The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  We will never have peace with them. And if Manizheh’s forces weren’t going to have peace with the Geziris and shafit, then they would remain a threat. And Manizheh clearly dealt with threats the same way the Geziri kings who’d ruined her life had.

  She eliminated them.

  But she can’t. Not without her abilities. There would be no magical plagues striking down djinn in Daevabad while Suleiman’s seal rested in the heart of a ring-bearer possibly on the other side of the world. Trepidation stole over Dara, the shedu slowing in response. For the next part of his mission was meant to put them on the road to recovering that very seal.

  You are the weapon of the Nahids, Dara reminded himself at last. The protector of the Daevas.

  And a good Afshin obeyed.

  IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO CROSS THE LAKE, THE WATER vast and glimmering. No longer a deathly still pane of liquid glass, now currents danced and whirled over the surface, the water lapping thirstily at the shore like a parched dog. Dara eyed it with apprehension as he flew overhead, keeping his distance. The marid might have claimed they wanted nothing more to do with the Daevas after they aided Manizheh in her conquest, but Dara strongly suspected the Daevas had not seen the last of them.

  But thoughts of the marid ebbed away as Dara passed the lake, flying out over the mountains. The mist that had once shrouded them was gone, the trees ending abruptly in a sandy waste, and where the threshold had stood was a stand of dying forest. Rot crept up the trees, bulbous growths swelling their papery, flaking bark. Dara breathed deep, tasting decay on the air.

  He kept flying, soaring over the rushing Gozan, and then he saw them camped out on the dusty plain above the river: the travelers Kaveh said would be heading to Daevabad for Navasatem. The tourists and traders who but for a quirk of timing had been on the other side of the veil when magic fell. The travelers on whom so much hung in the balance right now.

  Dara had his answer the moment he settled his gaze upon them.

  They had no magic.

  A crashed Sahrayn sandship lay on its side, its massive sails repurposed into a crude tent. There were no pavilions of enchanted silk or floating lanterns. Instead, the travelers had made a circle of their wagons, palanquins and chariots shoved together to create a wall. Dozens of animals—camels and horses, but also simurgh and a rare tame zahhak—were gathered in the strangest herd Dara had ever seen, the lean ground stripped of grass.

  There must have been a hundred travelers, but none were studying the sky. They looked miserable, cold and disheveled, with no flames to warm them or cook their food. Kaveh had been right: with no magic, few people knew how to build a fire. But they had otherwise banded together. Among the drawn faces, Dara saw men, women, and children from all six of the tribes passing around cold food and talking. About a dozen children were playing on the downed ship, climbing over the sewn hull—Daevas and Geziris among them.

  Dara steeled himself, hardening his heart once again. Because he was about to undo such intertribal camaraderie.

  He slammed to the ground, landing the shedu with a thud that shook the earth. There were cries of alarm, people scrambling to their feet, but he ignored them, drawing up to survey the crowd with every ounce of arrogance he possessed. He tossed his hair back, letting his hands rest on the hilts of his swords. Dara wore no helmet, nothing to obscure the tattoo and emerald-bright eyes he knew shouted his identity to the world, and he could only imagine the spectacle he presented—indeed, that was the point. He was to be the Afshin from legend, the dashing war god of a bygone era.

  Unsurprisingly, it was a Daeva man who reacted first. “By the Creator …,” he choked out. “Are you—” His eyes widened on the conjured shedu. “Is that—”

  “Rejoice!” Dara commanded. “For I bring glad tidings.” The words sounded false in his mouth, no matter how many times Manizheh, Kaveh, and he had practiced them. “The usurper Ghassan al Qahtani is dead!”

  There were a couple of gasps, and then a pair of Geziri men who’d been cleaning saddles jumped up.

  “What do you mean, he is dead?” the younger one demanded. “Is this some sort of trick? Who do you think you are?”

  “You know who I am,” Dara said. “And I do not mean to waste words.” He drew his second sword—Ghassan’s own zulfiqar—and threw it to the ground, the rest of the king’s bloody turban knotted around the hilt. “Your sand fly king is gone to hell with the rest of his kin, and should you not wish to join them, you will listen.”

