THE EMPIRE OF GOLD
Book Three of the Daevabad Trilogy
S. A. Chakraborty

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © S. A. Chakraborty 2020

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Maps copyright © Nicolette Caven

S.A. Chakraborty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008239497

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008239510

Version: 2020-09-23

Dedication

FOR MY PARENTS, WHO WORKED SO HARD TO

MAKE SURE THEIR CHILDREN COULD DREAM,

AND WHO WERE ALWAYS THERE, NO MATTER

HOW LONG AND FAR MY WANDERINGS

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1. Nahri

Chapter 2. Dara

Chapter 3. Nahri

Chapter 4. Dara

Chapter 5. Ali

Chapter 6. Nahri

Chapter 7. Dara

Chapter 8. Nahri

Chapter 9. Ali

Chapter 10. Nahri

Chapter 11. Dara

Chapter 12. Ali

Chapter 13. Dara

Part Two

Chapter 14. Nahri

Chapter 15. Ali

Chapter 16. Dara

Chapter 17. Nahri

Chapter 18. Ali

Chapter 19. Dara

Chapter 20. Nahri

Chapter 21. Dara

Chapter 22. Ali

Chapter 23. Nahri

Chapter 24. Ali

Chapter 25. Nahri

Chapter 26. Ali

Chapter 27. Dara

Chapter 28. Nahri

Chapter 29. Ali

Chapter 30. Nahri

Chapter 31. Dara

Chapter 32. Ali

Chapter 33. Nahri

Chapter 34. Ali

Chapter 35. Dara

Chapter 36. Nahri

Chapter 37. Ali

Chapter 38. Dara

Chapter 39. Nahri

Chapter 40. Ali

Chapter 41. Nahri

Part Three

Chapter 42. Nahri

Chapter 43. Ali

Chapter 44. Nahri

Part Four

Chapter 45. Dara

Chapter 46. Nahri

Chapter 47. Ali

Chapter 48. Nahri

Epilogue

Cast of Characters

Glossary

The Six Tribes of the Djinn

Acknowledgements

Also by S. A. Chakraborty

About the Publisher

Maps

PROLOGUE
MANIZHEH

Behind the battlements of the palace that had always been hers, Banu Manizheh e-Nahid gazed at her family’s city.

Bathed in starlight, Daevabad was beautiful—the jagged lines of towers and minarets, domes and pyramids—astonishing from this height, like a jumble of jeweled toys. Beyond the sliver of white beach, the dappled lake shimmered with movement against the black embrace of mountains.

She spread her hands on the stone parapet. This was not a view Manizheh had been permitted while a prisoner of the Qahtanis. Even as a child, her defiance had made them uneasy; the palace magic’s public embrace of the young Nahid prodigy and her obvious talent curbing her life before she was old enough to realize the guards that surrounded her day and night weren’t for her protection. The only other time she’d been up here had been as Ghassan’s guest—a trip he’d arranged shortly after he became king. Manizheh could still remember how he’d taken her hand as they’d gazed at the city their families had killed each other for, speaking dreamy words about uniting their peoples and putting the past behind them. About how he’d loved her since they were children, and about how sad and helpless he’d felt all those times his father had beaten and terrorized her and her brother. Surely she must have understood that Ghassan had had no choice but to stay silent.

In her mind’s eye, Manizheh could still see his face that night, the moon shining upon his hopeful expression. They’d been younger; he’d been handsome. Charming. What a match, people would have said. Who wouldn’t want to be the beloved queen of a powerful djinn king? And indeed, she’d laced her fingers between his and smiled—for she still wore such an expression in those days—her eyes locked on the mark of Suleiman’s seal, new upon his face.

And then she’d closed off his throat.

It hadn’t lasted. Ghassan had been quicker with the seal than she’d anticipated, and as her powers fell away, so did the pressure on his throat. He’d been enraged, his face red with betrayal and lack of air, and Manizheh remembered thinking that he would hit her. That he’d do worse. That it wouldn’t matter if she screamed—for he was king now and no one would cross him.

But Ghassan hadn’t done that. He hadn’t needed to. Manizheh had gone for his heart and so Ghassan did the same with ruthless effectiveness: having Rustam beaten within a hair of his life as she was forced to watch, breaking her brother’s bones, letting them heal and then doing it again, torturing him until Rustam was a howling mess and Manizheh had fallen to her knees, begging Ghassan for mercy.

When he finally granted it, he’d been even angrier at her tears than he’d been at her initial refusal. I wanted things to be different between us, he’d said accusingly. You shouldn’t have humiliated me.

She took in a sharp breath at the memory. He’s dead, she reminded herself. Manizheh had stared at Ghassan’s bloody corpse, committing the sight to memory, trying to assure herself that her tormentor was truly gone. But she wouldn’t have him burned, not yet. She intended to examine his body further, hoping for clues as to how he’d possessed Suleiman’s seal. Manizheh hadn’t missed that his heart had been removed—carved from his chest with surgical precision and making it clear who’d done the removing. Part of her was grateful. Despite what she’d told Nahri, Manizheh knew almost nothing about how the seal ring was passed to another.

And now, because of Nahri, Manizheh knew the first step after finding them would be to cut out the heart of Nahri’s djinn prince.

Manizheh returned her gaze to the city. It was startlingly quiet, adding an eerie facade to the entire experience. Daevabad might have been a kingdom at peace in the dead of night, safe and still under the helm of its rightful guardians.

A lie a distant wail betrayed. The cries were otherwise fading, the violence of the night giving way to sheer shock and terror. Frightened people—hunted people—didn’t scream. They hid, hunkering down with their loved ones in whatever shelter they could find, praying the darkness might pass them by. Everyone in Daevabad knew what happened when cities fell. They were raised on stories of vengeance and their enemy’s rapacity; depending on their roots, they were told hair-raising tales of Zaydi al Qahtani’s violent conquest of Daevabad, Darayavahoush e-Afshin’s scourging of Qui-zi, or the innumerable sacks of human cities. No, there wouldn’t be screaming. Daevabad’s people would be hiding, weeping silently as they clutched their children close, the sudden loss of their magic only one more tragedy this night.

They are going to think another Suleiman has come. It was the conclusion any sensible person would arrive at. Had Suleiman’s great judgment not started with the stripping of their ancestors’ magic? They probably expected to see their lives shattered and their families torn apart as they were forced to toil for another human master, powerless to fight back.

Powerless. Manizheh pressed her palms harder against the cold stone, aching to feel the palace’s magic. To conjure dancing flames or the shimmer of smoke. It seemed impossible that her abilities were gone, and she could only imagine the injuries piling up in the infirmary, injuries she now couldn’t heal. For a woman who’d endured the ripping away of everything she loved—the shy country noble she might have married, the dark-eyed infant whose weight in her arms she’d yearned to feel again, the brother she’d betrayed, her very dignity as she bowed before the Qahtanis year after year—the loss of her abilities was the worst. Her magic was her life, her soul—the power beneath the strength that had enabled her to survive everything else.

Perhaps an apt price to pay, then, for using healing magic to kill, a voice whispered in her head. Manizheh pushed it away. Such doubt wouldn’t help her or her people right now. Instead she’d lean on anger, the fury that coursed in her when she watched years of planning be upended by a quick-fingered shafit girl.

Nahri. The defiance in her dark eyes. The slight, almost rueful shrug as she shoved their family’s most cherished treasure onto the finger of an unworthy sand fly.

I would have given you everything, child. Everything you could have possibly wanted. Everything I never had.

“Enjoying your victory?”

Aeshma’s mocking voice set her teeth on edge, but Manizheh didn’t so much as twitch. She’d been dealing with the ifrit long enough to know how to handle him—how to handle everyone, really. You simply offered no target—no weaknesses, no doubt. No allies or loved ones. She kept her gaze forward as he joined her at the wall.

“A long time I’ve waited to look upon Anahid’s city.” There was cruel triumph in his voice. “But it’s not quite the paradise of the songs. Where are the shedu rumored to patrol the skies and the gardens of jeweled trees and rivers of wine? The fawning marid servants conjuring rainbows of waterfalls and a library teeming with the secrets of creation?”

Manizheh’s stomach twisted. Gone for centuries. She’d immersed herself in the great stories of her ancestors, and they painted an utterly unfamiliar Daevabad from what she saw now. “We will bring them back.”

A glance revealed cold pleasure rippling across Aeshma’s fiery visage. “She loved this place,” he continued. “A sanctuary for the people she dragged back together, her carefully tended paradise that allowed no sinners.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Jealous? Three thousand years I dwelled in the land of the two rivers with Anahid, watching the floods recede and the humans rise. We warred with the marid and traveled the desert winds together. All of that forgotten because of some human’s ultimatum.”

“You chose different paths in dealing with Suleiman.”

“She chose to betray her people and closest friends.”

She saved her people. I intend to do the same. “And here I thought we were finally setting that aside and making peace.”

Aeshma scoffed. “How do you propose to do that, Banu Nahida? Do you think I don’t know what’s happened to your abilities? I doubt right now you could even summon a spark, let alone hope to fulfill your bargain with me.” He raised a palm, a tendril of fire swirling between his fingers. “A shame your people haven’t had three millennia to learn other ways of magic.”

It took everything Manizheh had not to stare at the flame, hunger eating through her soul. “Then how fortunate I have you to teach me.”

The ifrit laughed. “Why should I? I have been helping you for years already, and I’ve yet to gain a thing.”

“You’ve gained a glimpse of Anahid’s city.”

Aeshma grinned. “There is that, I suppose.” His smile widened, his razor-sharp teeth gleaming. “I could gain even more right now. I could throw you from this wall and kill her most promising descendant.”

Manizheh didn’t flinch; she was too accustomed to men threatening her. “You would never escape Darayavahoush. He would track down every ifrit left, torture and slaughter them before your eyes, and then spend a century killing you in the most painful way he could imagine. You would die at the hands of the magic you desire most.”

That seemed to land, a scowl replacing Aeshma’s mocking grin. It always did; Manizheh knew the ifrit’s weaknesses as well as he knew her secrets.

“Your Afshin does not deserve such abilities,” he snapped. “The first daeva freed from Suleiman’s curse in thousands of years, and he’s an ill-tempered, overly armed fool. You might as well have given such abilities to a rabid dog.”

That wasn’t an analogy Manizheh liked—there was already a bit too much defiance simmering below the absolute loyalty she typically enjoyed with Dara.

But she pressed on. “If you desire Dara’s abilities, you should stop issuing worthless threats and help me get Suleiman’s seal back. I cannot free you from the curse without it.”

“How very convenient.”

“Excuse me?”

He dropped his gaze to stare at her. “I said it is convenient,” he repeated. “For decades now, I have been at your side, awaiting your help, and you keep coming up with excuses. It is all very distressing, Banu Nahida. It’s making me wonder if you’re even capable of freeing us from Suleiman’s curse.”

Manizheh kept her face carefully blank. “You were the one who came to me,” she reminded him. “I’ve always made clear that I would need the ring. And I would think you’ve seen enough to know what I’m capable of.”

“Indeed I have. Enough that I’m not particularly eager to see you master my kind of magic as well. Especially for the mere promise of some future freedom. If you want me to teach you blood magic, I’m going to need something more tangible in return.”

More tangible. Manizheh’s stomach knotted. She had already lost so much. The little she had left was precious. “What do you want?”

The ifrit’s cold smile curled again as his gaze drifted over Daevabad, the eagerness in it sending a hundred warnings through her mind. “I think of that morning every day, you know. That raw power scorching the air, screaming in my thoughts. I hadn’t felt something like that since Anahid pulled this island from the lake.” He ran his fingers along the parapet in a caress. “There’s nothing quite like Nahid magic, is there? Nahid hands raised this city and have brought back untold masses from the brink of death. A mere drop of their blood is enough to kill an ifrit. A Nahid life … well, imagine all the things that could do.” Aeshma twisted the knife deeper. “The things it already has done.”

Now Manizheh did flinch. How quickly it all came back. The smell of burned flesh and the sticky blood coating her skin. The twinkling city seemed to disappear, replaced by a scorched plain and smoky sky—the dull color reflected in her brother’s vacant, unseeing eyes. Rustam had died with an expression of faint shock on his face, and seeing that had broken what was left of Manizheh’s heart, reminding her of the little boy he’d once been. The Nahid siblings who’d lost their innocence too soon, who’d stuck together through everything only to be ripped apart at the end.

“Speak plainly.”

“I want your daughter.” Aeshma was brusque now, any coyness gone. “And since she’s proven herself a traitor, you need her gone.”

A traitor. How simple it was for the ifrit to declare such a thing. He hadn’t seen a trembling young woman in a torn, bloodied dress. He hadn’t stared into frightened, achingly familiar eyes.

She betrayed you. Indeed, Nahri had done worse, tricking her with a sleight of hand more appropriate for a low-born shafit thief than a Nahid healer. But Manizheh could have forgiven that, would have forgiven that, had Nahri taken the ring for herself. Creator knew she could not judge another woman’s ambitions.

But Nahri hadn’t. No, she’d given it to—of all people—a Qahtani. To the son of the king who’d tormented her, the king who’d stolen any chance Manizheh had at a happy life and driven the final wedge between her and her brother.

Manizheh couldn’t forgive that.

Aeshma spoke again, perhaps seeing the doubt in her long silence. “You need to make some choices, Manizheh,” he warned, his voice dangerous and low. “Your Scourge is obsessed with that girl. If she was clever enough to deceive you, how do you imagine that lovesick fool would fare if she made a play for his heart? But the things I could teach you, that Vizaresh could teach you …” Aeshma leaned closer. “You would never again have to worry about Darayavahoush’s loyalty. About anyone’s loyalty.

“But only for a price.”

A glimmer caught Manizheh’s eye—a fiery shard of sun emerging from behind the eastern mountains, its brilliance taking her aback. Sunrise wasn’t usually that bright in Daevabad, the protective magic veiling the city off from the true sky. But it wasn’t just the sun’s brightness that felt wrong.

It was the silence accompanying that brightness. There was no drumming from the Grand Temple or djinn adhan, and the quiet failure to welcome the sun’s arrival sent more dread into her heart than all the blood that had dripped from her unhealed finger. Nothing stopped the drums and the call to prayer; they were part of the very fabric of time in Daevabad.

Until Manizheh’s conquest ripped that fabric to shreds. Daevabad was her home, her duty, and she’d torn out its heart. Which meant it was her responsibility to mend it.

No matter the cost.

She closed her eyes. Manizheh had not prayed since she’d watched two djinn scouts bleed out in the icy mud of northern Daevastana, dead at the hands of the poison she’d designed. She’d defended her plan to Dara; she’d gone forward with bringing an even worse wave of death to Daevabad. But she had not prayed through any of that. It felt like a link she had broken.

And she knew the Creator would not help her now. She saw no alternative, only the path she’d forged and had to keep walking—even if there was nothing left of her by the time she finished.

She made sure her voice was steady; Manizheh would not show the ifrit the wound he’d struck. “I can offer you her name. Her true one.

“The name her father gave her.”

PART ONE

1
NAHRI

When Nahri was a very little girl, in the last orphans’ home that would take her, she met a storyteller.

It had been Eid, a hot, chaotic day, but one of the few pleasant ones for children like her when Cairo’s better off were most inclined to look after the orphans whose welfare their faith preached. After she had feasted on sweets and stuffed butter cookies in new clothes—a pretty dress embroidered with blue lilies—the storyteller had appeared in the haze of sugar crashes and afternoon heat, and it wasn’t long before the children gathered around him had passed out, lulled into dreams of faraway lands and dashing adventures by his smooth voice.

Nahri had not been lulled, however; she had been mesmerized, for tales of magical kingdoms and lost royal heirs were the exact fragile hopes a young girl with no name and no family might nurse in the hiddenmost corner of her heart. But the way the storyteller phrased it was confusing. Kan wa ma kan, he kept repeating when describing fantastical cities, mysterious djinn, and clever heroines. It was and it wasn’t. The tales seemed to exist between this world and another, between truth and lies, and it had driven Nahri mad with longing. She needed to know that they were real. To know that there might be a better place for her, a world in which the quiet things she did with her hands were normal.

And so, she had pressed him. But was it real? she demanded. Did all that really happen?

The storyteller had shrugged. Nahri could remember the rise of his shoulders, the twinkling of his eyes, no doubt amused by the young girl’s pluck. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

Nahri had persisted, reaching for the closest example she could find. Is it like the thing in your chest, then? The thing that looks like a crab around your lungs, that’s making you cough blood?

His mouth had fallen open. God preserve me, he’d whispered in horror, while gasps rose from those who were listening. Tears filled his eyes. You cannot know that.

She hadn’t been able to reply. The other adults had swiftly intervened, yanking her up by the arms so roughly they tore the sleeve of her new dress. It had been the last straw for the little girl who said such unnerving things, the girl who cried in her sleep in a language no one had ever heard and who showed no bruises or scrapes after being beaten by the other children. Nahri had been dragged out of the crumbling building still begging to know what she’d done wrong, stumbling to the dust in her holiday clothes and rising alone in the street as people celebrated with their families inside the kind of warm homes she’d never known.

When the orphans’ home slammed its door behind her, Nahri had stopped believing in magic. Until years later, anyway, when a Daeva warrior came crashing to her feet among a tangle of tombs. But as Nahri stared now in utter incomprehension at Cairo’s familiar skyline, the Arabic words ran back through her memory.

Kan wa ma kan.

It was and it wasn’t.

The storybook world of Daevabad was gone, replaced, and Cairo’s mosques and fortresses and old brick buildings were hazy in the distance, heat shimmering off the surrounding desert and flooded fields. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. The city was still there, as were the Pyramids, standing proud against the pale sky across the wide blue Nile.

Egypt. I’m in Egypt. Nahri found herself pressing her knuckles against her temple, hard enough to hurt. Was this a dream?

Or maybe Daevabad had been the dream. The nightmare. For surely it was more likely she was a human back in Cairo, a poor thief, a con artist taken in by her own scheme rather than someone who had lived the past six years as the future queen of a hidden kingdom of djinn.

And that might have been a possibility, were it not for the wheezing, sweating, and still slightly glowing prince who stepped between Nahri and her view of the countryside. Not a dream, then—not unless she’d brought a piece of it back with her.

“Nahri,” Ali whispered. His eyes were bloodshot and desperate, water beading down his face. “Nahri, please tell me I’m seeing things. Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

Still numb, Nahri glanced past his shoulder. She couldn’t look away from the Egyptian countryside, not after aching for it for so long. A warm breeze played through her hair, and a pair of sunbirds twittered as they climbed through a patch of thick brush that had swallowed a crumbling mudbrick building. It was flood season, a thing the inundated banks and water lapping at the roots of the palms made clear to any Egyptian in a moment.

“It looks like home.” Her throat was horribly strained, her healing magic still blocked by Suleiman’s seal blazing on Ali’s cheek. “It looks like Egypt.”

“We cannot be in Egypt!” Ali stepped back, falling heavily against the minaret’s crumbling inner wall. There was a feverish flush to his face, and hazy heat rose from his skin. “W-we were just in Daevabad. You pulled me off the wall … did you mean to—?”

“No! I just wanted to get away from Manizheh. You said the curse was off the lake. I figured we’d swim back to shore, not rematerialize on the other side of the world!”

“The other side of the world.” Ali’s voice was hollow. “Oh my God. Oh my God. We need to go back. We need to—” His words slipped into a pained hiss, one hand flying to his chest.

“Ali?” She grabbed him by the shoulder. Closer now, Nahri could see that he didn’t just look upset—he looked sick, shivering and sweating more than a human in the death throes of tuberculosis.

Her training took over. “Sit,” she ordered, helping him to the ground.

Ali squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the back of his head into the wall. It looked like it was taking all his strength not to scream. “I think it’s the ring,” he gasped, pressing a fist to his chest—or to his heart rather, where Suleiman’s ring should now be resting, courtesy of Nahri’s sleight of hand back in Daevabad. “It burns.”

“Let me see.” Nahri grabbed his hand—it was so hot it felt like plunging her own into a simmering kettle—and pried it away from his chest. The skin beneath looked completely normal. And without her magic, there was no examining further—Suleiman’s eight-pointed mark still blazed on Ali’s cheek, blocking her powers.

Nahri swallowed back her fear. “It’s going to be okay,” she insisted. “Lift the seal. I’ll take the pain away and be able to better examine you.”

Ali opened his eyes, bewilderment swirling into the pain in his expression. “Lift the seal?”

“Yes, the seal, Ali,” Nahri repeated, fighting panic. “Suleiman’s seal. I can’t do any magic with it glowing on your face like that!”

He took a deep breath, looking worse by the minute. “I … okay.” He glanced back at her, seeming to struggle to focus on her face. “How do I do that?”

Nahri stared at him. “What do you mean, how? Your family has held the seal for centuries. Don’t you know?”

“No. Only the emir is allowed—” Fresh grief ripped across Ali’s expression. “Oh God, Dhiru …”

“Ali, please.”

But already dazed as he was, the reminder of his brother’s death seemed too much. Ali slumped against the wall, weeping in Geziriyya. Tears rolled down his cheeks, cutting paths through the dust and dried blood on his skin.

The sound of birdsong came, a breeze rattling through the bristling palms towering over the broken mosque. Her own heart wanted to burst, the sweet relief of being home warring with the nightmarish events that had ended in the two of them appearing here.

She sat back on her heels. Think, Nahri, think. She had to have a plan.

But Nahri couldn’t think. Not when she could still smell the poisoned edge of Muntadhir’s blood and hear Manizheh cracking Ali’s bones.

Not when she could see Dara’s green gaze, pleading from across the ruined palace corridor.

Nahri took a deep breath. Magic. Just get your magic back, and this will all be better. She felt horribly vulnerable without her abilities, weak in a way she’d never been. Her entire body ached, the metallic smell of blood thick in her nose.

“Ali.” She took his face in her hands, trying not to worry at the frighteningly unnatural—even for a djinn—heat in his clammy skin. She brushed the tears from his cheeks, forcing his bloodshot eyes to meet hers. “Just breathe. We’ll grieve him, we’ll grieve them all, I promise. But right now, we need to focus.” The wind had picked up, whipping her hair into her face. “Muntadhir told me it could take a few days to recover from possessing the ring,” she remembered. “Maybe this is normal.”

Ali was shivering so hard it looked like he was seizing. His skin had taken on a grayish tone, his lips cracking. “I don’t think this is normal.” Steam was rising from his body in a humid cloud. “It wants you,” he whispered. “I can feel it.”

“I-I couldn’t,” she stammered. “I couldn’t take it. You heard what Manizheh said about me being a shafit. If the ring had killed me, she would have murdered you and then taken it for herself. I couldn’t risk that!”

As if in angry response, the seal blazed against his cheek. Where Ghassan’s mark had resembled a tattoo, blacker than night against his skin, Ali’s looked like it had been painted in quick-silver, the mercury color reflecting the sun’s light.

He cried out as it flashed brighter. “Oh, God,” he gasped, fumbling for the blades at his waist—miraculously, Ali’s khanjar and zulfiqar had come through, belted at his stomach. “I need to get this out of me.”

Nahri ripped the weapons away. “Are you mad? You can’t cut into your heart!”

Ali didn’t respond. He suddenly didn’t look capable of responding. There was a vacant, lost glaze in his eyes that terrified her. It was a look Nahri associated with the infirmary, with patients brought to her too late.

“Ali.” It was killing Nahri not to be able to simply lay hands upon him and take away his pain. “Please,” she begged. “Just try to lift the seal. I can’t help you like this!”

His gaze briefly fixed on hers, and her heart dropped—Ali’s eyes were now so dilated the pupils had nearly overtaken the gray. He blinked, but there was nothing in his face that even indicated he’d understood her plea. God, why hadn’t she asked Muntadhir more about the seal? All he’d said was that it had to be cut out of Ghassan’s heart and burned, that it might take the new ringbearer a couple of days to recover, and that …

And that it couldn’t leave Daevabad.

