But with the marid roaring behind her, a howl that sounded nothing like her friend, she pushed on, jumping to her feet and fleeing into the forest. Branches and vines tore at her face, her slippers instantly shredded.
The sounds of pursuing feet came from behind her, barely audible against her ragged breathing. Ali made no other noise, and Nahri suddenly felt horribly hunted and outmatched, like a doomed gazelle fleeing a lion. Just ahead was the swollen creek, rushing red with mud and rain. She sprinted for it.
The marid caught her. They crashed to the flooded bank, Ali landing on top of her.
“Oh no, Nahid,” the marid said. “This we do together. For I too am rather eager to see Sobek.” He pulled free the knife. “So if you don’t mind …”
He dragged the blade down her palm, breaking the skin. Nahri held back a cry of pain, refusing to give the marid the satisfaction as he yanked her bleeding hand away from her chest, shoving it underwater.
“SOBEK!” He spat the blood flowing from Ali’s nose into the creek. “Your mortals call!”
There was no response. The rain lashed Nahri’s face, the marid holding her so hard it hurt. She tried to wrench away, and his hand went to her throat, pushing her head closer to the surging water. The creek tugged viciously at her hair.
“What do you think would make him come faster?” the marid purred. “If I drowned you or if I shoved a blade through the heart of his little hatchling?”
“Nahri!” Jamshid had caught up, rushing from the castle gardens to join her.
Everything went very cold.
Below her, the creek chilled, flattened, and then stilled so completely that it might have been an untouched lake deep below the earth. The monsoon marid loosened his grip enough that Nahri scrambled free, crawling backward across the scrubby bank as something stirred in the mists billowing above the creek. She saw the outline of a reptilian head, dark scales, and glowing eyes.
A kind of primal terror Nahri had never known—not when glimpsing her first hint of the supernatural in a Cairo cemetery, not when facing down a fiery ifrit—rushed through her as the largest crocodile she had ever seen rose up before them. More mist shrouded it, circulating as if in devotion, and then the crocodile shifted, taking on the appearance of a youth with green skin and eerie dappled yellow-and-black eyes.
The creature—Sobek, Nahri realized, remembering what Ali had told her about the Nile marid—appraised each of them in turn, his head and neck darting like a snake selecting a meal.
His gaze settled on Ali, and he charged.
Ali barely swayed when Sobek thrust his hands at his chest. Instead, the squall burst again from his back with a hiss and the smell of fresh rain, and then Ali collapsed at Sobek’s feet.
But the monsoon marid didn’t leave. Thunder shook the ground, lightning splitting the sky as the rain condensed, shifting and darting like a wave to loom over Sobek and Ali. It wasn’t the river monster the Gozan had turned into, but it was still intimidating.
It had nothing on Sobek, however. Nahri squinted, trying to get the image of the Nile marid to stay solid in her mind, but it was impossible. He carried himself with a speed and lethal grace that made Dara look slow, a low rumbling growl coming from his throat that caused every hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. The air smelled of blood, of mud on sunbaked scales.
Jamshid had made it to her side. “Suleiman’s eye,” he gasped, staring at the pair of dueling marid.
Ali rose to his knees. He retched murky water and then, with a wail, staggered to his feet and rushed the monsoon marid. His knife sliced uselessly through the rainy form.
Cruel laughter filled the air. No, not the air. Nahri’s head, like a voice inside her mind. And then words as well, in hissing syllables that pieced themselves together.
Your spawn has your temper, Sobek. A pity you did not teach him to protect himself.
Sobek grabbed Ali by the arm and shoved him back, knocking him into the brush. “He is not your concern. Return to the clouds.”
More thunder cracked the sky. Nahri jumped, Jamshid’s grip tightening on her arm.
He is our concern, you arrogant fool! You consumed his memories; you know what has happened. We are in debt to the Nahids’ champion because of your mistake!
“It was not I who chose to test the boundaries by killing one daeva with another,” Sobek hissed. “That was a reckless decision. Had they taken the time to consider his blood—”
You swore they were dead! You promised the Blessed One herself it was done!
