The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  They both lunged to grab on to the boat. Ali held his breath, expecting the motion to stop, assuming they’d just gone down the dip of a swell. Their boat had been rising and falling for hours with the natural motion of the waves.

  But they didn’t stop.

  “Alizayd.” Earlier Fiza had found a glass-enclosed oil lamp in the hold and lit it; the flickering flame now revealed her face had drained of color. “I don’t think they forgot about you.”

  The wind returned, howling past as clouds of mist rushed away. A bolt of lightning, slow and lingering, splintered across the sky, casting jagged light over the ocean.

  “Oh, God,” Fiza whispered. “Oh, God.”

  They were indeed falling in time with a wave. With a whole army of waves. A wall of water surrounded them on all sides, higher than anything Ali had ever seen in his life, as though they’d been cast at the bottom of a mountain. More lightning, silent as death, flashed, illuminating the swelling waves as they reached a tipping point far above Ali’s and Fiza’s heads, the crests turning white. The wave edges touched, briefly enclosing the boat in a cocoon of water nearly as beautiful as the hidden passages of the Nile. More lightning flashed, glowing blue and green beyond the screen of water like an alien sky.

  And then that oceanic sky crashed down.

  35

  DARA

  For all that Daevabad was synonymous with the very idea of a city—bustling streets, towering buildings, and crowded markets—there was still wilderness to be found in the forests and rocky hills that hemmed the island’s terraced fields and shepherds’ pastures. Even after all these centuries, the land beyond the walls had remained Daeva. Their Geziri conquerors had never been able to replicate the knowledge Dara’s tribe had perfected over generations, and risking Daevabad’s nearest food source wasn’t worth it, not when the Daeva landowners could simply be bribed or terrorized into submission.

  Dara slipped through the scrubby forest now, as silent and invisible as the frightening wraith he might have been considered in the human world. He wasn’t in the human world, however; he was on the island wherein he’d been born and which he feared was in more danger than ever. He passed fields devastated by hail and an orchard beset with locusts. Several farmhouses had burned; a broken mill left grain rotting on the ground.

  He tripped over the landscape, his usual grace gone. If Dara had been boundless and powerful with Suleiman’s curse removed—an original daeva free to shed his form and fly on the wind—being “healed” among the smoldering heap of Nahid corpses had shoved him back into a tight, barbed cage. Everything hurt. Moving hurt, breathing hurt. His powers were brittle, shaky things, as if neither his body nor his magic belonged to him, as if he were pulling strings to control a puppet he could not see.

  There is something wrong with me, with all of this. For Dara couldn’t get the sight of Manizheh surrounded by murdered Daevas, using magic she shouldn’t have had, out of his head. He couldn’t even bear to look at the relic she’d embedded in his wrist, the sick contraption of metal and blood. Dara had wrapped it in linen, but lines of speckled black gold still traced out across the left half of his body, the jagged lines of light pulsing with each ragged beat of his heart.

  You should have fled, Afshin, Vizaresh had mocked. But Dara hadn’t fled. He couldn’t.

  Now, though, he was headed toward an objective that felt even worse.

  You are supposed to serve. To obey. A good Afshin could advise, they could argue, but they obeyed. That was their code.

  But you do not only serve the Nahids. You serve the Daevas, and they need you too. Dara kept walking.

  The crumbling structure where they’d arranged to meet looked like little more than a jumble of rocks. In Dara’s day, it had been a celebrated pilgrimage spot: a cave in which a famed Nahid ascetic had prayed for survival from a famine only a few centuries after Anahid herself had died. It had been popular with couples hoping to conceive—a thing his people didn’t do easily—and there had been all sorts of rituals associated with the place, from leaving a silver coin inside an infant’s hat at the cave’s base to simmering the small purple flowers that grew on the surrounding hills into a tea. Judging from the look of the cave, its significance had either been forgotten or failed to survive the Qahtani invasion—like so much of the world Dara had known.

  A figure emerged from the shadows. “Stop.”

  Dara recognized the curt voice as belonging to the rude female warrior from Am Gezira and immediately scowled. “Where is my priest?” he demanded. “Where is Razu?”

