The Empire of Gold

7

DARA

Aeshma clucked his tongue, gazing upon Dara’s creation with open admiration. “Now this is a thing worthy of a true daeva.” He gave Dara a grin of gleaming fangs. “See what happens when you embrace your magic instead of sulking?”

Dara threw him an annoyed look, but he had to force it. For what the ifrit had helped him conjure was indeed magnificent.

It was a blood beast, shaped from Dara’s own smoke and life-blood to resemble a massive shedu. Its hide was a rich amber and its glittering wings a rainbow of jewel-bright colors. Bound to his mind, the shedu was pacing, the ground shaking with the impact of its chariot-wheel-size paws.

Dara ran his fingers through its mane, and a burst of fiery sparks erupted from the dark locks. “Is it supposed to be so big?”

“I’ve killed larger,” Aeshma replied, supportive as usual. “It was always a delight to see their Nahid riders smash against the ground. I suppose they couldn’t heal from that.”

“You look like each other,” Vizaresh added. “The hair. Maybe if she lives, your Nahri could ride it.”

The ifrit’s tone was as lecherous as it came, and Dara took a deep breath, reminding himself that Manizheh still needed these cretins—which meant that he was not yet allowed to remove Vizaresh’s head from his neck.

Instead, he glared. “Such a sharp tongue when you’re not running away from djinn boys a fraction your age.”

Vizaresh snorted. “I did not survive this many centuries by picking fights with creatures I don’t understand, and your oil-eyed ‘djinn boy’ who was using water currents like a whip is one of them.” He leaned back, reclining against the base of an apricot tree. “Though I do regret not staying to see your lover bring the ceiling down on your head. That would have been most entertaining.”

“Coward. I suppose that is why you scurried straight to Banu Manizheh and told her I tried to enslave him. Curious that you left out your involvement.”

“I did not wish to get in trouble. Besides …” Vizaresh shrugged, glancing at Aeshma. “I would never do anything to jeopardize our alliance with the Banu Nahida.” He pressed a clawed hand to his heart. “I am ever so loyal.”

“Is this a joke to you?” Dara demanded. “People are dead, and my home is broken.”

Resentment swirled into Vizaresh’s fiery eyes. “You’re not the only one who’s seen your world broken, Afshin. Nor the only one who grieves for their dead. You don’t think I mourn my brother, the daeva your blood-poisoning little Nahid murdered at the Gozan?”

“No,” Dara shot back. “I doubt you demons are capable of any real affection. And you are not daevas, you are ifrit.”

“We called ourselves daevas millennia before you were even born. Before Anahid betrayed us and—”

“Vizaresh.” Aeshma’s voice was thick with warning. “That is enough.” He jerked his head toward the palace. “Go.”

The smaller ifrit stalked off but not before shooting Dara another hate-filled scowl.

Aeshma looked equally annoyed. “You are impossible, do you know that?”

Dara wasn’t in the mood to hear comments about his character. “Why are you here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why are you here? Why are you helping Banu Manizheh if your people hate the Nahids?”

“Oh, are you asking questions now? I thought that part of your mind was removed during training.”

“Why are you here?” Dara snarled a third time, baring his fangs. “If I need to repeat myself again, I will drop you from the sky.”

The ifrit’s eyes danced with malice. “Maybe I want to be like you. Maybe after ten thousand years, I’m dying and would settle for peace and a taste of my old magic. Or maybe I simply find your Manizheh amusing and novel and enjoy the entertainment.”

“That does not answer my—”

“I do not answer to you.” The jest was gone from Aeshma’s voice. “My alliance is with your master, not her dog.”

Rage boiled down Dara’s arms, flames twisting through his hands. “I have no master,” he snapped. “I am a slave no longer.”

“No?” Aeshma nodded to the emerald gleaming on Dara’s finger. “Then why do you still wear that ring? Because it’s pretty? Or because you’re too frightened to try and remove it?”

“I could kill you,” Dara said, stepping closer. “It would be nothing.”

Aeshma laughed. “You’re not going to kill me. You don’t have it in you to defy your Banu Nahida, and she’s made it clear we’re not to be harmed.”

“She will not always need you.”

