A volley of arrows and bolts greeted his emergence, but Dara had been expecting the attack and froze them in the air.
Over a dozen warriors blocked them in, arrayed across the three corridors. The majority were Geziris, some still wearing tattered uniforms from the Royal Guard.
“It’s an ifrit!” one of the soldiers cried, aiming a crossbow.
An older man snarled. A nasty gash split his face, a wound Dara suspected would never heal. “That’s not an ifrit,” the man said. “It’s the bloody Scourge. He takes the demon’s form now.”
Dara stared at them, almost pleading. He didn’t want to kill more men. Creator, he wanted to stop being the Scourge that destroyed lives, the cursed enemy in the hearts of more children of murdered fathers. “Let us leave. I do not wish to kill you.”
“You had no problem butchering our brothers in the Citadel.”
“You cannot defeat me,” Dara said plainly. “You will all die, and it will be for nothing.”
The man lifted his zulfiqar, the copper blade looking diminished without its flames. “No one is letting you leave, and you might find we’ve our own tricks now.”
Dara’s heart sank. Resolve was growing in their faces, as the shock of confronting a monster from legend became the urge to revenge themselves on the very real man who’d murdered so many of their friends.
“So be it,” Dara said quietly. He snapped his fingers.
Their arrows and bolts—still hanging in the air—hurtled back at them.
The majority were prepared, raising shields or ducking, but a handful fell. Dara didn’t wait, hurling himself on the rest and cutting through their line with ease. They were simply not as fast, not as strong. They were good, well trained, and brave.
But they weren’t him, and so he slaughtered them.
He returned to Irtemiz, stepping past the steaming corpses. He could already hear more men coming. “Let’s go,” he said, hopping on the front edge of the floating mat like he might have on a horse cart. “Hold on to my belt. I’m going to need my hands free.”
The mat shot forward on the air. They zoomed through the corridor, dipping and diving around corners and over the heads of more warriors. Too busy trying to fly and steer, Dara didn’t have enough strength to freeze the arrows that zipped by, so he drew his bow, shooting anyone and anything that moved.
Finally, a square of trees and dark night: the courtyard open to the sky. Dara urged the mat faster, cutting through the air.
They had no sooner escaped the cramped corridor than he heard a shout and the scrape of metal.
Acting on instinct, Dara threw himself over Irtemiz, provoking a pained gasp from his wounded friend. A moment later, a heavy net landed on them both, and it was his turn to scream. Fitted with iron studs—broken nails, barbed clippings, and scavenged razors—the burning metal pierced his skin, the fire flickering out where it touched.
They crashed to the ground, and Irtemiz groaned, crying out as her broken body took the jolt. Dara tried to free himself, but the motion only pushed the iron studs deeper into his body.
An arrow tore past his shoulder, another barely missing Irtemiz’s head. There was a blast of a rifle and an explosion as its projectile shattered the tile near his foot.
Trapped. The real trap. And now he was about to have warriors shooting at him with everything they had, desperate to take him out before he could murder them all.
Dara met Irtemiz’s frightened eyes. He’d failed her and her fellows before, sending them alone into battle during an invasion he knew was rushed.
He wouldn’t fail her again. He threw himself off Irtemiz, rolling away, the net tangling his limbs as more barbs pierced his skin. Dara reached for his magic, commanding the mat beneath her to rise. The palace. Manizheh.
“Afshin, no!” Irtemiz cried, but she was already gone, the mat soaring up and away.
Dara got no reprieve, nor did he care. Irtemiz was safe.
Which was good—because everyone else here was going to die.
Dara ripped the net away with his bare hands, the links melting and snapping. He bellowed in pain—Creator, it hurt, tearing out flesh and blood—but there was relief the moment the net was gone. His bow flew to his hand, and then he was firing arrows faster than an eye would have been able to track, the motion between plucking and drawing and releasing a blur of muscle memory.
