In none of those dreams had Nahri arrived fleeing Daevabad’s violent conquest at the hands of people she’d thought dead, people who in another life she might have loved—nor did she imagine traveling with a man who by any right should be her enemy.
Yaqub snapped his fingers in front of her face and then gestured to an oil-splattered paper package. “Sambousek. Eat.” He grunted, settling on a stool. “Were I smart, I would only give you one per question answered.”
Nahri opened the package, her belly rumbling at the pile of sambousek, the smell of the fried dough making her lightheaded. “But that would make you a terrible host. After all, you did call me a guest.” She all but inhaled the first pastry, closing her eyes in delight at the taste of the salty cheese.
Yaqub smiled. “Still the little street girl. I remember the first time I fed you: I’d never seen a child eat so fast. I thought for sure you would choke.”
“I was hardly a child,” she complained. “I think I was fifteen when you and I started working together.”
“You were a child,” Yaqub corrected softly, remorse in his voice. “And clearly so very, very alone.” He hesitated. “I … after you disappeared, I regretted that I had not done more to reach out to you. I should have invited you into my home, found you a proper husband …”
“I would have turned you away,” Nahri said wistfully. “I would have thought it was a trick.”
Yaqub looked surprised. “Did you not trust me even at the end?”
Nahri swallowed her last bite and wordlessly took the cup of water he offered. “It wasn’t you. I didn’t trust anyone,” she said, realizing it as she spoke. “I was afraid to. It always felt like I was one mistake away from losing everything.”
“You sound so much older.”
She forced a shrug, dropping her gaze before he could see the emotions in her face. She’d started to trust people in Daevabad—at least as much as Nahri was capable of trusting anyone. She’d had friends and mentors—roots. Nisreen and Subha, Elashia and Razu, Jamshid and Ali—even Muntadhir and Zaynab in their own way.
At least she’d had roots until the first person she’d trusted—the first person she’d let into her heart—had ripped them out and set everything she’d built spectacularly ablaze.
“It’s been a long few years.” Nahri changed the subject, her appetite vanishing. “How have you been doing? You look pretty good. I wasn’t sure you’d still be …”
“What? Alive?” Yaqub harrumphed. “I am not that old. The knee gives me trouble, and my eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were—as you so kindly pointed out—but I’m still better than half my competition, out there mixing chalk and sugar syrup into their marked-up products.”
“Have you considered taking on an apprentice?” She nodded to the untidy shop. “It’s a lot of work.”
He made a face. “I’ve tried a few sons-in-law and grandsons. The ones who weren’t useless were lazy.”
“And your daughters and granddaughters?”
“Are safer at home,” he said firmly. “There has been too much war, too many of these foreign soldiers mucking about. French, British, Turkish—one can hardly keep track.”
Nahri drew back, confused. “British and Turkish? But I thought … aren’t we controlled by the French?”
Yaqub gave her a look like she’d lost her mind. “The French have been gone for years now.” His face grew even more disbelieving. “Nahri, where have you been that you did not know about the war? They were battling on both sides of the Nile, through the streets of Cairo …” His voice grew bitter. “Foreigners, all of them. Bloodying our land; seizing our food, our palaces, all these treasures they were said to have dug out of the ground—and then claiming it was all done because each would be better at ruling us.”
Her heart sank. “And now?”
“The Ottomans again. A new one. Says things will be different, that he wants to lead a modern and independent Egypt.” Yaqub let out a grumpy snort. “Plenty of people like him, like some of his ideas.”
“But not you?”
“No. They say he is already turning on some of the Egyptian nobles and clerics who supported him.” He shook his head. “I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs. And those Europeans will be back. People do not cross a sea to fight without expecting some return on their investment.”
At that, Nahri forced herself to eat another pastry. It seemed wherever she went, her people were being pushed down by foreign rulers and killed in wars over which they had no say. In Daevabad, at least, she’d had some power and had done her damnedest to set things on a different course—her marriage to Muntadhir, for starters, and the hospital. And still it had done nothing, her efforts at peace destroyed by violence again and again.