  More of the djinn were pushing to their feet now, a mix of incredulity and fear on their faces.

  “Liar,” the Geziri man shot back, drawing his khanjar. “This is some fire-worshipper nonsense.”

  With a burst of heat, Dara commanded the blade to melt. The Geziri man shrieked, dropping his dagger as the molten metal dripped down his skin. The nearest djinn, a Sahrayn woman, started to run to him.

  Dara held up a hand. “Don’t,” he warned, and the woman froze. “Touch another weapon, and what I do next will make that look like a kindness.”

  The Daeva man who’d spoken up, an older man with silver in his beard and an ash mark on his brow, carefully edged in front of the group. “We will raise no weapons,” he said, his gaze darting to the angry djinn. “But please tell us what happened. How is it you still have magic?”

  “Because I serve the Creator’s chosen. The rightful and most blessed Banu Manizheh e-Nahid, who has taken back the city of her ancestors and now rules as was intended.”

  The Daeva man’s mouth fell open. “Manizheh? Banu Manizheh? But she’s dead. You’re both supposed to be dead!”

  “I assure you we are not. Daevabad belongs to us again, and should you wish to save the lives of your loved ones, you will carry our words.” Dara looked past the Daeva man. He appreciated the courage it must have taken for his tribesman to put himself between the Afshin and the djinn, but this message was not for him. “Those of you from the djinn tribes will not be permitted to continue into the city. You are to return to your lands.”

  That provoked another outcry. “But we cannot return!” a woman declared. “We have no supplies, no magic—”

  “Silence! You will return to your lands with our mercy, but there will be no magic restored to you yet.” He glared at the djinn in the crowd. “Your ancestors strayed from the right path, and for that there is a cost. You will return to your lands, gather whatever councils you use to govern yourselves, and send your leaders and their families back to Daevabad with tribute and word of immediate fealty.”

  There was bristling in the crowd, but Dara wasn’t done. “As for your magic, you have one man to blame: the traitor Alizayd al Qahtani.” He all but hissed the words, letting his anger show—finally something that didn’t feel like an act. “He is a liar and an abomination, a crocodile who sold his soul to the marid and took advantage of the chaos to steal Suleiman’s seal and kidnap Banu Manizheh’s daughter.”

  It was an Ayaanle woman who stood now, an elder with flashing eyes. “You are the liar, fiend. And more a monster than any marid from legend.”

  “So ignore me. Perhaps the Ayaanle do not wish to see their magic return, but surely not all of you feel the same. For those, Banu Manizheh offers a deal. Alizayd al Qahtani has fled, slipping through the lake as his marid masters have taught him, to hide in your lands. Find the traitor and Banu Nahri both, return them—alive—and your tribe shall see its magic returned.

  “Else, perhaps you best go beg the humans of whom you are so fond to show you how to live.”

  Dara could see unease rippling across the djinn, straining whatever new and fragile bonds had started to knit them together.

  The Ayaanle woman was still glaring at him. “And our kin inside the city?”

  “No one leaves Daevabad until the Banu Nahida has her daughter back. And she is not the only one to be returned unharmed.” He turned to the Geziris. “You look like soldiers, so let us see if you cannot convey a warning to your Qaid. Should he take vengeance on Jamshid
e-Pramukh, we will release a poison into your land that will kill every Geziri within a day.”

  The Geziri man recoiled. “You have no such power. Nor does the witch who commands you. That is magic beyond—”

  “Sand fly,” Dara interrupted, “how do you think we took the city?”

  The man instantly drew back, horror in his gray eyes. “No,” he whispered. “That cannot be … There were thousands of us in Daeva—”

  “There were. And there are yet more of you in Am Gezira.” Dara glanced again at the crowd. “Our world is returning to the way things should have been, and I pray this time, your people show the sense your ancestors never did. Surrender.”

  Some of the djinn were already edging away, parents grabbing children and people eyeing the supplies as though wondering what they could seize.