“And it was done. Tiamat knows. She feasted on the memory!”
Ali climbed back to his feet, putting his hands out as if to steady himself. He was a bloody wreck, his soaked clothes hanging in rags, his nose swollen. “What’s going on, Sobek?”
Take him, the monsoon marid demanded. You should have taken him the moment you realized what he was. Give him to Tiamat, beg for mercy, and pray the gift of Anahid’s ring saves your soul.
“No,” Sobek insisted. “He has fulfilled his ancestor’s bargain. He has taken the ring from the Nahids and their city.”
He desires to give it right back!
Nahri wrenched free of Jamshid. She’d had enough of being spoken over by two sniping water demons.
“Your people aren’t supposed to interfere with mine,” she reminded them, stepping between Ali and the two marid. “Remember? This is definitely interfering, and at this point, I’m ready to take my chances calling that Nahid champion you’re all so frightened of. Leave.”
It was a lie, but both marid drew back—well, the cloud undulated.
But then the monsoon marid rushed forward, an icy, wet chill brushing over her skin. You bluff. You think yourself clever, and yet you’ve turned on your own blood to protect an instrument meant to destroy you.
“That is enough,” Sobek declared. “Tiamat’s envoy will be leaving now.” He returned his glare to the monsoon marid. “I will handle this.”
You have handled nothing. Our patience is gone, Sobek. You and your daeva pet are to submit yourself to Tiamat by the next risen tide.
The Nile marid growled. “She does not command me.”
The other marid rippled through the air as though laughing. River lord, do you believe the Blessed One would have sent me to beg? You and your hatchling will submit yourselves, or she will come personally to this land and pluck him away.
Sobek immediately stilled, his entire demeanor changing. “She would not. There are tens of thousands of mortals on this coast. We are not permitted to hurt—”
The cold laughter again. But we are, don’t you see? He is ours, and we are permitted to hurt him. It is his decision whether to remain among so very many potential victims.
Ali rocked back on his feet. “What does that mean?”
But the monsoon marid’s foggy presence was already rising. I have delivered our message. Were you wise, Sobek, you would heed it. Give yourselves to Tiamat by the next risen tide, or see this land devoured.
In the next second, the monsoon marid was gone. The sky lightened by a fraction, but the rain stayed steady, pattering on the leaves and ground around them.
Ali’s face was ashen. “They … they cannot do that. Surely they cannot do that.”
Sobek moved for him. “You will come with me.”
Nahri stepped between them. “No, he won’t. What does that mean, that Tiamat will devour the land?”
Sobek’s eyes pinned hers, and it took everything Nahri had in her not to crumble. Yet she couldn’t look away from his petrifying, beautiful face. She wanted to move closer as much as she wanted to flee, suddenly seeing herself dragged beneath muddy water, feeling teeth break through her flesh.
“It means that if he is here, a wave higher than your Pyramids is going drown this entire coast by morning.” Sobek spun on Ali with a snarl. “I tried to warn you. I told you to run to your deserts, to avoid my kind!”
“You told me I had a place in my world and should return to it,” Ali
shot back, sounding just as enraged. “That’s not a warning. Had you said, ‘attracting their attention will result in an ocean demon killing tens of thousands,’ maybe I would have acted differently!”
Tens of thousands. By God. Nahri stared at the arguing pair, trying to wrap her head around the enormity of the threat. She probably should have told Ali to shut up, to stop fighting with the literal lord of the Nile as if this were some family feud.
A family feud.
“Why did it call him kin?” Nahri demanded, praying she was wrong. Praying the instincts that usually served her so well were wildly off the mark.
Ali stopped yelling at Sobek, glancing at her like she’d lost her mind. “What?”
Sobek growled, flashing dagger-sharp teeth. “This does not concern you, Nahid.”
No. Oh no. But Nahri could see it, the puzzle piece that had been missing falling into place with the others she already knew. The water that had healed Ali’s stab wounds long before the marid on Daevabad’s lake ever touched him. The marid’s careful plans to kill Dara with another daeva falling apart, creating the weapon they feared—the weapon they couldn’t touch.