  “We’re here.” Razu stepped out from the cave, holding a small torch, Kartir behind her.

  Dara stared at the three of them, fighting the wild urge to run in the other direction. Traitor, his mind berated him. It had been berating him since Dara had sneaked from the palace in the dead of the night to surprise the priest in his temple bedchamber. “She has done something terrible,” he’d burst out before the startled old man had gotten a word in. Dara had not been able to say the phrase “blood magic” or put into words the true horror he feared, but his ramblings about Manizheh demanding the names of the murdered Daevas while Aeshma gloated—not to mention the sight of the vile contraption shackling his wrist—had been enough to make Kartir go pale.

  “We need to talk to them, Darayavahoush,” the priest had said after a long moment of silence. “This is beyond us now.”

  At the time, it had felt like the right decision, the scenes from the arena scoured in Dara’s mind, and yet now this seemed like a rash mistake. Manizheh had just been betrayed by Daevas she believed she could trust, and now her Afshin was taking a secret meeting with her enemy?

  Kartir must have seen the expression on his face. “It is all right, Darayavahoush,” he said, his voice gentle. “All is as planned.”

  Planned. That only made Dara feel worse. No matter what Manizheh had done, every bit of training and worship that had been carved into him was resisting this. Suspicion still gripped him as well, and Dara conjured his own torch, throwing brighter light on the djinn. Dressed in rags that looked stolen from various men, the Geziri warrior—Aqisa, Dara remembered, from his rampage at the hospital—was smirking, her crossbow aimed at his heart and a knife and sword at her waist. He glared at her, not missing that she appeared markedly thinner.

  “Afshin,” Razu prompted, a note of warning in her voice. “Kartir said you were coming in peace. The face you are making does not indicate peace.”

  “Neither does the crossbow aimed at me. I came to talk to your princess, so where is she?”

  Aqisa tapped a pair of iron cuffs hanging from her belt. “You’ll be putting these on before you see her.”

  “I will shove them down your throat.”

  Kartir let out a frustrated sigh. “Dara—”

  “I have had enough of iron for several lifetimes,” Dara said, hissing through his teeth. “Not to mention bondage. I am not putting those on. You either trust me or you don’t.”

  “I don’t.” Aqisa cocked her head. “Tell me, what exactly is the difference between you and a ghoul? You both rise from the dead, make irritating moans that pass for speech—”

  “That is enough, Aqisa.”

  The command was richly spoken, the new woman’s voice calm and assured. And indeed, when Zaynab al Qahtani stepped out from the cave, she did so as though she might have entered a throne room rather than exited a hiding spot.

  Dara straightened up. He’d gotten a glimpse of Zaynab at the hospital, but he took his time examining her now. Doing so perhaps should have filled him with shame—proper Daeva men did not stare at unrelated women. But Zaynab al Qahtani was their nearest enemy. While she stood free in Daevabad, ruling her own united block of armed Geziris and shafit, she presented an alternative to Manizheh, a reminder that the city hadn’t truly fallen. Not yet.

  So he looked at her. Zaynab hadn’t given him much to read—she was dressed in black from head to toe and had wrapped one end of her headscarf across
her face, concealing all but her luminous gray-gold gaze. Dara could see the resemblance to her younger brother in the set of her high brow and large eyes, and he wondered how else she might be similar to him. Did Zaynab share Ali’s fierce faith and refusal to compromise? Or had a life in the palace tempered her, taught her the art of politics and accommodation—not to mention lethal scheming—that Muntadhir had mastered?

  Or perhaps she is something entirely different.

  Either way, Dara intended to tread carefully. He would greet her, but in his people’s way. “May the fires burn brightly for you, my lady,” he said, bringing his fingers together in blessing.

  “And for you,” Zaynab replied, clearly taking her own moment to assess him in return. If she was frightened, and she should have been, she hid it well.

  “I would speak with you alone.” Dara was thankful for the priest’s help in setting up the meeting, but this was not a conversation he wanted Kartir judging or the rude warrior interrupting.