Cold fear stole through her even as a hot breeze rushed across her skin. No, please, no. That couldn’t be why this was happening. It couldn’t be. Nahri hadn’t even asked Ali’s permission—he’d tried to jerk away, and she’d shoved the ring on his finger anyway. Too desperate to save him, she hadn’t cared what he thought.

And now you might have killed him.

A scorching wind blew her hair straight back, sand whipping past her face. One of the swaying trees across from the ruined mosque suddenly crashed to the ground, and Nahri jumped, realizing only then that the air had grown hotter, the wind picking up to howl around her.

She glanced up.

In the desert beyond the Nile, orange and green clouds were roiling across the pale sky. As Nahri watched, the river’s glistening brightness vanished, turning a dull gray as clouds overtook the gentle dawn. Sand swirled over the rocky ground, branches and leaves cartwheeling through the air.

It looked like the storm that brought Dara. Once, that might have given Nahri comfort. Now she was terrified, shaking as she rose to her feet, Ali’s zulfiqar in her grip.

With a howl, the sandy wind rushed forward. Nahri cried out, raising an arm to protect her face. But she needn’t have. Far from being lashed and torn to pieces, she blinked to find herself and Ali inside a churning funnel of sand, an eye of protection inside the storm.

They weren’t alone.

A darker shadow lurked, vanishing and reappearing with the movement of the wind before it landed on the edge of the broken minaret, like a predator who’d caught a mouse in a hole. The creature came to her in unbelievable pieces. A tawny, lithe body, muscles rippling beneath amber fur. Clawed paws the size of her head and a tail that cut the air like a scythe. Silver eyes set in a leonine face.

And wings. Dazzling, iridescent wings in what seemed all the colors in the world. Nahri nearly dropped the zulfiqar, a startled gasp leaving her mouth. She’d seen renderings of the beast too many times to deny what was before her eyes.

It was a shedu. The near-mythical winged lion her ancestors were said to have ridden into battle against the ifrit, one that remained their symbol long after the mysterious creatures themselves had vanished.

Or so everyone thought. Because feline eyes were fixed on her now, seeming to search her face and size her up. She’d swear she saw a flicker of what might have been confusion. But also intelligence. Deep, undeniable intelligence.

“Help me,” she begged, feeling half mad. “Please.”

The shedu’s eyes narrowed. They were a silver so pale it edged on clear—the color of glittering ice—and they traveled over Nahri’s skin, taking in the zulfiqar in her hands and the injured prince at her feet. The mark on Ali’s temple.

The creature ruffled its wings like a discontented bird, a rumbling growl coming from its throat.

Nahri instantly tightened her grip on the zulfiqar, not that it would do much to protect them against such a magnificent beast.

“Please,” she tried again. “I’m a Nahid. My magic isn’t working, and we need to get back to—”

The shedu lunged.

Nahri dropped to the ground, but the creature simply soared over her, its dazzling wings throwing the minaret into shadow. “Wait!” she cried as it vanished into the golden wave of sand. The storm was pulling away, rolling into itself. “Wait!”

But it was already gone, dissipating like dust on the wind. In a moment, it was as if there had been no storm at all, the birds singing and the sky bright and blue.

Ali let out a single sigh—a hush of breath like it was his last—and then crumpled to the ground.

“Ali!” Nahri fell back to his side, shaking his shoulder. “Ali, wake up! Please wake up!” She checked his pulse, relief and despair warring inside her. He was still breathing, but the beat of his heart was wildly erratic.

This is your fault. You put that ring on his hand. You pulled him into the lake. Nahri swallowed a sob. “You don’t get to die. Understand? I didn’t save your life a dozen times so you could leave me here.”

Silence met her angry words. Nahri could shout all she liked. She still had no magic and no idea what to do next. She didn’t even know how they were here. Rising to her feet, she glanced at Cairo. She was no expert, but she’d guess it was a few hours distant by boat. Clustered closer to the city were more villages, surrounded by flooded fields and tiny boats gliding over the river.

Nahri looked again at the broken mosque and what appeared to be a scorched pigeon coop. Cracked foundation stones outlined what might once have been homes along a meandering, overgrown path that led to the river. As her eyes traced the ruined village, a strange sense of familiarity danced over the nape of her neck.

Her gaze settled on the swollen Nile, Cairo shimmering in the distance across from the mighty Pyramids. There was no trace of the shedu, no hint of magic. Not in the air, nor in her blood.

Its absence made her angry, and as she stared at the Pyramids—the mighty human monuments that had been ancient before Daevabad was even a dream—her anger only burned hotter. She wasn’t waiting around for the magical world to save her.

Nahri had another world.

ALI WAS EERILY LIGHT IN NAHRI’S ARMS, HIS SKIN scorching where it touched hers, as if half his presence had already burned away. It made it easier to drag the overly tall prince down from the minaret, but any relief Nahri might have felt was dashed by the awful suspicion that this was not a good sign.

She eased him to the ground once they were out, taking a moment to catch her breath. Sweat dampened her forehead, and she straightened up, her spine cracking.

Again came the unnerving sensation she’d been here before. Nahri glanced down the path, trying to let whatever teasing pieces of familiarity drifted through her mind settle, but they refused. The village looked like it had been razed and abandoned decades ago, the surrounding greenery well on its way to swallowing the buildings entirely.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that of all the places in Egypt two fire-blooded djinn could have been magically whisked to, a creepy, burnt-down village was it.

Throughly unsettled, Nahri picked Ali back up, following the path to the river as though she’d walked it a hundred times. Once she was there, she laid him along the shallows.

The water instantly lapped forth, submerging the line of dried grass underneath Ali’s unconscious body. Before she could react, tiny rivulets were creeping over his limbs, racing across his hot skin like watery fingers. Nahri moved to pull him away, but then Ali sighed in his sleep, some of the pain leaving his expression.

The marid did nothing to you, really? Nahri recalled Ali’s zulfiqar flying to him on a wave and the way he’d controlled the waterfall in the library to bring down the zahhak. Just what secrets was he still harboring about the marid’s possession?

And were they secrets that were dangerous now? A flying lion everyone believed long gone had just checked up on them. Were some river spirits next?

You do not have time to puzzle all this out. Ali was sick, Nahri was powerless, and if Manizheh somehow found a way to follow them, Nahri didn’t intend to be an easily spotted target in an abandoned village.

She was ruthless in taking stock of their circumstances, banishing thoughts of Daevabad and slipping into the cold pragmatism that had always ruled her life. It almost felt good to do so. There was no conquered city, no calculating mother who should have been dead, no warrior with pleading green eyes. There was only surviving.

Their possessions were pathetic. Save for Ali’s weapons, they had nothing but the tattered, blood-soaked clothes upon their backs. Nahri usually spent her days in Daevabad wearing jewelry that could have bought a kingdom but had been wearing none in deference to the traditions of the Navasatem parade, which dictated plain dress. She’d been taken from Cairo barefoot and dressed in rags and had returned the same—an irony that would have made her laugh if it didn’t make her want to burst into tears.

Worse, she knew they looked like easy marks. Their clothing might be destroyed, but it was djinn cloth, strong and luxurious to any eye. Nahri and Ali were visibly well-nourished and groomed, and Ali’s glimmering zulfiqar looked exactly like what it was: a stunningly crafted weapon more suited for a warrior from an ancient epic than anything a human traveler would be carrying. Ali and Nahri looked like the wealthy nobles they were, dragged through the mud but clearly no local peasants.

Considering her options, Nahri studied the river. No boats had come by and the nearest village was a smudge of buildings in the distance. She’d probably manage the walk in half a day, but there was no way she could carry Ali that far.

Unless she didn’t walk. Nahri eyed the fallen palm, an idea forming in her head, and then she reached for Ali’s khanjar, thinking it would be a more manageable blade than his zulfiqar.

Her hand stilled on the dagger’s jeweled handle. This wasn’t Ali’s khanjar—it was his brother’s. And like everything Muntadhir had fancied, it was beautiful and ridiculously expensive. The handle was white jade, banded with worked gold and inlaid with a floral pattern of tiny alternating sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. Nahri’s breath caught as she mentally calculated the value of the khanjar, already separating out the valuable gems in her mind. She had no doubt Muntadhir had given this to his little brother as a remembrance. It was perhaps cruel to contemplate bartering bits away without Ali’s permission.

But that wouldn’t stop her. Nahri was a survivor, and it was time to get to work.

It took her the entire morning, the hours melting by in a haze of grief and determination, her tears flowing as readily as her blood did when she gashed her fingers and wrists trying to pull together a makeshift skiff of lashed branches. It was just enough to keep Ali’s head and shoulders above the waist-high water, and then she waded in, mud sucking at her bare feet, the river pulling at her torn dress.

Her fingers were numb by midday, too useless to hold the raft. She used Ali’s belt to tie it to her waist, earning new bruises and welts. Unused to such enduring physical pain, to injuries that didn’t heal, her muscles burned, her entire body screaming at her to stop.

Nahri didn’t stop. She made sure each step was steady. For if she paused, if she slipped and was submerged, she wasn’t certain she’d have the strength to fight for another breath.

The sun was setting when she reached the first village, turning the Nile into a glistening crimson ribbon, the thick greenery at its banks a threatening cluster of spiky shadows. Nahri could only imagine how alarming she must appear, and it didn’t surprise her in the least when two young men who’d been pulling in fishing nets jumped up with surprised yelps.

But Nahri wasn’t after the help of men. Four women in black dresses were gathering water just beyond the boat, and she trudged straight for them.

“Peace be upon you, sisters,” she wheezed. Her lips were cracked, the taste of blood thick upon her tongue. Nahri held out her hand, revealing three of the tiny emeralds she’d pried from Muntadhir’s khanjar. “I need a ride to Cairo.”

NAHRI STRUGGLED TO STAY AWAKE AS THE DONKEY cart made its rumbling way into the city, night falling swiftly and cloaking the outskirts of Cairo in darkness. It made the journey easier. Not only because the narrow streets were relatively empty—the locals busy with evening meals, prayers, and the settling down of children—but because right now Nahri wasn’t sure her heart could take an unencumbered view of her old home, its familiar landmarks lit by the Egyptian sun. The entire experience was already surreal—the sweet smell of the sugarcane littering the floor of the cart and the snatches of Egyptian Arabic from passersby contrasting with the unconscious djinn prince burning in her arms.

Every bump sent a new jolt of pain into her bruised body, and Nahri could barely speak above a murmur when the cart’s driver—the husband of one of the women at the river—asked where next. It was all she could do not to fall apart. To say this was a lean plan was an understatement. And if it failed, she had no idea where to turn next.

Fighting despair and exhaustion in equal measure, Nahri opened her palm. “Naar,” she whispered to herself, hoping against hope as she said the word aloud, as Ali had once taught her. “Naar.”

There was not the slightest hint of heat, let alone the conjured flame she was aching to hold. Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

They finally arrived, and Nahri shifted in the cart, her limbs protesting. “Can you help me carry him?” she asked.

The driver glanced back, looking confused. “Who?”

Nahri gestured in disbelief to Ali, less than an arm’s length from the driver’s face. “Him.”

The man jumped. “I … Weren’t you alone? I could have sworn you were alone.”

Apprehension darted down her spine. Nahri had been under the vague understanding that humans couldn’t see most djinn—especially not pure-blooded ones like Ali. But this man had helped lift Ali’s body into the cart when they’d started out. How could he have already forgotten that?

She fought for a response, not missing the fear blooming in his eyes. “No,” she said quickly. “He’s been here the entire time.”

The man swore under his breath, sliding from the donkey’s back. “I told my wife we had no business helping strangers coming from that accursed place, but did she listen?”

“The Nile is an accursed place now?”

He shot her a dark look. “You did not just come from the Nile, you came from the direction of … that ruin.”

Nahri was too curious not to ask. “Are you talking about the village to your south? What happened there?”

He shuddered, pulling Ali from the cart. “It is better not to discuss such things.” He hissed as his fingers brushed Ali’s wrist. “This man is burning up. If you brought fever into our village—”

“You know what? I think I can actually carry him the rest of the way myself,” Nahri said with false cheer. “Thanks!”

Grumbling, the driver dumped Ali into her arms and then turned away. Struggling to adjust to the weight of his body, Nahri managed to drape one of Ali’s arms around her neck, then made her laborious way toward the small shop at the end of the dark alley—the small shop upon which she was pinning all her hopes.

The bells still rang when she opened the door, and the familiar sound as well as the aroma of herbs and tonics nearly made her double over with emotion.

“We’re closed,” came a gruff voice from the back, the old man not bothering to look up from the glass vial he was filling. “Come back tomorrow.”

At his voice, Nahri promptly lost the battle with her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

The elderly pharmacist dropped the glass vial. It shattered on the floor, but he didn’t appear to notice.

Yaqub stared back at her, his brown eyes wide with astonishment. “Nahri?”

2
DARA

It was shocking, truly, how easy it was to kill people.

Dara stared at the devastated Geziri camp before him. Spread across the manicured grounds of the palace’s public garden, it had been a beautiful place, fit for the honored guests of a king. Towering date palms from their homeland were set in giant ceramic pots among the smaller fruit trees, and glittering mirrored lanterns hung over paths of amber pebbles. Though magic had been stripped from the camp like everywhere else in Daevabad, the silk tents gleamed in the sunlight, and the gentle burble of the water fountains carried through the silence. The aroma of flowers and frankincense contrasted sharply with the acrid smell of burnt coffee and sour meat, meals that had been ruined when the people eating them were all abruptly murdered. There was the heavier smell of blood, of course, clinging to the patches of copper vapor still lingering in the air.

But Dara was becoming so accustomed to the scent of blood that he’d stopped noticing it.

“How many?” he asked quietly.

The steward standing next to him was shaking so badly it was a miracle the man was still standing. “At least a thousand, m-my lord. They were travelers from southern Am Gezira, here for Navasatem.”

Travelers. Dara’s gaze dropped from the tents and the trees—the dreamy setting for a fairy-tale feast—to the carpets so soaked with blood it was running in tiny streams into the surrounding garden. The Geziri travelers—many of whom he assumed had never been to Daevabad, who must have so recently gazed upon the city’s famed markets and palaces with wonder—had died swiftly but not instantly. There had been enough time for many to run, only to die clutching their heads on the pebbled paths. More had died holding each other, and dozens had died in what must have been a panicked stampede to escape a small plaza set up with handicrafts. The vapor Manizheh conjured had not discriminated between young and old, or woman from man, instead killing all with equal brusqueness. Young women with embroidery, old men stringing lutes, children holding sticky sweets.

“Burn them,” Dara commanded, his voice low. He had not been able to raise his voice today, as though if he gave any opening to the part of him that wanted to scream, the part of him that wanted to throw himself in the lake, he would be undone. “Along with any other Geziri bodies found in the palace.”

The steward hesitated. He was a Daeva man, a Creator-fearing one if the ash mark on his brow was anything to judge by. “Should we … should we make some effort to learn their identities? It doesn’t seem right to—”

“No.” At Dara’s curt response, the steward flinched, and Dara tried to explain. “It is better if the true toll is not known in case we need to adjust the number.”

The other man paled. “There are children.”

Dara cleared his throat, swallowing the lump rising there. He looked directly at the steward, letting his eyes brook no further discussion. “Find one of their clerics and have him pray over them. Then burn them.”

The steward swayed on his feet. “As you command.” He bowed and then scurried away.

Dara let his gaze fall on the dead again. It was utterly silent in the bloody garden, the close air feeling like a tomb. The palace walls loomed high overhead, their height tripled by his magic. Dara had done the same for the entire Daeva Quarter, taking advantage of the pandemonium to thoroughly seal his tribe off from the rest of the city. He’d done more magic than he ever had before, not even caring he’d had to stay in his fiery form to conserve his strength.

And looking at the murdered Geziris, he was glad. For if their kin on the other side of the city had somehow survived the vapor, Dara doubted even the loss of magic would keep them from coming for vengeance.

Devil, a voice whispered in his mind as he returned to the palace. It sounded like Nahri. Murderer.

Scourge.

He shoved the voice away. Dara was the weapon of the Nahids, and weapons didn’t have feelings.

The halls were desolate, his steps ringing on the ancient stones—many of which had cracked during the quake that had shaken the city when its magic was ripped away. The djinn who hadn’t managed to escape the royal complex, along with any Daevas caught protecting them, had been rounded up and herded into the ruined library. Many were inconsequential—bloodied scholars and civil servants, wailing harem companions, and terrified shafit servants—but among the mix, Kaveh had pointed out a few dozen nobles: men and women who would make for useful hostages, should their tribesmen start feeling mutinous. There was also a handful of surviving Geziris, the few besides Muntadhir who’d managed to remove their relic in time.

Dara kept walking. These are the corridors you said would be filled with celebration, aren’t they? Music and joy: the victory you promised your young warriors who now lie slaughtered on the beach, their bodies left to rot. The warriors who trusted you.

Dara squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t stop the heat crackling down his limbs. He exhaled, smoky embers escaping his mouth, and opened his eyes to see fire swirling in his palms. Had the Qahtani emir not accused him of belonging to hell? Perhaps his current appearance was an apt one.

He could hear the cries of the infirmary’s injured long before he passed through the thick wooden doors. Inside was organized chaos. Manizheh might not have her healing magic, but she commanded a forceful presence and had pulled together a team to help her, including the followers she’d brought from their camp in northern Daevastana, servants who’d worked with Nahri in the infirmary, a few seamstresses who were taking their talents to flesh, and a midwife she’d plucked from the harem.

Dara spotted her across the room now, dismayed to see she’d replaced the quilted armor he’d insisted she wear during the attack with lighter clothes she must have pillaged: a man’s tunic and a blood-soaked apron stuffed with tools. Her silvering black hair was gathered in a hasty bun, strands of it falling in her face as she bent over a crying Daeva girl.

Dara joined her, prostrating himself and pressing his brow to the ground. The show of obedience was intentional. In the face of an incomplete conquest and a frightened city stripped of its magic, the strains in their relationship were petty concerns. He would not dare undermine her in public—people needed to believe her rule was absolute.

“Banu Nahida,” he intoned.

“Afshin.” There was relief in her voice. “Rise. I think we can put off the bowing for the time being.”

He did as she commanded but kept his tone formal. “I have done what I can to seal off the Daeva Quarter and the palace from the rest of the city. I cannot imagine the djinn have the resources to scale such high walls anytime soon, and if they try, I have archers and Vizaresh awaiting them.”

“Good.” Her attention shifted to a man across the room. “Did you find the saw?” she called out.

The Daeva servant hurried over. “Yes, Banu Nahida.”

“A saw?” Dara asked.

Manizheh inclined her head toward her patient. The girl was young, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of her wound: a grisly bite in the meat of her arm. The surrounding flesh was crimson and badly engorged.

“She’s a simurgh trainer in the royal menagerie,” Manizheh explained softly. “When the firebirds panic, they emit a venom in their saliva. Apparently the arena’s karkadann escaped when its magical gate fell away, and in the chaos, one of her birds bit her.”

Dara’s heart dropped. “What will you do?”

“If I had my abilities, I could draw the poison out before it reached her heart. Without magic, there’s only one thing I can do.”

The meaning of the saw became horribly clear, and whatever was between them, Manizheh seemed to have some mercy left for him. “She is the last patient I need to stabilize, and then I would like to catch up with you and Kaveh.” She nodded to a pair of doors. “He’s waiting in the other room.”

Dara bowed haltingly. “Yes, Banu Nahida.”

He weaved his way through the crowded infirmary. It was packed with the injured, and Dara didn’t miss that they were all Daevas. He doubted it meant casualties were confined to his tribe—on the contrary, he suspected that in the cold calculus of their world, it meant only after the Daevas were helped would Manizheh turn her attention to the rest of the djinn.

We are never going to have peace, he despaired as he pushed through the doors she had indicated. Not after this. Consumed by his thoughts, Dara only realized where Manizheh had sent him when the door fell shut behind him.

He was in Nahri’s room.

Compared to the rest of the conquered palace, Nahri’s room was quiet and untouched. Dara was alone, Kaveh nowhere to be seen. The apartment was pretty and well appointed and at first glance could have belonged to any Daeva noblewoman. A silver fire altar smoldered in a prayer niche, perfuming the air with cedar, and a pair of delicate gold earrings and a ruby ring had been left on a small painted table.

Looking closer, though, Dara saw signs of the woman he’d known, the woman he’d loved and betrayed. Books were stacked in a precarious tower beside the bed, and what appeared to be small, almost crude items—a reed bent to resemble a boat, a dried garland of jasmine blossoms, a carved wooden bangle—were set with reverence on the windowsill. An ivory hair comb and an abandoned cotton shawl lay on the table beside him, and it was everything Dara could do not to pick them up and touch the things Nahri had touched so recently, to see if her scent lingered.

She cannot be dead. She simply cannot be. Losing the battle with his aching heart, Dara ventured farther into the room, feeling like an intruder as he ran his fingers over the finely carved mahogany bedposts. He could still remember doing so six years ago. How full of himself he’d been that night, righteously indignant after learning the Qahtanis intended to force Nahri to marry Muntadhir. Dara had not doubted for a moment when he had slipped into her bedchamber that what he was doing was right, that Nahri would greet him with a relieved smile, take his hand, and escape Daevabad at his side. That he was saving her from a terrible fate she could not possibly want.

He had been so entirely, utterly wrong.

In hindsight, it was obvious he’d lost her here, that night, and Dara had no one but himself to blame. He had taken Nahri’s choice away from her—from her, the only person who’d seen something in him beyond the legendary Afshin, the abominable Scourge, and might have loved him for it.

“Afshin?”

Dara straightened up at Kaveh’s faint voice. The grand wazir stood at the steps that led to the garden, looking pale as parchment and about as stable as the gauzy curtain dancing in the breeze.

“Kaveh.” Dara crossed the room, reaching out a hand to steady the other man. “Are you all right?”

The grand wazir let himself be led to a cushion near the fire altar. Despite the warm day, he was shivering. “No. I … Manizheh said I should wait here, but I can’t.” His bloodshot gaze darted to Dara’s. “You’ve been all over the palace … is it true about the Geziris?”

Dara nodded grimly. “A few survivors removed their relics in time—the emir is one of them—but the rest are dead.”

Kaveh jerked back, one hand going to his mouth in horror. “Creator, no,” he whispered. “The poison, the vapor … it wasn’t supposed to spread beyond the spot in which it was unleashed.”

Dara went cold. “Manizheh told you that?”

Kaveh nodded, rocking back and forth. “H-how many …”

There was no point in pretending. Kaveh would learn the truth either way. “At least a thousand. There were … travelers staying in the garden that we didn’t anticipate.”

The grand wazir let out a strangled sound. “Oh my God, the camp.” He was pressing his fingers so hard against his skull it had to hurt. “There were children there,” he wept. “I saw them playing. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I only meant to kill Ghassan and his men!”

Dara didn’t know what to say. Manizheh had known damn well the vapor would spread—she and Dara had fought bitterly about it. Why had she kept it from Kaveh? Was it because she feared the man she loved would protest? Or was it to spare him the shared guilt since she’d already made the decision to proceed?

She spared him nothing. Manizheh had made Kaveh into an instrument of mass murder, and for that, Dara had no reassuring platitudes. He knew the feeling all too well.

He tried to change the subject. “Is there any news of Jamshid?”

Kaveh wiped his eyes. “Ghassan only said he was holding him with people he trusted.” He started to shake harder. “Afshin, if he was at the Citadel … if he died when we attacked it …”

“You have no reason to believe he was there.” Dara knelt in front of the other man, gripping his arm. “Kaveh, you need to pull yourself together.”

“You’re not a father. You don’t understand.”

