The woman glanced up, her black eyes pinning Nahri.
Anahid smiled.
“Nahri, let go!”
The vision shattered, replaced with an equally unbelievable sight: Ali’s heart healing before her eyes, the membrane knitting back together and smoothing without a scar. His rib regrowing, nearly spearing her hand as Nahri jerked it away. Tissue, muscle, and skin raced to cover it, and then Ali seized, his eyes shooting open.
“Oh my God,” he gasped, sitting up. “What happened?” He let out a strangled sound as his fingers brushed the rib fragment beside him. “Ah!”
Nahri didn’t answer. She’d fallen with her brother to the floor, both of them weeping.
JAMSHID POKED AT THE RING ON NAHRI’S FINGER. “I thought it would be bigger. And somewhat grander.”
“You’ve spent far too much time with Muntadhir if you’re not impressed by the millennia-old ring, once worn by a prophet, that literally shaped our world.”
“Oh, I’m plenty awed, trust me. Baffled but awed.” A note of worry entered his voice. “How are you feeling?”
Nahri opened and closed her fist. The ring was still hot against her skin but no longer searing. “The room has stopped spinning. And I’m no longer suffering the headache of a woman in town or feeling the urge to vomit alongside a guard two floors below, so that’s a mercy.” She snapped her fingers, a conjured flame bursting between them. “It’s my magic, but it doesn’t feel more powerful than usual. Not like it did when I first put the ring on.”
“Can you sense anything of the seal? I don’t see the mark on your face.”
“Maybe that’s because the ring is still on my finger.” Nahri tapped it against her knee. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this at all.”
“That makes two of us.” Jamshid sighed. “Though you’re clearly the right Nahid to be wearing it.” He sounded ashamed. “Nahri, about before, I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. You were asked to do something you couldn’t possibly know how to do. And I pushed you. If anyone should apologize, it should be me.”
Jamshid didn’t look convinced. “I feel like such a failure. I could have killed him. I would have killed him if you hadn’t been there.”
Nahri knew that feeling. She also remembered the woman who’d picked her back up after all her mistakes and accidents, who’d taught her everything she knew about healing. “This wasn’t your fault. But even if it was, that’s okay—you’re going to make mistakes. Honestly, if you end up doing this work for decades, let alone centuries, you’re almost certainly going to kill someone.” Her stomach twisted. “I know I have. But that’s a fear you’ll have to manage if you want to help the many, many more people you’ll help.” She touched his hand. “Give yourself time, big brother. This takes patience and practice.”
“But we don’t have time.”
“For this we do. On the slim possibility we survive everything and take back our city, I am setting the Daevas straight and going back to my hospital. And if it’s what you want—what you want, not what you think you should do—I will teach you how to be a healer. I promise.”
“I’d like that.” Jamshid glanced past her shoulder. “I know we have a lot more to discuss, but I’ll give you two a minute.”
Nahri followed his gaze to see Ali standing at the door. He’d cleaned himself up, trading his blood-soaked waist cloth for a traveler’s robe. A pale blue turban wound around his head and neck in the Ayaanle fashion, a bag was slung over one shoulder, and his zulfiqar and a new iron knife were sheathed at his belt.
“The tide will be coming in soon,” he said. “I think I should go.”
The blunt reminder that they’d done all this only for Ali to still have to surrender himself to some demonic colossus at the bottom of the sea set despair sweeping through Nahri again. She rose to her feet, trying to force some professional distance into her voice. “How are you feeling?”
A little relief entered Ali’s expression as he rubbed the spot above his heart. “Like the world’s worst thorn was removed.”
Jamshid squeezed Nahri’s hand. “I’ll come find you after.”
But Ali caught Jamshid’s wrist as he attempted to pass. “Thank you, Baga Nahid.”
Jamshid bit his lip, looking like he was contemplating a sarcastic response, but then he simply nodded. “You’re welcome. And good luck, Alizayd.” He left, closing the door behind him.
