The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  “Where is my ring?” he wheezed, wrapping his hands around the ifrit’s throat.

  Vizaresh writhed, spitting fire. “Gone,” he choked out, nodding at Dara’s right wrist. “You’ve that now.”

  Dropping him, Dara glanced down. He recoiled at the contraption embedded in his wrist. A brass sheath like an archer’s bracer bordered by raw scar tissue and seeping, gold-flecked black blood. Set in the center was his relic, the amulet hammered out and flattened.

  What is that? What has been done to me?

  Sick with dread, Dara forced himself to look around. They were in the palace infirmary, but it had been emptied save for him and Vizaresh. Tools he couldn’t recognize, scorched rags, and broken apothecary bottles littered the worktables as though someone had gone into a frenzy.

  Dara shoved aside his broken chains. He’d been strapped to a low metal table set over a smoldering fire, and the smoke smelled wrong. He searched for what might have fed the flames, but there were no charred pieces of wood, or any oil. Instead, frayed bits of crumbling linen drifted through the air. Dara swept a hand through the ash lying thick in his lap, examining the crumbling remains. Tiny black shards peppered the pale dust.

  Bone.

  He reeled. “What is this?” There was so much ash. So much. “What did she do?”

  Vizaresh had backed away and was massaging his throat. “You were all but dead by the time Aeshma and I brought you back. One of your traitors injected you with iron solution. A brilliantly ghastly idea, to be honest. It’s still in you. Manizheh said there was no way to extract it from your blood without her magic. So she needed another way to save you.” His gaze met Dara’s, vicious and knowing. “How fortunate she was in possession of her dead kin. You know what they say about the power of the Nahid—”

  Dara cried out, heaving away the bone fragments in his hands and trying to scramble out of the burning pit. He stumbled to his knees and sent up more clouds of ash. It was on his tongue, in his eyes, clinging to his skin.

  The Nahid bodies from the crypt, oh, Creator. Men and women and children, all who’d died under the Qahtanis’ thumb. His blessed Nahids, denied the peace of death to rot under the lake and then only burned so their sacred flame could bring back an abomination—him. Dara lurched from the ash, landing on the cold tile and retching a molten substance that scorched the floor.

  Vizaresh was laughing. “Oh, Afshin, don’t despair! At least she survived. Such a nasty business, coups. I’ve seen my slaves dragged into more than I can count, and they’re always so much more violent than originally planned. When they’re not successful, however?” The ifrit’s eyes glittered. “Nothing quite as vicious as vengeance from those who almost lost power.”

  Dara clutched for a stool, trying to climb to his feet. “Where is she?”

  “In the arena. It was the only place big enough.”

  The only place big enough? Dara moved forward, the entire room swaying. Desperate, he called for his magic, but it came to him in jerky, uneven waves. Fire swept over him in patches, only one hand turning to flame, the pain vanishing down his left side but not his right.

  Creator, what is wrong with me? Dara made it to the infirmary door and fumbled as if drunk for the handle.

  “You should have flown, Afshin,” Vizaresh said again. “The Nahids do not deserve your loyalty. No one in their world does. Were you a wiser man, you would have seen that before destroying yourself for them.”

  “I am part of the reason for their world being the way it is. I will not abandon them.” Dara pulled open the door.

  And then he prayed he was not too late to save his Banu Nahida.

  THE PALACE WAS EERIE, SILENT AND EMPTY, THOUGH the bright sun streaming through the stone balustrades indicated it was midday. Dara’s heart raced, his breath echoing raggedly in the dusty corridors. Where were all the stewards? The servants and soldiers and scribes? The dozens of people who should have been milling about and hustling between appointments, all involved in the anxious running of a new, haphazard government attempting to stave off civil war and mass starvation?

  Manizheh is alive, Vizaresh had said. His Banu Nahida had survived. Dara tried to banish all other thoughts as he rushed forward. They could fix this. He could still fix whatever this was.

  The stench of blood hit him when he was still very, very far from the arena.