“I understand that there are thousands of Daevas who will be slaughtered for our actions if we lose control of this city. Manizheh is out there amputating limbs because she has no magic. She has the ifrit buzzing all around her, searching for a weakness. She needs you. Daevabad needs you. We will find Jamshid and Nahri. I pray as much as you do that the Creator has spared them. But we are helping neither if we don’t secure this city.”

The door opened and Manizheh stepped in. She took one look at them, and weariness creased her expression. “Well, don’t you two look hopeful.”

Dara stiffened. “I was updating Kaveh about the number of Geziri dead.” He met her eyes. “It seems the vapor spread farther than anticipated. Nearly all the Geziris in the palace are dead.”

He had to give her credit—Manizheh didn’t so much as flinch. “A pity. But then I suppose war is often more violent than expected. Had their people ruled justly, we wouldn’t have had to resort to such desperate means. But quite frankly, a few hundred dead djinn—”

“It is not a few hundred,” he cut in. “It is at least a thousand, if not more.”

Manizheh held his gaze, and though she did not directly rebuke him for interrupting her, Dara did not miss the warning in her eyes. “A thousand, then. They still aren’t our most pressing issue. Not when compared with our loss of magic.”

There was a moment of silence before Kaveh spoke. “Do you think it’s a punishment?”

Dara frowned. “A punishment?”

“From the Creator,” Kaveh whispered. “Because of what we did.”

“No,” Manizheh said flatly. “I don’t think the Divine had anything to do with this. Quite frankly, I don’t see the Divine anywhere in this awful city, and I refuse to believe Zaydi al Qahtani could have sacked the place and not suffered similar heavenly retribution if that were the case.” She sat down, looking rueful. “Though I don’t imagine you’ll be the only person to leap to that conclusion.”

Dara paced, too agitated to stay still. A thousand responsibilities pulled at him. “How do we rule a city with no magic? How do we live without magic?”

“We can’t,” Kaveh replied, dourer by the moment. “Our society, our economy, our world depends on magic. Half the goods traded in the city are conjured. People rely on enchantments to wake them up, to take them to work, to cook their food. I doubt one in twenty of us could even light a fire without magic.”

“Then we need to get it back,” Manizheh said. “As soon as possible.”

Dara stopped pacing. “How? We don’t even know why it’s gone.”

“We can make some guesses. You’re both fretting, but we’re not completely in the dark. You still have your magic, Afshin, as do the ifrit.”

He scowled at the comparison. “Meaning?”

“Meaning the magic that vanished is that which Suleiman granted our ancestors after their penance,” she explained. “You have yours because you’re untouched by Suleiman’s curse. The ifrit have their tricks because it is a different sort of magic, things they learned to circumvent his curse. It cannot be coincidence that our powers only vanished when Nahri and Alizayd took Suleiman’s ring and jumped into the lake.”

Dara paused, following her reasoning. “You are certain?”

“Quite,” Manizheh replied, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Nahri slipped it on his finger, they vanished into the lake, and moments later, the veil fell and my abilities were gone.” She looked grim. “I watched the water. They didn’t resurface.”

“I checked the cliffs as well.” It had nearly killed Dara to do so, the prospect of discovering Nahri dashed upon the rocks too awful to contemplate. “I found nothing. But the fall is not long. Perhaps they swam back, and I missed them. They could be hiding elsewhere on the island, Alizayd using the seal to stop magic.”

Manizheh shook her head. “It was too sudden. Ghassan went into seclusion for days when he first took the seal and looked like he’d been on the wrong end of a plague when he returned. I do not think this could be Alizayd’s doing.”

Kaveh cleared his throat. “I will say what neither of you want to: they are just as likely dead. That is a fall that could kill a man. For all we know, they drowned, and their bodies sank beneath the water.”

Dara’s heart twisted, but Manizheh was already responding. “The ring-bearer being dead should not have affected magic like this. After all, how many hours did Ghassan lie slain with it?”

Dara pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nahri is not dead,” he said stubbornly. “It is not possible. And I do not believe for one moment that the marid let their little pawn drown.”

Kaveh looked confused. “Why would the marid care? From what Manizheh told me, I got the impression Alizayd was nothing to them, merely the first convenient body to jump in that night they cut you down.”

“For someone who was merely convenient, he’s certainly been well rewarded. That sand fly killed my men with water magic. Vizaresh said he found Alizayd controlling the lake as though he were marid himself.”

“You might have mentioned that a bit sooner,” Kaveh sputtered. “They jumped in a marid-cursed lake, Afshin! If Alizayd is under the protection of those creatures—”

“The marid told me they wouldn’t interfere with us again,” Dara argued. “I made clear the consequences.”

“Enough.” Manizheh raised a hand. “I cannot think with you two shouting like that.” She pursed her lips, looking troubled. “What if he didn’t need to be under their protection?”

“What do you mean?” Dara asked.

“I mean that it might not have been Alizayd,” Manizheh suggested. “We were the ones who insisted the marid restore the lake’s original enchantment, the one that let Nahids travel through the waters—it’s how we returned to Daevabad. What if Nahri somehow used it to get them away?”

Kaveh opened his mouth, looking even paler. Dara was genuinely surprised he hadn’t fainted yet.

“That … that could fit. Back at the camp, you both said there was no evidence Suleiman’s seal had ever left Daevabad. Maybe this is why,” Kaveh continued, gesticulating like an over-exuberant lecturer. “Because if you remove the seal from Daevabad, everything falls apart. Does it otherwise not seem strange the Qahtanis never took the seal back to Am Gezira? That they wouldn’t have tried to build an empire closer to their home and allies?”

“It’s a theory,” Manizheh said after a cautious silence. “One that might fit, but even so, if Nahri accessed that kind of magic, they could be anywhere. She would have merely needed to think of a place, and they’d be gone.”

“Then I will go find them,” Dara rushed, not caring how emotional he sounded. “Egypt. Am Gezira. Nahri and Alizayd are not fools. They’ll go somewhere familiar and safe.”

“Absolutely not.” Kaveh’s voice fell like a hammer. “You can’t leave Daevabad, Afshin. Not for a single minute. Besides the ifrit, you’re the only magic-user in the city. If the djinn and shafit thought you weren’t here to protect us …” He began to shake again. “You didn’t see what they did to the Navasatem parade. What they did to Nisreen. The dirt-bloods don’t need magic. They have ghastly human weapons capable of blowing people to pieces. They have Rumi fire and rifles and—”

Manizheh’s hand fell on Kaveh’s wrist. “I think he understands.” She glanced at Dara, resignation in her face. “I am desperate for my magic, Afshin, I am. But we took this city by blood, and now Daevabad comes first. We’ll need to come up with another way to get the seal back.”

If Dara had felt the weight of his duties before, it landed even more heavily now, tightening around his shoulders and throat like a barbed scarf. Manizheh wasn’t manipulating him this time. Dara knew damn well the price his people would pay for the violence their invasion had wrought.

It was not a thing he would let happen. “Then what do we do?” he asked.

“We finish what we started: we put Daevabad—all of it—under our control. And while we’ll need to find out if magic is gone beyond our borders, for now we keep news of what’s happened under wraps. I won’t have the shafit running off to bring magic to the human world or the djinn fleeing to their homelands. Have the ifrit burn any boats trying to cross the lake.”

Kaveh visibly started at that. “But there will be travelers trying to come for Navasatem.”

“Then we’ll deal with them. And on a more personal note”—Manizheh took a deep breath—“is there any news of Jamshid?”

The grand wazir’s face crumpled. “No, my lady. I’m sorry. All I know is that Ghassan said he was someplace secure. He might have been at the Citadel when it fell.”

“Stop saying that,” Dara demanded, seeing Manizheh pale for the first time. “Kaveh, you were the one who told me about Alizayd’s rebellion. The Citadel was his when it fell—why would Ghassan have sent Jamshid there?”

Manizheh stepped closer to the mirrored table, picking up Nahri’s hair comb. “There’s someone else who might know where Ghassan would have kept Jamshid,” she said, running her fingers over the ivory teeth. “Someone who might also be able to tell us about Suleiman’s seal—and where his brother and wife would run if indeed they’re still alive.” She slipped the comb into one of her pockets. “I say it’s time we pay a visit to our former emir.”

3
NAHRI

Yaqub reentered the room, and dropped a shawl around her shoulders. “You look cold.”

Nahri drew the shawl closer. “Thank you.” It wasn’t particularly chilly in the apothecary’s cramped back storeroom—especially not at the side of a feverish, unconscious djinn—but Nahri hadn’t been able to stop shivering.

She dipped her compress into a bowl of cool peppermint-scented water, squeezed it, and then laid it flat upon Ali’s brow. He stirred but didn’t open his eyes, the cloth steaming where it touched his hot skin.

Still standing, Yaqub spoke again. “How long has he had the fever?”

Nahri pressed her fingers against Ali’s throat. His pulse was still too fast, though she’d swear it was a degree slower than it had been at the riverside. She prayed to God it was, anyway, clinging to Muntadhir’s warning that it would take the new seal-bearer a few days to adjust to the ring’s presence and praying this was all normal, not a consequence of taking the ring out of Daevabad.

“A day,” she answered.

“And his head …” Yaqub’s voice was uncertain. “You’ve bandaged it. Did he take a blow? If there’s a wound and it turned septic—”

“It didn’t.” Nahri wasn’t sure what a human would see if they looked at the glowing mark of Suleiman’s seal on Ali’s temple but had decided not to find out, ripping a strip from the bottom of her dress and tying it tight around his brow.

Gripping a new cane—it really had been a long time—Yaqub lowered himself to the ground beside her, carefully balancing another bowl. “I brought some broth from the butcher. He owed me a favor.”

Guilt stabbed through her. “You didn’t have to trade a favor for me.”

“Nonsense. Help me raise your mysterious companion a bit. He’s moving enough that you should try and get some liquid in him.”

Nahri lifted Ali’s shoulders, her arms still aching from the river. He mumbled something in his sleep, shivering like her, and her heart panged. Please don’t die, she begged silently as Yaqub slid another cushion behind him.

Yaqub wordlessly took over, coaxing a couple of spoonfuls of broth into Ali’s mouth and down his throat. “Not too much,” he instructed. “You don’t want him to choke.” His voice was gentle, like a man trying not to spook a nervous animal, and it touched Nahri almost as much as it embarrassed her. If she had feared him turning her away at the door, such worry had been entirely unfounded—the old pharmacist had taken one look at her with a sick man in her arms and invited her in without question.

He sat back. “My mind or my eyes must be going. Every time I look at him, he seems to vanish.”

“Odd,” Nahri replied, her voice strained. “He looks normal to me.”

Yaqub set down the bowl. “I always had the impression that you and normal did not quite fit. Now, I would ask if you’d like to get a proper doctor to see him and not just some batty old pharmacist, but I suspect that I already know the answer.”

Nahri shook her head. No human doctor was going to be able to help Ali, and she didn’t want either of them attracting undue attention. “No doctors.”

“Of course not. Why do something that would make sense?”

Ah, there was the old business partner she remembered. “I don’t want to get in trouble with anyone,” she retorted. “I don’t want you to get in trouble. It’s best if we lie low for now. And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have intruded on you like this. I’ll get the rest of this broth in him and then—”

“And then you’ll what? Drag an unconscious body around Cairo?” Yaqub asked drily. “No, you will both be staying right—” He jumped, staring in bewilderment at Ali. “He did it again,” he said. “I would swear he just vanished.”

“It’s your eyes. They start going at your age.” When Yaqub gave her an incredulous look, Nahri forced a pained smile. “But thank you for your offer of hospitality.”

Yaqub sighed. “You would return under such circumstances.” He climbed heavily to his feet, motioning for her to follow. “Come. Let whoever this is rest. You need to eat, and I have some questions.”

Apprehensive, Nahri nonetheless drew a light blanket over Ali and climbed to her feet. She straightened up, twisting her back to relieve her aching body. She felt so horribly frail.

It’s only temporary. Ali would wake up and lift the seal, they’d get their magic back and then they’d sort everything out.

They had to.

Nahri’s stomach grumbled as she passed through the door. Yaqub was correct about her hunger. She hadn’t eaten in a long time, her last meal spent in the hospital with Subha as they struggled to take care of the victims of the Navasatem attack.

By the Most High, was that only two days ago? A wave of fresh despair welled in Nahri’s chest. What would happen to Subha, her family, and the rest of the shafit in a city controlled by Manizheh and Dara, especially when their new Daeva rulers learned of the Navasatem attack? Might the doctor be shown mercy for having saved Daeva lives? Executed for her brazenness?

“Are you coming?” Yaqub called.

“Yes.” Nahri tried to distract herself from her fears, but being in Yaqub’s shop only shook up her emotions more. The apothecary looked like it had been plucked from her memories, as messy and warm as always. There were the old wooden work-bench and scattered pharmacy tools—many of which looked as old as Daevabad. The air was thick with the smell of spices and herbs, and barrels of dried chamomile flowers and gnarled gingerroot covered the dusty floor, with tins and glass vials of more precious ingredients perched upon the shelves.

She ran her hand over the worn table, her fingers brushing the various boxes and baubles. Nahri had spent countless hours in this cramped room, helping Yaqub with inventory and trying to pretend she wasn’t hanging on every precious word he imparted about medicine. Back in Daevabad, she’d have done almost anything to return, to spend just one more day in Egypt, one more afternoon dicing herbs and pounding seeds in the sunlight streaming through the tall window as Yaqub droned on about treating stomach cramps and insect bites.

In none of those dreams had Nahri arrived fleeing Daevabad’s violent conquest at the hands of people she’d thought dead, people who in another life she might have loved—nor did she imagine traveling with a man who by any right should be her enemy.

Yaqub snapped his fingers in front of her face and then gestured to an oil-splattered paper package. “Sambousek. Eat.” He grunted, settling on a stool. “Were I smart, I would only give you one per question answered.”

Nahri opened the package, her belly rumbling at the pile of sambousek, the smell of the fried dough making her lightheaded. “But that would make you a terrible host. After all, you did call me a guest.” She all but inhaled the first pastry, closing her eyes in delight at the taste of the salty cheese.

Yaqub smiled. “Still the little street girl. I remember the first time I fed you: I’d never seen a child eat so fast. I thought for sure you would choke.”

“I was hardly a child,” she complained. “I think I was fifteen when you and I started working together.”

“You were a child,” Yaqub corrected softly, remorse in his voice. “And clearly so very, very alone.” He hesitated. “I … after you disappeared, I regretted that I had not done more to reach out to you. I should have invited you into my home, found you a proper husband …”

“I would have turned you away,” Nahri said wistfully. “I would have thought it was a trick.”

Yaqub looked surprised. “Did you not trust me even at the end?”

Nahri swallowed her last bite and wordlessly took the cup of water he offered. “It wasn’t you. I didn’t trust anyone,” she said, realizing it as she spoke. “I was afraid to. It always felt like I was one mistake away from losing everything.”

“You sound so much older.”

She forced a shrug, dropping her gaze before he could see the emotions in her face. She’d started to trust people in Daevabad—at least as much as Nahri was capable of trusting anyone. She’d had friends and mentors—roots. Nisreen and Subha, Elashia and Razu, Jamshid and Ali—even Muntadhir and Zaynab in their own way.

At least she’d had roots until the first person she’d trusted—the first person she’d let into her heart—had ripped them out and set everything she’d built spectacularly ablaze.

“It’s been a long few years.” Nahri changed the subject, her appetite vanishing. “How have you been doing? You look pretty good. I wasn’t sure you’d still be …”

“What? Alive?” Yaqub harrumphed. “I am not that old. The knee gives me trouble, and my eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were—as you so kindly pointed out—but I’m still better than half my competition, out there mixing chalk and sugar syrup into their marked-up products.”

“Have you considered taking on an apprentice?” She nodded to the untidy shop. “It’s a lot of work.”

He made a face. “I’ve tried a few sons-in-law and grandsons. The ones who weren’t useless were lazy.”

“And your daughters and granddaughters?”

“Are safer at home,” he said firmly. “There has been too much war, too many of these foreign soldiers mucking about. French, British, Turkish—one can hardly keep track.”

Nahri drew back, confused. “British and Turkish? But I thought … aren’t we controlled by the French?”

Yaqub gave her a look like she’d lost her mind. “The French have been gone for years now.” His face grew even more disbelieving. “Nahri, where have you been that you did not know about the war? They were battling on both sides of the Nile, through the streets of Cairo …” His voice grew bitter. “Foreigners, all of them. Bloodying our land; seizing our food, our palaces, all these treasures they were said to have dug out of the ground—and then claiming it was all done because each would be better at ruling us.”

Her heart sank. “And now?”

“The Ottomans again. A new one. Says things will be different, that he wants to lead a modern and independent Egypt.” Yaqub let out a grumpy snort. “Plenty of people like him, like some of his ideas.”

“But not you?”

“No. They say he is already turning on some of the Egyptian nobles and clerics who supported him.” He shook his head. “I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs. And those Europeans will be back. People do not cross a sea to fight without expecting some return on their investment.”

At that, Nahri forced herself to eat another pastry. It seemed wherever she went, her people were being pushed down by foreign rulers and killed in wars over which they had no say. In Daevabad, at least, she’d had some power and had done her damnedest to set things on a different course—her marriage to Muntadhir, for starters, and the hospital. And still it had done nothing, her efforts at peace destroyed by violence again and again.

Yaqub leaned against his workbench. “So now that you have effectively diverted the conversation twice, let us return to those questions I have for you: What happened? And where have you been all these years?”

Nahri stared at him. She wasn’t sure she could answer that for herself, let alone for a human who was supposed to have no inkling of the magical world.

A human. How quickly that word had risen unbidden in her mind. The realization threw her, making her fumble for an answer even more awkward. “It’s sort of a long story—”

“Oh, have you somewhere to be? An appointment?” Yaqub wagged a trembling finger. “Child, you should be happy for all the wars. They distracted people from the rumors flying around after you disappeared.”

“Rumors?”

His expression darkened. “A girl was found murdered in El Arafa, surrounded by decaying bodies, ransacked tombs, broken graves—like the dead themselves awoke, God forbid. People said she was shot with an arrow that looked like it came from the time of the Prophet. Wild stories, including gossip that she’d taken part in a zar earlier in the evening. And that it was led by …”

“Me,” Nahri finished. “Her name was Baseema. The girl, I mean.”

She didn’t miss the way he drew back ever so slightly. “You weren’t actually involved in her death, were you?”

Creator, Nahri was so tired of lying to people she cared about. “Of course not,” she said hoarsely.

“Then why did you vanish?” Yaqub sounded hurt. “I was very worried, Nahri. I know I’m not your family, but you might have sent word.”

More guilt, but at least this Nahri could answer somewhat honestly. “I would have if I could, my friend. Believe me.” She thought fast. “I was … taken—rescued. But the place I ended up, the people—they were on the controlling side,” she explained, in what had to be the mildest assessment of Ghassan al Qahtani ever uttered. “In fact, that’s why we’re here. We’re sort of … political exiles.”

Yaqub’s fuzzy gray brows had been rising higher in disbelief as she spoke, but now he just looked confused. “We?” he repeated.

“Me and him,” Nahri replied, nodding at Ali, his sleeping form visible through the open door.

Yaqub glanced back and then jumped. “Oh, goodness, I’d completely forgotten about him!”

“Yes, he seems to have that effect.” Not that Nahri was complaining. If Ali woke up in Cairo, it might be better for everyone that humans had trouble seeing—and perhaps more importantly, hearing—the djinn prince with the habit of saying exactly the wrong thing.

If he wakes up. Even thinking it made her want to rush back in and check on him.

Yaqub was still staring at Ali’s feet, squinting as though that would keep him from popping out of view again. “And who exactly is ‘he’?”

“A friend.”

“A friend?” He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “What is a ‘friend’? You are not married?”

Nahri’s guilt left her in one fell swoop. “I vanish in a cemetery full of exhumed skeletons only to show up in your shop six years later, and your primary concern about the man you can barely see is whether or not he’s my husband?”

Yaqub flushed but remained stubborn. “So you and your not-husband are political exiles, you said? From where?”

A magical court of djinn. “An island,” she answered. “It’s this tiny island kingdom. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”

“An island where?”

Nahri swallowed. “Afghanistan?” she tried. “I mean, you know, in that general area.”

Yaqub crossed his arms over his chest. “An island. In Afghanistan? Where? Near the endless desert steppe or the rocky mountains weeks from the sea?”

His sarcastic response only made Nahri more heartsick. How quickly they’d fallen back into their verbal sparring matches, the biting remarks she’d always trusted more than if Yaqub had treated her with pity.

And suddenly she wanted to tell him. Ali might be dying, the magic that had been part of her identity since she was a child was gone, and her world had been torn apart. She wanted someone to tell her it was all going to be okay, to hug her as she wept the tears she rarely let fall.

She looked at Yaqub, at the gentleness in his warm, human-brown eyes and the weary lines in his face. What horrors had he seen in the wars Nahri had missed? How had he survived, managing his shop and feeding his family in a city filled with hostile foreigners—a city where his faith marked him out as different and possibly suspicious, a sickening situation Nahri could empathize with all too well?

Nahri would not shake his world further. “Grandfather, you always made it clear you didn’t want to know certain things about me. Trust that this isn’t a tale you want to hear.”

Yaqub’s eyes dimmed, a quiet sadness crossing his face. “I see.” There was tense silence for a moment, but when he spoke again, his voice was understanding. “Are you in trouble?”

Nahri had to bite back a hysterical laugh. She’d tricked Manizheh—a woman who controlled people’s limbs with her mind and summoned back dead Afshin from ash—and stolen the seal ring her mother had been after for decades. Yes, Nahri would say she was in trouble.

She lied again. “I think I’m safe for now. For a little while, at least,” she added, praying that part was true. Nahri didn’t put tracking her and Ali out of Manizheh’s skill set, but Daevabad was a world away and presumably consumed by utter chaos. Hopefully her mother would be too busy with her new throne to come hunting for them so soon.

But she would come eventually. Nahri hadn’t missed the hunger in Manizheh’s face when she spoke of Suleiman’s seal.

Or maybe she’ll send Dara. God forgive her, Nahri almost wanted to see him. She wanted to confront him, to understand how the man who’d escorted her to Daevabad, the charismatic warrior who teased her and conjured his mother’s stew, had knowingly taken part in an assault meant to end with the murder of every Geziri man, woman, and child.

And then what? Will you kill him? Could she? Or would Dara simply sweep Nahri’s opinions and pleas aside once again, rip Ali’s heart from his chest, and then drag her back to face Manizheh?

“Nahri?” Yaqub was staring at her.

She glanced down, realizing she’d crushed the remaining pastry in her hand. “Sorry. Just lost in my thoughts.”

“You look exhausted.” Yaqub nodded to the storage room. “I have another blanket in there. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll head home and see if I can’t find the two of you some clean clothes.”

Shame blossomed through her once again. “I don’t want to take advantage of your hospitality.”

“Oh, stop.” Yaqub was already rising to his feet. “You don’t always have to do everything on your own.” He waved her off. “Go rest.”

Nahri found the second blanket upon a thin, rolled pad and spread them both on the floor. She grunted in relief as she collapsed. It felt heavenly to lie flat, a small mercy to her battered body. She reached out, finding Ali’s wrist at her side and taking his pulse once more.

Slower. Only by a count or two, and his damp skin still burned—but it didn’t scorch. He shifted in his sleep, murmuring under his breath.

She slipped her fingers through his. “A woman is sleeping beside you and holding your hand,” she warned, her voice breaking. “Surely you need to wake up and immediately cease such forbidden behavior.”

There was no response. Nahri hadn’t expected one and yet still felt herself fighting an edge of grief.

