The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  “Does that not seem a blessing?”

  “A blessing?” Dara repeated, the hysterical edge in his voice echoing across the empty vastness. “It is a curse!”

  Kartir removed the broom from Dara’s hands—just in time, for it was starting to smolder. “Walk with me, Darayavahoush.” The priest took his arm, leading him past the enormous, gleaming silver altar and into the back corridors of the Temple.

  “If you will permit me,” Kartir said as they approached a pair of brass doors at the end of the hall, “all I am hearing from you is ‘I this, I that.’ Have you not considered that your suffering and redemption might be less important than making things up to your victims?”

  The words struck deep, leaving Dara thrown for a response. “There is no making that up. You can’t bring back the dead.”

  “You can stop making more dead. You are the bravest man I know, and you run now from ghosts? Sit with this burden, Dara. You may find doing so is easier than holding it over your head and waiting for it to crush you.”

  Kartir opened the door. Inside was a small circular room lined with glass shelves. At its center stood a crude, almost primitive fire altar, little more than a beaten brass bowl in which cedar burned brightly. It threw firelight across the room, reflecting on the glittering glass shelves and the soft velvet cushions they displayed.

  And on the emerald ornaments that were everywhere.

  Dara recoiled so fast he crashed into the door frame. Slave vessels—rings, lamps, bracelets, and collars. Dozens.

  Kartir squeezed his arm. “Breathe, Darayavahoush. They cannot hurt you. They sleep.”

  Dara shook his head, trying not to rip his arm free and tear out of the room. “I do not want to be here.”

  “Neither do they. But I think you need a reminder of the position you’re in, a reminder, frankly, that you’ve sided with the creatures responsible for this. These souls are fortunate; there are at least a dozen more, judging from the relics we have recovered, still out in the human world.”

  Dara forced himself to relax. In the hush of the room, he would swear he heard slumbered breathing.

  Kartir let him go. “This is where I brought Banu Nahri on her first day. She came here afterward—not infrequently. She has a good heart. I pray to the Creator that she’s safe wherever she is.” He paused. “I did not ever think to see the two of you on opposite sides.”

  Nor did I. Dara leaned against the door frame. “I am not capable of fixing this,” he said. “I am not a prophet, not a priest. I am a murderer.”

  “Again with the ‘I,’” Kartir rebuked him. “Tell me, Darayavahoush, what good will you be doing, burning in this hellfire you’re aching to join? Will that help your victims? You have been blessed; you have been granted the power, the privilege, the time—all these centuries you don’t want—to fix things. And when you finally do face our Creator, do you want to say you spent them wallowing in guilt?” Kartir’s expression grew fierce. “Or would you rather say you spent every extra breath fighting for a more just world?”

  “This is an easy thing to preach from the Temple. You do not see the threats we do from the palace or bear the responsibilities of protecting tens of thousands of frightened people ready to tear one another apart.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. But neither do you,” Kartir countered. “Not alone. If Manizheh wants to rule Daevabad, she should be listening to Daevabad—not just the select Daevas who agree with her. She needs to make peace with the djinn and be seen as a unifier, as someone capable of mercy and reason.”

  Dara rubbed his temples, his own slave ring knocking against his skull. It made his stomach churn, recalling the moment he’d considering removing it to kill himself in the hospital.

  But he’d survived, once more against the odds.

  Could he change? Could Manizheh? Because heartbreakingly, Dara did see hints of the leader she might have been if Ghassan had not brutalized her. She was exceedingly brilliant, measured, level headed, and thoughtful. It was not her powers or name alone that had led people to follow her in the wilderness.

  But it would not be easy to sway her.

  It will be even harder to sway the djinn. He felt his face fall. “I would not even know where to start with the djinn. Which of them would possibly want to deal with, let alone trust, us?”

  Kartir gave him an even look. “If I recall, you have a djinn with plenty of experience navigating tribal politics currently languishing in the dungeon.”