Yaqub leaned against his workbench. “So now that you have effectively diverted the conversation twice, let us return to those questions I have for you: What happened? And where have you been all these years?”
Nahri stared at him. She wasn’t sure she could answer that for herself, let alone for a human who was supposed to have no inkling of the magical world.
A human. How quickly that word had risen unbidden in her mind. The realization threw her, making her fumble for an answer even more awkward. “It’s sort of a long story—”
“Oh, have you somewhere to be? An appointment?” Yaqub wagged a trembling finger. “Child, you should be happy for all the wars. They distracted people from the rumors flying around after you disappeared.”
“Rumors?”
His expression darkened. “A girl was found murdered in El Arafa, surrounded by decaying bodies, ransacked tombs, broken graves—like the dead themselves awoke, God forbid. People said she was shot with an arrow that looked like it came from the time of the Prophet. Wild stories, including gossip that she’d taken part in a zar earlier in the evening. And that it was led by …”
“Me,” Nahri finished. “Her name was Baseema. The girl, I mean.”
She didn’t miss the way he drew back ever so slightly. “You weren’t actually involved in her death, were you?”
Creator, Nahri was so tired of lying to people she cared about. “Of course not,” she said hoarsely.
“Then why did you vanish?” Yaqub sounded hurt. “I was very worried, Nahri. I know I’m not your family, but you might have sent word.”
More guilt, but at least this Nahri could answer somewhat honestly. “I would have if I could, my friend. Believe me.” She thought fast. “I was … taken—rescued. But the place I ended up, the people—they were on the controlling side,” she explained, in what had to be the mildest assessment of Ghassan al Qahtani ever uttered. “In fact, that’s why we’re here. We’re sort of … political exiles.”
Yaqub’s fuzzy gray brows had been rising higher in disbelief as she spoke, but now he just looked confused. “We?” he repeated.
“Me and him,” Nahri replied, nodding at Ali, his sleeping form visible through the open door.
Yaqub glanced back and then jumped. “Oh, goodness, I’d completely forgotten about him!”
“Yes, he seems to have that effect.” Not that Nahri was complaining. If Ali woke up in Cairo, it might be better for everyone that humans had trouble seeing—and perhaps more importantly, hearing—the djinn prince with the habit of saying exactly the wrong thing.
If he wakes up. Even thinking it made her want to rush back in and check on him.
Yaqub was still staring at Ali’s feet, squinting as though that would keep him from popping out of view again. “And who exactly is ‘he’?”
“A friend.”
“A friend?” He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “What is a ‘friend’? You are not married?”
Nahri’s guilt left her in one fell swoop. “I vanish in a cemetery full of exhumed skeletons only to show up in your shop six years later, and your primary concern about the man
you can barely see is whether or not he’s my husband?”
Yaqub flushed but remained stubborn. “So you and your not-husband are political exiles, you said? From where?”
A magical court of djinn. “An island,” she answered. “It’s this tiny island kingdom. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
“An island where?”
Nahri swallowed. “Afghanistan?” she tried. “I mean, you know, in that general area.”
Yaqub crossed his arms over his chest. “An island. In Afghanistan? Where? Near the endless desert steppe or the rocky mountains weeks from the sea?”
His sarcastic response only made Nahri more heartsick. How quickly they’d fallen back into their verbal sparring matches, the biting remarks she’d always trusted more than if Yaqub had treated her with pity.
And suddenly she wanted to tell him. Ali might be dying, the magic that had been part of her identity since she was a child was gone, and her world had been torn apart. She wanted someone to tell her it was all going to be okay, to hug her as she wept the tears she rarely let fall.