“Don’t die in my debt, al Qahtani. I’ll come find you in Paradise, I swear, and they’ll kick you out for associating with such a disrespectful thief.” She squeezed his hand. “Please.”

4
DARA

The twisting tunnel that led to the palace dungeons was as bleak as its end point, a narrow corridor that burrowed deep into the city’s bedrock, lit only by the occasional torch and smelling of mildew and old blood. Ancient Divasti graffiti spoke to its origins in the time of the Nahid Council, but Dara had never been down here.

He’d heard stories, of course. Everyone had—that was the point. Rumors of bodies left to rot into a gruesome carpet of bones and decaying viscera, a cruel welcome to new inmates who might suddenly find confessing their crimes a better alternative. The torture was said to be worse—illusionists who could make you hallucinate the deaths of your loved ones and poisons that melted flesh. There was no light and little air, just tight cells of death where one would slowly go mad.

Had Zaydi al Qahtani succeeded in capturing him, Dara had no doubt that would have been his fate. What better propaganda than the last Afshin, the rebel Scourge, driven to insanity beneath the stolen shedu throne? Such punishment had still been on Dara’s mind when he’d escorted Nahri to Daevabad, and it had taken every bit of courage and bluster he’d had to stare Ghassan al Qahtani in the eye while envisioning himself being dragged away to spend eternity in a dark stone cage.

Dara had never imagined, however, that the haughty emir at Ghassan’s side, the heir apparent wrapped in every wealth and privilege, would be the one who ended up here instead.

Dara stepped closer to Manizheh as they turned the corner. “Did you know Muntadhir well when you lived in Daevabad?”

Manizheh shook her head. “He was barely out of boyhood when I left, and the djinn children of the harem believed me a witch who could break their bones with a single glance.”

“But you can do that.”

“Answers your question, doesn’t it? But no, I didn’t know Muntadhir well. He was precious to his mother, and she was careful to keep him away from me. He was young when she died, but Ghassan had him moved out of the harem and into the emir’s quarters. And from what I’ve heard, he handled his abrupt transition into public adulthood by pouring everything he could down his throat and sleeping his way through the nobility.”

There was no missing the disdain in her response, but Dara wasn’t so ready to underestimate the son Ghassan had raised to rule a divided city.

“He’s not a fool, Banu Nahida,” he warned. “He’s reckless and intemperate when drunk, but no fool—especially when it comes to politics.”

“I believe you. Indeed, I’m relying on the fact that he’s not a fool, because it would be quite foolish for him to decide not to talk to us.”

Dara had little doubt what she was alluding to. “It does not work as well as you think,” he said. When Manizheh glanced at him, questioning, Dara was blunter. “Torture. Hurt a man badly enough and he will say anything to make it stop, regardless of whether or not it is true.”

“I trust you have the experience to make such a judgment.” Manizheh’s expression was contemplative. “So perhaps there’s another way to reach him.”

“Such as?”

“The truth. I’m hoping it’s such an unexpected departure from the way our families typically deal with each other that it might startle him into some truths of his own.”

Gushtap, one of Dara’s surviving soldiers, stood beside a heavy iron door, a wall torch throwing blazing light on his harrowed face. He caught sight of them, jerking to attention and offering a shaky bow. “Banu Nahida.”

“May the fires burn brightly for you,” Manizheh greeted him. “How is our prisoner?”

“Quiet for now, but we had to chain him to the wall—he was smashing his head into the door.”

Manizheh blanched, and Dara explained. “Muntadhir thinks I’ve returned from hell to avenge myself on his family. Killing himself before I can do it more painfully likely seems a sound plan.”

Manizheh sighed. “Promising.” She laid a hand on Gushtap’s shoulder. “Go take some tea for yourself and send another to relieve you. No one should have to serve in this crypt long.”

Relief lit the young man’s face. “Thank you, Banu Nahida.”

The door creaked when Dara pushed it open, the heavy wood scraping the floor. And though he trusted his men about the chains, he still found himself reaching for his knife before stepping into the black cell. The memory of the slaughtered Geziris was fresh in his mind, and Dara knew how he would react if he were suddenly face-to-face with the individuals who’d done that to his people.

The stench hit him first, blood, rot, and waste, so thick he covered his nose, trying not to gag. With a snap, Dara conjured a trio of fiery floating globes that filled the cell with golden light. It revealed what he’d dreaded all those years, though the remains of the infamous “carpet” looked nearly worn away, reduced to blackened bones and scraps of cloth.

Muntadhir was chained to the opposite wall, iron cuffs binding his wrists and ankles. Daevabad’s once-dashing emir was still dressed in his ruined clothes from the night before, bloodstained trousers and a dishdasha so torn it hung around his neck like a scarf. A shallow gash stretched across his stomach, a nasty wound to be certain, but nothing like how it had looked before magic vanished: the skin flushed with the ominous green-black of the zulfiqar’s poison, the steadily spreading tendrils of inescapable death.

Muntadhir jerked back against the sudden light, blinking. He met Dara’s eyes, and hatred ripped across his face.

Then he noticed Manizheh.

Muntadhir’s mouth fell open, a strangled sound leaving his throat. But then he laughed, a hysterical, bitter laugh. “Of course,” he said. “Of course it was you. Who else would be capable of such a thing?”

Manizheh’s tone was almost polite. “Hello, Emir.”

Muntadhir shuddered. “I watched you burn on the funeral pyre.” He glared at Dara. “I watched you turn to ash. What devil’s deal did the two of you make to return and visit such slaughter on my people?”

Dara tensed, but Manizheh was implacable. “Nothing so dramatic, I assure you.” She pointed at his wound. “May I check that? It should be cleaned and may require stitching.”

“I would rather it kill me. Where is my brother?” Muntadhir’s voice broke with worry. “Where is Nahri? What have you done with them?”

“I don’t know,” Manizheh replied. “The last I saw of them, Alizayd had seized Suleiman’s seal ring, grabbed my daughter, and jumped into the lake. No one has heard from them since.”

And here I thought we were trying the truth. Yet Dara would be lying if he said that wasn’t a story he wished he could believe as well. It would be easier to have a new reason to hate Alizayd than confront the unsettling truth that Nahri had chosen another side.

“I don’t believe you,” Muntadhir retorted. “The lake kills anyone who goes in it. Ali would never—”

“Wouldn’t he?” Manizheh countered. “Your brother has partnered with marid before. Maybe he thought they would help him.”

Muntadhir’s expression stayed flat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dara spoke up. “Come on, al Qahtani. You’ve seen him use water magic. He did so right in front of us. And you were on the boat that night he fell in the lake, and they possessed him.”

The emir didn’t flinch. “Ali didn’t fall in the lake,” he said coolly, reciting the words with the ease of an often-told lie. “He was caught in the ship’s netting and recovered in time to strike you down. God be praised for such a hero.”

“Odd,” Dara said, matching his chill. “Because I remember you wailing his name as he vanished beneath the surface.” He stepped closer. “I’ve met the marid, Emir. You may think me a monster, but you have no idea what these creatures are. They use the rotting bodies of their murdered acolytes to communicate. They despise our kind. And do you know what they called your brother? A mistake. A mistake they were very angry about and one which delivered them into my debt. Now he has vanished into their domain with your wife and one of the most powerful magical objects in our world.”

Muntadhir met his stare. “If they have escaped you, I don’t care who helps them.”

Manizheh cut in. “Where would they go, Muntadhir?”

“Why? So you can poison that place as well?” Muntadhir laughed. “Oh, right; you can’t now, can you? Do you think I didn’t notice? Except for your Scourge, magic is gone.” He snorted. “Congratulations, Manizheh, you’ve done what no invader has accomplished before: you’ve broken Daevabad itself.”

“We’re not the ones who took the seal out of the city,” Dara shot back. “That is why this happened to magic, is it not?”

Muntadhir’s eyes went wide with feigned innocence. “Certainly seems like a strange coincidence.”

“Then how do we restore it?” Manizheh asked. “How do we get our magic back?”

“I don’t know.” Muntadhir shrugged. “Perhaps you should go make friends with a human prophet. Best of luck, truly. I’m guessing you have about a week before Daevabad devolves into anarchy.”

The emir’s haughty sarcasm was grating on the last of Dara’s nerves, but Manizheh still seemed unaffected. “You don’t strike me as a man who would enjoy watching his home slip into anarchy. That doesn’t fit the gentle boy I remember, the polite young prince who always joined his mother for breakfast in the harem. Poor Saffiyeh, taken so early—”

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?

Nahri mumbled in her sleep again, and Ali jumped.

You failed her. You failed all of them. Nahri could have been back in Daevabad right now, with the world and a throne at her fingertips.

I have to get out of here. Ali had a sudden driving need to get out of this claustrophobic little room. To breathe fresh air and put space between himself, Nahri, and his awful, bloody memories. He crossed the room, reaching for the door and stumbling through. He caught a glimpse of crowded shelves, the scent of sesame oil …

Then Ali crashed directly into a small, elderly man. The man let out a surprised yelp and stepped back, nearly upsetting a tin tray of carefully heaped powders.

“I’m sorry,” Ali rushed to say, speaking in Djinnistani before thinking. “I didn’t mean to … oh, my God, you’re a human.”

“Oh!” The man put down the knife, setting it next to the bright bed of herbs he’d been cutting. “Forgive me,” he said in Arabic. “I don’t think I quite understood that. But you’re still here—and awake. Nahri will be so pleased!” His fuzzy brows drew together. “I keep forgetting you exist.” He shook his head, looking oddly undisturbed by such alarming words. “But I am forgetting my manners. Peace be upon you.”

Ali swiftly pulled the door closed, not wanting to wake Nahri, and then stared at the man in open astonishment. Ali couldn’t have said what set him so immediately apart; after all, he’d met plenty of shafit with rounded ears, dull, earthy skin, and warm brown eyes like the man before him. But there was something entirely too real and too solid, too … rooted about this man. As though Ali had stepped into a dream, or a curtain had been drawn back he’d never realized was there.

“I, er … upon you peace,” he stammered back.

The man’s gaze traced across Ali’s face. “It is like the more I try to look at you, the harder it is. How bizarre.” He frowned. “Is that a tattoo on your cheek?”

Ali’s hand shot up to cover Suleiman’s mark. He had no idea how to interact with this man—despite his fascination with the human world, he had never imagined actually speaking with a human. By all accounts, the man shouldn’t have been able to see him at all.

What in the name of God has happened to magic? “Birthmark,” Ali managed, his voice pitched. “Completely natural. Since birth.”

“Ah,” the man marveled. “Well, would you like some tea? You must be hungry.” He beckoned Ali to follow him deeper into the shop. “I am Yaqub, by the way.”

Yaqub. Nahri’s stories of her human life came back to him. So they really were in Cairo—with the old man she said had been her only friend.

Ali swallowed, trying to get his bearings straight. “You are Nahri’s friend. The pharmacist she worked with.” He glanced down at the small man, Yaqub’s head barely reaching Ali’s chest. “She always spoke most highly of you.”

Yaqub blushed. “That was too kind of her. But my mind must be going with age. I cannot seem to recall her mentioning your name.”

Ali hesitated, torn between politeness and caution—the last time a non-djinn asked for his name, it had not gone well. “Ali,” he answered, keeping it simple.

“Ali? Are you a Muslim, then?”

The human word, a sacred word his people rarely voiced, tumbled Ali’s emotions further. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

“And your kingdom?” Yaqub ventured. “Your Arabic … I’ve never heard an accent like that. Where is your family from?”

Ali grasped for an answer, trying to piece together what he knew of the human world and match it to his djinn geography. “The Kingdom of Saba?” When Yaqub merely looked more perplexed, he tried again. “Yemen? Is it the Yemen?”

“Yemen.” The old man pursed his lips. “The Yemen and Afghanistan,” he muttered under his breath. “Of course, the most natural of neighbors.”

But questions about Ali’s family had sent darkness rushing forward again, despair unfurling and creeping through him like vines that couldn’t be beaten back. If he stayed here and tried to make small talk with this curious human, he was going to slip up and unravel whatever story Nahri had already spun. The apothecary walls suddenly felt close, too close. Ali needed air, the sky. A moment alone.

“Does that lead outside?” Ali asked, raising a trembling finger at a door on the other side of the shop.

“Yes, but you’ve been bedridden for days. I’m not sure you should be out and about.”

Ali was already crossing the apothecary. “I’ll be fine.”

“Wait!” Yaqub protested. “What should I tell Nahri if she wakes before you return?”

Ali hesitated, his hand on the door. Forget whatever was going on with Suleiman’s seal and magic; it was hard not to feel like the kindest thing he could do for Nahri would be to never return. That if Ali truly cared for her—loved her as Muntadhir had accused—he’d leave and let her go back to the human world she’d never stopped missing, without needing to worry about the useless djinn prince she kept having to save.

Ali pulled open the door. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

ALI HAD SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE DREAMING OF THE human world. He’d devoured accounts of their monuments and marketplaces, envisioning himself in the holy city of Mecca and wandering the ports of great ships that crossed oceans. Exploring markets packed with new foods and inventions that had not yet made their way to Daevabad. And libraries … oh, the libraries.

None of those fantasies had included being nearly run down by a cart.

Ali jerked out of the path of the snub-nosed donkey and its driver and then ducked to avoid a mountain of sugarcane heaped on the back. The motion sent him crashing into a veiled woman lugging a basket of vivid purple eggplant.

“Forgive me!” he said quickly, but the woman was already brushing by as if Ali were an invisible irritant. A pair of chatting men in clerical robes parted like a human wave as they passed him, not even pausing in their conversation, and then he was almost knocked to the ground by a man balancing a large board of bread on his head.

Ali lurched out of the way, stumbling as he walked. It was too bright, too busy. Everywhere he looked was sky, a more vibrant, sunnier blue than he ever saw in Daevabad. The buildings were low, none more than a few stories tall, and far more spread out than they would have been in his packed island city. Beyond were glimpses of golden desert and rocky hills.

Ali might have craved open sky and fresh air, but in his dazed grief, the bustling human world was suddenly too much; too different and too similar all at once. The heavy, dry heat felt like an oven compared to the misty chill of his kingdom, the rich scent of fried meat and spices as thick in the air as it was in Daevabad’s bazaars, but the notes unfamiliar.

“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

Ali jumped at the adhan. Even the call to prayer sounded strange, the human intonation falling on different beats. He felt like he was dreaming, as if the awful circumstances to which he’d awoken weren’t real.

It’s real, all of it. Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your friends, your family, your home. You left them when they needed you most.

Ali clutched at his head but started walking faster, following the sound of the nearest muezzin through the winding streets like a man bewitched. This was something he knew, and all Ali wanted to do right now was pray, to cry out to God and beg Him to make this right.

He fell in with a crowd of men streaming into an enormous mosque, one of the largest Ali had ever seen. He didn’t have shoes to kick off, as he was already barefoot, but he paused as he entered anyway, his mouth falling open at the vast courtyard. The interior lay exposed to the sky, surrounded by four covered halls held up by hundreds of richly decorated stone arches. The skill and devotion displayed in the intricate patterns and soaring domes—done with painstaking effort by human hands, not by the simple snap of a djinn’s fingers—stunned him, briefly pulling Ali from his grief. Then the glisten and splash of water caught his eye: an ablution fountain.

Water.

A worshipper shouldered roughly past, but Ali didn’t care. He stared at the fountain like a man dying of thirst. But it wasn’t hydration he craved; it was something deeper. The strength that had run through his blood on Daevabad’s beach when he’d commanded the lake’s waves. The peace that had eased him when he’d coaxed springs out of Bir Nabat’s rocky cliffs.

The magic that the marid’s possession—the possession that had ruined and saved his life—had granted him.

Ali stepped up to the fountain, his heart in his throat. He was surrounded by humans, and this would be a violation of every interpretation of Suleiman’s law his people had, but he needed to know. Ali extended a hand just above the water. He called to it with his mind.

A ribbon of liquid leapt onto his palm.

Tears stung his eyes and then Ali faltered, a spasm stabbing through his chest. The pain wasn’t awful, but it was enough to break his concentration. The water fell away, streaming through his fingers.

But he had done it. His water abilities might be weakened, but they were there, unlike his djinn magic.

Ali wasn’t sure what that meant. Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer.

It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape. Ali could not begin to imagine how the two men he stood between—an elder in a crisp galabiyya and a pale, jittery boy—would react if they knew their arms were brushing those of a djinn. This was probably another violation of Suleiman’s law, and yet Ali found it impossible to care, aching only to call out to his Creator, whom he so obviously shared with the worshippers around him.

Tears were brimming in his eyes by the time he finished. Ali stayed kneeling in numb silence as the other worshippers slowly left. He stared at his hands, the scarred outline of a hook marking one palm.

We’re okay, Zaydi. The poisoned lines creeping over his brother’s stomach and the pain Muntadhir couldn’t hide in his last smile as he reassured Ali. We’re okay.

Ali promptly lost the battle with his tears. He fell forward, biting his fist in a poor effort to contain his wail.

Dhiru, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Ali was crying so hard now that his entire body shook. To his ears, his sobs rang out across the vast space, echoing off the lofty walls, but none of the humans seemed to hear him at all. He was utterly alone here, in a world he was not only forbidden to be in, but one that seemed to deny his very existence. And wasn’t that what he deserved for failing his people?

The salty taste of blood burst in his mouth. Ali dropped his hand away, fighting the mad desire to do something reckless and destructive. To hurl himself back into the Nile. To climb these high walls and jump off. Anything that would allow him to escape the grief tearing him open.

Instead, he pressed his face into his hands and rocked back and forth. Merciful One, please help me. Please take this from me. I can’t survive this. I can’t.

Hours passed. Ali stayed rooted to the spot he’d claimed, falling apart in his grief in a span of time that felt endless. His voice faded as his throat grew sore, and his tears dried up, his head pounding with dehydration. Numb, he was barely aware of the humans bustling around him, but he pulled himself from the ground each time they came to pray. It was a tether, a fragile line anchoring him from complete loss.

When night fell, Ali climbed the steps that spiraled around the minaret, feeling like the restless creature he’d heard humans believed djinn to be—the unseen spirits who haunted ruins and crept through graveyards. He pulled himself onto the small, ornate roof and then finally slept, tucked between the cold stones beneath the stars.

He woke just before dawn to the sounds of the muezzin shuffling up the steps. Ali froze, not wanting to frighten the man, and then listened quietly as the call to fajr rose in waves across the city. From this height, Ali could see much of Cairo: a labyrinth of pale brown buildings nestled between hills in the east and the winding dark Nile in the west. It was larger than Daevabad, sprawling across a land so very different from his fog-wreathed island, and though it was dazzling, it made Ali feel very small and very, very homesick.

Is this how Nahri felt? Ali recalled his friend on the night before everything had gone so terribly wrong. The longing in her voice contrasting with the sounds of celebration as they sat together in the hospital and spoke of Egypt. The night she’d touched his face and urged him to find a happier life.

The night Ali realized too late that his heart and his head might be taking different paths when it came to the clever, beautiful Banu Nahida. And though he was not arrogant enough to believe his world had been punished for the beginnings of a forbidden attraction he would never have acted on, it didn’t help his guilt.

You shouldn’t have left her at Yaqub’s like that. Ali might have been senseless with grief, but it had been cruel and selfish to have vanished without a word. Nahri probably would be better off without him, but that was still her decision to make.

So he’d make sure she could.

IT TOOK ALI MOST OF THE MORNING TO RETRACE HIS steps, an effort that sent him down several wrong streets and made him briefly fear that he was lost for good. Finally, he found the twisting lane he half remembered and followed it to its end.

Nahri was outside the apothecary, perched on a stool in a patch of sun. Though she’d veiled her face, Ali would have known her anywhere. There was a basket in her lap, and she was sorting through a pile of leafy twigs, separating out the green leaves like she’d been doing it for years. She seemed at peace, already back in the rhythms of her old life.

Then she glanced up. Relief rushed into her eyes, and Nahri shot to her feet, knocking over the bowl.

Ali crossed the street with equal haste. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I woke up, and I just needed to get away.” He dropped to his knees, trying to pick up the leaves she’d scattered. “I didn’t mean to startle you—”

Nahri grabbed his hands. “You didn’t startle me. I’ve been waiting out here, hoping you’d come back!”

Ali met her gaze over the overturned basket. “Oh.”

Nahri quickly let him go, averting her eyes as she knelt and stuffed the leafy twigs back into the basket. “I … when I woke up and you were gone, I wanted to go after you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me. I figured I’d wait a day, but then I was worried if I wasn’t outside, you’d never find the apothecary again …” She trailed off, stammering in a very un-Nahri-like way.

It wasn’t close to the anger Ali had been expecting to be greeted with. “Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”

Nahri was trembling. “I put that ring on your hand. I took you away from your family, your home.” He heard her voice catch. “When you left, I thought it might have been because you hated me.”

“Oh, God, Nahri—” Ali took the basket out of her hands, setting it aside and rising as he helped her to her feet. “No. Never. I was at the palace with you; I saw the same things. I don’t blame you for anything that happened that night. And I could never hate you,” he insisted, shocked that she could think so. “Not in a thousand years. By the Most High, I actually thought you might be happier if I stayed gone.”

It was her turn to look confused. “Why?”

“You’re free of us,” he said. “My family, the magical world. I thought … I thought if I was a good friend, it would be better to let you return to your life. Your human one.”

She rolled her eyes. “I dragged your burning body through the Nile for a whole damn day. Trust that I wouldn’t have done so if I wanted to get rid of you.”

Shame rushed through him. “You shouldn’t have had to. You shouldn’t have to keep saving me like this.”

Nahri stepped closer. She touched his hand, and Ali felt all the walls he’d bricked up around his broken spirit crash to the ground. “Ali … I thought I made very clear to you I never intended to let you out of my debt.”

Ali choked, a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. But it was tears that pricked his eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.” Ali couldn’t even say what “this” was. The enormity of how thoroughly his world had just been broken, the danger his loved ones were in, the impossibility of ever fixing it all … he knew no words to convey it.

“I know.” And indeed, there was no mistaking a wet glimmer in her eyes as well. Nahri dropped her hand. “Why don’t we take a walk? There’s a place I’d like to show you.”

6
NAHRI

“It’s the first thing I remember,” Nahri said softly, her eyes on the coursing river. “Like my life started the day I was lifted out of the Nile. The fishermen pounding my back to get the water out of my lungs, asking me what happened, who I was …” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the warm air. “Nothing. But I remember the sunlight on the water, the Pyramids against the sky, and the smell of mud like it was yesterday.”

They had returned to the Nile, walking its bank as fishermen and sailors brought their boats and nets ashore. After a while, the two of them had settled at the base of a towering palm tree, which was when Nahri had started talking, sharing stories about her old life.

Next to her, Ali was tracing patterns in the dust. He had barely spoken, a quiet shadow at her side.

“That’s the first thing you remember?” he asked now. “How old were you?”

Nahri shrugged. “Five? Six? I don’t really know. I had issues with speech—all the languages in my head.” Nostalgia swept her. “The little river girl, they called me.”

“Bint el nahr.” They’d been switching between Djinnistani and Arabic, but he said the words in Arabic, glancing up at her. “Nahri.”

“Nahri,” she repeated. “One of the few things I could decide for myself. Everyone was always trying to stick proper names on me. Never fit. I’ve always liked choosing my own path.”

“That must have been hard in Daevabad.”

A half-dozen sarcastic responses hovered at her lips. But the devastation still felt too close. “Yes,” she said simply.

Ali was silent for a long moment before speaking again. “Can I ask you something?”

“That depends on what it is.”

He looked at her again. Creator, it was hard to hold his gaze. Ali had always been an open book, and the achingly raw grief in his bloodshot eyes was nothing like the reckless, know-it-all prince she’d unwittingly befriended. “Were you ever happy there? In Daevabad, I mean.”