  But with threats and violence, there would also be mercy, a hint of the pleasures that awaited them if they obeyed. “You need not fear your journey,” Dara declared. “As promised, it will be provided for.”

  He spread his hands, concentrating on the sandship. With a burst of magic, it divided into a half dozen smaller ships, silver sails swelling with air, each marked with a different tribal emblem. His head throbbed, but Dara pressed on, visualizing holds filled with food and drink.

  He fought the instinct to shape-shift, his body aching to burst into the fiery form that allowed such power. “Go,” he growled, his hands clenching into fists as flames danced through his fingers. He exhaled, heat scorching the air. “Now.”

  Dara didn’t need to repeat himself. The djinn fled, clearly too frightened to bid farewell to their companions across tribal lines. Or perhaps they were already cutting those ties, eager to get home and make sure their people were the ones who found and returned Alizayd and Nahri.

  Let them be divided. Let them return to their homes with tales of horror and a magic they couldn’t fight. Let everyone know peace was only possible under Banu Manizheh.

  But as Dara saw the Daevas retreating with the same speed, he spoke up, his voice still ragged. “Wait,” he called, flagging them down. “You needn’t leave. You are welcome to enter the city.”

  That was met with hesitant silence, the other Daevas glancing uncertainly at one another.

  Finally, one of the men replied. “Is that an order?”

  Dara was taken aback by the question. “Of course not. But we control Daevabad again,” he assured them, baffled by their attitude. “It is ours. We did this for you.”

  One of the Daeva children, a little girl, began to cry. A woman quickly picked her up, shushing her with obvious fear.

  The grandstanding he’d shown with the djinn went out of Dara in one breath. The last time he’d been among Daeva children, they’d been cheering him as a hero, pushing to show off their little muscles.

  “I—I mean you no harm,” he stammered. “I promise.”

  The Daeva man seemed to be struggling to conceal his misgivings. “All the same, I think we would like to leave.”

  Dara forced a smile. “Then go with my blessings. May the fires burn brightly for you.”

  No one replied in kind.

  The other djinn ships were already sailing away. He watched as the Daevas did the same, sickness rising in his heart. Only when the horizon was clear did Dara exhale, letting his fiery form sweep over him. The scorching pain vanished as did his exhaustion, a cruel reminder once again that this was what Dara truly was now. And considering how his own people had just fled from him, perhaps he should keep this visage. He certainly felt like a monster.

  Dara strode back to his conjured shedu, his warm breath coming in a steamy hush. His boots crunched on the ground. He frowned at the sound and then glanced down.

  Fine crystals were racing across the churned earth.

  Ice. Dara suddenly realized everything had gone quiet. Cold. The stillness to the chill air was utterly unnatural, as though the wind itself were holding its breath.

  Dread rising in his core, Dara moved fast, closing the distance between himself and his winged creation. He reached for its mane.

  The wind exhaled.

  A blast of frigid air hit him so hard that Dara stumbled back from the shedu, falling to the frozen earth. He covered his head as the remains of the travelers’ camp went hurtling by, flung across the landscape by the howling wind. The shedu disintegrated in a puff of smoke that was gone on the next breeze, the air churning so violently Dara felt as though an invisible assailant were pummeling him.

  The storm vanished nearly as soon as it came, leaving behind barely a breeze. The entire landscape had been iced over, glittering in the dying sun.

  Dara was shaking, breathing fast. What in Suleiman’s eye had just happened?

  But the answer was already coming to him on the stinging breeze. Not fire nor water nor earth.

  Air.

  The peris.

  He shivered again. But of course—this was where Khayzur had been slaughtered by his own people, doomed for the “crime” of saving Dara’s and Nahri’s lives. Because it hadn’t just been the marid who’d toyed with Dara. No, it had been Qahtanis and Nahids, marid and peris.

  Anger roiled through him. The accusations he hadn’t been able to shout at Manizheh, Khayzur’s gentle last words, and Nahri’s betrayed eyes. Dara was so sick of despairing over his fate, of guilt eating him alive. Now he was just furious. Furious at being used, at letting himself be used again and again.