  By the time Dara was staggering through a back passage, the miasma of rot and released bowels was so thick on the air that it choked him. It was the smell of a battlefield, bringing him back to the worst memories of his life. But there should have been no battlefield in the arena, in this palace—in the heart of the Daeva Quarter that Dara had done everything to protect. How could the djinn have broken in? How many people had they killed?

  At the sound of a woman’s scream, he broke into an uneven run. Finding the door ahead locked, he kicked it down with a grunt.

  Dara had two arrows pointed at him in an instant. And yet the sight brought him relief—their bows were held by his warriors.

  “Afshin,” one of the men, Piroz, breathed. “Thank the Creator.” He was shaking.

  Dara gripped his shoulder. “What is going on? I just woke up in the infirmary; the palace is empty—”

  Another scream came from the arena.

  Dara stepped forward, but the second Daeva soldier moved to block him.

  “Forgive me, Afshin,” he said. “But the lady asked that she not be interrupted.”

  “Interrupted?”

  The soldiers exchanged an uncertain look. Piroz spoke. “She … she is punishing the traitors.”

  The way he said that sent ice flooding into Dara’s veins. “Stand aside.”

  “But we have orders to—”

  At that, Dara shoved the soldiers apart and strode through. “I do not die,” he warned. “If you shoot me in the back with weapons I taught you to use, remember that.”

  There was broken sobbing as he pushed through the last door. “Forgive me, my lady. I confess, I confess!”

  “I do not want your confession.” Manizheh’s voice was colder than he’d ever heard it. “I’ve made clear what I require from you. Give your name, and I will spare your child.”

  Dara rushed into the arena.

  He fell to his knees.

  Bodies were everywhere. Dozens, hundreds. Men and women of all ages, and if he spotted no children, there were enough youths who skirted the edge. All were Daeva, many still wearing ash marks, their glassy black eyes opened to the sky. Some had their throats slashed, but more had puncture wounds to their hearts, their clothes soaked in blood that ran out into the sand, as thick and copious as the Geziri blood that had flowed across the palace gardens not long ago.

  But Daeva blood wasn’t supposed to spill like this again. That had been the focus, the entire point, of their war. Dara wavered on his knees, gazing across the sand.

  Just in time to witness the woman kneeling at Manizheh’s feet plunge a dagger into her own chest.

  Dara let out a soundless cry, aghast and not understanding. The royal viewing platform had been stripped to its marble surface, and Manizheh, her head bare and her hair in loose, tangled waves, stood in the ceremonial gown he’d seen her in the day of the failed meeting with the djinn envoys. It was now entirely black with blood. She watched dispassionately as the woman crumpled to the ground.

  From the shadows behind Manizheh, Aeshma emerged. The ifrit pulled the blade from the dead woman and kicked her with his foot off the platform and onto the tangle of bodies splayed across the sand. As he straightened up, his gaze met Dara’s.

  A look Dara had never seen from the mocking, haughty ifrit leader crossed Aeshma’s face. It was … hunger. The anticipation of something more ancient and longed for than Dara could even imagine. As if Aeshma could scent the despair and horror radiating off Dara and wanted to taste it, to rip his teeth into them all.

  And then it was gone. Aeshma handed the dagger back to Manizheh.

  She stroked her finge
rs through the blood coating the blade, a twisted caress. She shivered, her lips briefly parting.

  Aeshma spoke. “Your Afshin has joined us.” It sounded like a warning.

  Dara rose shakily from the ground, gazing in horror at the gory sand that stretched between them. He could not bear to cross it. “What have you done?”

  She wiped the flat part of the dagger on her hand. “It seems Muntadhir was right about the fickle loyalties of the Daeva noble houses.” Manizheh met his gaze, and the haunted vacantness in her eyes chilled Dara to the core. “So now there are no more Daeva noble houses.”

  He swayed on his feet. “Not all these people betrayed you.”

  “No, but their kin did. A lesson needed to be taught.”

  Dara’s gaze fell back to the ground. A young woman lay curled on her side, a hand still pressed to her torn throat. She looked younger than Nahri had been when Dara found her in Egypt.