Nahri sucked in her breath, not expecting that question. “I … yes,” she replied, realizing it was the truth as she said it. “Sometimes. I liked being a Nahid healer. I liked the purpose it gave me, the respect. I liked being part of the Daevas and being able to fill my mind with books and new skills rather than fretting over where to find my next meal.” She paused, her throat hitching. “I liked the hospital a lot. It made me feel hopeful for the first time. I think …” She dropped her gaze. “I think I would have been happy working there.”

“Until my father found a way to crush it.”

“Yes, admittedly, the constant fear your father would murder someone I loved and being forced to marry a man who hated me were less than ideal.” She stared at her hands. “But I’ve got a lot of experience finding slivers of light to cherish when life gets more miserable than usual.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” Ali sighed. “My Divasti is, well, pretty awful, but I heard some of what Manizheh was saying to you that night. She wanted you to join them, didn’t she?”

Nahri hesitated, wondering how to respond. Ali was a Qahtani, she was a Nahid, and their peoples were at war. It seemed foolish to point out that she had a foot in each camp.

But right now, Ali didn’t look like her enemy. He looked like a man grieving for his dead, like the optimist she knew had desperately wanted a better world for all of them—and then had seen his hopes destroyed.

Nahri could relate. “Yes, Manizheh wanted me to join them.” Alone by the river, she’d removed her veil, and she worried it between her hands now. “Dara too.” Her voice, which had been steady, trembled at Dara’s name. “He said he was sorry, that I was supposed to be in the infirmary with Nisreen and … oh. Oh.”

“What?” Ali immediately moved closer, sounding worried. “What is it?”

But Nahri couldn’t speak. I was supposed to be with Nisreen the night of the attack. Nisreen’s comments about future training, her determined assistance in preventing Nahri from having a child with Muntadhir …

Just get through Navasatem, Nisreen had urged their last night together, as they drank soma and made peace after months of estrangement. I promise you, things are going to be very different soon.

Nisreen had known about Manizheh.

The mentor who’d been like a mother, who’d died in Nahri’s arms, had known. Along with Kaveh. Dara. Who else among the Daevas, among the people Nahri had thought she could trust, had quietly plotted the slaughter of the djinn they lived among? Who else had let Nahri dream, knowing it was just that—a dream?

“Nahri?” Ali started to reach for her shoulder and then stopped. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. She felt like she was going to throw up. “I think Nisreen knew about Manizheh.”

“Nisreen?” Ali’s eyes widened. “So, if Nisreen knew, and Kaveh knew, you don’t think Jamshid—”

“No.” But Jamshid … her brother’s name was another knife through her heart, one Nahri did not feel remotely capable of extracting right now. “Jamshid would never have taken part in such a thing. I don’t think either of us was supposed to be involved. I guess they figured if they swept in, killed your father, seized the throne, and disposed of the bloody evidence, we’d just be happy to be saved.” The words were bitter in her mouth.

Ali looked sick. “Every time I think there’s no lower our world can sink, we all plunge deeper.”

“Some of us rise,” she countered. “What Muntadhir did … that was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”

“It was brave, wasn’t it?” Ali hastily wiped his eyes, doing a poor job of hiding his tears. “I can’t stop thinking about him, Nahri. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I can’t stop wondering how long it took, how much pain he was in, if he blamed me at the end—”

“Don’t. Ali, don’t do that. There’s no way Muntadhir blamed you, and he wouldn’t want you killing yourself thinking that.”

Ali was shaking. “It should have been me. I still don’t understand what happened, why I couldn’t fight Darayavahoush …”

Another subject Nahri wasn’t ready to discuss. “I can’t—I can’t talk about him right now. Please.”

Ali blinked at her, his eyes wet and uncertain. He managed a nod. “All right.”

But the silence that stretched between them didn’t last long. Because no matter how much Nahri didn’t want to talk about Dara, she remembered the rage of the woman who commanded him, and right now Nahri and Ali were powerless.

“Have you had any luck lifting the seal?” she asked, trying to keep the hope from her voice.

Ali’s expression was not inspiring. “No. The ring has mostly stopped feeling like it’s going to explode in my heart, but I can’t detect anything of its magic.”

“Muntadhir said it might take a couple of days.”

“It’s been a couple of days.”

Nahri toyed with her veil. “Well, there was one other thing.”

“What one other thing?”

“Muntadhir said the seal ring wasn’t supposed to leave Daevabad.”

Ali jerked upright. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” He gestured wildly at the Nile. “We are very much not in Daevabad!”

“I didn’t want you to overreact! Like you’re doing right now,” Nahri said when Ali groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

“God forgive me,” he muttered through his fingers. “We broke a prophet’s ring.”

“We didn’t break a prophet’s ring! At least, not intentionally,” she amended. “And we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It’s only been two days. We’ll keep trying.”

Ali lifted his head. “So if I don’t have magic, and you don’t have magic …” Alarm rose in his voice. “What if no one does?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if no one does, Nahri. Did any of your powers return while I was gone?” When she shook her head, he explained. “My father couldn’t strip magic from that far a distance. When he used the seal, it was only on those in his presence. What if we did break a prophet’s ring?”

Oh. Nahri’s mouth went dry. She hadn’t quite considered all that.

“We’ll fix it,” she replied, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “Though I cannot help but point out that it would slightly even the odds between us and Manizheh if we were all powerless.”

“About that …” A little shame crept into Ali’s voice. “I’m not entirely powerless. I still have this.” He made a beckoning motion at the river.

Water leapt into his hand. A tiny liquid tendril spun there like a miniature cyclone before Ali twitched as though in pain, and the water spout collapsed.

“Ah,” she said acidly. “That. One of the many secrets you swore you didn’t have.”

“There might be a few secrets,” Ali confessed. “About me, about the marid, the war. I don’t even know where to start.”

Had a Daevabadi royal wanted to spill secrets last week, Nahri would have been eager to listen. But right now she wasn’t ready to hear about some new horror of the magical world.

“Why don’t you not start? Not today anyway.” When Ali frowned, looking confused, Nahri tried a different tack. “I asked Subha once how she kept herself from being crushed by healing, by the weight of her responsibilities and the bleakness of the work.” Thinking about Subha hurt; it made Nahri sick with fear to imagine how terrified her shafit friends might be right now. “Do you know what she told me?”

“That depends on how early in your relationship it was. As I recall, the first few weeks were rather barbed.”

Nahri gave him an imperious look. “She told me to keep myself whole. That there wasn’t any shame in taking care of yourself in order to help those who needed you.”

Ali shifted. “What are you suggesting?”

“That we table discussions of secrets for a few days. We go back to the apothecary. We eat. I introduce you properly to Yaqub and maybe get you some clothes that aren’t … this.” She gestured to his ragged shawl.

“And then?”

She took his hand. “Ali, we’re spent. You couldn’t fight Dara, I couldn’t fight Manizheh. Now we’re halfway around the world in even worse straits with no clue how to get back.” Her voice grew gentler. “I know you want to rush home. To save your sister, save your people, and avenge Muntadhir. But we’re not ready. Let’s take a couple of days to recover and see if anything changes with the seal.”

Reluctance crossed Ali’s face, warring with the logic she’d laid out. “I suppose you’re right.” He took a deep breath and then, quick as a bird, squeezed and released her hand.

Nahri climbed to her feet, catching sight of a pack of giggling girls approaching the river with laundry. In the dying afternoon light, the Nile blazed, the familiar buzz of insects washing over her. Farther ahead, the streets leading back into Cairo were bustling with people headed home, ducking out of shops and setting up tables for coffee and backgammon.

Ali had stood as well, looking a little better. Some of his old determination settled over his features, and then he spoke. “I know things look bad, but I’ll get us back to Daevabad, I promise. We’ll find a way home.”

Nahri’s gaze was still on the Egyptian street. “Home,” she repeated. “Of course.”

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.

There must have been a hundred travelers, but none were studying the sky. They looked miserable, cold and disheveled, with no flames to warm them or cook their food. Kaveh had been right: with no magic, few people knew how to build a fire. But they had otherwise banded together. Among the drawn faces, Dara saw men, women, and children from all six of the tribes passing around cold food and talking. About a dozen children were playing on the downed ship, climbing over the sewn hull—Daevas and Geziris among them.

Dara steeled himself, hardening his heart once again. Because he was about to undo such intertribal camaraderie.

He slammed to the ground, landing the shedu with a thud that shook the earth. There were cries of alarm, people scrambling to their feet, but he ignored them, drawing up to survey the crowd with every ounce of arrogance he possessed. He tossed his hair back, letting his hands rest on the hilts of his swords. Dara wore no helmet, nothing to obscure the tattoo and emerald-bright eyes he knew shouted his identity to the world, and he could only imagine the spectacle he presented—indeed, that was the point. He was to be the Afshin from legend, the dashing war god of a bygone era.

Unsurprisingly, it was a Daeva man who reacted first. “By the Creator …,” he choked out. “Are you—” His eyes widened on the conjured shedu. “Is that—”

“Rejoice!” Dara commanded. “For I bring glad tidings.” The words sounded false in his mouth, no matter how many times Manizheh, Kaveh, and he had practiced them. “The usurper Ghassan al Qahtani is dead!”

There were a couple of gasps, and then a pair of Geziri men who’d been cleaning saddles jumped up.

“What do you mean, he is dead?” the younger one demanded. “Is this some sort of trick? Who do you think you are?”

“You know who I am,” Dara said. “And I do not mean to waste words.” He drew his second sword—Ghassan’s own zulfiqar—and threw it to the ground, the rest of the king’s bloody turban knotted around the hilt. “Your sand fly king is gone to hell with the rest of his kin, and should you not wish to join them, you will listen.”

More of the djinn were pushing to their feet now, a mix of incredulity and fear on their faces.

“Liar,” the Geziri man shot back, drawing his khanjar. “This is some fire-worshipper nonsense.”

With a burst of heat, Dara commanded the blade to melt. The Geziri man shrieked, dropping his dagger as the molten metal dripped down his skin. The nearest djinn, a Sahrayn woman, started to run to him.

Dara held up a hand. “Don’t,” he warned, and the woman froze. “Touch another weapon, and what I do next will make that look like a kindness.”

The Daeva man who’d spoken up, an older man with silver in his beard and an ash mark on his brow, carefully edged in front of the group. “We will raise no weapons,” he said, his gaze darting to the angry djinn. “But please tell us what happened. How is it you still have magic?”

“Because I serve the Creator’s chosen. The rightful and most blessed Banu Manizheh e-Nahid, who has taken back the city of her ancestors and now rules as was intended.”

The Daeva man’s mouth fell open. “Manizheh? Banu Manizheh? But she’s dead. You’re both supposed to be dead!”

“I assure you we are not. Daevabad belongs to us again, and should you wish to save the lives of your loved ones, you will carry our words.” Dara looked past the Daeva man. He appreciated the courage it must have taken for his tribesman to put himself between the Afshin and the djinn, but this message was not for him. “Those of you from the djinn tribes will not be permitted to continue into the city. You are to return to your lands.”

That provoked another outcry. “But we cannot return!” a woman declared. “We have no supplies, no magic—”

“Silence! You will return to your lands with our mercy, but there will be no magic restored to you yet.” He glared at the djinn in the crowd. “Your ancestors strayed from the right path, and for that there is a cost. You will return to your lands, gather whatever councils you use to govern yourselves, and send your leaders and their families back to Daevabad with tribute and word of immediate fealty.”

There was bristling in the crowd, but Dara wasn’t done. “As for your magic, you have one man to blame: the traitor Alizayd al Qahtani.” He all but hissed the words, letting his anger show—finally something that didn’t feel like an act. “He is a liar and an abomination, a crocodile who sold his soul to the marid and took advantage of the chaos to steal Suleiman’s seal and kidnap Banu Manizheh’s daughter.”

It was an Ayaanle woman who stood now, an elder with flashing eyes. “You are the liar, fiend. And more a monster than any marid from legend.”

“So ignore me. Perhaps the Ayaanle do not wish to see their magic return, but surely not all of you feel the same. For those, Banu Manizheh offers a deal. Alizayd al Qahtani has fled, slipping through the lake as his marid masters have taught him, to hide in your lands. Find the traitor and Banu Nahri both, return them—alive—and your tribe shall see its magic returned.

“Else, perhaps you best go beg the humans of whom you are so fond to show you how to live.”

Dara could see unease rippling across the djinn, straining whatever new and fragile bonds had started to knit them together.

The Ayaanle woman was still glaring at him. “And our kin inside the city?”

“No one leaves Daevabad until the Banu Nahida has her daughter back. And she is not the only one to be returned unharmed.” He turned to the Geziris. “You look like soldiers, so let us see if you cannot convey a warning to your Qaid. Should he take vengeance on Jamshid e-Pramukh, we will release a poison into your land that will kill every Geziri within a day.”

The Geziri man recoiled. “You have no such power. Nor does the witch who commands you. That is magic beyond—”

“Sand fly,” Dara interrupted, “how do you think we took the city?”

The man instantly drew back, horror in his gray eyes. “No,” he whispered. “That cannot be … There were thousands of us in Daeva—”

“There were. And there are yet more of you in Am Gezira.” Dara glanced again at the crowd. “Our world is returning to the way things should have been, and I pray this time, your people show the sense your ancestors never did. Surrender.”

Some of the djinn were already edging away, parents grabbing children and people eyeing the supplies as though wondering what they could seize.

But with threats and violence, there would also be mercy, a hint of the pleasures that awaited them if they obeyed. “You need not fear your journey,” Dara declared. “As promised, it will be provided for.”

He spread his hands, concentrating on the sandship. With a burst of magic, it divided into a half dozen smaller ships, silver sails swelling with air, each marked with a different tribal emblem. His head throbbed, but Dara pressed on, visualizing holds filled with food and drink.

He fought the instinct to shape-shift, his body aching to burst into the fiery form that allowed such power. “Go,” he growled, his hands clenching into fists as flames danced through his fingers. He exhaled, heat scorching the air. “Now.”

Dara didn’t need to repeat himself. The djinn fled, clearly too frightened to bid farewell to their companions across tribal lines. Or perhaps they were already cutting those ties, eager to get home and make sure their people were the ones who found and returned Alizayd and Nahri.

Let them be divided. Let them return to their homes with tales of horror and a magic they couldn’t fight. Let everyone know peace was only possible under Banu Manizheh.

But as Dara saw the Daevas retreating with the same speed, he spoke up, his voice still ragged. “Wait,” he called, flagging them down. “You needn’t leave. You are welcome to enter the city.”

That was met with hesitant silence, the other Daevas glancing uncertainly at one another.

Finally, one of the men replied. “Is that an order?”

Dara was taken aback by the question. “Of course not. But we control Daevabad again,” he assured them, baffled by their attitude. “It is ours. We did this for you.”

One of the Daeva children, a little girl, began to cry. A woman quickly picked her up, shushing her with obvious fear.

The grandstanding he’d shown with the djinn went out of Dara in one breath. The last time he’d been among Daeva children, they’d been cheering him as a hero, pushing to show off their little muscles.

“I—I mean you no harm,” he stammered. “I promise.”

The Daeva man seemed to be struggling to conceal his misgivings. “All the same, I think we would like to leave.”

Dara forced a smile. “Then go with my blessings. May the fires burn brightly for you.”

No one replied in kind.

The other djinn ships were already sailing away. He watched as the Daevas did the same, sickness rising in his heart. Only when the horizon was clear did Dara exhale, letting his fiery form sweep over him. The scorching pain vanished as did his exhaustion, a cruel reminder once again that this was what Dara truly was now. And considering how his own people had just fled from him, perhaps he should keep this visage. He certainly felt like a monster.

Dara strode back to his conjured shedu, his warm breath coming in a steamy hush. His boots crunched on the ground. He frowned at the sound and then glanced down.

Fine crystals were racing across the churned earth.

Ice. Dara suddenly realized everything had gone quiet. Cold. The stillness to the chill air was utterly unnatural, as though the wind itself were holding its breath.

Dread rising in his core, Dara moved fast, closing the distance between himself and his winged creation. He reached for its mane.

The wind exhaled.

A blast of frigid air hit him so hard that Dara stumbled back from the shedu, falling to the frozen earth. He covered his head as the remains of the travelers’ camp went hurtling by, flung across the landscape by the howling wind. The shedu disintegrated in a puff of smoke that was gone on the next breeze, the air churning so violently Dara felt as though an invisible assailant were pummeling him.

The storm vanished nearly as soon as it came, leaving behind barely a breeze. The entire landscape had been iced over, glittering in the dying sun.

Dara was shaking, breathing fast. What in Suleiman’s eye had just happened?

But the answer was already coming to him on the stinging breeze. Not fire nor water nor earth.

Air.

The peris.

He shivered again. But of course—this was where Khayzur had been slaughtered by his own people, doomed for the “crime” of saving Dara’s and Nahri’s lives. Because it hadn’t just been the marid who’d toyed with Dara. No, it had been Qahtanis and Nahids, marid and peris.

Anger roiled through him. The accusations he hadn’t been able to shout at Manizheh, Khayzur’s gentle last words, and Nahri’s betrayed eyes. Dara was so sick of despairing over his fate, of guilt eating him alive. Now he was just furious. Furious at being used, at letting himself be used again and again.

These creatures did not get to make him feel worse.

“Where were you when my people were slaughtered?” he howled into the wind. “I thought the mighty peris did not interfere, did not care what the lowly daevas did to each other?” He threw out his fists, fire bursting from his hands. “Go on! Break your rules, and I will return to destroy you as I did the marid! I have flown to your realms—I will do so again and set fire to your skies. I will leave you nothing but smoke to choke on!”

The chill immediately left the air, the ground beneath him warming. Dara shoved himself to his feet. He would not be intimidated by a damn breeze.

But it pulled at him even as he stalked away, the wind flowing through his hair and tugging at his clothes. It felt like a warning, and when combined with the sight of the diseased trees across the Gozan, the mountains concealing an even more broken city, it created a ripple of undeniable fear that crept down Dara’s back. The peris didn’t interfere. It was their most sacred code.

So what did it mean when they sent a warning?

8
NAHRI

The reeds tore at Nahri’s legs as they hurried through the flooded marsh. She burst into fresh tears, burying her face in the warm neck of the woman carrying her.

“Shush, little love,” the woman whispered. “Not so loud.”

They climbed down into the narrow canal that watered the fields. Nahri peeked up as they passed the shadoof, the wooden beams of the irrigation tool jutting up against the night sky like massive claws. The air was thick with the smoke and screams of the burning village behind them, the curtain of papyrus doing nothing to conceal the horror they’d narrowly escaped. All she could see of their village now was the shattered top of the mosque’s minaret above a sea of sugarcane.

She dug her small fingers into the woman’s robe, clutching her closer. The smoke burned Nahri’s lungs, nothing like the pleasantly clean scent of the tiny flames she liked to sing into creation. “I’m scared,” she whimpered.

“I know.” A hand rubbed her back. “But we just need to get to the river. El Nil. Do you see it?”

Nahri saw it. The Nile, flowing fast and dark ahead. But they’d only just crashed into its shallows when she heard the voice again—the stranger who’d arrived speaking the musical language Nahri was never permitted to use outside their small home, the words that whispered and burned in her mind when her scraped knees healed and when she breathed life anew into the tiny kitten crushed by a reckless trader’s cart.

“Duriya!” the stranger yelled.

The woman wasn’t listening. Transferring Nahri to her hip with one arm, she bit deep into her other hand until it bled and then thrust it into the water.

“I CALL YOU!” she cried. “Sobek, you promised!”

A heavy stillness stole across the air, silencing the dying cries of Nahri’s blazing village and freezing the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her skin prickled, the hair on the back of her neck standing up as though in the presence of a predator.

On the opposite bank, a shadowy form slipped into the water.

Nahri tried to jerk back, but the arms around her were strong, pushing her into the river.

There was arguing. “I will get you your blood!” A brow pressed against hers, a pair of warm brown eyes, flecked with gold, locking on Nahri’s eyes, the eyes neighbors whispered were too dark. A kiss upon her nose.

“God will protect you,” the woman whispered. “You are brave, you are strong, and you will survive this, my darling, I swear. I love you. I always will.” The next words came in a blur, the woman weeping as her gaze turned to the water. “Take this night from her. Let her start anew.”

Teeth clamped around Nahri’s ankle, and then, before she could scream, she was dragged under the water.

“Nahri?” A hand shook her shoulder. “Nahri.”

Nahri started awake, blinking in the dark storeroom. “Ali?” she murmured, thrown from the nightmare. She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her cheeks were wet, streaked with tears.

Ali was crouched next to her, looking worried. “I’m sorry. I heard you crying, and you sounded so upset …”

“It’s all right,” she said, shucking her blanket free. It had twisted around her body like she’d been fighting it. Nahri was drenched in sweat, her gown sticking to her skin and her hair plastered to her neck. “I was having a nightmare … about that village, I think.” The details were already drifting away in the fog of waking. “There was a woman …”

“A woman? Who?”

“I don’t know. It was just a dream.”

Ali looked unconvinced. “Last time I had ‘just a dream,’ it was the marid putting visions in my head two days before the lake rose up to tear down the Citadel.”

Fair point. She wiped her face with her sleeve. “What are you doing up? You should be resting.”

He shook his head. “I’m tired of resting. And of having nightmares as well.”

Nahri gave him a sympathetic look—she’d heard Ali screaming Muntadhir’s name in his sleep just the other night. “It’ll get easier.”

Another time, she knew he would have nodded with genuine earnestness—or, more likely, Ali would have been the one telling Nahri it was going to get better.

Now he did neither. Instead, he pressed his lips in a obviously forced expression of agreement and said, “Of course.” The lie seemed to age him, the optimistic prince she’d known gone. He rose to his feet. “If you’re not going back to sleep, I made some tea.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to make tea.”

“I didn’t say it was good tea.”

Nahri couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll take a glass of not-very-good tea over returning to nightmares.” She reached for her shawl, draping it around her shoulders to fight the chill, and followed him.

She blinked in surprise when she entered the apothecary. The tins and glass vials on the shelves had been neatly reorganized and dusted and the floor freshly swept. The braids of garlic, herbs, and roots Yaqub stuffed into the ceiling to dry had all been moved to some apparatus Ali appeared to have constructed from the broken baskets the old pharmacist had been saying he’d mend since before Nahri left for Daevabad.

“Well,” she started. “You’ve certainly been doing more than brewing tea.”

Ali rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Yaqub’s been so kind. I wanted to be useful.”

“Yaqub’s never going to let you leave. I didn’t even realize there was this much room in here.” She perched on the work-bench. “You must have been up all night.”

Ali poured a glass of tea from a copper pot set over the fire and handed it to her. “It’s been easier to keep busy. If I’m doing things—fixing things, working, cleaning—it keeps my mind from everything else, though that’s probably a cowardly thing to admit.”

“Not wanting to be destroyed by despair doesn’t make you a coward, Ali. It makes you a survivor.”

“I guess.”

But again, Nahri could see her words had failed to pierce the haunted expression in his gray eyes.

It made her physically ache to look at him. “Let’s go to Khan el-Khalili tomorrow,” she offered. “It’s the biggest bazaar in the city, and if trawling through human goods won’t keep your mind occupied, I don’t know what will.” She took a sip of her tea and then coughed. “Oh. Oh, that’s awful. I didn’t think you could ruin tea. You do know you’re supposed to take the leaves out, right? Not let them steep until it tastes like metal.”

The insult seemed to work better than kindness, bringing a glint of amusement to Ali’s face. “Maybe you like weak tea.”

“How dare you.” But before Nahri could expand on her offense, she heard shuffling outside the apothecary door—followed by voices.

“I am telling you she returned.” It was a woman. “The pharmacist says she’s a servant, a peasant from the south, but Umm Sara says she has the same black eyes as the girl who used to work for him.”