The weapon Ali hadn’t been able to touch.
Sobek’s hatchling, Sobek’s spawn. The words the monsoon marid had flung at Ali hadn’t just been insults.
Ali was looking between them. “What? What is it?”
Nahri couldn’t speak. Her mouth was dry, her mind shouting a conclusion that should have been impossible. One that could fracture their world and devastate the man before her, the man she’d tried so hard to protect.
And yet they had promised to be honest with each other.
“You’re marid,” she whispered. She didn’t know how else to say it because she could not put words like “family” and “kin” between the Ali she knew and the fog-shrouded crocodile wraith glaring at her. “You’re his.”
The slow ripple of horror across Ali’s face was a terrible thing to witness.
“I’m not,” Ali stammered. “That’s impossible. That’s ridiculous.” But his voice broke with emotion—Nahri could see him putting together the same pieces she had. “I have ancestors. Djinn ancestors! Sobek …” He whirled on the silent marid. “Tell her that’s impossible.”
The Nile marid shifted in the mists, the glistening scales vanishing beneath his skin and leaving him looking slightly less reptilian. When he finally spoke, his voice had softened to the quiet murmur of a gentle stream, water still relentless enough to cave in its banks and destroy its own foundation.
“I have seen much violence in the mortal lands I divide,” he began. “I have watched how they fight, how they plot. How a walled city seen to be safe might be compromised.” His unearthly eyes blinked, the irises flickering. “I could not directly attack Anahid and her ilk. So I created a breach.”
“A breach?” Ali had gone gray.
Sobek hissed. “You have seen my memories, Alizayd al Qahtani. You know how Anahid stole our lake and forced our people into servitude. I narrowly escaped, but I found new daevas in the lands along my river as well. They were transformed; frail, frightened things trying to make sense of their new world. Closer to humans, to the mortal brides I was used to.
“I took a woman of these new daevas. One who was not afraid to enter my waters, who was clever enough to see the promise in such a pact. And then I raised your kin—my kin—from the dust to become one of the most powerful clans in their land. I taught them how to swim the currents and summon palaces from the sea. All I asked was loyalty. And discretion.”
“I don’t believe you.” Nahri saw tears glistening in Ali’s eyes. “My ancestors wouldn’t have done that; they wouldn’t have lived as some clan of marid spies for generations.”
“They did not know the extent of their purpose. I told them merely to keep secret what they were and pass word down to future generations that one day I would require a service in return for the centuries of blessings. So I waited. I watched the Nahids weaken, and when an opportunity arose, I took it.”
“Zaydi’s war.” Nahri felt sick. “So the marid did help him take Daevabad. You helped him.”
Sobek gave her a cold look. “I have not gone near our lake since Anahid desecrated it. My descendant went in my place, bringing an entire army through the currents. That is what your family was capable of when it obeyed me,” he said to Ali, his tone growing bitter. “Not that it mattered. The daevas always lie, and my kin among them were no better. I made clear the Nahids were to be annihilated and that I needed Anahid’s ring to be returned to my waters. They failed on both accounts.”
Nahri untangled his appalling words, hearing the deal beneath the surface. “You knew,” she accused him. “Didn’t you? You knew what would happen if the ring was removed from Daevabad?”
“That foul city only exists because of Anahid’s magic. Your world exists because of it. Yes, I knew.”
“The price,” Ali said softly. He looked like he was going to throw up again. “Zaydi said the Ayaanle had paid a terrible price for their alliance with the marid. My ancestors didn’t give you the ring, they gave it to him.”
Nahri stared back at Sobek, dread creeping over her. “What did you do?”
The marid looked more crocodilian now, but there was a flicker of something very old and haunted in his eyes. “I loved them in the ways that I could. But they disobeyed. They were my responsibility, and they carried strains of my magic. A thing you should understand, Nahid, with your rules about Suleiman’s code.”
“That’s why you asked me those questions when we met,” Ali said. “Why you were surprised to learn of me.” Horror rose in his voice. “What did you do to my ancestors?”
“I devoured them. All that I could find.”
