His last words, spoken with a hitch, echoed the growing decision in Nahri’s mind. She picked up a chunk of driftwood, breaking it up to still the trembling in her hands, and then carefully set one of the tiny pieces upon the kindling. It caught, fire licking through the dry wood.
“I’m not going back to Egypt, Ali,” she started. “I can’t. The way Qandisha was talking, I think the ifrit had their own aims in allying with Manizheh. There are too many coincidences. Seemingly no one knew Dara was enslaved, and somehow my mother ends up with his ring and the company of the ifrit who enslaved him? And they’re happy to help her, their mortal enemy?”
Ali had betrayed no surprise when she said she wasn’t going back to Egypt—perhaps he really was starting to read her—but looked unconvinced at her other words. “Your mother was clever enough to outwit my father. Do you really think she’d fall for an ifrit scheme?”
“I think the ifrit were scheming for millennia before we were born. And yes, I think Manizheh might have been so hungry for power and revenge that she didn’t care about the costs. Or perhaps she thought she could outwit them as well. Either way …” Nahri’s throat constricted in fear, her body far more reasonable that her stupid, suicidal heart. “I can’t sit this out. Daevabad is my home. Our home.” She laced her fingers through his again. “The Qahtanis and the Nahids got us here. I think it should be an al Qahtani and a Nahid who fix it. Or more likely die trying in some horrible fashion.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that last part. But—oh!” Ali dropped her hand. “I nearly forgot!” He rose to his feet and loped off.
“Forgot what?” Nahri called.
But he was already returning. “I hung it on a tree to dry out.”
Nahri recognized the black bag in his hands. “My instruments!” she exclaimed in delight. She jumped up and pulled the bag from him, quickly examining it. All seemed in order, and she breathed a sigh of relief, the sight of the tools lightening the mantle of despair heavy upon her. “Oh, Ali … thank you!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck. “How in God’s name did you find this?”
“I …” She seemed to have caught him off guard. Then Nahri was suddenly very aware of his shirtless state. She blushed, stepping back, and Ali continued. “Sobek—the marid found it for me. I asked him to retrieve it.”
“You asked a marid to fetch my bag?” Nahri shuddered. “You frighten me sometimes. But thank you. And thank you as well for all that back on the beach,” she added, her cheeks going warmer with embarrassment. “You’re a good friend. Probably the best one I’ve ever had.” She hardened her voice. “But if you tell anyone I cried, I’ll kill you.”
Ali looked like he was trying not to smile. “Consider me properly threatened.”
“Good. Let’s go, then. We’ve wasted enough time, and I’d like to know what happened last night that left you on a first-name basis with a marid.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Ali, nothing about this trip has gone well. You know we have a long walk.”
NAHRI STEPPED OVER THE ROTTING REMAINS OF A fallen palm tree, pushing a sweat-soaked tendril of hair from her face. Leery of walking on the open beach, they’d stuck to the edge of the forest. “So he was a crocodile or just looked like one?”
Ahead, Ali cut through a net of green vines. “He seemed like something in between,” he answered. “Like he was both at once. The more I tried to look at him, the harder it became to distinguish.”
“And he knew of me?”
“He claimed he was the marid who cursed your appearance. He said it was part of a pact with your human kin, meant to protect you.”
“My human kin?” Nahri stopped in her tracks. “I have family in Egypt? Did he tell you anything else?”
Ali glanced back, apologetic. “He said they were dead. I’m sorry, Nahri. He refused to tell me anything more. That’s why he put you to sleep. He said it was best you didn’t remember.”
I had family in Egypt. I am Egyptian—truly. It was a bittersweet revelation, because deep in her heart, Nahri feared she’d never see Egypt again. And yet it only threw another knot into the tangled tapestry of her past. Her mother was a Daevabad-raised Banu Nahida whose every movement had been watched. Nahri had supposedly been born in Daevastana, on the road between Daevabad and Zariaspa. Where in that story was there room for an Egyptian father, a shafit? And how had Nahri been returned to his homeland as a child?
“Every time I learn something new, it just dredges up more questions.” Nahri kicked a desiccated coconut. “I hate it. I hate puzzles. You can’t come up with a plan if you don’t have all the pieces.”