Nahri instantly reached for Yaqub’s paring knife.

Ali gave her a bewildered look. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting myself.” She tensed, gripping the knife. It was astonishing how quickly it all came back. The constant worry a mark would return with soldiers, accusing her of theft. The fear that one wrong move would lead to a mob calling her a witch.

There was a knock at the door, rough and insistent. “Please!” the woman called. “We need help!”

Nahri hissed a warning under her breath when Ali moved for the door. “Don’t.”

“They said they needed help.”

“People say a lot of things!”

Ali reached out and gently lowered her hand. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he assured her. “I don’t know humans well, but I’m fairly certain if I make all the liquids in here explode, they’re not going to stick around.”

Nahri glowered. “I’m not putting down the knife.” But she didn’t stop him when Ali opened the door.

An older woman in a worn black dress pushed her way inside.

“Where is she? The girl who works with the pharmacist?” Their new arrival had a markedly southern accent and, from a glimpse at her unveiled, sun-beaten face, looked like she’d lived a hard life.

“That’s me,” Nahri said coarsely, the knife still in her hand. “What do you want?”

The woman lifted her palms beseechingly. “Please, I need your help. My son, he fell from a roof last week …” She gestured behind her and two men entered, carrying an unconscious boy in a sling. “We paid a doctor to come out who said he just needed to rest, but tonight he started vomiting and now he won’t wake …” She stumbled on, sounding desperate. “There are rumors about you. People say you’re the girl from the Nile. The one who used to heal people.”

The woman’s words struck a little too close: the one who used to heal people. “I’m not a doctor,” Nahri replied, hating the admission. “Where’s the physician you originally saw?”

“He won’t come again. He says we cannot afford him.”

Nahri finally put down the knife. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“You could look at him,” the woman persisted. “Please just look at him.”

The pleading in her eyes nagged at Nahri. “I … oh, all right. Ali, clear the table. You”—she nodded at the men carrying the boy—“bring him over here.”

They laid the boy out upon his sheet. He couldn’t have been older than ten, a wiry youth with close-cropped black curls and a wide, innocent face. He was unconscious, yet his arms looked oddly extended at his sides, his hands flared outward.

Nahri took his pulse. It was thready and far too slow. “He won’t wake up?”

“No, sayyida,” the older man answered. “He’s been sleepy all week, complaining his head still hurt and speaking little.”

“And he fell from a roof?” Nahri asked, carefully unwrapping the bandage around his bruised skull. “Is that what caused this injury?”

“Yes,” the man replied urgently.

Nahri continued her examination. She lifted one eyelid.

Dread rushed over her. His pupil was widely dilated, the black nearly overtaking the brown.

And immediately Nahri was back in Daevabad, trailing Subha as she went through the tools she’d brought to the hospital. But how did you know? she’d pestered, harassing Subha into the details of the patient Nahri had spotted in her garden.

Subha had scoffed. A blow to the head a few days back and a dilated pupil? There’s blood building in the skull, no doubt about it. And it’s deadly if not released—it’s only a matter of time.

Nahri kept her voice controlled. “He needs a surgeon. Immediately.”

One of the men shook his head. “We’re Sa’idi migrants. No surgeon is going to help us. Not unless we pay upfront with money we don’t have.”

The woman looked at her again, her gaze brimming with a hope that tore Nahri to shreds. “Could you not … lay your hands on him and wish him well? My neighbors say that’s what you used to do.”

There it was again. What she used to do. What, deep in her heart, Nahri feared she might never do again.

She stared at the boy. “I’m going to need boiling water and lots of clean rags. And I want one of you to go to the pharmacist’s home. Tell him to bring any tools he has from his grandfather.”

The woman frowned. “You need all that to lay hands upon him?”

“No, I need all that because I’m going to open his skull.”

TYING BACK HER HAIR, NAHRI STUDIED THE INSTRUMENTS that Yaqub had brought, thanking the Creator when she recognized the small circular trephine among his great-grandfather’s old tools.

“This is it,” she said, plucking the drill free. “How fortunate you’re descended from a surgeon.”

Yaqub shook his head fiercely. “You’ve lost your mind. That thing is a hundred years old. You’re going to kill that boy and get us all arrested for murder.”

“No, I’m going to save his life.” She beckoned to Ali and then handed him the drill. “Al Qahtani, you owe me. Go boil this and get me the scalpel already in the water.”

“Nahri, are you—”

She was already turning Ali around, pushing him in the direction of the cauldron. “Less talking, more helping.”

Yaqub stepped in front of her. “Nahri, in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never done anything like this. What you’re talking about is surgery that people train for years to master.”

Nahri hesitated. She actually agreed with him—she’d practiced on some coconuts and melons with Subha, but that was it. Contrary to the pandemonium that characterized the rest of her life, she was typically cautious with healing, and her years in the infirmary had only made her more careful. It was a responsibility and a privilege to be entrusted with a patient’s life, not a thing she took lightly.

But Nahri also knew the disregard with which people like this family were treated. Peasants and migrants, girls with no name and parents with no coin to convince a reluctant doctor.

“They don’t have time to go around Cairo begging for a surgeon to take pity on them, Yaqub. This boy could be dead by dawn. I know enough to try and help.”

“And if you fail?” He moved closer, lowering his voice. “Nahri, you know how things are here. Something happens to that boy in my shop and his neighbors will come for my family. They’ll run us out of this neighborhood.”

That stopped her. Nahri did know how things were—it was the same fear that had haunted her back in Daevabad. When emotions got high, the lines that divided their communities grew deadly.

She met his gaze. “Yaqub, if you refuse, I’ll understand, and I won’t do this. But that child will die.”

Emotion swept his lined face. The boy’s parents had taken up a vigil on either side of their child, his mother clutching one of his hands to her tearstained cheek.

Yaqub stared at them, indecision warring in his expression. “You chose a very inconvenient time to develop a conscience.”

“Is that a yes?”

He grimaced. “Don’t kill him.”

“I’ll try my best.” Still seeing reluctance in his eyes, Nahri added, “Would you mind making some tea for his parents and keeping them back? They don’t want to see this.”

She scrubbed up with soap. Ali had returned and laid her tools out on a clean cloth.

“Go wash your hands,” Nahri ordered.

Ali gave her an alarmed glance. “Why?”

“Because you’re helping me. The drill takes some strong-arming. Go.” As he walked away, muttering under his breath, she called, “And use plenty of soap.”

Straining to recall everything Subha had taught her, Nahri measured a spot about a hand’s breadth behind the boy’s brow and then carefully shaved his hair, scrubbing the skin with more soap before making a precise cut in the scalp. Dabbing away the blood that instantly blossomed from the cut, she pinned back the small flap of skin, revealing the bone underneath.

Back at her side, Ali rocked slightly. “Oh. That’s what that looks like.”

“Hand me another cloth,” Nahri replied, swapping out the blood-soaked one. “Now the drill.”

His hands were shaking when he gave it to her, and as the weight of the drill fell into hers, so did the staggering prospect of what she was about to do. Was Nahri mad? Who was she to take this boy’s life in her hands and drill a hole into his head? She was a thief, a con artist.

No, you’re the Banu Nahida.

When Nahri placed the drill against his skull, her hands had stopped trembling.

Later, she could not say when the eerie hush of calm descended, a feeling like what she’d been told proper prayer was supposed to invoke. There was the steady grinding of the drill and the wet, chalky smell of bone dust and blood. When her hands and wrists began to throb, she carefully coached Ali through a few rounds, sweat beading on her skin. She stopped him as soon as she saw the last bit of bone begin to give way. Nahri took over, her heart nearly stopping as she carefully withdrew the drill, removing a bloody coin of bone.

She stared at her work, too awed to speak. She’d just put a hole in a skull. Excitement buzzed beneath her skin, layering in with fear and anxiety.

Breathe, she reminded herself, Subha’s words coming back to her. There’s a membrane just below the skull. Beneath is where the blood builds. That is what you must puncture.

Nahri picked up her scalpel. The silence of the room was smothering, her heart beating so fast it felt ready to burst. She took a deep breath, offering a prayer to the Creator, Anahid, and anyone else willing to help tip the scales in her favor.

Then she pierced the membrane. Blood sprayed directly into her face. It was thick and dark, purple, with an oily cast.

That caught the other woman’s attention. “What have you done?” the boy’s mother cried, lunging up from where she’d been sitting with Yaqub.

Ali stepped between them, catching her before she could grab Nahri. Nahri had frozen, staring at the bloody incision. As the dark fluid dribbled out, she could see the pinkish-yellow brain beyond begin to pulsate with the boy’s heartbeat.

He stirred.

It wasn’t much, just a sigh and a slight twitch of one hand. But then there was movement beneath his closed eyes. The boy mumbled in his sleep, and Nahri let out a choked breath, fighting not to collapse.

She glanced back. Every eye in the room was on her, staring with a mix of horror and awe.

Nahri grinned. “Would someone hand me my sutures?”

IT TOOK THE REST OF THE NIGHT TO STITCH HIM UP. Nahri waited until the boy opened his eyes, and then another relative came by with a board to move him. His home was only down the block and Nahri gave his parents thorough instructions on how to care for him, assuring them she’d come by around noon for a checkup.

His father was an apologetic, grateful mess when he left. “May God shower you with blessings,” he gushed. “We’ll find a way to pay you, I promise.”

Nahri shook her head, watching as the mother cradled her son. “You don’t need to pay me,” she said, holding open the door. “I was happy to help.”

She watched them depart as dawn softened the sky. It was quiet save for the song of birds, a breeze bringing the scent of the Nile. Nahri took a deep breath, feeling a sense of peace and purpose she hadn’t felt since the morning of the Navasatem parade.

She still had it. Her magic might be gone, but Nahri had just saved a life, doing a procedure she suspected trained physicians would be lucky to pull off. She leaned against the apothecary door, trembling as the buzz of anxiety and excitement drained from her body, and then she wiped her eyes, embarrassed to find them wet.

I am who I always wanted to be. Forget Daevabad’s politics or the lack of whatever certificates the human world would never grant a woman like her. Nahri was a healer, and no one could take that away from her.

She went back inside. Ali and Yaqub were sitting across from each other, both looking stunned amidst the bloody tools and rags.

No, not just stunned—Ali looked as close to vomiting as she’d ever seen him. Nahri had to bite back a smile. “You’re the last person I’d think squeamish.”

“I’m not squeamish,” he said defensively. He raised a shaking finger at the drill. “I do not ever want to touch that thing again, but I’m not squeamish.”

Trying not to laugh, she laid a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you get some sleep while I clean up? I’m far too jumpy.”

Relief lit his face. “God bless you.” Ali was gone the next moment, lighting out of there like he was being chased by a karkadann.

“Let me help you,” Yaqub offered. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep after watching brain surgery being performed in my apothecary.”

They got to work, Nahri piling the bloody rags in a sack to be washed, and Yaqub wiping down his instruments.

Nahri rolled up the cloth she’d used to cover the table. “I’m sorry for not asking your permission first. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

Yaqub clucked his tongue. “First she takes a risk for a stranger, now she apologizes. Where is the rude girl who tried to swindle me so many years ago?”

Gone, for a long time now. “I can steal those instruments if you’d like to feel nostalgic.”

He shook his head, clearly not buying it. “You’ve changed for the better, whether or not you want to admit it.” He hesitated before meeting her gaze. “You did it somehow, didn’t you? You went and trained as a doctor.”

“You could say that.”

His eyes didn’t leave hers. “Where were you, Nahri? Really?”

A dozen excuses ran through her head, but God forgive her, she was so tired of lying.

Nahri took a deep breath. “Would you believe me if I said I came from a long line of djinn healers and was being held captive in a hidden magical kingdom on the other side of the world?”

Yaqub snorted. “Not even you could sell that story.”

Nahri forced a nervous laugh, the blood leaving her face. “Of course not,” she said, fighting disappointment. “Who would believe such a crazy tale?”

Yaqub set a kettle over the fire again. “It was an astonishing feat wherever you learned it,” he said, spooning tea leaves into two glass cups. “You’ll have stories spreading about you.”

“Especially since I didn’t make them pay.”

“That does sweeten the pot.”

Nahri dried the instruments, wrapping them in clean cloth, and then Yaqub motioned for her to sit. “You have ruined my night, so now take some tea with me,” he ordered, handing her a glass. “I would talk to you.”

She was instantly anxious. “If this is about us moving on, I can find other lodgings—”

He shushed her. “I’m not asking you to leave. I’m asking the opposite. I want you to stay.”

Nahri frowned. “What do you mean?”

He blew on his tea. “It’s hardly a secret that I’m getting old—you yourself have made any number of obnoxious comments to that effect—and no one in my family is equipped to take over the apothecary. My wife and I had discussed selling it, but I wonder if you and your friend would be interested in staying on and taking over.”

She stared at him in astonishment. That was frankly the last thing she’d expected Yaqub to say. “I haven’t trained as an apothecarist,” she sputtered.

“You haven’t trained as an apothecarist … for God’s sake, you just did brain surgery on the table! You could build your own sort of practice here and let your reputation speak for itself. And if you’re so concerned, I’m not yet ready to retire. I’d be perfectly happy to take the two of you on as apprentices for a few years.”

The offer was so kind and perfect that all Nahri could do was find reasons to push it away. “I’m a woman. No one will take me seriously as an apothecarist, let alone as a doctor.”

“Then to hell with them. You know perfectly well there are women practicing in the city, particularly on female patients.”

“Rich women. Daughters and wives of doctors who work alongside them.”

“So lie.” Some of the tea sloshed out of Yaqub’s glass at his exuberance. “Every other word out of your mouth used to be a lie to further your ambitions. Surely you can craft a suitable background for yourself. Claim you studied medicine in whatever mysterious island kingdom your not-husband is from.”

Nahri sat back. Before she could stop herself, she could see such a future spinning out before her. She was a good healer. Maybe rich nobles and fancy foreigners would turn up their noses at a so-called female doctor with no degree, but people like that boy’s family? Like the people she’d grown up among? Someone like Nahri would be a blessing. And who cared if they couldn’t pay much? She’d have the apothecary, and she’d always been good at finding ways to hustle. Ali was clever with numbers. They’d make enough to have a comfortable life.

Except …

Except the future Yaqub was offering was the one she’d wanted growing up in Egypt. She had new responsibilities now and people back in Daevabad waiting for her. And while Nahri felt the thrill of having saved that little boy, that wasn’t all the power at her disposal. She could save so many more with her magic, and until they found a way to restore it, she’d never truly be who she felt herself capable of being.

Yaqub must have seen the emotion in her eyes. He set down his tea and reached for her hand. “Nahri, child, I don’t know what the two of you are running from. I don’t know what you’re planning next. But you could have a life here. A good one.”

Taking a shaky breath, Nahri squeezed his hand. “That is … an incredibly kind offer. I need to think about it.”

“Take the time you need,” Yaqub said warmly. “Talk to your friend.” He smiled. “But I think Cairo could use someone like you.”

Nahri didn’t disagree.

But she wondered if Daevabad might need her more.

9
ALI

Ali would be having nightmares about open skulls for months, but the marvelous market Nahri took him to the next day more than made up for it. It was the human bazaar of his dreams, and Ali wandered through with open delight, grateful that humans seemed inclined not to see him because he wasn’t even trying to check his curiosity. Instead, he raced from shop to shop, stall to stall, touching everything he could get his hands on and examining embroidered tapestries, carpentry tools, mirrored lanterns, glass spectacles, and shoes with unbridled enthusiasm.

“Oh,” he gushed, catching a glint of metal in the distance. “Swords.”

“No,” Nahri said, tugging on the sleeve of the extremely ill-fitting galabiyya he’d borrowed from Yaqub. “I almost lost you to toy chickens. We’re not going to look at swords. We’ll never leave.”

“Those ‘toy chickens’ were marvels of mechanical ingenuity,” Ali defended himself, relishing his memory of the captivating device that had made a pair of tin chickens bob their heads when he pulled a hammer, appearing to “eat” grains of painted glass. He had desperately wanted it, aching to take the device apart and see how it worked.

“Yes. Marvels of mechanical ingenuity … for children.”

“I refuse to believe you weren’t equally enchanted by your first encounter with Daevabad’s bazaar.”

Nahri gave him a small, confessional smile that made Ali feel warm all over. “Maybe a bit. But”—she pulled the coffeepot he had been examining from his hands before dragging him away—“I have something better to show you.”

The next alley was covered, the narrow path snaking under a ceiling carved into a geometrical honeycomb. They turned a corner, and there, spread upon rugs and chests, was a sea of books and scrolls.

“Oh,” Ali said again. “Yes. Yes, this is better than swords.” He immediately went for the first shop, his eyes going wide as he took everything in. Besides books, there were rows and rows of maps and what appeared to be nautical scrolls laid out on blue velvet.

Ali knelt to examine them. The maps were beautiful, richly illustrated with miniature cities and tiny boats. He traced the bright blue line of a river, studying hand-drawn hills and a trio of islands.

“Is this Cairo?” he asked.

Nahri peered over his shoulder. “Maybe? I’m not very good with geography.”

He stared at the map, tugging absentmindedly at his beard. “How far south does the Nile go?”

“Pretty far, I suppose. I had the impression the southern parts ran through Ta Ntry.”

“Interesting,” he said softly.

“Why?”

Ali didn’t miss the guarded tone in her voice. “Just thinking,” he murmured, scanning the maps to see what else was available.

“Well, you can stay here and ponder rivers. I remember a man who used to sell medical texts down a ways. Catch up when you can.”

He muttered an assent, rifling through the pile of maps. Here was another showing the Nile. Ali traced the southern reaches, studying where the river branched and trying to make out what he could of the Arabic notes, most of the names unfamiliar.

But the land beyond … that he’d heard plenty about. The lush mountains and hidden castles built among human ruins, the desert peninsula seeming to nearly kiss Am Gezira and the humid, monsoon coast Ali had grown up listening to stories of at his mother’s knee.

Ta Ntry.

Amma.

Hatset would be home by now, right? It seemed so impossibly far, but … Ali brushed his thumb over the painted lands, his mind spinning with possibility. He was still struggling with his grief, but he hadn’t stopped quietly contemplating ways to return to Daevabad, turning their circumstances over like a puzzle in his mind.

And here was a new piece.

Ali rose to his feet, still holding the maps. A glance revealed Nahri several stalls down, immersed in her own perusing. He opened his mouth to call her name, then stopped.

No, let her be, he told himself, a rush of tenderness stealing through him at the sight of his friend. He wouldn’t get her hopes up, not yet. On the surface, Nahri seemed to be doing better than he was, but Ali wasn’t sure he believed it. Ali’s pain was bonedeep, but simply rooted: his loved ones had been murdered and his home conquered. Nahri had had her entire world turned upside down for the second time in six years, betrayed by seemingly everyone close to her, including the mother and Afshin she’d believed dead.

Besides, surely Ali could do this part on his own. He approached the bookseller.

“Peace be upon you … Peace be upon—excuse me!” Ali shouted, snapping his fingers in front of the human’s face.

The man blinked, a dazed look slipping across his features as he tilted his head. “Hello?” he said, sounding uncertain of the word.

“I would like to buy these,” Ali announced. He fumbled in his bag for the coins Yaqub had given him this morning. The apothecarist had wept, admiring his newly polished workbench. “You are a blessing. You … whatever your name is again,” he’d added, beause every night he seemed to forget anew Ali’s name and, on occasion—his very existence.

Ali held out the coins. “Is this enough?”

The bookseller glanced down at the coins and abruptly blinked again. “Yes,” he said, sweeping them from Ali’s hands. “The exact amount, yes.”

“Oh,” Ali replied, not missing the glee with which the merchant shut his money away in a small chest. He knew it was frowned upon to assume the worst of others, but he was pretty sure he’d just been cheated.

“What are you doing?”

Ali jumped at Nahri’s voice. “Nothing!” he said swiftly, turning around and hoping she wouldn’t figure out how easily he’d just been swindled. “So where to next?”

“Lunch. It’s time I repaid you for the feteer you brought me back in Daevabad with a proper Egyptian meal.”

10
NAHRI

Nahri lay back on the roof beside Ali, the remains of their feast surrounding them. “I concede defeat,” he admitted. “Human food is better.”

“Told you,” she replied, finishing the last slice of watermelon and tossing the rind aside. “Conjured spices have nothing on fried street dough.”

“And yet the place you’ve chosen to enjoy our meal is very djinn of you,” he teased, gesturing to the crumbling building they’d climbed. It looked like it had been a khanqah, a Sufi lodge, abandoned as the city’s heart shifted away. “Humans believe we haunt ruins, don’t they?”

“Exactly. It was a great place to hide when I was younger, and it has an excellent view,” she said, gazing at the spread of brown domes and minarets set against the glint of the Nile.

Ali pushed himself into a sitting position. “It does.” But then sorrow swept his face, obliterating the brief levity he had seemed to be enjoying. “There was a view of Daevabad like this from the Citadel tower,” he said softly, running his fingers over the broken bricks. “It’s still hard to believe it’s gone. The Citadel was my home for so long, the other soldiers like my family.”

His words struck close. “That’s how I felt about the infirmary and Nisreen. Jamshid too,” she added, guilt clawing through her. Jamshid was family, and Nahri couldn’t help but recall that one of the last things she’d done in Daevabad was refuse Ghassan’s attempt to use her brother’s life to blackmail her. Had Ghassan lived a few hours more, he might have taken it—killed Jamshid before Nahri’s very eyes.

And she’d been ready to let it happen: all to save the life of the man sitting next to her now in the hopes he’d take down his father. Not that she dared tell Ali any of this yet. Nahri didn’t think they were ready for that conversation.

“Kaveh might be a traitorous snake, but I’m sure he had a plan to keep his son safe.” Ali’s face fell. “Though when Jamshid finds out about Muntadhir … they were so close.”

Please tell him I loved him. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for him sooner. Nahri squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to talk about any of this. She survived trauma by suppressing it, by shoving back the grief and rage that would otherwise swallow her whole.

She was saved from having to respond by the sudden bang of a large drum. Ali jumped, reaching for the khanjar at his waist.

“Relax,” she said, easing his hand down. The strains of singing were already following. “It’s probably a wedding.” She peered over the wall, searching the maze of lanes below. “A decade ago, I’d have hunted it down and pretended to be a guest for the food.”

“Believe it or not, back in Bir Nabat, we did the same. We used to stalk human festivals and bring back their scraps. People skilled at the magic can re-create the whole feast.” Disappointment colored Ali’s voice. “Well, others went. I was never allowed. No one thought I could be discreet.”

Nahri grinned. “You, not discreet around humans? I could never imagine it.” She paused, feeling another question build in her. “But you liked it there. Living something like a normal life.”

“I loved it.” Ali leaned on his elbows, staring out at Cairo. “It got a little lonely on occasion, and I didn’t completely fit in. But I liked feeling useful, you know? Like I could do some good.” He sighed. “It was so much easier to do that in Bir Nabat than in Daevabad.”

“Yes,” she muttered. “I think I know how that feels.”

Ali turned to face her. “How is your patient doing, by the way?”

“Good, thank God.” Nahri had checked on the boy this morning. His incision looked great, and though he had some weakness on the left side of his body, he’d survived. “His mother wouldn’t stop crying and kissing me.”

“I thought the cookies you brought back were damp.” But there was a seriousness in Ali’s eyes that the jest didn’t touch. “I’m glad to hear he’s going to be okay. Because we need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About Suleiman’s seal and the fact that our magic isn’t returning.”

Nahri was already shaking her head. “Muntadhir said it could take a couple of days—”

“It’s been five. And Nahri, nothing’s changed. I don’t feel anything of my djinn abilities, or of the seal.” Ali touched his chest. “There’s pain in my heart when I call upon my water magic, but that’s it. Unless you’ve …”

“No.” Nahri woke every morning reaching for her healing magic, aching for its return.

