The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  Jamshid peeked in. “May I borrow the Banu Nahida?”

  Her patient bowed. “I was just leaving. Thank you again, Lady Nahri.”

  Jamshid let him stagger past and then entered the room, his eyes widening at the spread of tools and the makeshift apothecary Nahri had made from pilfered kitchen ingredients. “You set all this up fast,” he said, sounding awed.

  “I made a promise to Fiza’s crew when they saved us that I’d get that brand out of their necks.”

  Shuddering, her brother dropped into the opposite cushion. “I still can’t believe someone did that.”

  “And I wish I’d been surprised.”

  Jamshid sighed. “No, I guess you wouldn’t be surprised. But promises aside, are you okay, Nahri? I don’t think you’ve stopped working in days. I don’t think you’ve slept in days.”

  “There’s a lot to catch up on,” Nahri said, defending herself. “I like healing people, and we could use all the goodwill here that we can muster. Believe me when I say the sentiment of ‘don’t kill the doctors’ probably took our family a long way during the Qahtanis’ reign.”

  “Lovely.” He leaned his head back against the wall, peering down at her through half-closed eyes as though he knew to look at her directly would be unwanted. “And if I said it seemed like you sequestered yourself behind a wall of potions and scalpels to avoid both me and the having of emotions?”

  “I’m fine.” Nahri forced a placid smile. “Truly.”

  “You keep doing that. Making that face like I’m an enemy you have to guard yourself against. I’m not. I’m family, Nahri. You can talk to me instead of keeping all these secrets.”

  “Oh, can I?” She set down the hook, suddenly angry at the presumption in his words. “Because you’ve certainly never made me feel like I could talk about being shafit.”

  Jamshid took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I would never have said those things about the shafit if I—”

  “I don’t just want you not to say them.” Nahri tried to steady the tremor in her voice. “I want you not to think them at all.”

  He winced in shame. “Fair. Look, I won’t pretend I know how hard it must have been to be among our people and hear the things we say about shafit. I won’t. But you’re not the only one who’s had to pretend to be different, who’s had to smile politely when people with power insult the parts of you that you never get to wear openly. I wish you had trusted me. But more than that, I wish I had behaved in a way that would have encouraged you to trust me.”

  Nahri crossed her arms, trying to muster more anger as her eyes pricked again with tears. “Do you have to do that?” she asked. “Sound all reasonable and kind?”

  “I have a lot of experience in loving frustrating people. I can outpatience you any day, little sister.”

  “If you make me cry, I’m going to stab you.”

  “Then I’m going to take this away,” Jamshid said mildly, moving the tray of instruments. “Why don’t you wash up? You can wring out a rag and pretend it’s my neck while I talk.”

  Nahri glared but had to force it as she headed for the washbasin.

  He continued. “I understand why you didn’t tell me you were shafit. I might not like it, but I understand. But you should have told me about the marid, especially if you knew how entwined they were in all this. Do you have any idea how many references to Tiamat I’d read and set aside? We need to be able to trust each other if we’re going to fight back.”

  If we’re going to fight back. Only a small change in phrasing, and yet didn’t that say it all? In many ways, Ali had been the glue holding this fragile alliance of djinn and Daeva and shafit together in Ta Ntry, and his possible loss was a setback they were all still dancing around.

  Everything I build gets broken. Nahri gripped the edge of the washbasin. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “Then I’ll keep talking. Because I’m being a bit of a hypocrite. There’s a secret I’ve kept from you.”

  “There is?”

  Guilt swept over Jamshid’s face. “It was me at the feast,” he confessed. “I was the one who poisoned Ali.”

  Nahri’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him.” Jamshid flushed. “I wanted to scare him into leaving Daevabad. The poison was a formula from a scrap of old notes that a … friend from my Temple days and I discovered and messed around with when we were young and stupid. It never had that kind of effect when he brewed it.”

  “When you were young and stupid? Just to clarify, you mixed up a poison you learned from an old lover and gave it to a prince—to Ghassan’s son—in public, and you think you were stupid when you were young?”

