The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  41

  NAHRI

  The shedu landed lightly on the roof of Shefala’s castle, the pearl-colored peri fluttering down beside them. It was dark, the moon and stars veiled by clouds, but even if it had been midday, Nahri suspected they wouldn’t have been seen. The peris had literally plucked her from the castle’s halls and taken her to a cathedral of ice and snow above the clouds. If they didn’t want to be seen by djinn, they wouldn’t be.

  Must be nice to have power like that, to view problems that are life and death for us as mere errors to be “corrected.” Nahri had sworn never to be a pawn again, and yet here she was, a peri blade in her belt, forced to serve another master in order to save the people she loved. She slipped off the shedu’s back, aware of the peri’s eyes on her.

  “You should leave tonight,” the air elemental chirped. “There is no time to waste.”

  “It that one of your ‘suggestions’ or an order?”

  The peri bowed her head. “You are a mortal with human blood. I would never dare give such a lesser creature an order.”

  “If you call me a ‘lesser creature’ again, I’m going to stab you with this blade.”

  “Such fire.” It sounded like the compliment one would give a toddler and, paired with the peri’s condescending smile, indeed tempted Nahri to draw the dagger. “But that would be unwise. That blade is for the Afshin, no other.” The peri’s voice sharpened. “You must swear not to use it on Manizheh. She has been deemed impermissible.”

  “Not powerful enough for you?” When the peri’s eyes narrowed in warning, Nahri rolled hers. “Fine, I swear. I won’t use your blade on Manizheh.”

  “Good.” The peri stepped back. “They only eat fruit, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Your shedu. He will need to be fed.” Without another word, she vanished, flitting into the dark sky.

  Nahri glanced at the shedu. “Fruit?”

  He purred, a grumbly, grating sound, and then rubbed his head against her shoulder, nearly knocking Nahri from the roof.

  She patted his head, scratching behind his ear. “Oh, all right. I guess you’re not too bad.” She tried to think, her mind spinning. After so many weeks of fretting and loss, the prospect of being in Daevabad by dawn seemed impossible. Dangerous. She needed a plan.

  There is no plan. You fly to Daevabad, throw yourself weeping in Dara’s arms, telling him you’re sorry, telling him you love him—all the things he’d said to her in anguish the night of the attack—until he lets down his guard.

  Then she would put a dagger through his heart.

  I wonder if he’ll crumble to dust again. If it will hurt, if he’ll have enough time to look at me and realize what I’ve done. Nahri’s fingers twitched in the shedu’s mane, and he bumped her hand away.

  He is Manizheh’s weapon, she reminded herself. Dara had made his choice, and thousands had died for it.

  She took a steadying breath. Food. Supplies. The cold distance and calm Nahri needed would come with preparation. It always did. Dara was just another mark. This was just another con.

  Nahri glanced at the shedu. She wasn’t certain how much the creature understood, but she supposed they were going to learn together. “Stay here and out of sight,” she warned. “I’ll be back.”

  She slipped into the castle through a broken rain shutter, landing lightly on her feet in a dark, empty corridor. Doing so made Nahri feel younger, as though she might be breaking into a mansion back in Cairo. She padded down the corridor, startling the guards outside her door.

  “Banu Nahida!” The Geziri one gaped, looking between the closed door and her face. “Weren’t you—”

  “I had a meeting.” Nahri pushed through the doors.

  Jamshid was waiting for her.

  Her brother looked like he’d been there awhile, notes and books spreading across the low table, but he rose from his couch the moment she entered.

  “Nahri.” Jamshid let out a relieved sigh. “There you are. I was starting to worry.”

  Nahri closed the door behind her, silently cursing. Jamshid was the last person she wanted to see right now. She had limited time and couldn’t risk her overprotective brother getting even a whisper of what was going on. “Just checking on patients.”

  “Ever the devoted healer.” Jamshid smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes. “We need to talk.”

  You have no idea. A wave of exhaustion washed over her, and Nahri glanced around, spotting a samovar. “Is that tea hot?”

  “It was.”

  “Good enough.” Nahri was aching for a cup and could always reheat it in her hands, one of the most genuinely blessed parts of having fire magic.