“Then I think we need a new plan.” Ali reached for the bag he’d been carrying. “Maybe Manizheh and Dara have been stripped of their magic, maybe everyone has, but we don’t know for sure, and we can’t just wait here. It’s not safe for us or any of the humans we associate with. We need to find a place where we can reconnect with our people and start building alliances, an army …”

Alliances. An army. A buzz was growing in Nahri’s mind. She cleared her throat, suddenly finding it difficult to speak. “Where?” she managed.

“Ta Ntry.” Ali pulled a bundle of papers from his bag—no, not papers, maps.

“That’s why you were looking at maps?”

“Yes. And look—” He gestured to a spot on the map, somewhere in the golden lands beyond the Sea of Reeds. “Am Gezira is close, but I don’t think we should risk Manizheh bringing her plague to any more Geziris in case she still has her powers. But if we were to go south …” He ran his index finger much farther down, tracing the coast along the ocean. “My mother is from Shefala—here.” Ali tapped an invisible point. “She should be home. Ta Ntry is a power in its own right; it has money, warriors, enough resources to be largely self-sufficient.”

Ta Ntry. Nahri blinked, trying to take that all in. Her rocky relationship with the queen aside, Nahri could not deny the wisdom in going to Hatset—the cunning matriarch seemed a natural match for Manizheh.

But leaving Cairo … “Would we even be welcome in Ta Ntry?” Nahri asked. “Muntadhir always made it sound like the Ayaanle were plotting against us.”

“There might be something to that.” When Nahri lifted an eyebrow, Ali swiftly added, “But the library at Shefala is said to be extraordinary. They have a lot of texts taken from Daevabad during the original conquest, and we might find something about Suleiman’s seal in those books. Maybe there’s a part we’re missing, a way to fix all this and restore our magic.”

Creator, Nahri wanted her magic back. But another meddling court of djinn—who apparently had kept her family’s stolen archives—ruled by a sovereign she didn’t trust … “We can’t. We have no way to get there.”

“We do.” Ali again gestured to the map. “We sail.”

Nahri gave him a skeptical look. “You know how to sail?”

“I know a bit. But more importantly, I can do this.” Ali leaned over the balustrade, gesturing to a fallen palm tree drifting in the river’s languid current. It abruptly stilled and then reversed course as if being pulled by an underwater chain, moving toward Ali’s hand. He let it go, and it continued spinning away.

He grimaced, rubbing his chest. “It’s not going to be painless.” He glanced at Nahri, and for the first time since Daevabad fell, she saw hope in his eyes. “But I think it could work.”

Nahri stared at him, trying to act like a cage wasn’t closing around her. “It’s too dangerous. It’s too far. We’re all but powerless, and you want to set off on some trek through deserts and jungle because you can make a log go upriver?”

Ali deflated. “Then what would you suggest?”

Nahri hesitated but only for a moment. “That we consider staying longer.” She held his gaze, feeling more vulnerable than she liked. “Yaqub wants me to take over the apothecary.”

“Take over the apothecary?” Ali repeated, sounding bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“He’s offered to train us as apprentices,” Nahri explained. “We’d inherit it when he retires, and I could see patients there as well. I could be a doctor, or something like one, treating people who can’t afford anyone else.”

Ali was visibly shocked. “You’re not talking about staying in Cairo longer. You’re talking about staying permanently.”

“And if I am? Would it be so bad? We could have a good life here. We could help people!”

“Nahri.” Ali was already shaking his head and rising to his feet.

“Would you just consider it?” She followed him, hating the plea in her voice. “We could just be us: Nahri and Ali. Not Nahid and Qahtani, locked in some murderous feud.” Feeling desperate, she continued, “You like it here, don’t you? You’d get to ogle all the human toys you want; you could clean Yaqub’s shop and play accountant with his books—all with the added benefit of not being killed in some reckless plot. We could be happy.”

“We can’t stay here. We can’t—” Ali repeated when Nahri turned away, hating the pity in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish we could, but Manizheh is going to come for the seal. You know it. I know it. It’s only a matter of time.”

“We don’t know it,” Nahri countered fiercely. “For all we know, she thinks we drowned in the lake. And even if she has magic, so what? Will she search the whole world?”

“She doesn’t need to search the whole world.” Ali hesitated. “You didn’t hide your love for your human home. Surely if asked, Darayavahoush would—”

“Dara doesn’t know anything about me.”

A tense silence followed that. Ali paced away, linking his hands behind his head, but Nahri didn’t budge from her spot on the roof. If she could have, she would have rooted herself there.

Breathing hard, she fought for control of her churning emotions. Nahri had always done best when she was cold. Pragmatic. “Maybe it won’t be forever,” she said, trying to find a compromise. “If magic comes back, wonderful. We’ll consider going to Ta Ntry then. But if it doesn’t? We have a backup plan, a safe life here.”

“We will never be safe here and neither will anyone around us.” Ali tapped the mark on his brow. “Not with this. For all we know, she’ll send the ifrit after us. After Yaqub. And I don’t want to be safe. Not if my people aren’t. Not if my sister isn’t.”

“Then what? We go to Ta Ntry and build an army so we can fight in another pointless war?” She threw up her hands. “Ali, they turned the lake into a beast and designed a plague capable of killing thousands of djinn in a single night. She’s allied with the ifrit. There’s nothing she won’t do to win.”

“Then we’ll find a way to fight back!”

“Like you fought back?” Ali spun at the challenge in her voice, but Nahri pressed on. She needed to make him see. “How many Daevas did you kill that night?”

A hint of anger blossomed in his face. “The Daevas I killed were soldiers. Soldiers who invaded my home, killed my friends, and meant to slaughter my entire tribe.”

Nahri gave him an even look. “Change ‘Daevas’ to ‘djinn,’ and I bet that’s just what Dara said to himself.”

Ali stepped back like she’d slapped him. “I am nothing like him. I would take a blade to my throat before I’d do the things he’s done.” He blinked, hurt replacing the anger in his eyes. “He killed my brother. How could you say such a thing to me?”

“Because I don’t want that for you!” Nahri exploded. “I don’t want that for me! You looked like him that night on the palace roof and I …” A sick feeling rose in her. “I helped you. I helped you kill three Daevas. And when I cut into your father’s chest, Ali? It felt good. I felt satisfied.”

Shaking, Ali turned away again, crossing the roof as if to put space between them.

She followed, growing more frantic. “But don’t you see? We don’t have to go to war. Let them think we drowned. You and I, we tried, okay? We tried more than most. We built the hospital, and look what happened. The Daevas attacked the shafit, the shafit attacked the Daevas, and your father was ready to start slaughtering people before my mother killed him. Daevabad is a death trap. It corrupts and ruins everyone who tries to fix it. And we could be free of it. Both of us. We could have a life here together. A good one.”

Ali stopped at the roof’s edge, breathing hard. And then Nahri saw it, a flicker of longing in his face. She knew that longing. She was used to spotting it in others and then closing in, using the desire her mark was too foolish to conceal. A half dozen responses hovered at her lips, ways to convince him to stay, to force him to agree.

But Ali wasn’t supposed to be a mark anymore; he was supposed to be her friend.

He turned back around, the ache gone from his expression. No, not just gone—Ali was focused on her like he was about to read a mark himself, and Nahri didn’t like it one bit.

“I need to say something no Qahtani has a right to tell you, but it needs to be said and there’s no one else,” he began. “Even if Manizheh doesn’t hunt us, even if we don’t get our magic back, we can’t stay here. We have a duty to go back, no matter the consequences. Our families caused this mess, but they’re not the only ones who are going to pay. There are tens of thousands of innocent civilians who are going to pay. And you and I don’t get to look away from that, no matter how tempting.”

Nahri could have punched him in the face. “You’re correct, you don’t have the right to say that to me. Tempting? So I’m selfish for not wanting to die in Daevabad when I could help people here?”

“I didn’t say you were selfish—”

“You might as well have.” Fury rose in her, at herself as well as at Ali. Why was Nahri wasting air trying to convince some stubborn djinn prince to stay at her side?

Because you want him to stay at your side. Because Nahri didn’t want to be a lonely, selfless doctor in the human world. She wanted to drink bad tea and browse books with someone who knew her. She wanted a life, a friend.

Nahri didn’t need Ali. She wanted him.

And that made him a weakness. Nahri could hear the word in Nisreen’s voice, in Ghassan’s voice, in Manizheh’s. That’s what Ali was, what all of them were—the whole of Daevabad. She should have continued to live the way she had in Egypt. No attachments, no dreaming of a hospital or a better future. Just survival.

The sky abruptly darkened, the sun sinking behind the Pyramids. The murmur of river traffic and the bustling city pulled at her soul. It all suddenly felt so fragile that she wanted to clutch Cairo to her chest and never let it go.

“Forget it,” she declared. “I’m not going to waste my breath trying to save you from yourself again. You want to go die in Daevabad? Fine. But you’ll be doing it alone.”

Nahri turned away, meaning to leave him on the roof, but he was already pursuing her.

“Nahri, she’s going to come for the seal.”

She glanced back. It was a mistake. Because the beseeching look in Ali’s eyes tugged on a part of her heart Nahri wanted to crush out.

So she crushed him instead. “Then I’m glad I gave it to you.”

NAHRI SHOOK WITH ANGER AS SHE STORMED AWAY from the khanqah. To hell with Alizayd al Qahtani and his idealism. To hell with Daevabad, the doomed, poisoned city she’d tried to help. The Grand Temple had enough shrines to Nahids who’d martyred themselves. Nahri wasn’t planning on joining them.

She didn’t go back to the apothecary. Let Ali go back first, collect his things, and take off on his ludicrous Nile adventure. Maybe when he was starving and lost on some backwater stream, he’d realize he should have listened to her.

Instead, she walked. Not along the riverbank, but deeper into Cairo itself, through the crowded streets that led toward the hills and past neighborhoods of new migrants. Nahri didn’t want the quiet peace of the flooded Nile, one that invited contemplation. She wanted distraction, noisy human life and activities: children playing and neighbors gossiping. The normal life she should have been living for the last half decade instead of getting pulled into the deadly politics of a bunch of vengeful, warring djinn. She walked without paying attention to where her feet took her, part of her hoping she’d get so lost that by the time she made it back to Yaqub’s, Ali would be gone, and she’d be free of her last tie to the magical world.

Yet, despite her desire to wrench it all away, Nahri was not surprised when she ended up in the neighborhood where it had all begun.

The empty lot where she’d performed the zar was eerily untouched, though the neighborhood had grown busier, extra floors built on the surrounding tenements and huts constructed against the walls. Yaqub had said that people were hopeful things were changing in Egypt. The French occupation had been defeated, and their new foreign ruler was promising reforms. More people were moving to the city, looking for opportunities.

She wanted to tell them not to. It hurt worse to see your dreams destroyed than to never have them at all.

It didn’t seem anyone had dared hope for this lot, however. The plain square of dust was filled with rubbish, an orange cat cleaning its whiskers the only occupant.

Not for the first time, she thought of Baseema. Had they removed Dara’s arrow from her throat before bringing the girl’s body to her grieving mother, the mother who’d kissed Nahri’s cheeks and blessed her the night before? Had Baseema’s fingers started to char from the ifrit’s possession, her final moments spent in agony all because Nahri had, on an utter whim, decided to sing in Divasti?

You’re as responsible for that girl’s death as Dara and Vizaresh. It had been unspeakably arrogant of Nahri to dabble in traditions she hadn’t understood, twisting abilities that were meant to heal into a way to deceive innocent people.

The sky was darkening, maghrib prayer already called. Nahri probably should have been concerned, a young woman alone, but strangely enough, though her magic was gone, she felt little fear from the humans around her. Her time in Daevabad had changed her, setting her apart from the people she once considered her own.

They’ll be my own again. The future she’d always wanted was finally in her hands, and Nahri wasn’t going to lose it.

But that night tugged at her like a string, bringing her to El Arafa once again, the vast cemetery looking just as Nahri remembered it, the jumble of tombs and mausoleums an eerie landscape of the dead she knew didn’t always slumber peacefully. She made her way inside, following the meandering alleys of her memory, and sat upon a crumbling stone pillar, half-bathed in moonlight.

And then—and only then, in the place where he’d arrived in a storm of sand and fire—did Nahri finally and fully let Dara back into her thoughts.

You weren’t supposed to see it. You were supposed to be safe. Nahri pressed her hands against her temples, remembering the anguish on his handsome face as he stammered those words, his bright eyes begging for understanding.

How could you do that, Dara? How could you have done any of this?

For Nahri could no longer deny that Dara was guilty of the whispered crimes that clung to his name. He’d carried out the slaughter of innocent shafit at Qui-zi, a crime so brutal it still scarred their world. He’d then done something equally heinous: knowingly abetting her mother in the attempted annihilation of Daevabad’s Geziri population.

And she’d fallen for him. No, she had loved him; she might as well admit it to herself. Maybe it had been the rush of adventure and sweeping excitement, the almost embarrassingly inevitable and clearly doomed romance that resulted between dashing warriors and wide-eyed young women. Had Muntadhir not accused her of living in a fairy tale, unable to tell the difference between its hero and its monster? Nahri, who always read her mark, who’d called out a djinn king. How had she not seen the darkness lurking in Dara?

Because you were the mark, she thought bitterly. And you think to go back to Daevabad, to proclaim yourself a leader capable of outwitting Manizheh? Her mother had taken one look at Nahri and seen straight through to her weaknesses. Her shafit heritage and her stupid fondness for an idiot prince. The darker resentments about being crushed by the djinn. The twinge of pleasure when she’d burned Ghassan’s heart.

Maybe that was how it started. Nahri wondered what might have happened if the invasion had gone according to Manizheh’s plan. If she’d been kept safe and in the dark by Nisreen and then woken to a world in which Ghassan was dead, the Daevas were free, and Nahri was reunited with her family and the man she loved. Might it have been easier to believe whatever lies they spun to justify it? To quietly choose to look ahead instead of at the bodies and blood propping up their new world?

Did Dara do that? Nahri tried to imagine him as a young man, as someone brimming with adoration for the Nahids and committed to protecting his people—someone who could have been convinced the shafit of Qui-zi were an existential threat and chosen to follow an order that must have seemed shocking. How many of those choices had led to Dara bowing before Manizheh, standing at her side while she committed genocide?

I don’t want to think about this. Nahri had made her choice. She wrapped her shivering arms around her knees and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears she refused to let flow, taking refuge in the darkness of her closed lids.

And then she saw them. Subha in the infirmary they’d rebuilt, forcing a cup of tea on her as Nahri tried to hold herself together for her injured tribesmen. Jamshid laughing in the infirmary on his steed of cushions. The shafit children in the school at the workcamp. The Daeva children grinning at her in the Temple.

The Geziri children who died with sparklers in their hands. The people who, like Ali had irritatingly pointed out, did not have their choice.

Nahri swore, loud and profuse enough to startle a pigeon that had been resting in the eaves of the nearest mausoleum. Then she rose to her feet and returned to Yaqub’s, praying she wasn’t too late.

THEY WERE WAITING FOR HER OUTSIDE THE APOTHECARY. Yaqub was dressed in the shawl he wore on his walks home, visibly fretting as he passed his cane from hand to hand. At his side, Ali was somber, looking even more isolated than usual from the humans passing by.

Yaqub clucked his tongue as he caught sight of her. “You are terrible for the nerves, do you know that?”

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Nahri apologized. “I just … I needed some space to think.” She kept her attention fixed on Yaqub, not unaware of the weight of Ali’s gaze.

The pharmacist looked unconvinced. “Young women should do their thinking in their homes,” he grumbled, adjusting his shawl. “It is safer.” He nodded at the door. “I left you beans and bread.”

Nahri let the “young women” comment slide for now. “Thank you, grandfather,” she said simply. “Give my blessings to your family.”

Ali stepped toward her the moment Yaqub was gone. “Nahri, I’m sorry. You’re right; I had no business—”

“You’re going to tell me everything,” she cut in. “What the marid did to you, whatever lore and history you’ve been hiding about the war, about the seal—everything, understand? No more secrets.”

He blinked. “I mean, of course—”

Nahri held up a hand. “I’m not done. If we’re going to do this, you need to listen to me. We need to be careful. No reckless plans of self-sacrifice and spouting off things that will get us killed. I’m not going near Banu ‘I control people’s limbs with my mind’ until we have a plan that I—not you—believe solid.”

Ali brightened. “Wait, you’re going to come with me to Ta Ntry? You don’t want to stay in Cairo?”

“Of course I want to stay in Cairo! And if Daevabad wasn’t in the hands of a murderous Nahid who makes your father’s body count look like child’s play, I would. But it’s like you said,” she explained begrudgingly. “We have people there relying on us.”

His eyes were shining with pride. God, Nahri wanted to stab him.

He touched his heart. “It would be my greatest honor to fight at your—”

Nahri let out an exasperated hiss to shut him up. Better rudeness than letting slip how relieved she was that he hadn’t already left. “No. None of that. I’m not even committing to anything, understand?” she warned, jabbing a finger in Ali’s face. “I haven’t had the greatest experience showing up unexpectedly at magical courts of bickering djinn who warred against my ancestors. If things go to hell in Ta Ntry, I’m gone.”

The ghost of what might have once been a smile curved his lips. “Then there’s no one I’d rather be abandoned by.” Ali’s expression softened. “And thank you, Nahri. I don’t think I could get through all this without you.”

She grumbled, fighting the emotions eating at her heart. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Now Ali did smile, the first time she’d seen him do so since the attack. “Then what do we do next, as it seems you’re in charge?”

Nahri nodded at Muntadhir’s khanjar. “We go buy a boat.”

11
DARA

Dara grimaced, watching as the line of young men before him shot arrows into the trees, into the grass, into a distant tent … really, anywhere that wasn’t their target.

“Are they getting any better?” he finally asked.

Noshrad, one of his original warriors, looked discouraged. “They have generally started shooting in a forward direction instead of at each other.”

Dara pinched his brow. “I do not understand. Our people are renowned at the bow. Navasatem was to be occurring. Where are all the Daeva archers who would have competed?”

“Since your death, the only Daevas permitted to own a bow have been noblemen sworn to the Qahtanis. Kaveh warned me many were the boon companions of Emir Muntadhir and advised we weed them out of potential recruits until things are … less tense.”

The news that there was a whole group of skilled Daeva archers—the exact kind of people Daevabad needed—unavailable because of their ties to Muntadhir al Qahtani filled Dara with a new desire to strangle the former emir.

He cracked his knuckles, forcing himself to remain calm. “There must be more Daeva men willing to protect their city.”

“We’ve already posted everyone with any fighting experience.” Noshrad hesitated. “But we haven’t been as successful with recruitment as we’d hoped. People are too afraid. With magic gone, everyone’s just waiting for the next catastrophe.”

Waiting for the next catastrophe seemed an entirely too-apt description of their current circumstances. Dara gazed at the field his men had turned into a training yard. With the rest of the city walled off, the Daevas had opened the gate that led from their quarters into the hills, forests, and farms that dominated the rest of the island—a gate and an option no other tribe had. Most of the land was owned by the city’s oldest Daeva families—or at least had been until Manizheh declared everything under her control. The city had been well stocked for Navasatem, but between the huge number of tourists and the fact that no ships or caravans were coming in, it was only a matter of time until food became an issue, so they intended to make sure what had yet to be harvested remained in their hands.

Food wasn’t technically Dara’s problem; only security and military affairs were. Yet it wasn’t easy to divest himself of the day-to-day issues of running the city. It had been two weeks since they’d taken the palace, and Manizheh was still attempting to piece together a government—if by government, one meant a dozen cowed ministers of extremely varying levels of experience ruled by an increasingly exhausted and exasperated Kaveh e-Pramukh. Despite Manizheh’s ultimatum and the havoc Dara had unleashed while delivering said ultimatum, none of the djinn had surrendered. The Agnivanshi had sent over a cautiously worded letter that could have been interpreted a dozen different ways, the Tukharistanis a far blunter missive suggesting the Scourge of Qui-zi go burn in hell, and the Sahrayn an actually burning barrel of dung. From the Ayaanle and Geziris was silence, though Dara supposed silence was what happened when someone was actively conspiring to bring you down.

And there was nothing he could do about it besides train more warriors. “Keep at it,” he told Noshrad. “I shall see if I can’t rustle up more recruits.”

Dara took the main avenue back to the palace, steeling himself for the mixed reactions his presence provoked. When he’d first returned to Daevabad, he’d been treated like a hero by the Daevas, the legendary Darayavahoush e-Afshin brought back to life to escort the even more miraculous and mysterious Banu Nahri e-Nahid. It made for a fantastic story, truly—Dara had once seen it performed by some sort of street puppets while walking with Jamshid in more peaceful times. He was also not unaware of the other angle people brought into it: Nahri was a beautiful woman, Dara a handsome warrior, and the Qahtanis made for excellent villains. He’d heard the sighs as he bowed before Nahri in the Grand Temple, not missing the admiring whispers, longing looks, and overly excited children eager to show him the Afshin marks they’d drawn on their cheeks.

No one wore Afshin marks now.

Oh, there were plenty of Daevas who’d greeted their conquest with grateful tears and flocked to see Manizheh during her rare public appearances. But like Noshrad said, most of their people just seemed wary. Resigned, traumatized, and as intimidated by Manizheh and Dara as they had been by Ghassan. And Dara couldn’t blame them. They’d been stripped of their magic, and ifrit strolled the streets. Ghassan might have been a tyrant, but Dara suspected the brutal way the Geziris had been slaughtered—the Nahid magic his people revered as sacred twisted to deliver a gruesome death—was simply too much to accept. Dara kept his eyes down as he walked, aware of the conversations that abruptly ended when he drew near, and the whispers that picked up in his wake. There were almost no women and children out, and the markets and cafés were empty, litter and weeds beginning to overtake the cobbled streets.

It was no easier to enter the palace grounds, for Dara walked straight through the scoured dirt field where the doomed Geziri traveling camp had been. It stood out like a wound against the rest of the lush garden; no one had yet the stomach to do anything about it.

Nor did Dara. Because every time he looked at this field, it was impossible to deny that what was left of his soul screamed this was wrong.

It could have been worse, he tried to tell himself. The palace had been just as blood soaked the last time Daevabad was conquered—and that time it had been his people slaughtered. The Daevas cowering in their homes should count themselves lucky to still be cowering. His family never had that chance.

But the justifications were getting harder to swallow. Dara continued to the massive throne room. This place too still smelled like blood. They’d removed the bodies of the dozen Geziris they’d found here, and Dara had ordered the room cleaned, first by servants and then by his own magic, but the pungent aroma lingered.

Without it, the throne room would have dazzled. Knowing this would be the place where Manizheh greeted her subjects, Dara had not held back from returning it to its former glory. He’d stripped the age from the enormous columns with a snap of his fingers, restoring the lustrous shine of the sandstone walls and the bright paints of the original Daeva ornaments. A thick conjured carpet ran the entire length of the audience hall, the luminous threads depicting dancers and animals and feasts, the patterns he remembered from his youth. Two large fire altars had been brought in, filling the room with cedar incense. And yet beneath that holy fragrance … still blood.

The room has always demanded a cost. Dara could still remember the first time he’d set foot in here. Suleiman’s eye, he’d been young. Eighteen, nineteen? Still in training, since he’d been taken directly from the sparring yard by an impatient steward in royal colors who said Dara had been summoned by the Nahid Council.

Summoned by the Nahid Council.

The five words that changed the entire course of his life.