  “I think I was a fool. A desperate, arrogant fool who got an innocent servant killed and who knows how many others beaten and terrorized during interrogations. And I’ll answer for that on the day of my judgment. But I didn’t think of any of that when I decided to do it, Nahri. All I saw was Muntadhir. I was convinced Ali came back to replace him. I was convinced he was dangerous. Muntadhir was falling apart, and I knew he didn’t have it in him to protect himself. So I did. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I didn’t blink an eye.”

  Nahri studied him with alarm. “I hope you don’t plan on unburdening yourself to anyone else about this. Hatset and Wajed are looking for an excuse to toss you in a cell.”

  “I have no intention of returning to a cell in Ta Ntry or anywhere else,” Jamshid declared. “I’m telling you because I want us to be honest with each other. And because I know how hard it is to think clearly when someone you love is in danger.”

  Nahri flinched. Jamshid had a courtier’s tongue and he chose his words carefully.

  When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Nisreen asked me once what my heart wanted. Do you know what I told her?”

  Jamshid’s eyes had filled with sorrow upon Nisreen’s name. “What?”

  “That I didn’t know. That I feared even thinking about the things that would make me happy would destroy them. And it does,” she whispered. Had she not finally kissed Ali only to send him to his doom? “Even just talking like this …”

  “Talking like this what?” he asked.

  I’m afraid to get close to you. Nahri lost everyone she loved, everything she wanted. How could she risk Jamshid as well?

  But a knock on the door saved her from a reply. “Banu Nahida?” a muffled voice called.

  Nahri gripped the washcloth. “Come in.”

  It was Musa. “Forgive me,” he greeted her, barely checked worry in his expression. “But we have a visitor from Daevabad.”

  THE PAIR OF CREATURES ON THE BEACH MADE EVERY hair on the back of Nahri’s neck rise from ten paces away. From a distance they might have been normal, healthy simurgh, the firebirds Daevas enjoyed racing.

  Except nothing about these firebirds was normal. Their brilliant feathers, typically in dazzling shades of crimson, saffron, and gold, were dull, limned with ash and purple-hued boils. Flies buzzed over their glassy, vacant eyes, and foam dripped from their half-open beaks.

  “They haven’t moved.” Musa sounded ill. Jamshid was gone, dressing to meet their mysterious visitor. “At first, we thought we might have to corral them, but they haven’t moved. They look half dead.”

  A group of djinn had gathered, whispering and pointing with obvious disquiet. They parted for Nahri, and she drew closer. The seal ring on her finger had been buzzing since she’d left the castle, and it grew painfully cold now.

  A warning. Nahri studied the simurgh’s eyes again, the bright teal blank and feverish. There was no spark, no movement, nothing indicating life within the creatures, and as Nahri stretched out a hand, trying to detect the beat of their hearts without having to touch them, her unease grew. There was a pulse, but barely, and not one that made her think of life.

  “And you said someone was riding one?” she asked.

  Musa nodded. “A Daeva man. He called h
imself Manizheh’s envoy and asked after your brother.”

  An utter sense of wrongness swept her. “There’s magic controlling these creatures, but not like anything I know.”

  “Maybe the Afshin did it? He still has his abilities, no?”

  Nahri studied the firebirds, recalling the smoky beasts Dara had conjured back in the palace. They’d been terrifying, but wild, lashing out in a typhoon of destruction—alive in a way these pitiful decaying creatures weren’t.

  “I don’t think this was Dara.” Then her heart skipped. Two simurgh. One for the rider.

  And one for whomever he’d come to fetch.

  JAMSHID WAS WAITING IN A SCREENED BALCONY THAT overlooked the majlis, his silhouette visible against a field of carved diamonds, their tiny bursts of light like stars in the sky. He glanced back as Nahri approached, and she started at his appearance. God only knew where the Ayaanle had gotten Daeva clothes befitting … well, a Baga Nahid, but her brother had been dressed to impress in a blue and white linen robe patterned with leaping deer and a gold diadem crowning his wavy black hair. He was clean-shaven save for his mustache, and an ash mark split his brow.