  She crossed to the samovar. It had been crammed onto the same table as her accumulating pharmacy supplies, a tilting stack of tea cups sharing space with her mortar, pestle, and the assorted vials, tins, and herbs she’d gathered to make the paralysis serum for the shafit sailor. Nahri chided herself—she was normally careful about stowing away such dangerous medicines. She was lucky some unfortunate soul hadn’t come through here, topped off their tea with a bit more than sugar, and ended up frozen on the floor.

  Nahri stopped, staring at the vial of serum. There was just the smallest amount left. “Jamshid,” she said softly, “would you mind taking down the storm shutters and dragging the couch onto the balcony? I could use some air.”

  “Certainly.” Nahri heard him scrape back his chair. Always so eager to please. Her brother might never have the grasp of magical healing that she did, but he would be better at the bedside.

  If he survived.

  It took Jamshid several minutes to open the shutters and pull the couch out. Enough time for Nahri to prepare two cups of tea. Perhaps the veiling of the sky had been a peri trick, for when Nahri stepped out onto the balcony, she saw stars and a thin moon now, and through the trees, light reflecting on the ocean.

  She dropped her gaze. This was the balcony upon which she’d stood with Ali, the monsoon churning in his eyes, and if Nahri never saw the ocean again, it would still be too soon. She handed Jamshid his cup of tea and then sat, taking a sip of her own.

  Jamshid mirrored her motion but then made a face. “It’s gone bitter.”

  Nahri smiled at him, her heart breaking. “Snob.”

  “Refined,” he corrected, setting the cup back on the table. His expression turned serious. “Is the queen’s father all right?”

  “He took a pretty bad fall and broke his hip and his wrist. I’ve set the bones, but not even Nahid magic erases old age. I think for now we do what we can while preparing his family.”

  Jamshid sighed. “I don’t have much warmth for the queen and her kin since they tossed me in a cell, but Seif seemed a kind man. How did Hatset take the news?”

  “Like you’d expect a woman who’s had her husband murdered, her son abducted, and her daughter threatened with imminent execution.”

  Jamshid leaned forward on his knees. “I need to go back to Daevabad. We don’t have a choice.”

  “We might.”

  “Nahri, come on. We’ve discussed—”

  “A peri came to me.”

  Her brother jerked upright, staring at her with stunned eyes. “I’m sorry, a what?”

  “A peri came to me.” Nahri set down her tea, trying to judge the minutes, and then, for one of the first times in her life, she told someone everything without prodding. From being plucked out of the hallway and soaring on the shedu to the vast chamber of snowy clouds and the peris’ infuriating “guidance.”

  Jamshid didn’t interrupt. He grew paler as she continued, but there was no despair, no shock—not even when she showed him the icy dagger and explained what was expected of her. He just listened.

  A long moment of silence stretched between them when Nahri was done. Jamshid opened and closed his mouth, but it was the trembling in his hands Nahri looked for and the drop in his shoulders.

  He finally spoke. “So there’s a shedu on the r
oof?”

  “Waiting for his fruit, yes.”

  “Suleiman’s eye.” Jamshid exhaled. “All right, I know this seems bad. But we’ve been searching for a way to take down Dara and Manizheh, right?”

  Nahri was already shaking her head. “They said the dagger couldn’t be used on Manizheh. Even if we succeed with Dara, Manizheh and her ifrit will still be there.”

  “And considering the things Saman was saying about her and those poor firebirds penned up on the beach—” He grimaced. “She must have some sort of magic.”

  The peris’ vague words came back to Nahri. She has taken a step we didn’t anticipate. The half-dead simurgh and the hundreds of slaughtered Daevas … what had Manizheh done to have finally frightened the peris into taking action? “I believe so, yes.”

  “Then we go back together,” Jamshid said firmly, his decision obviously made. “We fight together. I can handle the Afshin. You shouldn’t have to—” He reached out as if to touch her shoulder in assurance.

  His hand quaked badly and then fell back to his lap.

  “I’m sorry, big brother,” Nahri said quietly. “But you won’t be coming with me.”

  Jamshid attempted to push himself up from the couch. He had barely taken two staggering steps when he collapsed, his legs giving out.