Ali eyed the table they’d only half cleaned up. “That looks like a lot more blood than was expected.”
Nahri paused, not wanting to delve back into the terror she’d felt watching him die before her eyes. “It got a little complicated.”
He drifted nearer but stayed out of arm’s reach. “I knew it wanted you,” he said, nodding to the ring on her thumb. His lips quirked in amusement, but in his expression Nahri saw poorly concealed grief at the good-bye they both knew he’d returned to say. “How many times have you saved me now?”
“I told you that you’d never get out of my debt.”
“May I confess something?” Ali gazed at her in open sorrow. “I never really wanted to be out of your debt.”
The floor seemed to move beneath her. “Ali—”
“Wait. Please. Please just let me say this.” When Nahri exhaled, letting her silence stretch out, Ali continued. “I don’t regret kissing you. I know it was wrong. I won’t do it again. Yet I cannot make myself regret it. But the way we started, how I stopped—I didn’t want you to think that … that it was impulsive. That I didn’t want it.” He dropped his gaze. “That I haven’t wanted it for a very long time.”
Nahri was going to cry. She was going to scream. This still didn’t seem real; his fate monumentally unfair and almost too awful to truly contemplate. Yet Nahri checked the anguish threatening to tear her apart. He didn’t need anything else to worry about. “I don’t regret it either, Ali.”
He glanced up, looking close to tears as well. “I’m glad,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t do things the proper way by you. Sorry that we couldn’t …” He trailed off, stumbling on the words.
Nahri should have offered them. But she couldn’t. Because if Nahri said those words, she knew he was never going to come back. She knew what happened when she dared to have hopes and dreams.
They got broken.
Instead she took two steps forward and flung her arms around his neck. She didn’t kiss him—she would respect the line Ali had drawn—but she clutched him close, not missing the cool wetness on her cheek. She couldn’t have said which of them was crying.
“Come back,” she begged. “Cut a deal with Tiamat. Flatter her sea snakes, or throw yourself on Sobek’s mercy. Don’t be stupid or reckless or proud. Give her what she wants, Ali, and come back to me.”
He was trembling. “I’ll try.”
Nahri broke away, giving him a fierce look. “No, promise me. Promise me you’ll come back.”
Ali stared down at her. She expected him to say there was no way he could honor such an impossible promise. That he’d already given to Nahri the one thing they knew Tiamat desired.
“I promise,” he whispered.
There was a knock on the door. “Zaydi,” Wajed called. The old warrior sounded heartsick. “It’s time.”
Ali stepped back, but his fingers stayed tangled in Nahri’s for a moment longer. “About Daevabad …”
“We’ve got it,” she said with the most confident smile she could muster—she was still the better liar. She squeezed his hand. “Jamshid and your mother and I. Don’t worry about us.”
“There was never a more capable group.” Ali brushed his thumb over the ring on her finger and then released her hands. “May the fires burn brightly for you, my friend.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “Go with God, Ali,” she returned in Arabic. “Peace be upon you.”
34
ALI
Though the rain had finally broken, the beach was so misty
and humid that Ali was soaked before he spotted the ship Wajed had prepared, driven up on the sand. The tide lapped around the sewn hull, wild and ravenous. There were no stars, no moon, just monsoon clouds glowing faintly with the celestial light they concealed. The ocean, typically so gentle, lashed with spray as storm-churned waves beat against the beach.
Promise me you’ll come back. Nahri’s plea ran through his mind, her eyes wet with tears. Ali could still feel her lips on his, her touch driving him to madness. He was struggling not to. He’d made the most earnest apology he could muster during his last prayer while also being honest with himself and his Creator—there was little point in lying to the One who knew his heart either way.
But Ali feared he might have lied to Nahri. Because he didn’t see a way back from this.
With the ring gone, he could barely check the marid magic rushing through him. Whispers raced through his mind, the damp wind tugging him forward on ribbons of moisture. The wet sand sucked at his sandals, but Ali tried not to look at it. Like others had warned, the tide had carried with it rotting seaweed, decaying fish, and what smelled horribly, impossibly, like djinn blood.