  All in all, he looked very regal, and Nahri realized he’d started carrying himself differently as well. Jamshid wasn’t the quiet Daeva courtier who’d had to keep his head down lest he attract the wrath of the wrong djinn. He was the last Baga Nahid, a warrior, scholar, and healer-in-training.

  Nahri nodded at the diadem, the gold stamped with a snarling shedu. “That was definitely stolen from our family during the conquest.”

  “A nice reminder, isn’t it?” Jamshid jerked a thumb at the screen. “I know our visitor. He’s Saman Pashanur, one of my father’s closest friends. A large landowner with priestly roots.”

  “A trusted friend?”

  Jamshid nodded. “Growing up, I heard him make plenty of treasonous remarks about the Qahtanis when he’d had too much wine.”

  Treasonous enough that he’d now be Manizheh’s envoy? Peering through the screen, Nahri studied their new arrival. Saman was dressed in a traveling robe with a dusty scarf still draped over his cap. He was standing up and looked rather defiant, considering he was surrounded by armed djinn. Hatset sat on a low, cushioned divan on the platform above him.

  “And he’s looking for you?” Nahri asked.

  “That’s what he says. I get the impression he doesn’t know you’re here.” Jamshid nodded at a black chest at the envoy’s feet. “He claims he has a message but won’t say anything else until he sees me.”

  “A message in a box. That sounds promising.” Nahri glanced at her brother, his expression difficult to read in the dim light. “He’s going to want to know if you’re a prisoner.”

  “Well, then we’ll have that in common. You’ll stay here?”

  “For now.” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring nod, and he left.

  But a pang of loneliness struck her the moment he was gone. Ali should have been here, frowning the way he did when trying to puzzle things out and undoubtedly finding a way to make being trapped together in a small, dark chamber more awkward.

  A mix of grief and helplessness surged through her—God, but Nahri hated this awful not knowing. Had Tiamat taken him already and killed him? Or was Ali even now being tortured for having given away Suleiman’s ring?

  Don’t do this. Not now. Nahri leaned against the screen, pressing her fingers into the cutouts, hoping touching something solid might ground her.

  There was visible relief in the Daeva envoy’s eyes when Jamshid entered the room. “Jamshid,” Saman greeted him. “Thank the Creator. I was starting to get worried.”

  Hatset cut in. “So familiar with your Baga Nahid,” she said archly. “Don’t your people remove tongues for that?”

  Saman stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Jamshid drew nearer, and then in a bold move that made Nahri smile, her brother took a stool, set it next to the queen, and sat.

  “We can speak honestly,” he began. “I know who I am, Saman, and if Manizheh sent you after me, I suspect you do as well. I wish my father had been honest with me so that I didn’t have to learn the truth from strangers in a foreign land.”

  Saman lowered his gaze. “Apologies, my lord. For what it’s worth, I did not know until recently.” He glanced up again, genuine concern in his eyes. “Are you well, Baga Nahid? Have they hurt you?”

  Jamshid inclined his head, gesturing to the room of armed soldiers. “I’ve been better, but I’m unharmed. How is the city? My father? My … mother?”

  Saman brought his hands up in blessing. “It would be best if we spoke of those things in private.”

  “Which is not going to happen,” Hatset pointed out. “Come. You’ve seen him, so now we shall have some answers. Why has Manizheh sent you?”

  “Because she received your threat regarding her son,” Saman replied. “It came at a poor time—she’d been trying to make peace with the djinn, only to be betrayed once again. Baga Jamshid,” he said more softly, “I am very sorry to inform you that your father is dead.”

  Jamshid rocked back on his stool. “What? How?”

  “He was killed during a peace summit the Banu Nahida had graciously organized. Unknown to us, Emir Muntadhir had been poisoning the Daeva houses against her, offering all manner of riches. It is to my lasting shame that some of our people gave in to the temptation. They murdered the grand wazir as he fought to return to her.”

  Jamshid sucked for air, blinking rapidly. “Oh, Baba,” he whispered. He bit his lip, his gaze dropping to the floor as if to hide the whirl of emotions in his face.