  “The tea …” His voice was already thicker. He looked at her wildly. “You poisoned me?”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I mean, you did sort of give me the idea.”

  “My legs …” Jamshid’s expression twisted with horror. And not just horror—with utter betrayal. “No.” He grasped for his legs, clearly struggling to drag them up. “How could you do this to me again?” he choked out.

  Nahri had not known until that moment how truly deep guilt could cut. Her brother might never forgive her for this.

  Tears blurred her vision. “I couldn’t think of another way.” She crossed the space between them to lift him off the floor. She wouldn’t have him found like this. “It will wear off by tomorrow, I swear.”

  Jamshid grabbed her when she tried to pull away, tangling his hands in her shawl as his strength continued fading. “Don’t,” he panted. “Please. You’ll be outnumbered. They’ll kill you!”

  “Then I’ll take as many of them with me as I can.” Nahri shoved her brother’s hands away. “Please understand. I’ve lost everyone I’ve dared to love. I can’t lose you. Not you. You’re good, and you’re kind and you’re going to be a great healer …” Her voice broke at the anguish in Jamshid’s expression. He was scrabbling for her skirts, her wrists, but Nahri stepped out of arm’s reach. “If you get back to Daevabad, take the Nahid texts and go to Subha. You can teach each other.”

  “Please don’t do this,” Jamshid begged, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Nahri, you’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to do this all by yourself! We could wait.” He tried again, clearly searching for any reason to delay her. “Alizayd might still come back!”

  He’d picked the wrong thing to say. If Nahri had been clinging to her last shreds of hope and optimism, the peris’ cynical deal might as well have snatched them from her fingers. She had been foolish to make Ali promise to return; she’d all but sealed his fate the moment she’d opened her heart to him.

  “I don’t think Ali’s coming back, Jamshid.”

  “Nahri, don’t,” he cried, his voice growing weaker as she turned and walked away. “You’re my sister. We can do this together. I don’t need you to save me!”

  I don’t need you to save me.

  Had those not been the words—the exact words—she had flung at Dara the night he’d stolen into her bedroom, intent on “rescuing” her from her decision to marry Muntadhir? The night everything had gone so spectacularly wrong?

  You’re doing to Jamshid exactly what Dara did to you. And Nahri was doing so just as violently, incapacitating her brother in a callous mirror of the way he’d suffered for years. It was as vicious as Dara putting a sword to Ali’s neck and telling her to choose.

  And Jamshid was a warrior. He was clever and brave. He could be an asset, a valuable ally. Nahri could see them flying back to Daevabad together, fighting side by side. She wouldn’t have to be alone; she wouldn’t have to confront this awful task alone.

  But then the memories came to her. Dara crumbling to ash and the light leaving Nisreen’s eyes. The slaughtered shafit in the workcamp and the murdered Daevas from the parade. Ali begging her to cut the seal from his heart, with the lips she’d just kissed.

  Everything I build gets broken. Nahri stepped back from her brother as if she’d been burned.

  “I’m sorry, Jamshid,” she said as she reached for the door. “I really am.”

  PART THREE

  42

  NAHRI

  When the sun was at its zenith, burning straight down upon the dusty plains that bordered the Gozan River, Nahri stepped out of the shade of her shedu’s wing and got ready.

  First went her shabby clothing: the wool robe she’d worn to protect herself from the chilly air high above the earth. Underneath Nahri was dressed in a sky-blue gown that fell to her shins, patterned with bronze sunbursts. Leggings in the same color were tucked into comfortable riding boots she could run in. She rewrapped her gold-and-green headscarf, taking care to pin the cotton so the wind wouldn’t wrench it away. Nahri had chosen her clothes with care—colors reminiscent of the Nahids’ imperial past, and cuts that would allow her to flee if this all blew up in her face.

  She opened her bag, taking a sprig of the sweet basil she’d swiped from the castle kitchen back in Shefala. For luck, Nisreen had told her many years ago, twining a similar sprig in Nahri’s braid before her first day in the infirmary.