AT FIRST DARA THOUGHT IT WAS A MISTAKE. WHEN IT became clear it wasn’t, he was both thrilled and panicked. Afshin minors did not get summoned by the Nahid Council. Dara knew he was favored—though he came from a talented generation of Afshins, he was head and shoulders above his cousins when it came to military skills. Considered a prodigy with the bow, he’d been taken for specialized training two years earlier, a decision that had quietly irked his father. Zaydi al Qahtani takes votes with his generals and sends their sons to rebuild villages we have destroyed, he recalled his father complain to his mother in a whispered conversation, while we make assassins out of warriors we should be training to lead.

Indeed, his father, Artash, was there when Dara arrived, kneeling before the shedu throne, his helmet at his side. Yet everything about the set of his features was wrong. Everyone bowed before the Nahids, but there was a simmering despair under his father’s carefully neutral expression Dara had never seen before. His own heart was pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears, more embarrassing because he knew the healers could detect it as well.

Almost too nervous to proceed, Dara prostrated himself before he even neared the throne, dropping to the ground to press his face into the carpet.

A chuckle broke the tense silence. “Come forward, young warrior,” a Baga Nahid teased. “We can hardly converse when you’re all the way back there.”

His gaze lowered and his face burning, Dara approached, taking the cushion beside his father, aching to ask him what was going on. Artash was a hard but loving man, both Dara’s commander and his father. Dara never disobeyed him, had always looked to his father first, and seeing him suddenly bowed in grim silence was a disorienting experience.

“Look up, boy. Let us see you.”

Dara glanced up. The throne catching in the sunlight was blinding and he blinked, the Blessed Nahids coming to him as indistinct shapes in their blue-and-white regalia, their faces veiled. Five sat there, one on the throne and the others on jeweled stools. He’d heard they took turns sitting on the throne and possessing Suleiman’s seal. None but members of their family knew who ruled and when.

He’d also heard that the Council had once been thirteen—before that even more. People whispered the Nahids were turning on themselves, relatives who quietly dissented being exiled, and those who openly criticized being found dead. But those were rumors, blasphemous gossip that good Daevas—Daevas like Dara—didn’t listen to.

There was a smile in the Nahid’s voice. “A handsome young man,” he remarked. “You must be so proud, Artash, to have raised such a diligent warrior, one praised by his instructors for his skill. For his obedience.”

His father’s voice was halting. “He is my life.”

Worried, Dara snuck a glance at his father, surprised to find him unarmed, the iron knife he wore at his waist missing. A trickle of fear stole through him. What could have reduced his towering father to such a state?

“Good.” The Baga Nahid’s clipped voice brought Dara back to attention. “For we are sorely in need of such a man for a very important mission. A difficult one, but perhaps the most crucial we’ve faced in a long time.” He stared at Dara over his veil. “We believe you are he.”

Startled by the pronouncement, Dara nearly broke protocol, his mouth falling open to protest. Surely this was a mistake. He was skilled, but he was a minor, still years away from his first quarter century. The Afshins held themselves to notoriously strict standards, particularly when it came to training the next generation. Their warriors did not go near a battlefield until their majority; leading a mission was unheard of.

But there was no questioning a Nahid—a good Afshin obeyed—so Dara said the only thing he could. “I am here to serve.”

He remembered the Baga Nahid’s eyes crinkling, his smile hidden beneath his veil. “See how easy that is, Artash?” he remarked before returning his attention to Dara. “There is a city called Qui-zi …”

The rest was a blur. Dire warnings that shafit had infiltrated and corrupted a Tukharistani merchant city. That the fanatic Zaydi al Qahtani, desperate and losing, schemed to so brazenly flout Suleiman’s law that he’d trigger another cataclysm. That to save their people, this all needed to be stopped.

Their orders. So specific that Dara, who had spoken out of turn not once, drew in a sharp, shocked breath and glanced again at his father, an act that prompted the Nahids to start fretting about what might happen should another Suleiman return. How they’d all be stripped of their magic, their names, their family, their very identity—pressed into human service for untold centuries. How his mother and little sister might suffer in such a disaster.

So Dara again said the only thing he could. “I am here to serve.”

And once again the Baga Nahid seemed pleased. “Then take your father’s helmet. He will not need it. He has another task.”

Dara did so numbly, too overwhelmed by the warning and his orders—by the shock of being in such a holy presence—to understand the despair in his father’s eyes, to realize his father’s “task” was to be sent to the front lines as fodder.

He couldn’t know that, though, so Dara obeyed. Or, at least, he tried to. He left the next day and served the Nahids, clinging to their assurance that the shafit who screamed and begged for mercy at Qui-zi were not real people: they were invaders, soulless deceptions plotting the destruction of his people. His family. It became easier to believe as the bodies piled up. For it had to be the truth.

If it wasn’t the truth, Dara was a monster, a murderer.

And Dara wasn’t a monster. Monsters were the ifrit, the treacherous Zaydi al Qahtani who’d murdered his garrison commander and loosed shafit hordes on Daeva civilians. Dara was a good man, a good son who would return to parents who loved him. Who’d tease his young sister as they sat for dinner. The kind of upstanding youth anyone would be proud of.

He was only following orders.

But on one order Dara failed. He’d been told to leave no survivors. The Nahids had spoken in the language of healers, and one did not leave an infection to spread. But in telling him how to so brutally isolate those who had human blood—with the scourge he’d be tied to for the rest of his life—they had ensured that Dara knew just how many women and children were not shafit. The weeping survivors who screamed for husbands, for sons, for fathers. They were not soulless deceptions, and when his men barred the gates of Qui-zi and left it to burn, Dara could not bear to shut them inside. Instead he’d brought them back to Daevabad.

And they rightfully, justifiably, told the world he was a monster.

The Nahid Council was furious, the story it had wanted to tell torn from its members’ tongues. Dara was home only a week—his mother unable to look him in the eye—when they decided to banish him. The Scourging of Qui-zi had been meant to end the war, and instead it had done the opposite, pushing the surviving Tukharistani clans into the welcoming embrace of Zaydi al Qahtani, who already counted the Ayaanle and Sahrayn as allies. The Agnivanshi retreated, their traders and scholars quietly disappearing one by one, and then the Daevas were left isolated, alone in their slowly starving city with the thousands of shafit they’d forced to live in squalor.

And five years after Dara burned their city and killed their kin, the Tukharistanis—no doubt led by some of the survivors he’d spared—entered the city at Zaydi al Qahtani’s side. They sacked the Daeva Quarter. They hunted through the streets until they found his family’s home.

They got the revenge that would haunt him through all his resurrections …

RAISED VOICES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CHAMBER caught Dara’s ear, pulling him from his memories.

“—if the djinn want their kin returned, they can come to me and surrender,” Manizheh said, her voice lifting in anger. “The Grand Temple had no business interfering!”

“They are afraid of you,” he heard a familiar voice plead. “Banu Manizheh, they are terrified. The rumors they came to me with … they think your Afshin is drinking blood and eating the hearts of his enemies. They think you’re giving over anyone who opposes you to the ifrit to be enslaved!”

Dara flinched at the words from Kartir, the Daeva high priest—he could see the back of Kartir’s peaked azure cap and crimson robe. Dara moved closer but stayed out of sight. Before the conquest, he would have never contemplated so blatantly spying on his Banu Nahida. But Manizheh had proved at least one of the secrets she held—the poison that had killed the Geziris—was deadly, and while Dara believed she was still working for the good of their people, it seemed wise not to allow himself to be kept completely in the dark.

“And if they came to me directly, they’d learn such things were ridiculous.” Manizheh was seated on the throne, dressed in a gown of indigo and gold, her chador hanging lightly from a braided crown. Kaveh was at her side, as usual, watching the exchange with concern.

“They’re not going to come to you. Not after what happened to the Geziris. That poison was a cruel act, my lady. People are saying it’s the reason magic is gone, that you twisted your Nahid abilities, and the Creator punished you.”

Manizheh drew up. “And is that what the high priests believe as well? Have you been wringing your hands in the temple my ancestors built, taking meetings with djinn and undermining me with our people? You might remember it is my family that our creed elevates—it’s we who are to lead you, not the other way around.”

“You are to be stewards,” Kartir corrected, and Dara couldn’t help but respect the man’s courage, even as his words stirred an unease that had been growing in Dara’s soul. “The Nahids were tasked with caring for this city and its people, all of them. It’s a responsibility, Banu Nahida. Not a right. I beg you, turn back from this violence. Let the djinn being held hostage in the palace go home.”

Kaveh spoke up, perhaps seeing the fury burning in Manizheh’s eyes. “That’s not possible, Kartir, and respectfully, you are out of your element. This is a political matter. Everyone holds hostages, and right now, they’re one of the most powerful cards we have.”

“That was how Ghassan ruled,” Kartir rebuked him. He’d crossed the room to service one of the fire altars, swapping the low-burning incense for fresh cedar. His voice was soft, but Dara did not miss his next words, for they went to his heart like a lance. “How the last Nahid Council ruled as well … and then lost the support of its people.”

“Blasphemy,” Kaveh spat, true anger in his face. There was no quicker way to shed Kaveh’s political pragmatism than to criticize the woman he loved. It was worrying Dara more and more—Manizheh needed advisors who didn’t always tell her what she wanted to hear. “The last Nahid Council didn’t lose the support of its people, it was slaughtered by a bunch of dirt-blood obsessed sand flies.”

No, Dara wanted to say, his heart aching with the memory of Qui-zi. The Nahids had started to go astray, we just didn’t know until it was too late.

“Dirt-blood,” Kartir repeated. He was staring at the fire altar. “This is not ours, did you know that?”

Manizheh was still glowering. “What are you talking about?”

“Our fire altars. We were not the ones who invented them. Humans did. If you travel to southern Daevastana, you will find the remains of them in buildings that look like ours but were built long before this city was erected. The humans used them in their rites. Our fire temples, our buildings, our food, the very cut of our clothes …” Kartir turned around, his gaze falling on Kaveh. “Your title, Grand Wazir. Our government. Do you think our ancestors before Suleiman built grand palaces of mudbrick and discussed financial policy when they lived on the winds and took sustenance from wildfires? We owe our survival to humans. We built our entire civilization off theirs, and now we act as if the greatest contamination in our world is a drop of their blood.”

Manizheh shook her head. “What you’re talking about happened thousands of years ago. It isn’t relevant anymore.”

“Isn’t it? For much of my life, I thought the same. I taught the same. And yet I wonder if we’ve been blind to the lessons of Anahid’s own life. Did she not build a city, a palace, a temple with human architecture and fill it with human innovations? Was her closest companion not a human prophet?” Kartir drew nearer to the throne. “Anahid embraced all that humanity could teach her; she designed a capital not just for the Daevas, but with room for all. And I fear that’s an inheritance and debt our tribe has forgotten, sealing itself off from the world that gave us so much.”

Kaveh eyed the other man with skepticism. “You have been listening too closely to Banu Nahri.”

The priest flushed. “I did not agree with her ideas originally, but I have been to her hospital and seen Daevas and djinn and shafit caring for one another.”

“And was this before or after shafit attacked the Navasatem procession?” Kaveh provoked him. “Before the dirt-bloods she was helping returned her kindness by trying to assassinate her and my son? Did you give this lecture to the hundred murdered Daevas during their last rites? To Nisreen?”

“Kaveh.” Manizheh laid a hand on his wrist. She returned her gaze to the priest, looking more exasperated than angry now. “Kartir, I am given to understand my daughter can be very convincing, but I wouldn’t let her sway your opinion on the shafit. She has been under the influence of Geziris and humans for far too long and does not know of what she speaks.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kartir replied, sounding offended. “I know Banu Nahri. She has her own mind.”

“Her own mind led her to commit treason,” Manizheh argued. “I don’t think we should let her opinions influence the direction of our faith.”

The priest paled. “Treason? But you said Alizayd kidnapped her.”

“I lied. The truth is that Nahri gave Alizayd the seal and fled at his side. I’d like to get her back and believe it best if her treachery is concealed for now.” Manizheh’s voice grew delicate. “It’s so hard for young women to recover their reputations. I don’t want our tribe to turn on her forever just because she lost her head for some silver-tongued prince.”

Kartir rocked back on his heels. “You’re surely not suggesting …” He trailed off, his cheeks going red. “I don’t believe it.”

Dara felt like a rug had been pulled out from underneath him. What was Manizheh suggesting?

And then he saw Nahri again, her eyes blazing as she stood before him and the Qahtani brothers and brought the ceiling down on Dara’s head. As she tackled him to the ground when Vizaresh had been trying to enslave the djinn prince. The affection between the pair that Dara himself had used six years ago to put a blade to Alizayd’s throat and force Nahri’s hand.

Dara could not put a word to the emotion that twisted through him. It wasn’t quite jealousy, nor was it guilt. He realized it wasn’t friendship Manizheh was suggesting had moved her daughter’s actions, but he also knew he’d long ago lost the right to plumb the depths of Nahri’s heart.

However that didn’t mean he had to stand by while Manizheh spread such damaging gossip. “May the fires burn brightly for you all,” he greeted them loudly, striding out from the columns as though he’d just arrived. “Something I’ve missed?”

“Not at all,” Manizheh replied calmly, as though she hadn’t been slandering her daughter as a treasonous adulterer. She smiled at Kartir. “I thank you for your counsel. Please be assured I will consider it. Indeed, perhaps I could oversee sunrise ceremonies tomorrow and meet with the rest of the priests and Daeva dignitaries? I understand this turn of events is shocking and frightening, but I do believe we can overcome things if we band together.”

She might as well have physically tossed Kartir out. The priest looked a little lost, his earlier drive gone.

“Of course,” he stammered. “We look forward to welcoming you.” His eyes briefly flickered to Dara, but he said nothing, making his way out.

The silence that fell over the three of them was heavy, the weight of the magnificent chamber eerie without a full crowd. Manizheh watched the priest retreat beyond the doors.

“I want him gone.” Her cold voice sliced through the warm air.

“It will be difficult,” Kaveh warned. “Kartir has held the position for a long time and is highly respected.”

“More reason to get rid of him. I don’t need him teaching heresy to his flock, and I’m sure there are plenty of senior priests who prefer the old ways. Find one and replace him.” Her gaze shifted to Dara. “I hope you bring better news.”

Dara took a moment to set aside everything he’d overheard—it would not do to reveal he’d been eavesdropping. “Regretfully, no. We have too few volunteers and even fewer with military skills. We’re managing to protect the Daeva Quarter, but I fear effective offensive action is out of the question. We don’t have the numbers.”

“Any idea how to get them?”

“We could offer an increased stipend,” he suggested. “I do not like the idea of needing to bribe men to protect their own people, but it’s an option.”

“It’s not,” Kaveh said. “I wish it was, but the Treasury cannot accommodate such a thing right now. The more we dig into Ghassan’s finances, the more trouble we find. The Ayaanle had been working to pay their back taxes but stopped when Queen Hatset was banished. The Treasury was overspending in the hopes of making it back during the Navasatem celebrations, but without that income, funds are very low. We’re already having enough problems paying the Daeva noble families whose lands and harvests we commandeered.”

“Those families should be happy for the opportunity to play their part,” Manizheh retorted. “I doubt they fared well under Ghassan.”

“They fared better than you might imagine,” Kaveh said. “They’re the oldest and wealthiest houses in the city, and they got that way by learning when to get in bed with the Qahtanis.”

“I take it the skilled archers I am not permitted to use in the city’s defense are also from these families?” Dara asked, scowling.

“Yes. I’ve already had two of them thrown in the dungeon for inquiring a bit too aggressively about Muntadhir’s fate.”

“That won’t do,” Manizheh said. “We have enough djinn conspiring outside our walls. I will not brook disloyalty from our people as well. Get them in line.”

Before Kaveh could respond, Dara drew up. There was the sound of marching coming from the garden. Faint and uneven—but getting louder very quickly.

“Stay behind me.” Without another word of explanation, Dara seized Kaveh by the collar, yanking him behind the throne as he moved between the entrance and Manizheh. A conjured bow was in his hands the next moment, an arrow aimed at the figure dashing up the path.

It was a Daeva servant. The man fell to his knees. “My lady, I tried to stop her, but she insisted on coming straight to you. She claims she has a message from Ghassan’s daugh—”

“Ghassan’s daughter has a name,” a rude, thickly accented voice interrupted, the new arrival striding into the chamber.

It took Dara a moment to recognize the armed Geziri warrior before him as a woman. She was dressed in a motley assortment of men’s clothing: a black tunic that might have been taken from a member of the Royal Guard and loose, fraying trousers. Dark braids spilled from a crimson turban, framing a severe face. A sword and khanjar were belted at her waist, her bare arms corded with muscle and scars.

Woman or not, she looked capable of taking down all his new recruits with her bare hands, and so Dara refocused his arrow. “Stop where you are.”

The warrior halted and gave him an openly appraising look, her gray, unimpressed eyes sweeping Dara from his boots to his face.

“You’re the Scourge? You look like you spend more time combing your hair than wielding a whip.” Her gaze narrowed on Manizheh, her expression curdling. “I suppose that makes you the Nahid.”

“You suppose correctly,” Manizheh said coolly. “And you are?”

“A messenger. Her Royal Highness, Princess Zaynab al Qahtani, has returned your people.” The warrior stepped aside and whistled, beckoning to the garden.

Dozens of Daevas—scores, the crowd he had heard marching—filed into the throne room. They were also dressed in a miscellaneous assortment of clothing—hand-me-downs and garments stained with old blood. There were men and women, young and old, nearly all wounded, sporting bandaged heads and splinted limbs.

“They were in the hospital after the Navasatem attack and got trapped behind our lines,” the warrior explained. “Our doctor has been caring for them.”

“Your doctor?” Manizheh repeated.

“Our doctor. Ah, that’s right. If your magic is gone, I suppose you can’t heal anyone anymore. How fortunate these people were on our side,” she added with a mocking smirk of concern.

An expression of pure wrath blazed across Manizheh’s face, and Dara found himself thinking the other woman was indeed fortunate the Banu Nahida’s magic was gone.

“Kaveh,” Manizheh said, her voice low and deadly as she continued in Divasti, “who is this woman?”

Kaveh was staring at the Geziri warrior like he’d drunk rotten milk. “One of Alizayd’s … companions. He arrived with two of them, barbarians from northern Am Gezira.”

“And is what she says true? You mentioned you feared some Daevas might have been trapped on the other side, but you’ve barely discussed this supposed hospital, let alone another doctor.”

“Because I did not think much of either, my lady. The hospital was some vanity project Banu Nahri worked on with Alizayd, and this so-called doctor is a shafit. You know what they say about human medicine.” Kaveh shivered. “It is little more than the hacking off of limbs and superstitious ritual.”

Manizheh pursed her lips and then spoke again in Djinnistani. “We sent a message to Ghassan’s daughter demanding her surrender.” She swept her hand over the group. “I don’t see anyone who appears to be her.”

“Princess Zaynab doesn’t intend to surrender herself to the people who stole the throne, murdered her father, and arranged the slaughter of her tribe. Her Highness has released these Daevas not as a favor to you, but because they requested to be freed, and she is ever merciful to her family’s subjects.”

“Your princess has a skewed view of the concept if she thinks her father and grandfather ever showed mercy to their subjects.” Manizheh switched to Divasti again. “Kaveh, see that these people are catered to. Food, money, their every whim granted. I will not have them return to our quarter speaking of the mercy of a Qahtani.” She raised her voice, speaking more warmly to the Daevas. “Thank the Creator for returning you. My grand wazir will see to your needs and make sure you are reunited with your loved ones.”

Dara held his tongue, not taking his eyes off the Geziri warrior as Kaveh led the other Daevas out. The woman was openly studying the room, looking a bit too much like she planned on taking it back.

Manizheh waited until the two of them were alone with the warrior before speaking again. “I made it clear to Ghassan’s daughter what would happen to her brother if the Geziris didn’t surrender.”

The warrior scoffed. “You’ve given her no proof he’s still alive, and strangely enough, the thousands of Geziris and shafit under her protection don’t want to submit to people who planned to massacre them. Which is why she offers you an alternative way to prove your good intent. And to save another Daeva as well.”

Suspicious, Dara spoke up. “What Daeva?”

“An injured warrior we found on the beach. An archer, judging from the grips she wore.”

An archer. Irtemiz. Dara’s protégé, who’d been among the warriors he’d sent to the beach—the ones he’d believed had been slaughtered by Alizayd.

“Were there any others?” Dara asked urgently. He didn’t miss the annoyed look Manizheh shot him, but he pressed on. “How badly is she hurt?”

Triumph glittered in the woman’s gray gaze. “How fortunate you are so concerned, Afshin, for the deal Zaynab offers involves you.” Her attention shifted back to Manizheh. “Her Highness understands how desperate you must have been to ally with the ifrit and the Scourge of Qui-zi, for it’s clearly not the act of a rational mind, certainly not a mind anyone could trust to rule.”

Magic or not, Dara would swear the entire chamber shivered when Manizheh narrowed her eyes. “Get to the point, sand fly.”

“Get rid of your ifrit, fire worshipper. And hand over your Afshin. He’ll be the one held responsible for the massacre and executed accordingly. Then we’ll return your warrior and open negotiations.”

Dara’s stomach dropped. Again, they wanted him to take the blame for the decision of a Nahid.

Manizheh stood up. “It was I who killed your king,” she declared, venom in every word. “And it was I who would have seen my city emptied of your people, a future that sounds more promising with each minute you remain in my presence. Tell your so-called princess that. Tell her the day my Afshin is in your company, it won’t be tears of victory you’re weeping.”

“A shame,” the warrior replied, looking at Dara again. “Your soldier spoke so fiercely in your defense.” She turned away, striding through the doors as if she didn’t have an arrow locked on her neck.

Dara lowered his bow. “You didn’t give me up.”

Manizheh glared at him. “Of course I didn’t give you up! Though I appreciate learning just how much you trust me.”

“They have Irtemiz,” he whispered. “I thought she was dead. I thought they all were.”

“She is just as likely dead,” Manizheh warned. “That sand fly was testing you, and you blundered right into it.”

Dara shook his head. “She is one of mine. I have a duty to try and get her back.”

“You certainly do not.” Manizheh’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “By the Creator, theirs isn’t even a clever trap. They’re trying to divide us—to get rid of you.” She must have seen the rebellion brewing in his face. “Afshin, this is not a matter on which there is any negotiation. I mourn the girl, I do, but there are thousands of Daeva girls like Irtemiz who’ll be at risk if you’re killed.”

“But it isn’t right that she suffer in my place. This is maddening, Banu Nahida. I cannot go after Irtemiz, I cannot go after Nahri—”

“It has only been two weeks, Dara. You must be patient. Give us time to secure the city, for the djinn to turn over Nahri and Alizayd as they’ve been warned. There is no other way. They are waiting for us to stumble, to make a mistake.”

“But—”

“Am I interrupting something?”

At the sound of Aeshma’s coy, mocking voice, Dara abruptly lost the battle he was waging with his emotions. Thunder cracked across the throne room, the air growing hot.

“What do you want?” he hissed.

“To relieve the Banu Nahida of your ever-pleasant company.” Aeshma turned his attention to Manizheh, bowing slightly. “You are ready?”

Manizheh sighed. “Yes.” She glanced at Dara. “I will find a way to send proof of Muntadhir’s life,” she assured him. “Hopefully that will convince this princess to spare Irtemiz, especially since she has already given up her other Daeva hostages—a mistake I will not be making on our part. You are not to engage with them further, understand?”

Dara grunted assent, still glowering at the ifrit. “What does Aeshma want with you?”

Manizheh’s eyes dimmed. “It’s complicated.” She turned to follow the ifrit but then stopped, glancing back once more. “And, Afshin?”

“Yes?”

Manizheh nodded toward the direction in which the Geziri warrior had departed. “Start training more women.”

That he agreed to more readily. “Understood.” Dara watched her leave with Aeshma, not missing how she’d dodged his question.

Fine. Manizheh wanted to keep her secrets?

She wasn’t the only one who had them. And there was one in particular Dara had been aching to try again.

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