“I told you I don’t know.” Muntadhir’s voice quaked in angry fear. “Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they were right to be. Look at you. You should be dead twice over; you have access to powers not even you understand—and all because of her.” Muntadhir gestured rudely at Manizheh. “Maybe they liked the occasional reassurance that you were all dead.”
Manizheh closed her hands into fists, and for a moment Dara thought she was going to punch Muntadhir.
But then she inhaled, shutting her eyes. “Kaveh, get him out of my sight. Find a scribe who can read Geziriyya and one of our priests. People who can be discreet. I’m not ready to share this news.”
Kaveh hesitated, clearly not liking the murderous look Dara was giving Muntadhir, but then he came to his senses and rushed the emir away.
When they were gone, Manizheh opened her eyes, gazing at the entombed remains of her relatives. She was still holding his relic.
Dara had to fight the wild urge to grab it away. His relic. If he opened it, would the curl of baby hair his mother tucked inside with a prayer still be there? Could he touch something she had once touched so many centuries ago?
But Dara’s distant past wasn’t the most pressing one. Not now. “Banu Manizheh,” he said softly, “how did you bring me back?”
Manizheh stilled. “What are you talking about?”
Dara met her gaze. His anger was gone, and now he was just tired. “I know how slaves are freed and brought back to life. You would have needed my relic.”
“I only needed a bit of your mortal remains, and Qandisha showed me where you died.”
“I am not talking about that, and you know it. I am talking about the first time.” His voice rose. “You and I have been dancing around this for six years. So now I am asking. How did you bring me back?”
Manizheh gave him a wary look. “This isn’t a story you want to hear. If I’ve held back certain details, it was out of kindness.”
Another time Dara might have believed that. He might have even found it compassionate.
No longer. “I have followed you and killed for you and asked for nothing in return.” He was trembling. “I walk around you all, but I am not one of you. I’m not like other freed djinn. I can’t remember my years as a slave, centuries—centuries—of my own life. I want to know why. I want to know how. You owe me that.”
Manizheh held his gaze. Torchlight reflected in her eyes, but her expression otherwise gave nothing away.
Which was why Dara was shocked when she set down his relic, sat upon the desk, and began.
“We found your ring when we were children. The three of us: Kaveh, Rustam, and I. We’d discovered the ruins of a human caravan while exploring. We were very young, and it was very exciting—the closest any of us had gotten to humans, even if all that was left were bones and a few rotted possessions. The bodies had been scattered, dismembered. And on one severed hand there was a ring.”
Dara was already uneasy, a caravan of murdered humans perhaps a too apt start to this tale. “My ring?”
“Your ring. The magic coming off it … any Nahid would know it was a slave vessel. There’s a way to glimpse some of the dreams of the slave trapped inside, and when I peered inside yours, I recognized right away who you were. Your rage, your despair, the memories of Qui-zi and warring against Zaydi al Qahtani—you could be no other than the great Darayavahoush, the last of the Afshins.”
She already looked lost in her memories, but more alarm spiked through Dara at her words. “And you didn’t think it was too much of a coincidence that the last of the Nahids stumbled across the last of the Afshins?”
“We were children, Darayavahoush. It sounded like a fairy tale. The adults around us were all so cowed by the djinn, so defeated. So we brought the ring to Daevabad, hidden in our clothes, and tried to learn the truth of what had happened to you.”
“Did none of my followers leave accounts?”
Manizheh shook her head. “If your followers knew, they didn’t talk. Those who weren’t executed after your rebellion fell apart were brought back to Daevabad and richly rewarded.”
Ah, yes, the Daeva noble houses with their familiar names. Stung, Dara pressed on. “So if there was no record of me being enslaved, no hope of a relic …”
“It meant we needed to find another way. So Rustam and I tried everything. For years. Decades. Any new magic we came upon—enchantments and potions and conjurements. Wild experiments that would have horrified our ancestors.”
Dara felt ill. “Experiments?”