That took care of the fools shooting from an upper story—the man holding the rifle first and foremost—but then their fellows charged him, wielding maces, zulfiqars, and lengths of pipe. There were shafit among them, which seemed fitting. The kin and people of all his victims, come to finally try and cut him down.
But no one was cutting Dara down. He shoved his sword through the throat of the nearest sand fly, ripping it out to decapitate the dirt-blood next to him.
“COME!” he roared. Any inklings he’d had of mercy were gone. The Geziris and shafit thought to kill him here—here at this hospital where so many of their forebearers had slaughtered his Nahids and kicked off the violent sack of his city that had ended with the deaths of his mother and little sister?
Dara would bathe it in their blood.
He tore through them, crimson and black gore coating his hands, his wrists, his face. He was a weapon again and he acted accordingly, not hearing their screams, their gurgles, their dying cries for their mothers. It was a relief, who he was meant to be.
“Aqisa, no!”
The female voice caught him off guard, jerking him from his bloodlust, and then a warrior did—Aqisa, the Geziri woman who’d delivered Zaynab al Qahtani’s threat. She swung her zulfiqar at his neck in a motion that would have left a slower man headless, but Dara ducked back in time. He forced her against the fountain, raising his sword.
“Stop!” Another woman rushed out from beneath the shadowed arcade. She was armed as well, but it wasn’t her blade that caught Dara’s attention.
It was her gray-gold eyes and the instantly familiar set of her face.
The princess. Between her eyes and the striking resemblance to Alizayd, she had to be. Manizheh’s enemy, the key his Banu Nahida needed to force the Ayaanle and Geziris to back down.
Dara didn’t hesitate. “Do not move!” he boomed to the soldiers as he lunged for the princess, seizing her arm. “Drop your weapons, or—”
A fierce thrust punched through his shoulder, stealing his next words. There was the sharp smell of gunpowder and iron.
Then a white-hot blast of the worst pain he’d ever felt, in all his lives, exploded through his body.
Dara cried out, his sword dipping as he stumbled. Aqisa pulled Zaynab from his grip as he tried to recover, but it was as if someone had shoved poison into a gaping wound and set the entire thing ablaze. Spots blossomed across his eyes and Dara bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
Gunpowder. He could smell it, the iron scorching his flesh. They’d shot him. Some filthy dirt-blood had actually shot him with one of their wretched human weapons.
And by the Creator, were they going to pay. A burst of magic and his sword split into a dozen barbed strands, the handle transforming in his hand.
His scourge. Dara drew it back and whirled around. He would shred the man who had dared …
He froze. It wasn’t a man. It was a woman, standing not five paces away, the smoking pistol still in her hands.
She was shafit, brown visible in her tin-toned eyes, her skin a human matte in the darkness. She was breathing hard and was dressed in a bloodstained smock, small metal weapons poking out of the pockets. No, not weapons. A scalpel and small hammer, a roll of bandage cloth.
The shafit doctor Aqisa had mentioned.
The princess gasped. “Subha, run!”
But the doctor didn’t run. Instead, she stood tall, glaring at Dara with all the hate someone like her was right to hold. Creator, how he must look, wild and gruesome, his infamous scourge in one fiery hand.
He should have struck her down. He’d just killed dozens. What was a
nother life—particularly when it belonged to a woman holding one of the few weapons that could kill him?
A shafit woman and the metallic smell of human blood. Somewhere a baby cried, but Dara did not move, the hospital suddenly feeling very far away in the fog of pain racking his body. It wasn’t the raging courtyard battle he saw, but a plaza in a bustling merchant city, lanterns hanging from pretty, tiled buildings and stalls packed with bolts of silk in all the colors of the world. They’d burned so fast, so violently, snapping and cracking in the heat, delicate embers floating in the air.
The doctor raised the pistol, leveling it at his head. Wouldn’t this be justice? The Scourge of Qui-zi killed by some shafit civilian, taken down with a weapon from the human world. He thought of just closing his eyes, giving in.
But Dara didn’t close his eyes.
Instead, he dropped his scourge and ran.
