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 cl
osed 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!”
The Empire of Gold Page 6