The slow, vicious smile that spread across Aeshma’s face sent a thousand warnings screaming through Dara’s mind. “But she will. Because I can give her magic she can wield herself instead of power she can only watch you wield in her name.” Aeshma stepped back, gesturing to the shedu. “Which I believe is what you’re meant to be doing now, yes?” He clucked his tongue. “Best hurry, Afshin. You wouldn’t want to make your betters angry.”

Dara reached for his magic, sweeping it over his body. The fiery flush vanished from his skin as he shifted to his mortal form, his plain tunic and trousers transforming into a brilliant crimson and black uniform. Glittering scaled armor crawled into place, and then Dara spread his hands. A magnificent silver bow appeared before them, flashing in the sun.

“You still cannot do this,” he said coldly. “And you never will. Bluster and puff all you want, Aeshma, for when the day finally comes that you cross a line and threaten my Banu Nahida, I will be there to deal with you.”

“Odd,” Aeshma replied as Dara turned and walked away, retrieving the quiver of arrows he’d prepared before returning to the shedu’s side. “For I told her much the same about you.”

Dara stilled for a moment, his back to the ifrit. But it was only for a moment—he was not letting Aeshma toy with him any longer.

Instead, he considered the shedu before him. Dara was an accomplished rider, but horses and flying lions were rather different beasts—particularly since this shedu was no true animal, but rather an extension of his own magic, a feeling more akin to a limb.

A very new limb. Gripping its mane, Dara pulled himself onto the shedu’s hazy back. A thrill raced down his spine. His circumstances might have been bleak, but part of Dara felt like a giddy little boy, the child who’d grown up listening to the hair-raising legends of the Afshins of old and their mighty Nahids.

With but a thought, the creature shot into the sky, and Dara gasped, seizing its mane as its wings whipped overheard. The palace shrank beneath him, a tiny jeweled toy, and he could not help but laugh, an uncharacteristically nervous sound, before gaining some semblance of control. He could see everything from this distance: the midnight lake and lush forests, the neatly terraced fields beyond the walls, and intricate Daevabad, a miniature of twisting streets and stone towers.

But it was the mountains that called to him, the wide world beyond. A smarter man would fly for them, would take the opportunity to flee the madness below and start anew, rather than be the cause of more violence.

And then every Daeva in the city would die. With a twinge of regret, Dara urged the shedu to dive, pulling free one of his arrows. There were five he’d prepared specially—one for each of the djinn tribes, binding a scroll to the shaft with a strip torn from Ghassan’s bloodstained turban. Upon the scroll was a short message demanding immediate surrender. It had been three days since they’d taken the throne, and there hadn’t been a word from the other tribes. No ambassadors demanding to know what had happened, no worried relatives of the government officials unfortunate enough to have been in the palace that night—there wasn’t even the vengeful, suicidal charge he expected from whatever Geziri survivors were holed up with the princess. Instead, they all seemed to have retreated to their respective quarters and barricaded themselves away with whatever nonmagical means they could muster, awaiting the explosion they must fear would come.

An explosion neither Dara nor Manizheh wanted to see—one he hoped the djinn would have the wisdom to avoid.

The Agnivanshi were first. Though Dara knew he had only minutes before being spotted—his was a presence meant to terrorize, not hide—he quickly studied the fortifications they’d made, having bricked up their pretty sandstone gate and sent a handful of men with bows, swords, and ladders to guard the walls. They were likely civilians, as Dara knew the only djinn allowed military training in Daevabad were those in the Royal Guard—the Royal Guard whose Citadel his forces had already annihilated.

Just past the gate, a pile of bulging sacks was stacked on a wooden platform. A crowd had gathered, waiting with baskets and jars. Dara flew nearer, watching as grain was distributed to the waiting djinn. Armed men and nervous faces aside, it all looked rather orderly.

But there would be no order in Daevabad unless it came from Banu Manizheh.

With a snap of his fingers, the sacks burst into flame. The handlers cried out in alarm but moved swiftly to try and beat out the fire. Dara coaxed the flames higher, sending the djinn running. Finally, one of the women glanced up.

“The Scourge!”

His conjured shedu dived as the djinn started shouting in panic, fleeing in all directions. Dara drew back his bow, not missing that one of the Agnivanshi guards was doing the same.

Dara was faster. He shot the other archer through the chest. The man collapsed, the bloody silk binding the scroll to Dara’s arrow fluttering like a downed flag on a battlefield. Dara flew on, leaving screams in his wake.