  Dara instantly scowled. “Muntadhir would never work with us. He would happily see the entire palace—himself included—crumble into the lake if it meant Manizheh and I went down with it.”

  “You don’t know that. Muntadhir has his weaknesses, yes, but I always got the impression he truly cared about Daevabad and had a genuine affection for our tribe. And it might look good for you to suggest such an outreach,” Kartir added. “Pragmatic and careful. If you want Banu Manizheh to listen to you, you must show that your opinions are worth their weight.”

  “If I let the emir out of his chains, he is going to try to kill me.”

  Kartir clapped him on the back. “A blessing, then, that accomplishing such a feat is so difficult.”

  17

  NAHRI

  It really was beautiful.

  Nahri stared at the ocean. It was the first time she’d ever seen the sea, and it was dazzling, painted so beautifully with the rich colors of approaching dawn that it looked as though the Creator had personally blessed it, the water stretching to meet a hazy horizon. A gull cried as gentle waves caressed the soft beach, the surf rushing forward and pulling back in a steadying, hypnotizing motion.

  “Please say something.”

  It was the second time Ali had begged her to speak since she’d woken to his stammered explanations of sunken boats and mysterious marid. He was a wreck at her side, reduced to only a ragged waist cloth and his weapons belt, mud clinging to his skin and beard. She imagined she looked the same, her dress ruined and scratches covering her skin. Numb, Nahri traced spirals in the sand, disturbing a line of shells and drying seagrass.

  “Nahri—”

  “Is any of our food left? The coins I exchanged the last gems for?” Her voice came out in a scratchy whisper, her throat smarting from the muddy river water that had poured down it and just as painfully been forced back up.

  Ali hesitated. There was worry in that pause, a man wondering how to break bad news.

  “I’m sorry,” he said haltingly. “The boat sank so fast. By the time I got you out of the river, everything that wasn’t already gone was on fire. The marid said it would be safer if we left immediately. He said if Qandisha returned with Darayavahoush, he couldn’t protect us.”

  Nahri twitched at Dara’s name. She could still taste the Nile on her tongue and remember with wrenching clarity the moment she’d lost the battle to keep her mouth shut. How poetic, both of them drowned by the same ifrit.

  Both of them dragged back to life and forced to fight anew.

  A salty breeze blew a lock of messy hair across her face. The ocean wind and swaying palms, the rise and fall of the waves like a slumbering liquid behemoth, it was splendid beyond words, as though she and Ali had actually died last night and been whisked away to a sliver of Paradise. A shame they hadn’t. Maybe in Paradise, Nahri would have been allowed to finally rest.

  “It’ll be okay,” Ali rushed to say, clearly trying to make her feel better. “There are coconuts if you’re thirsty. I didn’t see anything else to eat, but Sobek said if we walked south, we would find ruins there that djinn like to—”

  Nahri burst into laughter.

  It was a wild laugh, followed by another, and then Nahri couldn’t stop, giggling so hard that tears came to her eyes and she struggled for air.

  She wiped the wetness away. “I’m sorry, it’s just … I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it? Do you know how many times I’ve had to do this? Forget healing; my specialty should be having my life destroyed and then being
forced to rebuild from nothing.” Nahri thought of their little boat, now on the bottom of the Nile, along with Yaqub’s precious tools and all the supplies she’d bartered and stolen. The previous days came back to her, idling in the shade of crumbling temples and the long, peaceful hours of sailing past green fields and sun-drenched villages.

  She should have known it couldn’t last.

  “I’m so tired,” she said, her voice cracking. “Everything I build gets broken. My life in Cairo. My dreams for Daevabad. I give everything—everything—I have only for someone to come along and smash it. It’s all for nothing. Nothing.”

  The last word ripped from her in a choked sob, and then Ali was there, reaching for her hand.

  “It’s not for nothing, Nahri,” he insisted. “We can still put things right.”

  She yanked away. “Don’t. Don’t talk like that. Don’t look at me like that,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth. “I don’t need your pity. I don’t need anything.”