  “Absolutely not,” Aqisa cut in. “Do you think we don’t know how badly your Nahid wants her?”

  “If I was going to take her, I would have already.” Indeed, Dara was becoming more and more tempted to try. “A thing you must have known when you agreed to meet.”

  Zaynab hadn’t taken her eyes off him. “Aqisa, stay here.” When the other woman protested, she held up a hand. “Please.” She inclined her head toward the forest. “A walk?”

  Dara bowed and then started off. He set a small globe of conjured flames to dance overhead, illuminating a narrow black trail.

  Zaynab followed him, and the forest soon swallowed them up. Once it did, her breath came faster, and this time Dara suspected it was due to fear rather than being winded by a stroll.

  Be polite, he told himself. But careful. Zaynab had grown up politicking in the palace, and Dara had already learned the hard way from Muntadhir that he was no match in that realm. But neither threats nor diplomacy had worked thus far, so Dara needed to find another way if they were to avoid the catastrophe he feared was looming ahead.

  “I was not certain you would come,” he began, his steps silent on the soft earth. “Then again, bravery is one of the few attributes I have never been able to begrudge Geziris.”

  “Kartir gave me his word you meant me no harm. I trust him. He seems an honest man of God.”

  “How does a Qahtani princess come to know a Daeva cleric?”

  “I met him in your Temple,” Zaynab explained, glancing over when Dara’s face lit in surprise. “Alizayd and I both.”

  Dara frowned. “But djinn are not permitted there.”

  “We visited as Nahri’s guests. We went to show our support when she announced she’d be opening her hospital to shafit.” Bitterness laced into Zaynab’s voice. “She and Ali were trying something different, a small way to make peace before you destroyed any hope of that in our time.”

  “That peace was ended by the shafit attack on the Navasatem parade as much as it was by our conquest.”

  “I’m sure it’s comforting for you to believe that. What a relief after you’d already plotted the slaughter of my people to learn you had a new justification to cling to.”

  The sharp words cut closer than he liked, and Dara found himself automatically reaching for his usual defense. “We needed no further justification. This is a Daeva city. It should be ruled by Daevas.”

  “Strange that, for a Daeva city, Anahid herself set quarters aside for each of the six tribes and made the only requirement for entry a mere drop of magical blood. It’s almost as though she meant this to be a home for all and it’s the rest of you who’ve twisted her legacy.”

  Dara regarded her. “With your tongue, you and Nahri must have either been the closest of companions or utter enemies.”

  Zaynab looked away. “I used to think the worst of her. I feared her—I’d heard stories about Manizheh growing up, and I didn’t like how close her daughter was getting to my brothers. I thought Nahri plotted our destruction.”

  “Perhaps she did.”

  “Nahri wanted her people to survive. To thrive. If we needed to be destroyed for that, I think she’d have done it, but it didn’t seem like vengeance was first in her mind.” Zaynab glanced at him. “But I take it you’re not sneaking out on Manizheh to discuss her daughter?”

  Traitor, the voice whispered again. “No,” Dara replied, not certain if he was answering Zaynab or his own doubts.

  The princess stopped, gazing at him, the night song of insects filling the silence between them. The floating globe of flames did little to light up the thick darkness behind her, the silver of the trees standing against the soft black like stars in a vast, impenetrable sky.

  Whatever she saw must have alarmed her. “Is it Muntadhir?” she asked in a whisper, fear filling her eyes.

  “Muntadhir is alive for now. But she plans to kill him. To kill you and make him watch. Muntadhir plotted with some of the Daeva nobles to overthrow her. Kaveh was killed during the attempt and she blames your brother.”

  The mention of the coup attempt triggered no surprise in her expression—she clearly had her own sources. “Kaveh deserved it.”

  “Kaveh was torn apart by a mob in the street, and Manizheh is out for blood. We made a good faith effort toward your brother and his allies and were rewarded with betrayal. There will not be another.” Dara steadied his voice. “Muntadhir is going to die, but you don’t need to. He wouldn’t want you to. This doesn’t need to end in more violence, princess. Surrender. Convince your people to lay down their arms and open their gates.”