“We were desperate. It felt like a cruel joke. To be so close to someone who could save us and not be able to bridge that last gap. I watched my people crushed, my brother beaten, Ghassan pressuring me to marry him, and I’d close my eyes and see this ancient warrior, a man who’d known the mightiest of my ancestors, rising from the ash to set it all right.”
Dara scrubbed a hand through his hair, finding it hard to judge her. “So which … experiment,” he said, repeating the word with poorly concealed distaste, “was the one that finally worked?”
She rose from the desk. “We’d been reading a lot about the history of our family, the origins of our magic, all the miraculous things our blood—our very lives—were said to be capable of.” Manizheh brushed her thumb over his amulet. “There are stories of Nahids dying in battle and their lifeblood resurrecting all who’d fallen around them.”
“Fairy tales, Banu Nahida. Like you said.”
“Perhaps.” She ran her finger against the edge of the brass. “But then I became pregnant a second time. I couldn’t do it again—I couldn’t strip another Nahid child of her abilities and abandon her in Zariaspa to never again see my face. Rustam agreed, or so I thought. We left Daevabad, but I’d hidden the pregnancy well and was far along on the journey. Too far along.”
Manizheh fell silent. She looked crushed, more than Dara had ever seen her. “We were so broken, Afshin. Our spirits, our hopes. I had no doubt Ghassan would hunt me down. That when he realized I’d given away what he so openly desired, he would make me pay. Rustam knew that too. I think … I think in a way he was trying to protect me. To protect us all.”
Sick fear swirled into Dara’s heart. “What happened?”
Manizheh stared at her hands. “She was born. I knew it was obvious, but I was so tired, and when Rustam said he would handle things … I didn’t realize what he meant.” She took a deep breath. “When I woke up, he was preparing to use Nahri to bring you back.”
Shock froze his tongue. Dara knew little about Manizheh’s brother, but the scant amount he’d heard of a quiet man who’d liked to paint and had a talent for turning the plants he grew himself into pharmaceuticals did not add up to … that.
“Use her?” he whispered. “You mean, he meant to sacrifice her life to bring me back? His own niece? A child?”
“A shafit child.”
Dara blinked. Shafit? “But you said Nahri was pureblooded.
That her appearance was a curse …”
“And it is. But if it was the marid who cursed her, they had plenty to work with.” She exhaled. “I continued the lie when Kaveh told me. She’s my daughter, and I wanted to protect her. I knew—especially now, when she’s lied and deceived us—that if such information leaked, the Daevas would believe Nahri’s betrayal was because she was shafit and turn on her. It fits the worst of what people believe about the mixed-bloods.”
Dara was speechless. And yet there was another part of this that made no sense. “But who?” he asked, perhaps tactlessly. “You do not seem the type to—” He flushed. “I mean, the only shafit in the palace would have been …”
“Servants,” Manizheh finished. “A Nahid child—with abilities so strong I could sense them in pregnancy—and a shafit servant as a father. It would be beyond a scandal, Rustam said. A disgrace so outrageous it might have cost us the support of other Daevas when we needed it most. At least this way, she could serve her family. Her tribe. And it would be painless.”
Manizheh pinned him with her dark eyes, her expression suddenly frostier. “Were there no babes still at breast in Qui-zi?”
It was a cruel, if justified, question. “Are you saying you agreed with him?”
“Of course I didn’t agree with him! We fought about it, and when it became clear that Rustam wouldn’t stop, we … battled. In ways I didn’t think our people were still capable of. He cursed me, I’m not entirely sure how. A blast, an explosion. I woke hours later. What Kaveh would find—the scorched landscape, the broken bodies—that was what I returned to. My daughter was gone, the ring was gone. And Rustam …” Her voice grew hollow with old grief. “It was too late. I couldn’t save him.”
Dara abruptly sat down. “Suleiman’s eye.”
“Suleiman had nothing to do with it. In the end, that was what we were reduced to. The last Nahids scrabbling in the dust over whether or not to murder a baby. How pleased the djinn would have been to finally see our ruin.”
