And a small part of her still wondered if she should have seen it coming.
“I couldn’t take that risk.” Ali’s face was drawn, a sheen of dampness on his brow. “You’re not the only one with a duty.”
Silence fell between them. Nahri struggled to maintain her composure, hating that Ali’s haunted confession touched her. She almost wanted to believe him. To believe that the boy who’d taught her to conjure a flame was real, and that the man he’d become was not manipulating her yet again, to believe that not everyone and everything in this miserable city had to be second-guessed.
A weakness. Nahri shuttered the thought, ignoring the loneliness that pierced her chest upon doing so. “And the rest?”
He blinked. “The rest?”
“The marid,” she prompted, steadying her voice.
He stared at her in disbelief, turning his palms to reveal his scars. “You can’t believe I wanted this.”
“What did the marid want? Why did they use you to kill Dara?”
Ali shivered. “We weren’t exactly having a conversation down there. They were showing me things . . . the destruction of Daevabad, of Am Gezira. They said he was going to do it. Showed him doing it . . . but it didn’t look like him.”
Nahri narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
Ali frowned as though he were trying to remember. “They showed him turning into something else. His skin and eyes were like fire, his hands black claws . . .”
A chill went down her spine at the description. “They showed Dara becoming an ifrit?”
“I don’t know,” Ali replied. “I try not to think about that night.”
You’re not the only one. Nahri stared at him, a wary, charged tension filling the space between them. She felt raw, the dredged-up details of that awful night—a night she tried so hard not to dwell on—leaving her more exposed than she liked.
But it was a vulnerability she could see echoed in Ali’s face, and though her heart was warning her to get out of this room, she couldn’t turn away an opportunity to learn more about the dangerous rift she feared was growing in the family that controlled her life.
“Why are you back in Daevabad, Alizayd?” she asked baldly.
Ali hesitated but answered. “An Ayaanle trader, a cousin of mine, fell ill while crossing Am Gezira.” He shrugged—a poor attempt at casualness. “I offered to do him the favor of taking his cargo, thinking I’d enjoy the opportunity to celebrate Navasatem with my family.”
“Surely you can lie better than that.”
He flushed. “That’s the reason I’m here. There’s nothing more to it.”
Nahri drew closer. “Your mother seems to think there’s more to it. Muntadhir seems to think there’s more to it.”
Ali’s gaze shot to hers. “I could never hurt my brother.”
That lay between them for another long moment, Nahri crossing her arms and holding his gaze until he looked away, still a little shamefaced.
His attention fell on the books stacked haphazardly on the table next to her bed. He cleared his throat. “Er . . . are you reading anything interesting?”
Nahri rolled her eyes at the blatantly obvious attempt to change the subject. “Nothing that concerns you.” And nothing that should have concerned her. She was never going to rebuild the hospital, let alone find some mysterious shafit surgeon to work with her.
Clueless as usual, Ali didn’t seem to pick up on the malice in her voice. “Who is ibn Butlan?” he asked, leaning close to read from the Arabic scrawled on the top book. “The Banquet of the Physicians?”
She reached possessively for the armful of books. “Mind your own business. Were you not just weeping about how many times I’ve saved your life? Surely you owe me some privacy.”
That shut him up, but as Nahri crossed to dump the books on her couch, something clicked into place in her head.
Ali did owe her. She turned over Ghassan and Hatset’s argument. He was reckless when it came to the shafit, so self-righteous about helping them that he flung himself into things without thinking them through.
She straightened up, turning to him. “You know the shafit neighborhoods.”
His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Yes . . . I mean, I suppose so.”
She tried to tamp down the excitement swirling in her chest. No. This was a fool’s quest. If Nahri had any sense, she’d be staying away from Ali and holding her tongue about the hospital.
And will you do so forever? Was Nahri going to let Ghassan destroy her ability to hope for a better future, to harden her into the threat Hatset suggested she would one day become? Was that the life she wanted in Daevabad?