  “Don’t.” Manizheh’s voice was brittle. “You did worse at Qui-zi. You did worse during your rebellion against Zaydi al Qahtani. They wanted to put Muntadhir on the throne. He would have killed every Daeva who even thought about giving us support.” She gestured wildly with the knife. “We tried another way. We tried mercy and kindness and were betrayed in return. This is all anyone understands.”

  Dara stared at her, but he could not summon the rage of their earlier fights. Because even as his faith in the Nahids finally, fully shattered, his heart broke for her. For the brilliant healer who should have been making advances in her field and saving lives instead of becoming a ruthless killer. For the woman who was clever and brave and who might have been a good leader in another world. Who should have seen her children grow up in safety and taken pride in the people they’d become.

  He wanted to weep for her, for all of them. “My lady …”

  “They killed Kaveh. Our people, Dara. They tore him apart in the street like animals.” Her voice broke in raw grief, her bloodshot eyes wet.

  Kaveh. Dara felt like his legs had been cut out from underneath him. He and the grand wazir had argued plenty, but Kaveh had been Jamshid’s father and a determined, ruthless advocate for their tribe.

  And the Daevas had killed him for it. Dara could not imagine a more destabilizing loss for Manizheh.

  She shook her head. “The men put their hands on me, thought to bind me, saying surely I understood. That no one wanted to hurt me—I was their blessed Nahid, but it was time for men who knew better to step in. For a Qahtani to step in,” she said, spitting the name. “They would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Aeshma.”

  “I am sorry.” Dara didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m sure you are.” She stared at him. “They knew. They knew exactly how to take you out, and it was because of your actions in the hospital.”

  Dara tried to move forward, stepping over the bodies. “Banu Manizheh …”

  “No.” The rebuke was a slap in the face. “Afshin, I care for you. But I do not need your misplaced guilt right now.”

  Guilt. She thinks it’s guilt I feel right now?

  The door to the back of the platform opened, and his heart dropped further. Irtemiz and one of his newer recruits had a bound and gagged Muntadhir between them. The emir had been beaten; bruises and bloody gashes covered his bare, dirty skin; and his beard was hacked away.

  But defiance burned in his eyes even as they shoved him to his knees in front of Manizheh. He glared up at her with open hatred.

  We never had a chance with him, Dara realized. The dancer back at the feast who’d tried to warn him about Muntadhir had been right. They had killed his people and his father, so Muntadhir had struck back, planning their destruction the best way he knew how and smiling the entire time.

  A new dread stole over Dara. “The djinn representatives …”

  “Gone,” Manizheh replied. “They fled to their quarters like rats before the ifrit could catch them. They were in on it. All of them. Do you understand now, Afshin? There is no one we can trust. Not the Daeva nobles. Not the djinn. Not anyone who’s ever paid even lip service to Ghassan. They are poisoned. They are infected.” She reached down, grabbing Muntadhir by his hair. “And you are the disease. Look upon your allies, al Qahtani. Pleased to have more blood on your hands?”

  Muntadhir gazed wordlessly upon the dead.

  Dara watched more rage burn through Manizheh at the emir’s haughty silence. “Nothing? We really are pawns to you, aren’t we? Seduce one, marry another. Kill us, torture us, crush us, and then when we finally fight back, turn us against one another.” She ripped the cloth from his mouth. “Your companions are all dead. Every single Daeva who enjoyed your company. Every single one rumored to have enjoyed your company. No regrets?”

  Muntadhir looked up at her. “I regret not watching you weep as you tried to find all Kaveh’s pieces.”

  Dara would swear the palace itself trembled with her anger.

  “Ghassan’s son until the end,” she hissed. “A selfish, venomus snake.” Manizheh nodded at the soldiers. “Hold him still. The sand fly thinks tears a weakness, so surely he won’t mind if I relieve him of the ability to have them.”

  Some of Muntadhir’s courage seemed to leave at that. He writhed against the soldiers, and Dara did not miss the cruel triumph with which Irtemiz grabbed Muntadhir’s face, clapping a hand over his mouth. Irtemiz’s desire for vengeance didn’t surprise Dara—it was a desire he knew damn well he’d stoked during their years in the wilderness. A desire that would only have grown when she watched her friends and her lover die at the hands of Muntadhir’s brother, and when she’d been threatened with death in the hospital.