Surprised shouts followed as he threw himself into the maze of corridors leading off from the courtyard. Dara took the turns at random, but he was in so much pain, he was staggering more than sprinting. Black spots exploded before his vision, blood in his mouth. All that compelled him forward was the wild desire to escape, to live.
He could hear them hunting him. There were a few cries of triumph, but not many. The warriors after him now were professionals, and the tide had turned. A good story this would make for the djinn and shafit, the cruel Darayavahoush chased down like a wounded animal. The torture probably wouldn’t be long—they wouldn’t risk the opportunity to put him down for good—but it would be vicious. They’d probably hack him apart and put his head on a spike, a present for Manizheh when their forces broke into the Daeva Quarter.
Not like this. Creator, please … not like this.
The fire was steadily leaving his skin and with it the embrace of magic. The icy pain of the iron projectile in his shoulder pulsed harder with each breath, leaving him weak and rasping for air. Dara tripped, falling to his knees.
He blinked, dazed to find himself in a narrow hall, pitch-black save for the soft glow still emanating from his skin. The ghostly light danced upon wall paintings of sandships and seabirds, a narrow pocket of beauty and silence in the last moments before his horrific end.
And then Dara spotted his ring, the emerald gleaming in the darkness.
Everything went very still. The last time he’d been separated from his ring, he’d died. His body had turned to ash, his soul fleeing to the garden of shade and cypresses where his sister waited. Maybe he could go there again.
You will not go back to Tamima. Not this time. If there is any justice in this world, you will suffer for a thousand more years.
The ring seemed to brighten slightly, the halo of light spreading. And there before him, a miracle he didn’t deserve … a door.
Weeping with pain, with loss, Dara forced himself back to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. He could still hear the approaching mob, but maybe there would be a window, another way out.
Maybe this was not the night he died yet again. Dara eased the door open and slipped inside. The room was small and messy, covered with lengths of canvas, pots of paint, brushes, and half-completed portraits.
And a single Sahrayn woman with brilliant green eyes.
The breath went out of him. The woman had wedged herself into a corner and was holding some sort of paint-covered metal prod in her shaking hands. She stared in shock at him, her emerald eyes wide and startled. They were as green as his—the first time in his life he’d come face-to-face with another victim of ifrit slavery.
“Down here!” Shouts in Djinnistani and Geziriyya beyond the closed door, his pursuers catching up when there was nowhere else to run. Dara was caught.
But in the blink of an eye, the woman dashed to his side. She grabbed him by his collar and yanked him forward, surprisingly strong for her size. Stunned by the resulting burst of pain, Dara let himself be dragged toward a large ebony chest set against the wall.
She threw open the top and pointed.
Any other time, he might have hesitated. But about to pass out and with running footsteps closing in, Dara fell into the chest. She shut it, throwing him into darkness.
The smells of linseed oil and chalk were so thick he struggled not to cough. Paintbrushes were poking into him, his injured shoulder throbbing, but a small crack in the wood let in a fraction of light. Dara pressed an eye to it, glimpsing the Sahrayn woman covering a patch of blood on the floor with an old rug. He shifted, trying to get a better look as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
The movement cost him. A wave of fresh pain stabbed through his shoulder, and Dara’s vision blurred. He fell back against the chest’s interior.
There was an impatient knock, followed by the sound of the door scraping open. A man barking in Djinnistani, the words weaving in and out. Scourge. Escaped. Elashia. The Sahrayn woman didn’t seem to be saying anything.
And then Aqisa’s rough voice. “She’s shaking her head. That means she knows nothing, so you can stop badgering her.”
There was a protest and then the rather distinct thud of something—someone—being shoved into a wall.
“—and I said let her be,” Aqisa snapped. “Let’s move on. He’s probably hiding down the other way.”
Darkness was shutting in, hot blood running down his arm. Wetness on his cheeks that could have been tears or more blood.
Dara closed his eyes and let the blackness take him.