  “Nahri.” Undeterred, Ali knelt closer, wiping away the tears blurring her eyes. “You pulled me from my grief when I would have stayed and died with Muntadhir. You’ve saved my life more times than I can count.” He stroked back the hair sticking to her damp cheeks, his voice gentle as he said, “There’s no one else here, my friend. You don’t need to keep up this front.”

  Nahri wanted to protest. To slap his hand away and withdraw to her usual distance. To put on her mask.

  Instead, it all crashed down. She wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but then Ali was hugging her, and she was clinging to him, burying her face in the warmth of his neck.

  “I thought you were dead,” she wept. “I thought I was dead. I thought I’d failed everyone, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even fight back. There were too many of them.”

  Ali pulled her closer. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Qandisha is gone. Her ghouls are gone. She has no idea where we are.”

  “She’ll find us. She was waiting for us.” Fresh despair swept over Nahri. “She has magic we don’t understand. They all do. The ifrit, Manizheh, Dara … and I have nothing. I don’t have my abilities. And my mother …” God, Nahri couldn’t even say the words, for what Manizheh had done was worse. It was magic without magic, and more powerful for it. She’d made Nahri feel worthless. Foolish. Her mother had looked right through her supposed cleverness and read her better than Nahri had ever read a mark, fashioning all her fears and ambitions into a blade of calculated words that knocked Nahri right off her feet.

  “I can’t do this,” she choked out. “I can’t.” Nahri was strong, she was a fighter, but she did not have it in her to pick herself up yet again; to survive this new setback and fight for a future that seemed doomed either way.

  Ali pulled back just enough to meet her gaze. For a moment, the warm gray of his eyes seemed to swim with a darker mist, but then it was gone.

  “I’ll take you back to Egypt,” he promised. “I’ll find a way. Qandisha thinks you’re dead. That’s the story I’ll carry with me to Daevabad and Ta Ntry. You can return to Yaqub and build the life you want without a bunch of magical creatures ruining it. You deserve to.”

  His words went straight to her heart. Nahri could see it, the way out, the escape from all this. She could envision herself in thirty years with her own apprentices, surrounded by the neighborhood children she’d delivered as babes, the fantastic city of Daevabad—the land of djinn and magical courts—fading to legend.

  It would just mean turning her back on everyone else she loved. And then Nahri would be the one breaking what she’d built.

  The sun crested the ocean’s horizon, turning the undulating sea into a wild burst of fiery color. Scorching yellow and winedark crimson, burnt orange and warm copper. It reminded her of Daevabad’s lake on the morning of the Navasatem procession. Of laughing and smiling with her people as they lit lanterns and sang verses to the Creator to celebrate the founding of their home.

  How did Anahid do it? Her descendants might have gone astray—that seemed to happen to all revolutionaries—but still, how had Anahid pulled the tribes together from the ravages of Suleiman’s curse, protected them from the predations of the ifrit, and built a dazzling city? Built an entire civilization? Had she been made of greater stuff than Nahri? Or had she hidden her bone-shaking doubt, forced a confident smile, and carried on while continually praying she wasn’t making a mistake?

  Nahri could feel the weight of Ali’s expectant gaze. Taking a deep breath, she curled her fingers around his and then lifted his hand to her cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “But I need you to help me with something else.”

  Ali had gone still, so close their breath mingled together on the warm air. “With what?”

  “I want to conjure a fire.”

  the sun was high on the horizon by the time they were done digging a small pool at the tide break, their clothes freshly damp with seawater. Nahri carefully floated a cinnamon-colored scalloped shell in the pool, where it glimmered in the orange light.

  She did what she could in terms of ablutions, rinsing her arms and feet in the ocean’s spray, cupping her hands to let water trickle down her face and through her snarled hair. The salt and sand dried on her skin, smelling fresh, the aroma of a new start.

  Nahri beckoned Ali closer and then laid a hand over his heart. “Lift the seal.”

