reaching for his zulfiqar like a long-lost friend. His fingers closed around the hilt, and he desperately willed flames to rise from the blade he’d spent his life mastering—the blade tied so intimately to his identity.
It stayed cold in his hand, the copper surface dull in the dim light. It wasn’t just Nahri’s magic that was gone.
It was Ali’s.
That’s not possible. Ali had seen his father wield magic while using the seal to strip it from others. That was part of the ring’s legend—making its bearer the most powerful person in the room.
Panic raced through him. Was this a normal part of taking the seal, or had they done something wrong? Was there an incantation, a gesture, something that Ali was supposed to know?
Muntadhir would have known. Muntadhir would have known what to do with the seal had you not gotten him murdered with this very blade.
Ali dropped the zulfiqar. He stepped back, stumbling on his discarded blanket, the fragile veneer of control he’d pieced together slipping away.
You were supposed to protect him. It should have been you who held off the Afshin, you who died at his hand. What kind of brother was Ali, what kind of man, to be hiding in a storage room half a world away from the palace in which his father and brother had been murdered and his tribesmen and friends slaughtered? Where his sister—his sister—was trapped in a conquered city and surrounded by enemies?