Nahri, however, did exactly that. “He’s not bad.”
“You are an exceedingly frustrating person to talk to.”
“It’s a point of pride.” Nahri changed the subject as Hatset led her down another empty corridor. Aside from a gray-striped cat stalking a spider, there were no other signs of life in the quiet castle. “Your nephew mentioned that you sent people away. Is that true?”
“As many as I could convince. The Afshin sent people fleeing to their provinces with warnings of fire and retribution. If Manizheh came for Jamshid and burned this place to the ground, I didn’t intend for all of us to be killed.” Regret filled the queen’s voice. “A shame. This castle should be filled with the laughter of children, and I would have liked to see my son greeted by all his cousins and aunts. But it wasn’t worth the risk.”
The sincerity in the statement undid some of Nahri’s anger. Hatset had always been harder to hate than Ghassan—Nahri could relate too well to a woman for whom politics and family had left limited options.
They entered the castle’s courtyard. It was half garden, half ruin, and utterly beautiful. Mirrored stepping stones lined the sandy path, reflecting the full moon with silvery pools of light. A rushing stream divided the courtyard, pale trees stretching to climb through the latticed ceiling.
“This is incredible,” Nahri said admiringly. “I feel like I’m walking through the forest.”
“You should see it when the magic works.” Hatset trailed her fingers along a fern. “My father always says this is how djinn should live. On the edge and among the wilderness, closer in spirit to our ancestors than in ‘messy human cities.’ He never did think much of Daevabad.” Longing filled her voice. “I had a far gentler childhood than my own children, and I could never help but wonder how they might have blossomed here. How at ease Zaynab might be if she wasn’t confined to a harem full of politicking noblewomen. The kind of scholar Ali could grow into if he’d never had to pick up a zulfiqar.”
“They wouldn’t be themselves,” Nahri replied, almost without thinking. She couldn’t imagine Ali and Zaynab divorced of their royal identity.
“Perhaps not,” Hatset mused.
“Was it your choice to leave?” Nahri asked. Hatset seemed like she was in a talkative mood, and Nahri was never one to turn away information—but she was also genuinely curious.
The queen shrugged. “I’m not sure people like you and I have true choices. Ghassan was looking for a new wife and made clear he’d be open to a spouse from Ta Ntry. The merchant families convened, and I was at the top of the list. It sounded like an adventure, a chance to support my tribe. He was a handsome, clever king, and deeply charismatic. I arrived wary, only to find he’d had my entire wing enchanted to look like a Ntaran castle.”
Nahri glanced at her, surprised by the sorrow in the older woman’s expression. “You loved him.”
“I think we loved each other as much as we could. His loyalty was to Daevabad first and mine to Ta Ntry. Then when our children were born, I had no idea how fiercely I’d love them and how desperate I’d be to protect them from political fates that now seem unbearable.” She shook her head. “And I could not forgive him for banishing Ali. I think I could have excused Ghassan a great many awful things, but sending our son to die—he stomped out himself the part of my heart he’d once claimed.”
Nahri flinched. She knew how that felt.
Hatset was studying her. “Here, now I have spilled the details of my marriage, so you must do the same. I know you did not love Muntadhir, but do you think you could have one day ruled at his side?”
Nahri considered the question. A few weeks ago, she would have ducked it—this wasn’t the first time Hatset had tried to pry into her marriage. Muntadhir and Ali had been rivals, and Muntadhir’s alliance with the Daevas through his Nahid wife had been one of his strongest hands.
But that had all crashed down, and she found herself answering with more honesty than she usually did. “I don’t know. I was willing to sacrifice a lot for my people, but I don’t think I could have stood at Muntadhir’s side if he’d turned into his father. And if he’d managed to change and stand up to his father, I think one of the first things he would have done was divorce me. We were terribly matched.”
Hatset offered a grim smile. “A diplomatic statement. Prickliness aside, I do respect you, Banu Nahida. You have an admirable pragmatism, a willingness to hold contrary ideas in your head. I expected Manizheh’s daughter to be clever—but your wisdom, that I did not prepare for.”
“I am glad to be a surprise,” Nahri said drily. “Did you know her? My mother, I mean.”