  Nahri was gripping the screen so hard it hurt. She wanted to drag him away. She wasn’t going to pretend to mourn Kaveh, but the sight of her brother trying to hide his grief in public—before djinn he considered enemies—broke her heart.

  Hatset was still composed. “Where is the emir now?”

  “Awaiting execution with his sister.”

  Jamshid jerked up, fresh shock blossoming across his face. At Hatset’s side, even Wajed let out a short gasp.

  Hatset, though, Hatset was steel, her golden eyes narrowing as though the other man were an insect. A lying insect barely worth her time. “Sources have assured me that my daughter is not in Manizheh’s custody.”

  “Your sources are out-of-date.” Saman spread his hands. “I am but a messenger, Lady Hatset, and I was commanded to pass on a warning. The fates of Ghassan’s treacherous sons are decided, but our Banu Nahida wishes to extend to you one last mercy. Return Baga Jamshid unharmed within five days, and she will spare your daughter.”

  “Five days?” It was Wajed now. “You can’t get to Daevabad in five days.”

  “I can do it in three,” Saman corrected. “Banu Manizheh has been blessed with great magic. New magic, unlike anything her predecessors have known. The simurgh I traveled with are but a small part. Baga Jamshid will return with me, and your daughter will be granted clemency.”

  “So that means they’re both still alive?” Jamshid had recovered, his expression urgent. “Muntadhir and Zaynab?”

  The ambassador gave him a careful look. “For now, Baga Nahid. But our lady is grieving and rightfully angry, and there is no one in Daevabad to speak for them.”

  Nahri pressed her lips in a thin line, hearing the words he didn’t say. Clearly the ambassador wasn’t a fool. Jamshid wasn’t acting like some cowed prisoner, and his relationship with Muntadhir was public knowledge. Manizheh wanted to tempt him. To leave open the possibility that if Jamshid returned to her, he could beg for Muntadhir’s life.

  Hatset was glaring at the envoy with naked hate. She nodded rudely at the chest. “And the other part of your message?”

  Saman crossed to the chest. “The Banu Nahida has heard rumors you may be welcoming a pair of refugees soon. This displeases her. Surely you’d agree that we are stronger as a united people. I know she is helping my tribe to see that.

  “So s
he wishes to make clear what happens to Daevas who don’t obey.”

  He opened the chest, kicking it over to spill the contents. Dozens—scores—of blood-spattered brass amulets fell to the ground.

  Relics. Daeva relics.

  Nahri was suddenly done with watching from behind a screen.

  She shoved open the door, ignoring the soldier who moved to help her. Nahri was not dressed to impress—she was in the plain cotton gown and striped leggings she’d worn all day, splotches of dried blood splashed across her chest and mud staining the bottom of her trousers. The humidity had left her hair wild, curls escaping the scarf she’d tied at the back of her neck.

  But Nahri didn’t need fancy clothes to announce who she was, not when she could literally sense the blood that drained from Saman’s face when she walked into the majlis with every bit of arrogance she possessed. “Why don’t you explain to me exactly what was done to these Daevas who supposedly disobeyed?”

  Saman stared at her, blinking rapidly. “Banu Nahri,” he stammered. “I … may the fires burn brightly for you. Forgive me, I did not expect—”

  “To see me. Yes, obviously.” Nahri pointed to the relics. “Explain.”

  “As I told the Baga Nahid, the—the situation has grown more dire.” Saman’s practiced words came out a little less steady now, the man clearly rattled by her unexpected presence. “Banu Manizheh wished our tribe to know the price of letting the djinn divide it.”

  “And that price is being given to the ifrit? Is that what you’re implying? Because Manizheh has lost the right to call herself anything but a traitor if she gave another Daeva to the ifrit.”

  Saman’s eyes darted up at the word “traitor,” heat entering his expression. A true believer, then. “And what would one call allying with the man who stole Suleiman’s seal?”

  Nahri held up her hand and conjured a pair of flames, Suleiman’s ring gleaming in their light. “Misinformation.”