Come, the ocean seemed to beckon, to mock. Ali swore he heard laughter and gripped his zulfiqar in response, aching to hold something familiar as he and Wajed came around the boat.
His mother was waiting. Ali froze, but neither Wajed nor Hatset seemed surprised to see each other.
Hatset crossed her arms. “Did you really think he wouldn’t tell me?”
“Yes,” Ali replied, shooting Wajed a look. “What happened to Geziri solidarity?”
“She’s more frightening than you.”
“And I’m not here to stop you, baba,” his mother assured him. “Everything in my blood screams at me to, but I know I can’t. However, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t help.”
“We filled the hold,” Wajed explained. “All of us. Jamshid and that nutty scholar tried to come up with offerings that might please Tiamat. Gold and incense and silks and ivory.”
Guilt and gratitude rolled over Ali. “You didn’t have to empty half the treasury for me,” he protested. “You might need that for the war.”
Hatset hugged him. “There is nothing I wouldn’t give for you. I am so sorry for the words I spoke before, but I won’t burden you with my regrets or my grief, my love. Just know how utterly honored and proud I am to call you my son.”
“It is I who am blessed to have such a mother.” Ali stepped back, quickly wiping his eyes. “Qaid, you will protect my family?”
Wajed touched his heart and brow in the Geziri salute. “To my dying breath, my king.” He gave Ali a small, sad smile. “I had to call you that at least once.”
“Then let me do the kingly thing and leave before my emotions get the better of me.” Ali stepped into the surf, the sea licking at his legs, and climbed the hull. “If God wills it, I will return.” Under his breath, he added, “—I promise.”
And then Ali fixed his eyes on the horizon. This time when he called to the water, he didn’t have to flinch. The ocean rose around him, the boat bobbing madly, and pulled him out to sea. It happened so fast that Ali didn’t even get a chance to look at his mother again, a curtain of fog rushing between them. In moments, there was nothing but water surrounding him—the clouds threatening another downpour and Tiamat’s sea, dark as indigo.
Sail east, Issa had told him. As far as you can. It is the deepest heart of the ocean where she is said to rest.
But “sail east” was advice easier given than enacted in the dark of a monsoon night with the tide and waves shoving his boat every which way. This wasn’t the languid Nile—the river whose lord Ali now knew he descended from—and the ocean fought him when he reached for the currents, attempting to coax the water into carrying the boat along. He tried to steady the rudder, nearly getting the wind knocked out of him when a wave pitched the boat hard. The rain picked up again, the wind howling past his ears as the ship groaned and creaked, planks protesting.
It was so loud that Ali didn’t think much of it when he heard a squeak on the wood, his arms full of the sail he was attempting to adjust.
Until a voice spoke up behind him. “You’re doing that wrong.”
Ali stilled and then slowly turned around.
To see Fiza standing at the entrance to the hold with her pistol pointed at his head.
“NO, DON’T DROP IT,” FIZA WARNED WHEN ALI MOVED to let go of the sail. “I’d rather see your hands on that than on your weapons. And don’t try anything magical. If you, the ocean, the fog, or so much as a stray drop of rain make any strange moves, you’re going to get a bullet in your brain, and there’s no Nahid around to save you.”
“Fiza, you really should not be here.”
“And why’s that?” She let out a laugh, but it sounded forced. “I’ve got a ship, more treasure than I can spend in ten lifetimes, and my enemy at the end of a gun. For a pirate, I’d say I’m doing well.”
My enemy. The blood-stained bandage wrapped around her head caught his attention. “I’m sorry for hurting you,” Ali said softly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, Nahri told me. Some evil marid got in your head and made you do it. An even worse one wants to eat you up, or it will devour the whole coast. So what’s this, then? Are you running? You’re certainly carting enough riches to set up a nice new life somewhere the beach isn’t bleeding and Afshins aren’t after your head.”