“For what it’s worth, he confirmed some of what we thought about the marid’s involvement in the city’s fall. He accused Anahid of stealing the lake and using Suleiman’s seal to force his kin into servitude—that’s why they helped my ancestors overthrow the Nahid Council. When they heard rumors a powerful new Nahid had arisen and intended to take the seal and Daevabad back, they became determined to stop her.”
With the sun well risen, the day was sweltering, but a cold sweat broke out on Nahri’s back. “So that’s why the marid killed Dara. Because they feared Manizheh would use him to conquer Daevabad.” Of course, it was a connection to the Nahids that doomed Dara once again.
Ali slashed at a branch. “It’s also why they took me. Sobek said they would have been wary of killing a daeva directly, so they conspired to make sure it was one of Dara’s own people who wielded the blade. But it wasn’t enough, and now the marid owe him some sort of blood debt for killing a lesser being. They can’t harm him and have no choice but to help him.”
“You also couldn’t harm him.”
Ali seemed to go slightly still, but then he was pressing forward again, waving a mosquito away from his face. “Well, I still have the marid’s magic on me. Maybe that’s why.”
“Maybe,” Nahri echoed softly. “Did he tell you anything else?”
“No, but what he showed me, the way we traveled, my God, it was incredible. Like the river itself was suspended above us. All the fish and the gold glittering in the sand, the stars reflecting in the water.” Admiration filled Ali’s voice. “He showed me how they chase currents, and it was as if you could glimpse the entire world through all its different waters.”
“How very lovely for the people who tortured you.”
“Trust me, I haven’t forgotten that part. And there was plenty about him that wasn’t lovely. The things Sobek talked about doing to humans—” Ali shuddered. “God forbid, I can’t even say them aloud.”
Things too atrocious to say aloud sounded more like the magical world Nahri knew. She gave the ocean, sparkling through the trees, an uneasy look, half expecting sea creatures to emerge from its depths. “I’m surprised he showed you all this. I’m surprised he saved us.”
Ali hacked through another vine. “Well, like I said, he promised your family he’d keep you safe.”
“I guess.” But Nahri still felt like they were missing another piece. She kept walking, stepping carefully over the broken twigs covering the sandy ground. Her feet hurt, and the growing number of mosquito bites covering her bare skin itched like mad. They’d been traveling all morning, and the hot sun pierced the leafy canopy, the shade little relief.
Ahead Ali was marching like a damned automaton, his sword rising and falling. Dressed only in his waist cloth, he looked like he might have been plucked from the stone carvings they’d seen of clashing kings and divine warriors, his body all lithe muscle and supernatural grace. The slats of sunlight coming through the jungle striped his bare skin, illuminating gashes and bite marks from the ghouls’ attack. Lifting the seal earlier had begun to heal them, but not entirely. For all that he looked like a divine warrior, Ali was still very mortal.
I almost lost him last night. Even thinking it made her stomach lurch—and that, in turn made Nahri even more anxious. To say their friendship had a tumultuous history was an understatement, but it
wasn’t until she admitted it out loud on the beach that Nahri really realized the depth of what had grown between them. She didn’t have anyone else like Ali, her occasionally still infuriating, overly idealistic ancestral enemy who’d become the best friend—the partner she’d been ready to spend the rest of her days with back in Egypt.
You shouldn’t be thinking like that, she chided herself. By the Most High, hadn’t Nahri learned what happened when she got attached to people? Even saying something like that in her head seemed to be tempting fate.
They fell into silence as the temperature climbed and the sun rose higher. Finally, when Nahri was nearing exhaustion, the ground began to rise in a rocky hill—or rather not a hill, but some sort of crumbling brick foundation swallowed by weeds, roots sprawling over silvery stones. A wide creek twisted around it, the rich brown water coloring the azure currents where it met the ocean.
“Looks like a ruin,” Ali commented. “Sobek did say that’s where the djinn he knew of liked to congregate.”
They waded through the creek. Though it only went up to her knees, Nahri shivered. She suspected it was going to take her a long time to regain her comfort with water after last night. They stopped at the foundation wall, its height twice hers. It stretched to the water’s edge, melting away in the gloom of jungle.