  He complied, and it immediately fell away. They were getting better at this. She conjured a pair of flames in her other hand and used them to light one of the driftwood twigs they’d gathered. Then she let go of him, regret twinging through her as her magic fell away.

  “Can I … can I sit with you?” Ali asked. “I don’t want to intrude or if it’s not allowed …”

  Nahri blinked in surprise. “I wouldn’t have thought you wanted to.”

  Ali gazed back at her, the ocean reflecting in his eyes. “I want to.”

  “Then sit.” She patted the damp sand next to her. Nahri pressed the smoldering stick to the dried tuft of grass she’d stuck in the shell, and it burst into flame. Holding the stick in one hand, she bowed her head, praying quietly in Divasti.

  It felt good to go through the ritual, better than she would have imagined. Nahri hadn’t prayed since she left Daevabad. She hadn’t actually prayed since the dawn of Navasatem when she’d lit oil lamps at Nisreen’s side. Nahri had always had a mixed relationship with her faith, mostly because it felt more like a duty than any true belief. She might be the Banu Nahida, but often she’d felt like a fraud, yearning to share the sincere devotion so many of the Daevas around her enjoyed. She wanted their certainty in a higher power, a meaning to the cruelly chaotic violence that plagued their world.

  Do Manizheh and Dara pray? Was her mother even now leading dawn ceremonies at the Daeva temple and marking the brow of her loyal Afshin? Nahri knew Dara had once been devout—he’d killed people because he’d been told that was what the Creator required.

  And for a long time, that thought alone would have been enough to shake Nahri’s faith. How could she share these rituals, these words, with those who would slaughter innocents in the same Creator’s name? But as she gazed at her crude fire altar and the sunlight-streaked sea, some of her doubts settled.

  Manizheh was a murderer, plain and simple. Her mother could say otherwise all she liked; she was the one who had betrayed their role. For whatever had happened between their peoples, Anahid had built her city for all the tribes. She’d been a healer, a unifier, a woman blessed with miraculous powers by the Divine itself.

  Manizheh did not own that. No one did. Anahid’s legacy and faith were things Nahri had equal claim on and could also be strengthened by.

  She touched the smoldering stick to her brow to mark her skin with ash. Ali wordlessly lowered his head, and Nahri did the same for him. They sat in silence for a moment as the kindling burned and the sun pulled away from the waves.

  “What do they mean?” he asked.
“The prayers?”

  Nahri flushed. “You’d be better off asking a priest. The prayers are similar to yours, at least from what I remember hearing when I used to beg for alms outside mosques as a child.” She stuck the driftwood in the sand, letting the smoke perfume her skin.

  “And the rituals? The fire altar?”

  “The rituals remind us to tend the altar and keep the flames burning.” She bit her lip. “I told Kartir once it seemed like a clever way to remind people to pray, since the fire would otherwise go out, and he told me I was a cynic. Even so, I like the ritual of the motions; they set me at peace. I like the continuity—that Anahid might have done these same things so long ago. That the Daevas have maintained them. That we have survived worse. When I first arrived in Daevabad, Nisreen told me I should take assurance from the flames that survived the night, because there would always be darkness. But as long as you kept a light burning, it would be okay.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Ali said softly. “I never knew that. I probably should have. I should have taken the time to learn what so many people in my city kept sacred.”

  “I imagine the Citadel thought it wiser to teach their soldiers that we were lecherous fire worshippers, not people. Made it easier to hurt us.”

  “That doesn’t excuse my ignorance.” Ali stared at his hands. “I’ve hurt Daevas, and I’ve hurt shafit. I’ve said things and done things that have gotten people killed. I’ve killed them myself.” He lifted his gaze to study the smoldering grass on the floating shell. “We have a verse like that—like what Nisreen said. We say God is the light of the heavens and the earth, that it’s a light as steady and protected as a lamp behind glass and shines as brightly as a star. That it is always there to guide us.”