Ali drew back. “Why are you looking at me like that? It is alarming.”
She scowled. “I’m not looking at you like anything. You don’t know me.” She snatched the cup. “I’m going to get you some food. Touch my books again and I’ll put ice spiders in your coffee. And don’t die.”
Confusion rippled across his face. “I don’t understand.”
“You owe me a debt, al Qahtani.” Nahri strode off, yanking her door open. “I don’t intend to let it go unpaid.”
14
Dara
They were holding the Geziri scouts in a crude hut of lashed branches that Dara took care to keep wet and covered in snow. He had originally conjured their prisoners a small tent, a place that would have been warmer, but the pair had returned the favor by setting the felt aflame in the middle of the night and arming themselves with the support beams, breaking the bones of two of his warriors in an attempt to flee. Whatever else they were, the Geziris were a wily people, used to finding ways to survive in inhospitable environments, and Dara would not grant them another chance to escape.
His boots crunching on the snow as he approached the hut, Dara called out a warning. “Abu Sayf, tell your fellow that if he greets me with a rock again, I’m going to shove it down his throat.”
There was a flurry of conversation in Geziriyya inside at that, Abu Sayf sounding weary and exasperated and the younger one—who still refused to give his name—irritable before Abu Sayf spoke. “Come in, Afshin.”
Dara ducked inside, blinking in the dim light. It was fetid and cold, and smelled of unwashed men and blood. After their last escapade, the djinn were kept in irons and given blankets only during the coldest nights. And while Dara understood the need for security measures, the crude conditions made him increasingly uneasy. He had not taken Abu Sayf and his companion on the field of battle as combatants. They were scouts: a young man on what Dara suspected was his first posting, and an old warrior with one foot in retirement.
“Ah, look, it’s the devil himself,” the younger djinn said heatedly as Dara entered. He looked feverish but was glaring with as much hate as he could muster.
Dara matched his glare and then knelt, putting down the platter he’d been carrying and shoving it toward the younger man’s feet. “Breakfast.” He glanced at Abu Sayf. “How are you today?”
“A little stiff,” Abu Sayf confessed. “Your warriors are getting better.”
“A thing I have to thank you for.”
The younger Geziri snorted. “Thank? You told him you’d flay me alive if he didn’t spar with your band of traitors.”
Abu Sayf shot the other djinn a look, adding something in their incomprehensible language before nodding at the tray. “This is for us?”
“It is for him.” Dara crossed to Abu Sayf and struck his irons off. “Come with me. A walk will ease your limbs.”
Dara led the other man out and toward his own tent, a fittingly bare place for a man who belonged nowhere. He rekindled his fire with a snap of his fingers and waved for Abu Sayf to sit upon the carpet.
The Geziri did so, rubbing his hands before the fire. “Thank you.”
“It is nothing,” Dara returned, taking a seat across from him. He snapped his fingers again, conjuring a platter of steaming stew and hot bread. The burst of magic while in his mortal form made his head po
und, but he felt the other man deserved it. This was the first time he’d invited Abu Sayf to his tent, but not the first time they’d shared conversation. He might have been an enemy, but Abu Sayf’s fluency in Divasti and his two centuries serving in the djinn army made him an easy companion. Dara had great affection for his young recruits and was deeply loyal to Manizheh—but Suleiman’s eye, sometimes he just wanted to gaze upon the mountains and exchange a few words about horses with an old man who was equally weary of war.
Dara passed over a cloak. “Take this. It has been cold.” He shook his head. “I wish you would let me conjure you a proper tent. Your companion is an idiot.”
Abu Sayf pulled over the stew, ripping off a piece of the bread. “I prefer to stay with my tribesman. He is not handling this well.” A weary sadness fell over his face. “He misses his family. He learned just before we were posted that his wife was pregnant with their firstborn.” He glanced at Dara. “She is in Daevabad. He fears for her.”
Dara pushed away a stab of guilt. Warriors left wives behind all the time; it was part of their duty. “If she were back in Am Gezira, where you all belong, she would be plenty safe,” he offered, forcing a conviction he didn’t entirely feel into his voice.