She looked at Yaqub, at the gentleness in his warm, human-brown eyes and the weary lines in his face. What horrors had he seen in the wars Nahri had missed? How had he survived, managing his shop and feeding his family in a city filled with hostile foreigners—a city where his faith marked him out as different and possibly suspicious, a sickening situation Nahri could empathize with all too well?
Nahri would not shake his world further. “Grandfather, you always made it clear you didn’t want to know certain things about me. Trust that this isn’t a tale you want to hear.”
Yaqub’s eyes dimmed, a quiet sadness crossing his face. “I see.” There was tense silence for a moment, but when he spoke again, his voice was understanding. “Are you in trouble?”
Nahri had to bite back a hysterical laugh. She’d tricked Manizheh—a woman who controlled people’s limbs with her mind and summoned back dead Afshin from ash—and stolen the seal ring her mother had been after for decades. Yes, Nahri would say she was in trouble.
She lied again. “I think I’m safe for now. For a little while, at least,” she added, praying that part was true. Nahri didn’t put tracking her and Ali out of Manizheh’s skill set, but Daevabad was a world away and presumably consumed by utter chaos. Hopefully her mother would be too busy with her new throne to come hunting for them so soon.
But she would come eventually. Nahri hadn’t missed the hunger in Manizheh’s face when she spoke of Suleiman’s seal.
Or maybe she’ll send Dara. God forgive her, Nahri almost wanted to see him. She wanted to confront him, to understand how the man who’d escorted her to Daevabad, the charismatic warrior who teased her and conjured his mother’s stew, had knowingly taken part in an assault meant to end with the murder of every Geziri man, woman, and child.
And then what? Will you kill him? Could she? Or would Dara simply sweep Nahri’s opinions and pleas aside once again, rip Ali’s heart from his chest, and then drag her back to face Manizheh?
“Nahri?” Yaqub was staring at her.
She glanced down, realizing she’d crushed the remaining pastry in her hand. “Sorry. Just lost in my thoughts.”
“You look exhausted.” Yaqub nodded to the storage room. “I have another blanket in there. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll head home and see if I can’t find the two of you some clean clothes.”
Shame blossomed through her once again. “I don’t want to take advantage of your hospitality.”
“Oh, stop.” Yaqub was already rising to his feet. “You don’t always have to do everything on your own.” He waved her off. “Go rest.”
Nahri found the second blanket upon a thin, rolled pad and spread them both on the floor. She grunted in relief as she collapsed. It felt heavenly to lie flat, a small mercy to her battered body. She reached out, finding Ali’s wrist at her side and taking his pulse once more.
Slower. Only by a count or two, and his damp skin still burned—but it didn’t scorch. He shifted in his sleep, murmuring under his breath.
She slipped her fingers through his. “A woman is sleeping beside you and holding your hand,” she warned, her voice breaking. “Surely you need to wake up and immediately cease such forbidden behavior.”
There was no response. Nahri hadn’t expected one and yet still felt herself fighting an edge of grief.
“Don’t die in my debt, al Qahtani. I’ll come find you in Paradise, I swear, and they’ll kick you out for associating with such a disrespectful thief.” She squeezed his hand. “Please.”
4
DARA
The twisting tunnel that led to the palace dungeons was as bleak as its end point, a narrow corridor that burrowed deep into the city’s bedrock, lit only by the occasional torch and smelling of mildew and old blood. Ancient Divasti graffiti spoke to its origins in the time of the Nahid Council, but Dara had never been down here.
He’d heard stories, of course. Everyone had—that was the point. Rumors of bodies left to rot into a gruesome carpet of bones and decaying viscera, a cruel welcome to new inmates who might suddenly find confessing their crimes a better alternative. The torture was said to be worse—illusionists who could make you hallucinate the deaths of your loved ones and poisons that melted flesh. There was no light and little air, just tight cells of death where one would slowly go mad.