Let them scream. Better submission than a civil war, he tried to tell himself. Better that the Agnivanshi open their gate and cut a deal with Manizheh that kept grain flowing to all of Daevabad rather than one tribe hoarding more food than it could eat. Dara was sorry for the djinn, he was. He had no desire to shed more blood and sow more fear.

But he’d be damned if they would lose Daevabad now.

Dara set fire to the manicured vineyard in the heart of the Sahrayn market flush with grapes, and then burned the grand caravanserai in the Ayaanle Quarter to the ground, aiming to inflict a far more costly wound to the Geziris’ closest allies. He hadn’t the heart to burn anything that belonged to the Tukharistanis, and yet he knew the location of his scroll—shot into a wreath of blossoms adorning a memorial to the victims of Qui-zi—was message enough.

He studied every bit of ground he could, taking note of the magical buildings that had collapsed and the evidence of fires that had raged. There were enormous cracks in the ground from where the earth had split during the brief quake that had accompanied magic’s disappearance, a quake that had felled even more buildings. Twisted piping and broken bricks littered the streets, water pumps still spraying wildly. He gagged on the smell of waste as he flew over the disinterred remains of a public latrine.

There will be disease, Dara thought, as he gazed upon his shattered city. Famine and panic and death.

And it will be because we chose to come here.

It was not a good state of mind to be in as he approached the Geziri Quarter, the section of the city he was most dreading, and the number of alarming things he saw didn’t help his disquiet. First, judging from the hive of activity in the streets, the sand flies were very much not exterminated. Whether it had been Zaynab al Qahtani or not, clearly someone had succeeded in warning the rest of the Geziris about the vapor that had killed their kinsmen in the palace.

Second, they’d been busy. The wall that once separated the Geziri and shafit neighborhoods had been torn down, the bricks redistributed to fortify the boundaries and gates that separated them from the rest of the city. The Citadel lay in ruins like an ugly wound, but the bodies must have been removed, likely with whatever blades, bows, and spears could be scavenged from the armory.

Dara swore. So the Geziris and the shafit had indeed united. The tribe they’d tried to annihilate and the human-blooded people who knew best how to survive without magic. If there were remnants of the Royal Guard, they would be there. If there were those damnable dirt-blood weapons that had wreaked havoc during the Navasatem procession, they would be there as well.

And Dara could not imagine any way such a stand-off ended in peace. Manizheh had included a note to Zaynab in the scroll meant for the Geziris, entreating her to consider Muntadhir’s fate, but he wasn’t sure a single princess would be able to convince thousands of angry, grieving djinn. And why would they surrender? The Geziris knew Manizheh had intended to wipe them out, and the shafit knew Dara’s reputation as the Scourge. Either group would be fools to trust them.

Uneasy, Dara flew closer, searching for a place to leave his message. But he’d no sooner passed the first neighborhood than a terrible clanging sound rang out, like someone was smashing a shop full of porcelain while also playing the tambourine.

What in the name of the Creator is that awful racket?

He spotted the source of the sound. A wire had been strung across the wide street, copper pots hanging from it in bunches and crashing into one another as a man pulled it back and forth with a long, crooked cane.

A man who was looking straight at Dara.

Before Dara could react, a woman down the street followed suit with a similar setup of steel dishes, the noise carrying through the neighborhood as more and more posts took up the alarm, a signal fire of broken crockery and metal pans. Below, people raced away, but not with the disorganized panic of the other tribes. Geziri and shafit civilians—mostly men, but also a smattering of women and children—vanished into whatever building was nearest as though they were expected guests, doors flying open.

An explosion cut through the air. Dara spun as a projectile zipped past his face, smelling rankly of iron and close enough to singe his hair. He cursed, tightening his knees around the conjured shedu as he doubled back, searching wildly for what had targeted him. He traced a glimpse of white smoke to a balcony on a multistoried stone building near the Grand Bazaar. Two shafit men were wrestling with a long metal barrel.

A gun, he recognized. Like the one Kaveh said had been used to slaughter their people during the Navasatem attacks. Perhaps the very same one. For as Dara soared over the main avenue, he finally spotted what remained of one of his people’s most cherished traditions.