The anguish in Manizheh’s confession tugged hard at his soul. It was easier to resent the coolly aloof woman who’d ordered him to be a weapon and then dismissed him when he disobeyed. Dara could relate to someone who’d spent their life fighting tooth and nail for their freedom, for their people, only to lose it all at the end.
“You’ve not told anyone else this, have you?” he asked softly.
“How could I? It would confirm the worst prejudices of the djinn, and I knew the price Ghassan would demand to pardon me.” Manizheh’s voice grew fierce again. “I’d take my own life before I let him touch me.”
“Does Kaveh know?”
Her face fell. “No. He all but worshipped us. I couldn’t destroy his faith like that.” She hesitated. “But …”
“But, what?”
“Aeshma knows.”
Dara would not have been more surprised if she’d said the ifrit had gone out to dance in the midan. “Aeshma?”
“He showed up shortly after I found Rustam’s body. He said the intensity of the battle, of the magic and the blood, drew his attention. And he knew me. Knew my name, what people said about my abilities … he said he’d been hoping to meet me one day.”
“Why?”
“Is it not obvious?” Manizheh asked. “He wants to be like you, Afshin. The ifrit have been waiting for a Nahid powerful enough to free them from Suleiman’s curse. There are only a handful left, and they’re nearing the end of their lives. They want peace and a last taste of their old magic.”
Dara stared at her. “Don’t tell me you believed him. Banu Manizheh, for all you know, he’d been waiting for you to fall into a trap like that. He and Qandisha might have been the ones who put my ring in your path!”
“They probably were. And I didn’t care. I couldn’t go back to Daevabad. My brother was dead. I was certain my daughter was as well. The ring—you, my only hope—was gone, and I wanted to be free, no matter the cost. Even if it meant striking a deal with an ifrit—lying to an ifrit—because in truth, I had no idea how to remove Suleiman’s curse. I didn’t think it could be done.”
Manizheh set down his relic, pacing away. The bottom of her chador had turned gray with dust, streaks of it like grasping fingers reaching up from the ground of the crypt.
“But you found me again,” Dara said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. He had the feeling that somehow he was always destined to wind up in Manizheh’s hands. “Or my ring, anyway.”
“Nisreen recovered your ring.” Sadness crossed Manizheh’s expression. “She never told Kaveh how. I wish I had the story. I wish I could speak with her and thank her for everything. She was so loyal and worked so hard for all this. She should have seen it. She shouldn’t have spent her last moments in pain because of some shafit savage.”
Dara didn’t know what to say. Nisreen was only the latest in a long line of people whose brutal deaths he mourned, and coming up with the proper words to assuage another’s grief was beginning to leave him numb. “I take it you didn’t need my relic once you had my ring and Qandisha to tell you where she left my body to rot.”
“I still wasn’t sure it would work. You should have died when Alizayd severed your hand; a freed slave’s vessel cannot be separated from their conjured body. Whether it’s because you were brought back with Nahid blood or something else, I don’t know. But from the moment I held your ring, I knew you were still there. Your presence burned so strongly. I had your ring and I had your mortal remains. And when I woke you up, you were this.”
The meaning of the wonder in her voice and the way she trailed off took a moment to register.
“Wait …” Dara’s tone was shaky. “Surely you’re not suggesting you didn’t mean to make me like this?” He let his skin briefly turn to flame. “That you weren’t trying to bring me back in this form?”
“I freed you the way I would free any ifrit slave. When you opened your eyes, when the fire failed to leave your skin, I thought it was a miracle.” Manizheh laughed hoarsely, no humor in the sound. “A sign from the Creator, believe it or not.”
Dara’s mind spun. “I-I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us.” An almost desperate anger, a mad desire to be understood, seemed to have stolen over his usually so composed Banu Nahida. “Don’t you understand, Afshin? I saw the shock in Aeshma’s face when I brought you back. I knew how the story would carry, the power it would give me to lay claim to resurrecting the great guardian of the Daevas in such a way.”