  I miss you, my friend. I wish your last moments had not been so violent, and I wish that you’d trusted me. Nahri didn’t think she’d ever make peace with the knowledge that her beloved mentor had been a partner in Manizheh’s conspiracy, but she also wasn’t going to waste her life regretting other people’s choices. Especially not when she had a city to save. Instead, Nahri tucked the basil sprig under her headscarf and moved on.

  Her shedu was busy rustling through the basket of fruit she’d brought.

  “There are no more apricots left, you picky creature.” Despite the rebuke, Nahri reached out to ruffle his mane, scratching behind his ear when he pressed his nose into her chest with a happy grumble. “Maybe I should call you ‘Mishmish’ for how much you love them.”

  He tore apart the basket in response. Nahri caught a glimpse of a last apricot, stuck in the straw fiber, before the giant lion ate it, basket and all.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Steeling herself, Nahri reached deeper into her bag. There was just one more thing she needed.

  The peri’s dagger.

  She removed it, the blade gleaming silver bright in the sunlight, so razor-sharp that the barest press of her finger drew blood. It had remained icy to the touch and shone wetly. Fairly small, it took little effort to flick the dagger from her belt and shove it upward, an easy motion for a former cutpurse who still liked her knives compact.

  The size is probably deliberate. They’ve probably been watching, waiting for years for the right person, the right mark to take him down.

  Nahri stared at the knife. A single thrust to the heart, the peri had said.

  Dara’s hands on her face, his green eyes pleading. It’s going to be okay, he’d promised as they stood in the palace thick with slaughter. She’s going to set everything right.

  “We’ll see about that,” Nahri muttered, sliding the dagger into her belt. As ready as she suspected she’d ever be, she crossed back to her shedu. “Come on, Mishmish, it’s time to go settle a family argument.”

  THEY FLEW LOW TO THE GROUND, NAHRI HOPING TO remain as discreet as possible while upon a massive magical lion with rainbow-colored wings. But perhaps she needn’t have worried—for the sight before her was more than enough distraction for any unfortuna
te travelers. Where there had once been simply another dusty plain after the Gozan River, an illusion to hide the city, now jutted a massive ring of gloomy mountains, the deep forests a bizarre contrast to the rocky desert. It might have made for a marvel, two so very different worlds shoved up against each other.

  But it was no marvel. For as Nahri drew nearer, she saw rot had overtaken the trees, their bark covered in bulging pustules and their leaves leached of color. Entire stands had fallen, crumbling into windswept dunes of ash. A jagged gash ripped through a hill covered in dying wildflowers; from its depths burst fingers of serrated rock like protruding knives. The stone was stained dark crimson, the exact shade of Nahri’s blood.

  An excellent omen. Just really promising all around. But Nahri pushed on. She’d made her choice, and so she flew over the fallen divide between her worlds.

  A wave of heat stole over her, the ring scorching against her skin. Nahri clutched Mishmish, struggling to hang on as a burst of raw, jittery energy—as if she’d had way, way too many cups of tea—rushed through her body. She suddenly felt … connected, intertwined with the world below, as if it were a patient whose body she’d opened with her healer’s sight to examine.

  A very sick patient. Acting on instinct—or perhaps not even on instinct, but rather the world itself pulling her close, drawing what it needed as magic swirled in her hands, in her heart, dancing from her body in waves—Nahri held fast to Mishmish, feeling like they were being tossed about in a tumultuous, unseen sea.

  Her patient began to heal.

  The diseased trees beneath her sprouted new growth, their rotted bark falling away to reveal healthy wood. Buds and shiny new leaves unfurled, a sped-up spring. Color blossomed in waves as Nahri flew overhead, pale blue flowers and pink clover racing across the landscape, moss sheathing the jagged rocks in a curtain of softness. The magic raced ahead, a welcome mat of green unrolling before her.

  “Oh, wow,” she whispered. Nahri had no other words, only tears pricking her eyes.

  She was home.

  Her healing touch abruptly ended at the beach. The lake beyond stayed unaffected, its water churning with the violence of a tropical cyclone. Waves smashed against the shore, frothy whirlpools spinning with fallen tree branches and debris. If water could be angry, the marid’s lake was furious, lashing out at everything it could. But it didn’t hold Nahri’s attention.