“Not well, though I’m not sure anyone save her brother knew her well. Ghassan and I were only married a few years when she vanished, and I avoided her at court.”
“Because of Ghassan?”
“No, not because of my husband’s infatuation.” Hatset turned to look Nahri in the face. “Because she scared me, Banu Nahri, and I am not a woman who frightens easily. I still remember Ghassan bringing me to the infirmary to meet ‘his esteemed Nahids,’ as he called them. It made my skin crawl—they were so obviously prisoners, and it shocked me that my husband couldn’t see that. Rustam was so jumpy in his presence that he couldn’t hold a cup steady.”
Yet you were willing to make us prisoners again. But Nahri didn’t say that. “And Manizheh?”
“I’d heard the Daevas whisper that she was a goddess. I dismissed it as fire-worshipper superstition,” Hatset said, a note of apology in her voice. “But it was an apt description, and Manizheh knew it. You could see the rage, the resentment boiling behind her eyes, that inferior creatures such as we would dare to contain her. I remember thinking that I had no doubt if the winds of politics ever changed, she would not suffer a moment’s hesitation in killing us all.” Regret crossed her face. “And in a small way, I cannot blame her.”
Neither can I. Nahri despised the violence her mother had wrought, but she couldn’t blame her for striking back. Manizheh had gotten to Nahri that night on the roof, tugging hard at the part of her that wanted to stop bowing. That wanted to stop being afraid.
Nahri had denied her. And now she was surrounded by people she didn’t trust, with no clear path forward.
Hatset was staring at her as though she could read Nahri’s mind. “They won,” she said. “At least for now. Your mother sits on the throne, your Afshin stands at her side, and the Daevas reign supreme over the wreckage of the Citadel and the ruin of the Qahtanis. So how does the consummate survivor—a woman who submits to the marriage bed of her enemy, who denounces the Afshin she is said to have loved—end up here instead of with them, Suleiman’s seal on the brow of my son?”
“I would hope most people who saw what I did at the palace would stand against her.” Nahri shivered, remembering the screams of Ghassan’s guards as they clawed at their heads. “The poison my mother conjured was awful, and most of the Geziris it killed were completely innocent. Servants and scribes and normal people who just had the bad luck to get caught in the games of the powerful on the wrong night. Children.” She paused, seeing the little boys in their bloody festival clothes again. Nahri didn’t imagine she’d ever forget them. “It’s a con,” she said, freshly angry.
“A con?”
“It’s supposed to be the mark of a wise leader, right? The willingness to make sacrifices for a greater good? But nobody ever asks those ‘sacrifices’ if they’re willing—they get no say in whether or not their kids die for some supposed greater good. And I come from people like that,” she said, recalling Yaqub’s jaded description of Egypt’s latest war. “From a country that’s been fought over by foreigners for centuries. We die, and we bleed, and it’s a debt the powerful never repay.” Nahri trembled. “I don’t want to be part of that.”
Hatset looked at her for a very long moment. It was an assessing sort of stare. When the queen spoke again, it sounded like she’d come to some sort of decision. “As I said, wise.”
&nbs
p; “Or foolish. Because I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight someone who’s always going to be more willing to exact violence.”
“You outwit them.” Hatset turned away. “Come. There is someone you should see.”
Nahri was thrown by the comment. “There is?”
“You are not our only recently arrived visitor from Daevabad.”
Bewildered, Nahri followed Hatset as she strode off, heading for a small corridor tucked behind a large library—the library Ali had mentioned. Nahri longed to peek inside but settled for a glimpse of bookshelves soaring to a distant ceiling and beautiful windows of vibrantly colored glass.
Hatset nodded to the Ayaanle woman she’d seen in soldier’s dress earlier and exchanged a few words of Ntaran before the guard opened the door, revealing a cozy room filled with candles. A small, elderly man was wrapped in blankets and sitting before a steaming bowl. He looked up as they arrived, his green eyes exhausted.
Nahri gasped. “Ustadh Issa.”