  But Dara averted his gaze. He didn’t need to watch. Muntadhir’s scream was loud enough from behind Irtemiz’s hand.

  Manizheh stepped back, and they dropped him. Muntadhir fell to his knees with an agonized wail in Geziriyya, blood pouring from where his left eye should have been.

  “I shall leave you the other for now,” Manizheh said coldly. “For I want you to look upon your sister when I catch her. I want her death to be the last thing you see.”

  At that, Dara spoke up again. “Banu Manizheh, if you kill the princess, her mother—”

  “I have taken care of Hatset and her message. I have taken care of it all.” She gazed at him. “You should go, Afshin. I do not think you are entirely recovered.”

  She lifted a hand. And then, with a beckoning motion, she did something she should not have been able to do.

  Manizheh used magic.

  The door behind him flew open with a bang, and a gust of wind hit him in the chest, a firm push. Dara stumbled back, shocked and betrayed.

  “Forgive me, Afshin. But I’m doing things my way now.”

  32

  ALI

  His mother’s gaze might have been a thousand miles away. “I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. It’s not.”

  Jamshid had been pacing the same route along the carpet for so long that it was beginning to make Ali dizzy. “And I’m sure Tiamat will hold off from drowning us all because we declared it impossible.”

  “Then you go give yourself to her, Baga Nahid.” Hatset glared at Jamshid. “It was Anahid who stole her lake, Nahids who forced the marid to serve them. Why should my family, my son—who has done nothing to any of them—pay the price?”

  Ali stayed silent. He hadn’t spoken since denying Sobek at the river, letting the Nahid siblings fill Hatset, Wajed, and Issa in on what had transpired. He didn’t know what to add that wouldn’t shatter his mother further or make the man he called uncle look as though he hadn’t just aged a hundred years. Ali was supposed to be the reckless optimist, the idealist who never gave up.

  But there was no fixing this.

  So he said nothing. Instead, he stared at his stinging hands, which were cracked and dry. Ali had scrubbed his skin until it bled upon his return to the castle, scouring away every last bit of moisture, every physical reminder of the monsoon marid that he could.<
br />
  Not that it mattered. Ali couldn’t undo what had happened or what he’d learned.

  It’s not possible. Ali found himself repeating his mother’s desperate words. He’d come to terms with the fact that his father had been ready to turn into a butcher, a man he was required to stand against. But this, oh, God. Sobek was beyond even that. He was a creature from another age, another element. A world that had required blood and rites, which Ali’s had rightfully stomped out.

  Those couldn’t be his roots.

  The door to his room opened, and Nahri slipped through the sliver of light. Ali dropped his gaze to the floor; he couldn’t look at her.

  “Fiza is all right. She took a nasty bump to the head, but she’ll be fine.” Nahri hesitated. “But she said she was leaving.”

  Ali closed his eyes. Everything they’d knit together was falling apart.

  Jamshid’s voice grew even more alarmed. “What about her ship? Her crew?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Nahri said. Ali could sense from her voice that she was studying him. “But people know something’s up. Apparently as the tide’s been going out, it’s been leaving lumps of gristle and blood and rotting fish on the sand.”

  Dead silence met that until Jamshid broke it. “Maybe we should all be going with Fiza.”

  “We don’t have enough ships to evacuate even half the people here,” Wajed pointed out. “And by the next tide? All we’d do is put ourselves on the ocean when it smashes into the coast. If the marid meant their threat, the timing was deliberate. Not to mention the rest of the djinn and humans on the coast won’t have any warning at all.”

  Ali finally spoke. “Then I need to go. There is no other way.”

  His mother whirled on him. “I will lock you in a cell if you say that again.” Denial and grief warred in her voice. “You’re not going anywhere, Alu. This is preposterous. Our family hasn’t had anything to do with the marid in centuries, no matter what involvement this Sobek claims he had with our ancestors. And I won’t lose you,” she said, her hand trembling as she waved a finger in his face. “Not again.”