“Climb or go around?”
Nahri wrung out the bottom of her dress. “Is nap not an option?” When Ali narrowed his eyes, she sighed. “Climb, I suppose.”
“I’ll help you,” he offered, sheathing his weapons and taking her medical bag.
They climbed, emerging in a thick knot of scrubby greenery that scratched her skin. Nahri started to beat it away, but then Ali tugged her down.
“Company,” he warned softly. “Look.”
Following his gaze, she peered through the leaves. A massive ship lay badly beached on the foundation wall, trees smashed beneath its bulk as if it had dropped from the sky. The hull was painted in meandering stripes of warm beige and olive green, as though to blend in with the landscape. Its front third jutted over the creek, silvery sails tied up.
“That’s a sandship,” Ali said under his breath.
“Are you sure?” Nahri asked, studying the boat. “Maybe it’s human.”
“Not with those sails. Look, you can see the tide line halfway up the foundation wall. The water doesn’t go high enough to beach it like that. And, well, there’s them,” he added as two rather obviously djinn sailors came around the hull, both with the distinctive crimson-streaked black hair of the Sahrayn—and what seemed like an excess of weapons gleaming from their waists and arms.
Her heart beat faster. “I guess we go make friends.”
Ali grabbed her wrist. “No.” Alarm colored his voice. “That boat should be flying Ayaanle colors, no matter the crew’s heritage, to be permitted in these waters. The Ayaanle and Sahrayn are as much enemies as they are allies; they’ve bickered over their border for years. The only thing that keeps them from all-out war are those ships. The Ayaanle need them to trade goods, and the Sahrayn need the money they earn transporting those goods. There are a dozen treaties and taxes governing what flags—”
Nahri shushed him, deciding a history of intertribal trade was not what Ali was trying to tell her. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning we go around.”
Silently cursing, Nahri followed his lead, retreating down the wall.
They hadn’t touched the ground when a voice spoke up behind her.
“Stay right there, crocodile.”
Nahri froze. The voice was speaking Djinnistani with an accent she couldn’t pin. Careful not to move, she glanced down from the corner of her eye.
Three men, their faces covered, were waiting for them at the bottom of the wall. The first held a crossbow and was clearly Sahrayn, if the bright hue of his metal-toned eyes was anything to judge by. Another was small, carrying a scythe-ended staff, while the third man was massive, carrying a similarly sized mace and a sword at his waist. They were dressed in motley clothes: torn pants, a stolen Geziri belt, and Ayaanle turbans.
At her side, Ali had stilled. His face was only half turned, Suleiman’s mark not yet visible to the others.
The djinn holding the crossbow spoke again, his words directed at Ali. “Drop the weapons, Ayaanle. I do apologize for ruining whatever forbidden entertainments you had planned with your pretty human friend, but if you don’t hand over your sword, I’m going to put holes in both of you.”
Nahri didn’t even see Ali let go of the tree.
One moment he was at her side, and the next, he’d launched himself at the djinn holding the crossbow, sending the man crashing to the ground, ripping the weapon from his hands, and smashing him across the face with it in a single fluid motion.
The man with the mace was backing up, his wide eyes darting between the zulfiqar in Ali’s hands and the mark now visible on his face. He let out a stream of what Nahri was fairly certain she would have understood as expletives had her linguistic powers been working.
The other djinn had already whistled, hefting his bladed staff in the air to swing at Ali’s head. Nahri cried out in warning, but Ali was already ducking, rolling to his feet to emerge behind the man with the mace. He brought the hilt of his zulfiqar down on the man’s skull, sending him sprawling.
And Nahri was suddenly back on the roof of the palace as Ali cut through Daevas, on the burning boat as Dara cut through djinn. It was obvious these people meant the two of them harm, but Nahri had a sudden and irrational urge to grab the zulfiqar from Ali’s hands, to keep the man who’d held her as she fell apart on the beach from taking another life.