  These creatures did not get to make him feel worse.

  “Where were you when my people were slaughtered?” he howled into the wind. “I thought the mighty peris did not interfere, did not care what the lowly daevas did to each other?” He threw out his fists, fire bursting from his hands. “Go on! Break your rules, and I will return to destroy you as I did the marid! I have flown to your realms—I will do so again and set fire to your skies. I will leave you nothing but smoke to choke on!”

  The chill immediately left the air, the ground beneath him warming. Dara shoved himself to his feet. He would not be intimidated by a damn breeze.

  But it pulled at him even as he stalked away, the wind flowing through his hair and tugging at his clothes. It felt like a warning, and when combined with the sight of the diseased trees across the Gozan, the mountains concealing an even more broken city, it created a ripple of undeniable fear that crept down Dara’s back. The peris didn’t interfere. It was their most sacred code.

  So what did it mean when they sent a warning?

  8

  NAHRI

  The reeds tore at Nahri’s legs as they hurried through the flooded marsh. She burst into fresh tears, burying her face in the warm neck of the woman carrying her.

  “Shush, little love,” the woman whispered. “Not so loud.”

  They climbed down into the narrow canal that watered the fields. Nahri peeked up as they passed the shadoof, the wooden beams of the irrigation tool jutting up against the night sky like massive claws. The air was thick with the smoke and screams of the burning village behind them, the curtain of papyrus doing nothing to conceal the horror they’d narrowly escaped. All she could see of their village now was the shattered top of the mosque’s minaret above a sea of sugarcane.

  She dug her small fingers into the woman’s robe, clutching her closer. The smoke burned Nahri’s lungs, nothing like the pleasantly clean scent of the tiny flames she liked to sing into creation. “I’m scared,” she whimpered.

  “I know.” A hand rubbed her back. “But we just need to get to the river. El Nil. Do you see it?”

  Nahri saw it. The Nile, flowing fast and dark ahead. But they’d only just crashed into its shallows when she heard the voice again—the stranger who’d arrived speaking the musical language Nahri was never permitted to use outside their small home, the words that whispered and burned in her mind when her scraped knees healed and when she breathed life anew into the tiny kitten crushed by a reckless trader’s cart.

  “Duriya!” the stranger yelled.

  T
he woman wasn’t listening. Transferring Nahri to her hip with one arm, she bit deep into her other hand until it bled and then thrust it into the water.

  “I CALL YOU!” she cried. “Sobek, you promised!”

  A heavy stillness stole across the air, silencing the dying cries of Nahri’s blazing village and freezing the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her skin prickled, the hair on the back of her neck standing up as though in the presence of a predator.

  On the opposite bank, a shadowy form slipped into the water.

  Nahri tried to jerk back, but the arms around her were strong, pushing her into the river.

  There was arguing. “I will get you your blood!” A brow pressed against hers, a pair of warm brown eyes, flecked with gold, locking on Nahri’s eyes, the eyes neighbors whispered were too dark. A kiss upon her nose.

  “God will protect you,” the woman whispered. “You are brave, you are strong, and you will survive this, my darling, I swear. I love you. I always will.” The next words came in a blur, the woman weeping as her gaze turned to the water. “Take this night from her. Let her start anew.”

  Teeth clamped around Nahri’s ankle, and then, before she could scream, she was dragged under the water.

  “Nahri?” A hand shook her shoulder. “Nahri.”

  Nahri started awake, blinking in the dark storeroom. “Ali?” she murmured, thrown from the nightmare. She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her cheeks were wet, streaked with tears.

  Ali was crouched next to her, looking worried. “I’m sorry. I heard you crying, and you sounded so upset …”

  “It’s all right,” she said, shucking her blanket free. It had twisted around her body like she’d been fighting it. Nahri was drenched in sweat, her gown sticking to her skin and her hair plastered to her neck. “I was having a nightmare … about that village, I think.” The details were already drifting away in the fog of waking. “There was a woman …”