Had Zaydi al Qahtani succeeded in capturing him, Dara had no doubt that would have been his fate. What better propaganda than the last Afshin, the rebel Scourge, driven to insanity beneath the stolen shedu throne? Such punishment had still been on Dara’s mind when he’d escorted Nahri to Daevabad, and it had taken every bit of courage and bluster he’d had to stare Ghassan al Qahtani in the eye while envisioning himself being dragged away to spend eternity in a dark stone cage.
Dara had never imagined, however, that the haughty emir at Ghassan’s side, the heir apparent wrapped in every wealth and privilege, would be the one who ended up here instead.
Dara stepped closer to Manizheh as they turned the corner. “Did you know Muntadhir well when you lived in Daevabad?”
Manizheh shook her head. “He was barely out of boyhood when I left, and the djinn children of the harem believed me a witch who could break their bones with a single glance.”
“But you can do that.”
“Answers your question, doesn’t it? But no, I didn’t know Muntadhir well. He was precious to his mother, and she was careful to keep him away from me. He was young when she died, but Ghassan had him moved out of the harem and into the emir’s quarters. And from what I’ve heard, he handled his abrupt transition into public adulthood by pouring everything he could down his throat and sleeping his way through the nobility.”
There was no missing the disdain in her response, but Dara wasn’t so ready to underestimate the son Ghassan had raised to rule a divided city.
“He’s not a fool, Banu Nahida,” he warned. “He’s reckless and intemperate when drunk, but no fool—especially when it comes to politics.”
“I believe you. Indeed, I’m relying on the fact that he’s not a fool, because it would be quite foolish for him to decide not to talk to us.”
Dara had little doubt what she was alluding to. “It does not work as well as you think,” he said. When Manizheh glanced at him, questioning, Dara was blunter. “Torture. Hurt a man badly enough and he will say anything to make it stop, regardless of whether or not it is true.”
“I trust you have the experience to make such a judgment.” Manizheh’s expression was contemplative. “So perhaps there’s another way to reach him.”
“Such as?”
“The truth. I’m hoping it’s such an unexpected departure from the way our families typically deal with each other that it might startle him into some truths of his own.”
Gushtap, one of Dara’s surviving soldiers, stood beside a heavy iron door, a wall torch throwing blazing light on his harrowed face. He caught sight of them, jerking to attenti
on and offering a shaky bow. “Banu Nahida.”
“May the fires burn brightly for you,” Manizheh greeted him. “How is our prisoner?”
“Quiet for now, but we had to chain him to the wall—he was smashing his head into the door.”
Manizheh blanched, and Dara explained. “Muntadhir thinks I’ve returned from hell to avenge myself on his family. Killing himself before I can do it more painfully likely seems a sound plan.”
Manizheh sighed. “Promising.” She laid a hand on Gushtap’s shoulder. “Go take some tea for yourself and send another to relieve you. No one should have to serve in this crypt long.”
Relief lit the young man’s face. “Thank you, Banu Nahida.”
The door creaked when Dara pushed it open, the heavy wood scraping the floor. And though he trusted his men about the chains, he still found himself reaching for his knife before stepping into the black cell. The memory of the slaughtered Geziris was fresh in his mind, and Dara knew how he would react if he were suddenly face-to-face with the individuals who’d done that to his people.
The stench hit him first, blood, rot, and waste, so thick he covered his nose, trying not to gag. With a snap, Dara conjured a trio of fiery floating globes that filled the cell with golden light. It revealed what he’d dreaded all those years, though the remains of the infamous “carpet” looked nearly worn away, reduced to blackened bones and scraps of cloth.
Muntadhir was chained to the opposite wall, iron cuffs binding his wrists and ankles. Daevabad’s once-dashing emir was still dressed in his ruined clothes from the night before, bloodstained trousers and a dishdasha so torn it hung around his neck like a scarf. A shallow gash stretched across his stomach, a nasty wound to be certain, but nothing like how it had looked before magic vanished: the skin flushed with the ominous green-black of the zulfiqar’s poison, the steadily spreading tendrils of inescapable death.
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