Abu Sayf didn’t take the bait. He never did. Dara suspected he was a soldier through and through and didn’t care to defend politics in which he had little voice. “Your Banu Nahida came to take blood again,” he said instead. “And she hasn’t returned my friend’s relic.”
At that Dara reached for his goblet, watching it fill with date wine at his silent command. “I am certain it is nothing.” In truth, he didn’t know what Manizheh was doing with the relics, and her secrecy was starting to grate on him.
“Your men say she intends to experiment on us. To boil us alive and grind our bones for her potions.” Fear crept into the other man’s voice. “They say she can capture a soul like the ifrit and bind it away so it never sees Paradise.”
Dara kept his face blank, but annoyance with his soldiers—and with himself for not checking their behavior sooner—sparked in his chest. Animosity toward the djinn and shafit ran high in their camp: many of Manizheh’s followers had suffered at their hands, after all. Admittedly, Dara hadn’t thought much of it when he was first brought back. During his own rebellion fourteen centuries ago, he and his fellow survivors had expressed similar hatred—and carried out darker acts of vengeance. But they’d been raw with grief over the sack of Daevabad and desperate to save what was left of their tribe. That was not the situation his people were in today.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear they’ve been harassing you. Believe me when I say I’ll speak to them.” He sighed, looking to change the subject. “May I ask what has kept you in this part of Daevastana for so long? You said you’ve lived here a half-century now, yes? This does not seem an ideal posting for a man from the desert.”
Abu Sayf smiled slightly. “I have come to find the snow lovely even if the cold remains brutal. And my wife’s parents are here.”
“You could have taken a posting in Daevabad and brought them with you.”
The other man chuckled. “You have never had in-laws if you say something so easily.”
The comment threw him. “No,” Dara said. “I was never married.”
“No one ever caught your eye?”
“Someone did,” he said softly. “But I could not offer the future that she deserved.”
Abu Sayf shrugged. “Then you will have to take my opinion on the matter of in-laws. And regardless, I did not wish to take a posting in Daevabad. It would have led to orders I do not care for.”
Dara met his gaze. “You speak from experience.”
The other man nodded. “I fought in King Khader’s war when I was young.”
“Khader was Ghassan’s father, no?”
“Correct. The western half of Qart Sahar tried to secede during his reign, about two hundred years ago.”
Dara rolled his eyes. “The Sahrayn have a habit of that. They tried to do the same just before I was born.”
Abu Sayf’s mouth quirked. “To be fair . . . I do believe secession was somewhat in fashion in your time.”
He grunted. Had another djinn said that to him, Dara would have been irked, but considering Abu Sayf was his prisoner, he held his tongue. “Fair point. You fought the Sahrayn, then?”
“I’m not sure ‘fought’ is the best description,” Abu Sayf replied. “We were sent to crush them, to terrorize a set of tiny villages on the coast.” He shook his head. “Amazing places. They built directly from the sand of the seabed, blasting it into glass to create homes along the cliffs. If you pulled up the rugs, you could watch fish swim beneath your feet, and the way the glass glittered in the sun when we first arrived . . .” Wistfulness filled his eyes. “We destroyed them all, of course. Burned their ships, threw their bound leaders into the sea, and took back the boys for the Guard. Khader was a hard man.”
“You were following orders.”
“I suppose,” Abu Sayf said quietly. “Never seemed right, though. It took us months to get out there, and I never really understood what kind of threat some little villages on the edge of the world could present to Daevabad. Why they had anything to do with Daevabad.”
Dara shifted, not liking the fact that he’d essentially been backed into defending a Qahtani. “Surely if you wonder why Daevabad rules a distant Sahrayn village you should wonder why a Geziri family commands a Daeva city?”
“I suppose I never really thought of Daevabad as a Daeva city.” Abu Sayf looked almost surprised. “Feels like the center of our world should belong to us all.”