“You know I’m not running.”
Fiza’s hand trembled on the pistol. “Yesterday I would have believed that. I was starting to believe in you, in all these things you’ve been saying about a new Daevabad and equality for my people. I was getting ready to follow you, you bastard,” she said, her voice breaking. “You made me think it might be possible. That if I went home, if I was some kind of hero, maybe all the other things I’ve done wouldn’t matter.”
She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t ask. Despite her constant mocking and evasion, Ali had long had the impression that Fiza had survived much, much worse.
He so desperately didn’t want to see her die now. “Fiza, you can’t follow me. Not where I’m going. Nahri didn’t lie, and I don’t think the marid have any intention of letting me leave.”
“So this was all for nothing, then? Nahri’s and your big plans? You go get eaten by the ocean, and the murderers running Daevabad slaughter everyone I grew up with?”
With Nahri and his mother, Ali could put on a noble face. But he wasn’t going to lie to another shafit he’d failed. Part of him hoped she’d just shoot him and get this all over with. “Seems like it. Take me east a bit farther, if you don’t mind, and then throw my body over the side. Keep the ship and the treasure. Someone deserves to escape all this.”
Ali dropped his hands from the sail.
Fiza didn’t shoot him. Utter fury crossed her face—she certainly looked like she wanted to shoot him. But then she lowered the gun, shoving it back in her belt. “Pick that back up.”
“What?”
“Pick that back up, you infuriating son of an ass. You haven’t been going east, you’ve been going north. So I’m in charge now since you’re too shitty a sailor to do anything right. I’ll get you to your marid witch—and then, more importantly—I’ll get you back.”
Ali was speechless, certain he’d heard that wrong. “I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us,” Fiza muttered, pushing Ali out of the way so hard she nearly knocked him into the sea. “I’m helping you, prince. The right fucking thing to do and all that.”
“There’s no helping me,” Ali argued. “I’m not getting out of this. All you’ll do is get yourself killed, and I won’t—”
“I didn’t ask your permission. And I’m not doing this for you,” she snapped. “I’m doing this because I want you to go back to Daevabad and make good on the promises you made my people. I won’t let this all be for nothing.”
“Fiza …” Ali let out an exasperated sound.
“Tiamat is just as likely to swallow me, you, and the boat whole if you stay. Please,” he added when she ignored him to adjust the rudder. “I’ve gotten enough shafit killed.”
“More reason to go back to Daevabad and see us free.” Fiza did—something—and the ship immediately seemed less rocky. “My mother could still be there,” she said, seeming to be talking to herself. “I think I’d like to see her again.”
“The only thing we’re going to see is the seabed.”
Fiza flashed a glare that could have burned Ali to a crisp. “You know how you’re always going on about how much you respect the shafit and want them to be equals? Shut your mouth and prove it. Respect my decision, stop arguing, and make yourself useful.”
That did shut him up. Ali swallowed hard, then asked, “What can I do?”
She showed him, and for the next few hours Ali jumped at her commands, tacking and furling and a bunch of other things that made no sense but allowed the ship to sail through the storm as if by magic. It was exhausting work, but it kept his mind off what they were moving toward, and Ali would gladly have let the ropes burn his hands and the spray soak his skin for days if it meant delaying the inevitable.
Sooner than he expected, though, the wind died completely. The rain still lashed their faces, but otherwise there was no movement. It was impossible to see anything in the thick fog, as though they were floating in a black cloud rather than upon a vast sea.
“We must be pretty far out by now, yes?” Ali asked, his heart skipping. “Maybe she forgot about me.”
Fiza looked uneasy. “They said nothing but ‘give yourself to Tiamat by the next high tide’?”
“I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to ask questions.”
“Because of the threat to Ta Ntry?”
“Because I found out I’m descended from a Nile marid who created my family in the hopes of destroying the djinn world.”
Fiza spun to look at him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a long story.”
The ship abruptly dropped.
The Empire of Gold Page 46