  “That’s your message?” Zaynab was already shaking her head. “No.”

  “You would live,” Dara said, struggling to stay calm. He wanted to shake her, to shake them all. “On my honor, I swear it. I will see you returned to your mother in Ta Ntry and let the rest of your tribe go back to Am Gezira.”

  “And those of us who don’t live in Am Gezira?” She narrowed her eyes. “How can you not see that this city doesn’t belong to you alone? There are thousands of djinn and shafit who call Daevabad home, who’ve only known Daevabad, who don’t want to leave Daevabad. What happens to them?”

  “They do what my people did for centuries and live under a foreign government. They call Manizheh queen and submit to our rule.”

  “The rule of a woman who plotted their deaths? Who killed their kin and executes her own people?”

  “Yes.” Dara threw his hands in the air. “She is hardly the worst person to sit on that throne! Are you living in a fairy tale to imagine this ends another way? I can see you and your companion are thinner. I have heard reports of famine and sickness in your quarter—in all the quarters. The sky rains frogs and shards of ice. Our orchards are blighted, and the forests are rotting. You will starve. You will fall, one by one, leaving more dead. And when Manizheh’s rage finally outweighs her patience and you are weak, we will take with force what you could have simply given.”

  Her eyes blazed. “We outnumber you. The other tribes are still holding their own—”

  “She has magic.”

  Shock crossed Zaynab’s face. “That’s not possible. She would have used it on us by now.”

  Everything inside him coiled tight. The awful truth Dara so badly didn’t want to admit, the only one that might make this girl see reason—even saying it seemed blasphemous.

  “It is recent,” he finally said. “I myself do not fully understand how—she does not take me into her confidence. But I have seen her use magic. A type of magic. After the executions of the Daeva traitors and in the presence of ifrit.”

  Zaynab stared at him. Her face might have been veiled, but he could see her eyes widen in the kind of instinctual fear one couldn’t hide. “What are you saying, Afshin?”

  “That you are out of time.” Dara brought his hands up again in the Daeva blessing. “And I am asking—I am begging you to surrender. I do not wish to see more death, princess. Kaveh was not just her grand wazir. He was the love o
f her life, her closest companion since childhood, and she had to pick pieces of him up in the street. She is not going to show mercy.”

  Zaynab stepped back, panic sweeping her face. Good. Dara wanted it there, wanted to stoke it until she saw sense.

  “We removed our relics,” she whispered. “Her poison won’t—”

  “She will find something else. Do you not understand, al Qahtani? You have lost. Save yourself and what is left of your people before their blood is on your hands.”

  “My hands?” Anger spiked her words. “What about your hands? You claim you don’t wish to see more death, you come here whispering of blood magic, painting a picture of a tyrant mad with vengeance, yet if you wanted, you could end this war in a day with a single, well-aimed thrust.”

  The true meaning of Zaynab’s words took a moment to land, and when it did, fury roared through Dara’s soul. “You think I would hurt her?” he asked, appalled. “I am her Afshin, she is my Nahid. If she has erred, it is only because your father—”

  “My father is dead,” Zaynab cut in. “I’m not going to deny he treated her with violence or that his rule left wounds, but he is gone. And handing Daevabad over to a monster because ‘otherwise she’ll kill us all’ is not a solution.”

  A monster. How easy it was for this girl who’d lived barely a few decades to declare such a thing. She hadn’t seen her people suffer for centuries. She hadn’t broken her body and soul trying to set things right, only to see her efforts implode.

  And yet …

  And yet. The murdered Daevas giving up their names and Aeshma’s coldly triumphant smile. The punch of magic that sent Dara flying from the arena.

  I’m sorry, Afshin. But I’m doing things my way now.

  Zaynab was still looking at him, and Dara broke away from her stare with a hiss, fixing his gaze on the midnight forest. A tremor of fire crackled through his fingers.

  And what would you do? What could Dara do? For the thought alone of hurting Manizheh was unconscionable. She had lost her partner, her children, her magic. She’d tried to reach out to the djinn and nearly had her throne yanked out from underneath her by the Daevas she’d wanted to save.