NAHRI WAS AT ISSA’S SIDE THE NEXT MOMENT, HER healer’s instincts kicking in. He looked terribly frail, his brilliant green eyes dim and the glimmer gone from his smoky black skin. She had had no idea how the freed slaves might have reacted once magic was stripped—their bodies were conjurements themselves, and truthfully, Nahri had been almost too frightened to contemplate the consequences.
But it seemed the Creator had granted her this one mercy. She took Issa’s hand; it felt too light. “Are you all right?” she asked hurriedly.
He let out a hacking cough. “No,” he wheezed. “I hate traveling.” His bleary gaze focused on her. “Oh! But you are not dead. That is very good.”
“I like it,” Nahri replied, helping him sit up. “How did you get out of Daevabad?”
“The Afshin aided me. Razu made some sort of deal with him, appealing to his fellowship as a former slave.”
Nahri opened and closed her mouth. Dara had helped Issa escape? Had he acted without Manizheh’s knowing?
She shut down the thought before it dared spark even an ember of hope. No, Nahri was not going to lose herself in the madness of wondering if there was still goodness in Dara.
Hatset spoke. “I’ve kept Issa’s identity a secret thus far; people think he’s a cousin. I wanted to let him recover. And then with your and Alizayd’s arrival, I wanted to be careful in deciding what information should come out.”
Nahri’s heart dropped. “Is it worse? The vapor, the rest of the Geziris—”
“They survived,” Hatset assured Nahri quickly, although her tone indicated she was anything but comforted herself. “Zaynab escaped the palace, thank God, and was able to warn the Geziri Quarter in time for people to get rid of their relics. She and Ali’s warrior woman are safe for now, as safe as they can be. Issa says the shafit and Geziri neighborhoods have effectively barricaded themselves off, along with the other tribal districts.”
Barricaded themselves off? “Wait, do you mean Manizheh doesn’t control the city?”
Ustadh Issa let out a mournful sound. “No one controls anything. It’s chaos. Anarchy.” He raised a trembling finger. “Such civil strife is the greatest danger to society!”
Nahri straightened up like a shot. “Ali needs to hear this.”
“There’s one more thing.” Hatset met Nahri’s gaze. “Issa says Muntadhir is still alive.”
Worries over Daevabad’s security situation fled Nahri’s mind. “That’s not possible,” she whispered. “He was struck with the zulfiqar. I saw its poison spreading with my own eyes.” She whirled on Issa. “How do you know this? Have you seen him?”
The scholar shook his head. “No, but others have. Banu Manizheh sent a note to the princess saying she’d kill him if Zaynab didn’t surrender.”
Nahri was buzzing with new information. Daevabad hadn’t yet entirely fallen—though she wasn’t sure being on the brink of a civil war was much better. Muntadhir was possibly still alive, a prisoner in the palace.
And yet even as a bit of relief flooded through her, so did a strange foreboding, like waking from a dream into the harsh reality of day. So quickly all Nahri’s chains were coming back. Another foreign city and deadly political court. Jamshid, the brother Nahri needed to protect, a weakness that others could use against her.
And now the husband she’d never wanted, a good man whose honorable death she’d truly mourned, might still be alive. It all fell heavily on her shoulders, a mantle of yet more responsibility.
Nahri took a deep breath, trying to focus. “I need to tell Ali and Jamshid.” She couldn’t believe Hatset hadn’t done so already.
Hatset laid a hand on her wrist. “That’s not a good idea.”
“And why in God’s name is it not—”
The queen was already pulling her out of the room. “Excuse us, Ustadh,” she said to Issa, before shutting the door and leaving herself and Nahri alone in the narrow corridor. “Banu Nahri, you know my son. How do you think Alizayd will react when he learns Muntadhir is alive and being held prisoner by Manizheh? When he learns his sister is struggling to stay out of her clutches and the city is in open civil war?”
He’s going to go summon a marid and beg it to drop him off in Daevabad’s lake. But Nahri shook her arm free. “He’s not as rash as he once was. And this is good news! If Manizheh’s control of the city is weak, we might actually stand a chance of taking it back!”