Ali’s last opponent was more skilled than his fellows, however, dancing away as he defended himself against Ali’s whirling strikes. There was mad delight in his kohl-lined copper-brown eyes—shafit eyes—as though he was enjoying the challenge.
Not for long, though, because Ali’s next strike cleanly lopped off the metal head of the other warrior’s staff. Ali shoved an elbow in the man’s face, provoking a loud crack, and then swept his legs out. The djinn fell hard, his headcloth rolling away.
Nahri gasped. It wasn’t a man Ali had been fighting, but rather a young woman, her red-black braids tumbling free. Blood streamed from her nose as she crawled back on her elbows, looking at Ali with wide, frightened eyes.
“Please don’t kill me!” she begged.
Ali lowered the zulfiqar, but his face remained hard as he stalked after her. “Who are you?”
“Traders!” she cried. “Merchants from Takedda. Please, my prince!”
“Rather well armed to be merchants in a foreign land,” Ali scoffed. “Try again.”
She abruptly smiled, triumph washing away her frightened facade. “You’re right. We’re not merchants. We’re pirates.” She licked her teeth and inclined her head toward the foundation wall. “They are too.”
Nahri glanced up.
Over a dozen armed djinn stared back at her, crossbows drawn.
A Sahrayn man, wearing a long dagger on his forearm, stepped forward. “It seems we’ve won the hunt,” he said with a leer. “Daevabad’s missing royals are ours.”
18
ALI
Ali strained against the chains wrapping his limbs, the iron shackles burning his wrists. “Cowards,” he hissed as a pirate added yet another loop around his legs. “You outnumber me twenty to one and are still so afraid you weigh me down in iron? What kind of man are you?”
The man pulled the additional chain tighter. “The kind who doesn’t want to die.”
As the man stepped back, Ali spotted Nahri. The pirates had forced them onto the beached sandship, lowering their weapons only when the “Daevabadi royals” were shackled. Nahri wasn’t wearing the blanket of chains he was, but fury surged in Ali’s heart at the sight of her bound ankles. “Maybe next time, I’ll just kill you.”
“And that’s why you’re staying like this until we get to Daevabad.”
“
So here’s the prince responsible for stripping our magic.” The Sahrayn pirate who’d gleefully announced “winning” them strode forward, his sandals clicking on the wooden deck. A few steps behind was the shafit girl Ali had fought. The man bowed in Nahri’s direction. “And, of course, our blessed Banu Nahida. May the fires burn brightly for you, my lady.”
No matter what humble roots Nahri claimed in Egypt, the imperious look she leveled on the pirate was all Nahid. “And you are?”
“Your savior!” He touched his heart. “Call me al Mudhib.”
Ali eyed him. Judging from the lines on his sun-beaten face, al Mudhib had to be at least a century and a half old. His beard was entirely silver—and bright as the metal itself, an unnatural hue. He was broadly built and richly dressed in a sleeveless linen tunic accented with colorful silk embroidery depicting fighting snakes. Corded muscle and burns covered his exposed arms, and a turban in a flowing fabric like liquid gold wrapped around his head.
The weapon at his waist was Muntadhir’s khanjar.
Ali glared. “That’s my brother’s blade.”
Al Mudhib shrugged. “I can’t imagine he has much need for it now, being ash and all.”
“Ali.” Nahri’s voice cut a warning before Ali could test his chains. She turned back to the pirate. “You call yourself my savior, and yet you’ve shackled me to your boat.”
“A precaution,” al Mudhib explained. “You see, we’re all a bit confused finding you so cozy with your kidnapper.”
“Her kidnapper?” Ali repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Al Mudhib’s eyes danced with mirth. “Our new ruler, may God—sorry, the Creator,” he amended, using the Divasti word, “bless her reign, sent her Afshin charging out with the awful story. That instead of accepting Manizheh’s mercy, the treacherous Qahtani prince kidnapped her daughter, stole Suleiman’s seal, and fled to his marid masters.” Al Mudhib gave Nahri a wide, toothy grin. “Your mother is so very upset. She’s warned that no one shall have their magic restored until her daughter and wretched captor are returned to Daevabad. And the one doing that returning? Ah, they are to be well rewarded.”
The Empire of Gold Page 25