The enormous chariots of the Navasatem parade lay where they’d been attacked, many reduced to half-burned husks. Broken brass horses, shattered mirror-and-glass ornaments, and the twisted remnants of a traveling grove of jeweled cherry trees, most of their gems and golden bark stripped away, littered the dusty ground. Food carts festooned with dirty streamers were abandoned, children’s toys spilling from a turned-over wagon.

Rage scorched through him—the hatred Dara carried for the djinn and shafit stoked so fast it was as though someone had thrown oil upon smoldering coals. The bodies of the murdered Daevas were gone, but Dara could still see shoes and blood-soaked patches where they’d been cut down as they celebrated their youth, parading merrily through the streets of their sacred city.

Cut down by weapons like the one the shafit had just tried to use on him.

In truth, Dara knew very little about guns. There had been nothing like them in the world during his mortal life, and he’d rarely crossed humans since he was resurrected, catching sight only once of a human hunter bringing down a tiger in the mountains. He’d been shocked by the damage the gun had done, disgusted to see it happen in what seemed like some type of competition.

Perhaps Dara should have been frightened by such astonishing technology. By a weapon whose implication he could scarcely grasp.

But Dara had never frightened easily, and as he watched the shafit who’d tried to shoot him attempt to load their weapon again, fumbling and shouting at one another as he flew at them, it was not fear he felt. What a shame their guns took so much time and effort. Not enough time to keep dozens of his Daevas from being murdered, but still.

Dara didn’t need time. Roaring as magic boiled in his veins and crackled through his fingers, he raised his hand and then clenched it into a fist.

The entire building crumbled to the ground.

Dara collapsed nearly as fast, the power exhausting him. That wasn’t magic he should have done in his mortal form, and it took every bit of strength he had to urge the shedu to keep flying. Breathing heavily, he glanced back. Dust rose from a new hole in the skyline.

His stomach twisted. There had probably been innocent people in that building too.

But there were going to be a lot more innocent people dead before this was over, and not just at Dara’s hands. The Creator only knew how many human weapons had been smuggled into Daevabad over the years. There might be things worse than guns, weapons his Daevas—with their careful segregation from anything human—would have no clue how to counter. And as the full danger took shape before him, the cold realization he’d had while watching Manizheh’s copper vapor creep over the frozen ground of northern Daevastana returned to him.

We will never have peace with them. And if Manizheh’s forces weren’t going to have peace with the Geziris and shafit, then they would remain a threat. And Manizheh clearly dealt with threats the same way the Geziri kings who’d ruined her life had.

She eliminated them.

But she can’t. Not without her abilities. There would be no magical plagues striking down djinn in Daevabad while Suleiman’s seal rested in the heart of a ring-bearer possibly on the other side of the world. Trepidation stole over Dara, the shedu slowing in response. For the next part of his mission was meant to put them on the road to recovering that very seal.

You are the weapon of the Nahids, Dara reminded himself at last. The protector of the Daevas.

And a good Afshin obeyed.

IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO CROSS THE LAKE, THE WATER vast and glimmering. No longer a deathly still pane of liquid glass, now currents danced and whirled over the surface, the water lapping thirstily at the shore like a parched dog. Dara eyed it with apprehension as he flew overhead, keeping his distance. The marid might have claimed they wanted nothing more to do with the Daevas after they aided Manizheh in her conquest, but Dara strongly suspected the Daevas had not seen the last of them.

But thoughts of the marid ebbed away as Dara passed the lake, flying out over the mountains. The mist that had once shrouded them was gone, the trees ending abruptly in a sandy waste, and where the threshold had stood was a stand of dying forest. Rot crept up the trees, bulbous growths swelling their papery, flaking bark. Dara breathed deep, tasting decay on the air.

He kept flying, soaring over the rushing Gozan, and then he saw them camped out on the dusty plain above the river: the travelers Kaveh said would be heading to Daevabad for Navasatem. The tourists and traders who but for a quirk of timing had been on the other side of the veil when magic fell. The travelers on whom so much hung in the balance right now.

Dara had his answer the moment he settled his gaze upon them.

They had no magic.

A crashed Sahrayn sandship lay on its side, its massive sails repurposed into a crude tent. There were no pavilions of enchanted silk or floating lanterns. Instead, the travelers had made a circle of their wagons, palanquins and chariots shoved together to create a wall. Dozens of animals—camels and horses, but also simurgh and a rare tame zahhak—were gathered in the strangest herd Dara had ever seen, the lean ground stripped of grass.