“You lied.” The moment the words left his lips, Dara knew how naive they sounded. Manizheh had always made clear how far she would go to take back Daevabad. But this was different. Personal. It was his body and soul, shattered and re-formed. Snatched from the edge of Paradise and twisted again and again, into a tool—a weapon—to serve others.
Heat pooled in his hands, ribbons of smokeless fire wrapping about his arms. And suddenly Dara knew he was never going to have answers. Not about his memories. Not about his future. He was an experiment, a mess, and not even the Nahid who’d brought him back to life understood how.
“You were right,” he said quietly. “I did not want that story.”
“Then perhaps next time you should listen to me.” Manizheh was breathing fast, pacing, and when she spoke again, it seemed to be as much to herself as to Dara. “And it’s in the past now, anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
“No, I suppose not. Weapons are not permitted feelings.”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t speak to me about feelings. Not here.” Manizheh motioned to the decaying coffins of her relatives scattered on the filthy ground. “Not when my children are missing, and our city’s at war.” She picked up his relic and slipped it into her pocket. “You’re not the only one with regrets, Dara. This isn’t how I wanted to see the Nahids—the Daevas—rise.
“But I won’t bow. Not again.”
22
ALI
Ali jumped from the ship, splashing into the clear shallows of the inlet. “Looks welcoming,” he remarked, glancing at the dense forest and impenetrable brush.
Nahri was giving the jungle an openly doubtful appraisal. “This is the land of golden streets and coral castles?”
Fiza leapt down. “You’re in the human world, Daevabadis. Djinn here have to be discreet.”
“Are those bones in the trees?”
“Yes!” Fiza cackled, trudging ahead. “Looks like a zahhak. Very creative. Come along, fancy people,” she called over her shoulder, freeing the knife she wore on her arm. “I’m assuming most of the magical traps the Ayaanle set aren’t working, but you should probably stay close.”
“Of course there would be traps,” Nahri muttered, taking Ali’s hand and climbing down.
Ali said nothing but stuck to her side as two more crewmen followed. The inlet narrowed as they ventured deeper into the jungle, becoming little more than a wide, lazy stream. With birds and monkeys chittering in the lush canopy and the smell of ocean air, it might have
made for a pleasant scene … if not for the skulls, teeth, and rusting metal implements hanging in the trees. It was almost ridiculous—the exact scenario he imagined resulted from a bunch of paranoid djinn merchants gathering in a committee to decide what would best scare away curious humans.
“‘Plague ahead,’” Ali read from a large stone cairn. “‘Proceed, and you will most certainly die in painful fashion.’” The awkwardly phrased warning was written in a half dozen different languages. “Why don’t they just fill the forests with wild karkadann?”
“It’s probably been tried,” Fiza replied. “The Ayaanle always have to overdo it. Back in Qart Sahar, we just go camp out in ruins once a century and scream and bang drums all night. Keeps the humans away for decades.”
“Lovely,” Nahri commented. “You know there’s a human tale about a fisherman who traps a djinn in a bottle and tosses it out to sea? With every day I spend in the magical world, I like that story more.”
They left the creek and kept walking, the forest closing in around them until Ali glanced back and could no longer see the sea. Its loss left him feeling unmoored, like he’d been cut off from a vital link. Ali had not dared use his marid magic since his near miss with a midnight ocean plunge, but he longed for it with a craving he couldn’t explain. Every night since, he’d dreamed of the wondrous Nile path he’d walked with Sobek and the silky voice that had urged him to join with the sea. More than once, he’d woken up pressed against the ship’s railing, reaching for the ocean.
His hand brushed his belt. The place where Muntadhir’s khanjar should have hung was empty. Fiza hadn’t been able to steal it before they’d left, and the thought of his brother’s dagger, the one Muntadhir had put into his hands, in the possession of the filthy slaver made Ali want to drown the whole world.
Stop. Focus on Ta Ntry. Not the marid, not Muntadhir. Ali forced himself to look upon the sun-dappled jungle. His mother’s stories came to mind, the nostalgic tales she told of playing by a creek under banyan trees. In another life, Ali might have grown up here, this land as familiar to him as Daevabad.
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