Nahri could not stifle her gasp, but at her side, Ali did not shake. He took a single deep breath and then stepped back, putting Nahri and Jamshid behind him.
“This ocean is the abode of Tiamat, yes?” he asked.
Sobek clearly wasn’t as thrown as Nahri by the abrupt question. “Yes.”
“Then leave.”
The marid paused for a long moment. “You are upset. That is understandable. But you and I were both given a warning, and Tiamat will not care about your anger.”
“I will deal with Tiamat on my own.” Ali raised his knife, and now his voice did tremble. “You said I fulfilled my ancestors’ pact, so leave. I do not ever wish to see you again.”
If that landed, Nahri couldn’t tell. But Sobek retreated toward the water.
He turned to her. “The next risen tide is shortly after dawn. For the debt I owe your human kin, I will tell you this. Flee west, daughter of Anahid.”
“West?” Nahri repeated faintly.
“You will not be spared Tiamat’s wrath. None of you will. Not if he is here.”
Then Sobek vanished beneath the water’s surface, leaving nothing but ripples. Ripples and the three of them, the unrelenting rain, and a threat that suddenly made Daevabad feel very far away.
31
DARA
Consciousness pulled at Dara in the form of crackling flames and foul, acrid smoke.
Blistering hot spikes jabbed his back, his legs, his skull, miring him in pain. A worse torture throbbed in his right arm, his wrist bound and wrapped in what felt like his own iron-studded scourge.
The attack on the carriage. Muntadhir’s betrayal and Kaveh’s gutting cries. Dara tried to free himself, finding his limbs constrained, chains rattling from his wrists and ankles. The attempt left him panting for air, his body so weak it felt like a stranger’s.
“Ah, look who finally wakes.”
Dara blinked, his vision blurry with ash.
Vizaresh loomed over him. “You’re very irritating to watch over, did you know that? All this shrieking in your sleep and calling for your sister. ‘Tamima! Tamima!’”
Dara lunged against the chains holding him and then gasped as a wave of pain left him breathless. He fell back against the smoldering
surface to which he’d been bound.
Vizaresh slowly circled him, fiery eyes raking his body. “Careful, Afshin. Your Banu Nahida has gone through such efforts to revive you. It would be disrespectful to undo all her hard work. Especially now, when she needs you so dearly.”
Dara was still struggling to breathe, but he clung to the ifrit’s words like a drowning man. “She’s alive?”
“She survived.” The ifrit licked his teeth, revealing a glimpse of glistening fangs. “Such disloyal, flighty things, your Daevas. Running from this ruler to that ruler—”
“Where is she?” Dara demanded. “What have you done with her?”
Vizaresh’s eyes lit up, incredulity crossing his face. “Oh, you poor man, you still don’t see it, do you? I am not the one you should be worried about. Nor would I do anything to cross your Manizheh. At this point, I just enjoy watching her.”
Dara wanted to strangle him with his riddles. “Where is Aeshma?”
“At her side, as always. I believe the phrase is ‘helping her reach her true potential.’”
Dara writhed against his confines, a bit of strength returning. “Let me out of these chains.”
Vizaresh snorted. “You’ll never be out of chains. Not now.” He left Dara’s view, but when he returned, it was with a hammer. “I warned you the first time you took to the winds. You shouldn’t have wasted your rebirth on these mortals and their wars.”
Alarm spiked through Dara even as Vizaresh began striking off the chains. “What does that mean?” he demanded, wrenching his left hand free. “WHAT DOES THAT—”
Dara froze. His ring was gone.
He sprang up, all thoughts of Manizheh and Aeshma vanishing. “My ring,” he whispered, staring in dread at his hand. The other mark of ifrit slavery was there: the winding tattoo recording the lives of the human masters he’d taken. But the glowing emerald and battered band, the ring whose previous loss meant his instant death, was nowhere to be seen.
Dara lunged at the ifrit, who was probably regretting his decision to free him. The sudden movement made his head spin, and he clutched at Vizaresh’s collar. Creator, what had happened to him? Dara had never felt this fractured, like the pathways between his mind and body had been broken and badly pieced back together.
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