Before Dara could respond, there was the sound of running outside his tent. He shot to his feet.
Mardoniye appeared at the entrance the next instant, out of breath. “Come quickly, Afshin. There has been a letter from home.”
15
Ali
“Okay, we’re here,” Ali said, throwing out his arm to prevent Nahri from slipping past. “Now will you tell me why you had to visit Sukariyya Street?”
Nahri was the very image of calmness at his side, her dark eyes studying the bustling shafit neighborhood like a hunter might survey its prey. “The house with the red door,” she remarked softly under her breath.
Perplexed, Ali followed her gaze to a narrow, three-story wooden house that looked like it had been crammed between the two larger stone buildings on either side of it. A small open porch fronted the house, surrounding a red door painted with orange flowers. It was a cloudy afternoon, and shadows swallowed the building, obscuring it in gloom.
His unease instantly grew. The windows were boarded over, but with enough cracks that one could easily spy on the street from the inside, and a man sat on the steps of the neighboring building, reading a pamphlet with a bit too much studied disinterest. At a café across the street, two others sat ostensibly playing backgammon, their gazes occasionally flitting over to the red door.
Ali wasn’t Citadel-trained for nothing. “It’s being watched.”
“Why do you think I brought you?” Nahri asked. A strangled sound of disbelief left his mouth, and she threw him a scornful look. “By the Most High, could you stop acting so jumpy?”
He stared at her. “Someone tried to murder me a week ago.”
Nahri rolled her eyes. “Let’s go.” She was off without another word.
Aghast, Ali watched as she strode purposefully towards the guarded house. Admittedly, there was little to give her away. Dressed in a rough-spun abaya and shawl, Nahri blended into the crowd of gossiping shafit shoppers and arguing laborers with ease.
Certainly a different look from the gold dress she wore to the feast. Ali’s face abruptly filled with heat. No, he was not thinking about that dress. Not again. Instead, he hurried after her, cursing himself for getting dragged into whatever mysterious business Nahri claimed to have in the shafit district. He still wasn’t sure what foolishness had made him agree to this; the days
since he’d been poisoned were nothing but a pain-wracked blur of his mother’s hovering, endless questions from the Royal Guard’s investigators, and increasingly foul-tasting potions from the Banu Nahida.
She probably hexed you into agreeing. The Nahids could do that, couldn’t they? Because surely not even Ali was reckless enough to sneak his sister-in-law out of the palace—and to agree to take the blame if they were found out—without being hexed.
By the time he caught up, Nahri was walking with a hand on her lower belly. There was suddenly a bump there, and her bag was gone from her shoulder. When she’d slipped it under her abaya, God only knew, but she was sniffling by the time they neared the house. She wiped her eyes, a feigned limp affecting her walk.
The man next door dropped his pamphlet and rose to his feet, stepping in her path. “Can I help you, sister?”
Nahri nodded. “Peace be upon you,” she greeted him. “I . . .” She sucked in her breath, clutching her exaggerated belly. “I’m sorry. My cousin said there was someone here . . . someone who helps women.”
The man’s gaze swept over them. “If indeed your cousin said such a thing, you’d know to bring her so she could vouch for you.” He stared at Ali. “Is this your husband?”
“I didn’t tell her it was I who needed help.” Nahri lowered her voice. “And this isn’t my husband.”
The blood left Ali’s face. “I—”
Nahri’s hand darted out and she grasped his arm in a viselike grip. “Please . . .” She gasped, curling in on herself. “I’m in a lot of pain.”
The man flushed, glancing helplessly down the street. “Oh, all right . . .” He crossed the porch, swiftly pulling open the red door. “Come quick.”
Ali’s heart raced, his mind screaming warnings of entrapment—this was, after all, not the first time he’d been tricked into entering a crumbling shafit building—but Nahri was already dragging him up the steps. They creaked underfoot, the wood soft from Daevabad’s misty air. The shafit man shut the door behind them, throwing them into a gloomy darkness.
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