The queen shook her head. “Neither of you should be thinking about Daevabad yet, let alone the ludicrous prospect of warring with Manizheh and her Afshin. Our world is in chaos, not just a single city, and people want nothing more than to get their magic back—the magic Manizheh is promising to return to whoever hands you and Ali over to her. The two of you need to stay in Shefala, long enough to establish an independent court with its own army. A court attractive and stable enough that the other tribes will want to ally with the two of you, not submit in fear to her.”
Under different circumstances, Nahri would have seen the pragmatism in Hatset’s suggestion.
But these weren’t those circumstances. “We don’t have that kind of time, Hatset. I wish we did. But I know how badly my mother wants Suleiman’s seal. The moment she finds out we’re here, she’s going to send Dara—”
“She can’t send him. Issa says the Afshin appears to be the only one left with magic. Manizheh must be relying on him to hold Daevabad.” Hatset’s voice grew more fervent. “Child, it buys you both time. A degree of safety.”
But Daevabad doesn’t have time. Issa’s words ran through Nahri’s head again. How long could the city survive, isolated and cut off, with the tribal quarters at one another’s throats? How quickly would people run out of food, out of patience? If anything, Nahri was filled with a new urgency to return.
“I can’t abandon Daevabad,” she said. “My people are there, my friends, my allies at the hospital.” She considered the second part of Hatset’s suggestion and found it uncharacteristically impractical. “And to establish a court in Ta Ntry? You were just telling me how much the djinn here distrust Daevas. Why would they ever accept some Banu Nahida ruling over them?”
“Because of the other reason I don’t want Ali to learn about Muntadhir yet. You won’t just be the Banu Nahida here. You’ll be the queen. Ali’s queen.”
Nahri’s mind abruptly went blank.
“Forgive me,” she stammered, feeling like they’d leapt past several critical steps in this conversation. “But we’re not … I mean, he’s not—”
“King? No, not yet—but he will be. And once Ali declares his kingship, he will marry you, preserving the alliance between our families and tribes.”
Hatset said it all so plainly that Nahri almost felt foolish for being stunned, as if the queen was merely planning what they were having for lunch.
“Just to be clear,” Nahri started again, “you want me to lie to Jamshid and Ali about Muntadhir—a man they love—being alive and then abandon my people and home to a mass-murdering tyrant, all so I can f
orce my rule on a foreign land whose djinn would then really have a reason to hate me?”
“If that’s what you’re taking from ‘make a pragmatic political alliance’—with a man who happens to be utterly smitten with you—instead of going to die in Daevabad in an unwinnable war, then yes.”
Nahri stared at her. If she’d thought she was struggling with her emotions earlier, Hatset might as well have sauntered in, gathered all Nahri’s feelings, stuffed them in a barrel, and then blown it up with human explosives.
Stay focused, be calm. This was like any negotiation, and now was the time to wear her opponent down and find flaws in their offer.
But it wasn’t a deal they were negotiating, it was Nahri’s life and her future. Which was why Nahri—who was normally more careful—chose the wrong part to argue first.
“Your son isn’t smitten with me. Ali has never said anything, done anything—”
“And he won’t,” Hatset said. “He’s devout, Nahri. He follows the rules, and he’s not going to overstep. But surely you know why Ghassan chose you, of all people, to use against him.”
Nahri had no response to that. Ghassan had been as good as she was when it came to reading a mark.
And then Nahri suddenly saw—through new eyes—the longing in Ali’s face when she spoke about them having a life together in Cairo. His nervousness when she touched him. His shy grin as they sailed down the Nile and talked about everything and nothing.
She saw herself. How Nahri felt … better in his presence. Like she could breathe. Like a more open, more honorable version of herself, the Nahri she might have been in a world that hadn’t tried so hard to crush her. Before she could stop herself, Nahri went to a very dangerous place. A place where it was Ali, and not Muntadhir, on their wedding night, Ali burning her marriage mask.
But it wasn’t a vast royal apartment she saw or matching thrones in Shefala’s majlis. It was a book-stuffed bedroom over a tea-scented apothecary closed for the night. A modest home filled with laughter and ease, a place where Nahri wouldn’t need to perform. A person with whom she didn’t need to wear a mask.
The Empire of Gold Page 35