THE CHEST ABRUPTLY OPENED, PULLING DARA FROM unconsciousness. Two faces swam before him, both with emerald eyes. One belonged to his Sahrayn savior and the other to an older Tukharistani woman.
Half dead, insensible with pain, and sitting in a pool of his own blood mixed with paint cleaner, all Dara could think to do was croak a greeting. “May the fires burn brightly for you.”
The Tukharistani woman groaned. “This was not the sort of surprise I was hoping you had for me in your studio.”
The woman named Elashia gave her an imploring look, gesturing between the three of them.
“He’s not one of us,” the Tukharistani woman said fiercely. “Being enslaved by the ifrit is no justification for what he and Manizheh have done.” She touched Elashia’s face. “My love, what were you thinking? I know you have a tender heart, but these people have allowed us to stay here in peace and protected us, and now you hide their enemy?”
Dara tried to sit up, wheezing out a plume of smoke. “I mean you no trouble. I can leave,” he added, gripping the edge of the chest with his good hand.
The Tukharistani woman kicked the chest, sending a ricochet of pain through his body. Dara gasped, falling back.
“You can stay put,” she warned. “I won’t have you leaving a trail of blood back to us.”
Blazing pinpricks of light danced before his eyes. “Yes,” he agreed weakly.
She sighed. “Fire or water?”
“What?”
“Fire or water,” she repeated, as if speaking to a dense child. “What revives you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the new throbbing in his shoulder. “Fire,” he rasped. “But it does not matter. They shot me with some sort of iron projectile—”
“A bullet. Come now. I’ve got a millennium on you, and I keep up with the modern words.”
Dara gritted his teeth. “The bullet is still in my shoulder. It is interfering with my magic and keeping me in this form.”
The woman regarded him. “And if I removed it from your shoulder, do you think you could escape?”
Dara stared at her in shock. “You would help me?”
“That depends. Did you kill them?”
“You need to be more specific.”
Her expression grew hard. “Banu Nahri and Prince Alizayd.”
Dara’s mouth fell open. “No. I would never harm Nahri. I was trying to save her.”
“Then what happened?” the woman demanded. “And don’t give me this nonsense about Ali kidnapping her. That’s not them.”
/> “I do not know,” Dara confessed. “They jumped in the lake with Suleiman’s seal. We think they were trying to get away, but they vanished.”
Anger crept into the woman’s gaze. “I am very fond of that girl, Afshin. If what happened in the palace was enough to convince her that jumping in a cursed lake was safer than staying with you, I’d say you’ve done quite a bit of harm.”
“I know.” Dara’s voice broke. “I know I have wronged her, but I was trying to set things right. Manizheh had a plan—”
“To rule over a city of corpses? How was killing more people going to help Nahri?”
“I serve the Nahids,” he whispered. “The Daevas. I wanted them to be free.”
There was a long moment of silence before she spoke again. “Baga Rustam used to whisper of freedom too. But only when he was young.” She poked him, and Dara winced. “You still have your magic, and people say there are times you look like an ifrit, that you can shape smoke into living beasts. You are not like Elashia and me, are you?”
Dara shook his head. “I was before. Closer, anyway.”
“And Manizheh did this to you?”
There was a knowing in her voice that sent ice racing down his spine. “Did she not free you as well?”
“Baga Rustam freed me.” She met his gaze, a careful look in her eyes. “He told me once that he did not trust his sister with the freeing of slaves. She had ambitions that worried him.”
“What sort of ambitions?”
She ignored the question, crossing her arms and continuing her own interrogation. “Does your bond still exist?”
“My bond?”
The two women exchanged a glance. “Nahids use some of their own blood to conjure our new bodies,” she explained. “It creates a bond. A strong one. You should be able to sense Manizheh’s presence, to hear if she calls for you.”
I have only ever heard one Nahid call for me. A song that had dragged him across the world to a human cemetery on a long-ago night. Not for the first time, Dara was struck by how very little he knew about his own existence.
“I don’t know,” he finally replied. “I don’t know anything of this.”
The Empire of Gold Page 18