Dara frowned at the fierceness in her voice. “Why not?”
“Would you die for my daughter, Darayavahoush?”
The question surprised him, and yet the answer was already leaving Dara’s lips. “Yes. Of course.”
Manizheh gave him a knowing look. “And yet, would you let her die for you? Suffer for you?”
She has already suffered for me. “Not if I could help it,” Dara said quietly.
“Precisely. Affection is a weakness for people like us, a thing to be concealed from those who would harm us. A threat to a loved one is a more effective method of control than weeks of torture.”
She said the words with such cold certainty that a chill raced down his spine. “You sound as though you speak from experience,” he ventured.
“I loved my brother very much,” she said, staring into the distance. “The Qahtanis never let me forget it.” She dropped her gaze, studying her hands. “I will confess that my desire to attack during Navasatem has a personal edge.”
“How so?”
“Because Rustam spent the last one in the dungeons. I lost my temper, said something unwise to Ghassan’s father. Khader.” The name fell like a curse from her tongue. “An even harder man than his son. I don’t remember what it was, petty nonsense from an angry young woman. But Khader took it as a threat. He had my brother dragged from the infirmary and thrown into a lightless cell at the bottom of the palace. They say . . .” She cleared her throat. “They say that the bodies of those who die in the dungeon aren’t removed. You lie with corpses.” She paused. “Rustam spent the entire month of Navasatem there. He didn’t speak for weeks. Even years later . . . he could only sleep if lamps were blazing all night long.”
Dara felt sick. He thought unwillingly of his sister’s fate. “I am sorry,” he said softly.
“As am I. I’ve learned since that anonymity is far safer for those I love.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Though not without its own cruel drawbacks.”
He hesitated; Manizheh’s words indicated something that he couldn’t let pass. “Do you not trust the ifrit?” he asked. He’d made his poor opinion of the ifrit clear more than once, but Manizheh never wanted to hear it. “I thought they were your allies.”
“They are a means to an end, and I do not trust easily.” She leaned back on her palms. “Kaveh is dear to me. I will not have the ifrit learn that.”
“Your daughter . . .” Dara’s throat constricted. “When I said I would die for her, I hope you know I would do so for any Nahid. It was not because . . .” He grew flustered. “I would not overstep my station.”
A glint of amusement lit her face. “How old were you when you died, Afshin? The first time?”
Dara tried to recall. “Thirty?” He shrugged. “It was so long ago, and the last years were difficult. I do not remember exactly.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I do not understand.”
She gave him a wry smile. “At times you speak like a young man who’s yet to see a half-century. And as we discussed . . . I am a Nahid with a skill you compared to mind-reading.”
Heat filled his cheeks before he could check it, his heart skipping a beat . . . the very signs, of course, that he knew she’d been looking for.
Manizheh shaded her eyes. “Ah, I do believe that is the lake where we are to meet Aeshma. You can take us down.”
He flushed again. “Banu Manizheh, I pray you know . . .”
She met his eyes. “Your affections are yours, Afshin.” Her gaze turned a little harder. “But do not let them be a weakness. In any way.”
Embarrassed, he merely nodded. He raised a hand, and the rug dipped, speeding toward a distant gleam of azure. The lake was enormous—more sea than lake—the water a brilliant aquamarine, the tropical hue at stark odds with the snowcapped mountains ringing its shore.
“Lake Ossounes,” Manizheh said. “Aeshma says it’s been sacred to the marid for millennia.”
Dara gave the lake an apprehensive look. “I am not flying over that much water on a rug.”
“We needn’t.” Manizheh pointed to a thin trail of smoke drifting from the easternmost shore. “I suspect that is him.”
They flew closer, zooming over rocky red bluffs and a narrow, marshy beach. It really was a stunning place. Lines of evergreens stood as sentinels against jutting hills and grassy valleys. A few clouds streaked the pale sky, and a hawk circled overhead. The air smelled fresh, promising cold mornings around pine-scented fires.
Longing stole into his heart. Though Dara had been born in Daevabad, this was the type of country he loved. Open skies and staggering vistas. One could take a horse and a bow and disappear into a land like this to sleep under the stars and explore the ruins of kingdoms lost to time.
Ahead, a fire blazed on the beach, the flames licking the air with a bit too much malicious delight.
Dara inhaled, catching the scent of ancient blood and iron. “Aeshma. He is near.” Smoke curled from under his collar. “I can smell that foul mace he carries, thick with the blood of our people.”
“Perhaps you should shift back into your natural form.”
Dara scowled. “This is my natural form.”
Manizheh sighed. “It isn’t, and you know it. Not anymore. The ifrit have warned you that your magic is too much for this body.” She tapped his tattooed arm, the skin pale brown and very much not aflame. “You leave yourself weak.”
Their carpet fluttered to the ground. Dara didn’t respond, but he didn’t shift either. He would do so if and when the marid appeared.
“Ah, there are my erstwhile allies.”
At the sound of Aeshma’s voice, Dara’s hand dropped to the long knife at his side. The bonfire split, and the ifrit strolled through the break with a black-fanged grin.
It was a grin that made Dara sick. That was what he looked like now when he shifted, his fire-bright skin, gold eyes, and clawed hands a mirror of the demons who’d enslaved him. That his ancestors had looked the same before Suleiman’s curse was of little comfort. It hadn’t been his ancestor’s grin he’d seen just before the fetid water of the well closed over his face.
Aeshma sauntered closer, his smile widening as if he could sense Dara’s displeasure. He probably could; it was not a thing Dara tried to conceal. Balanced on one shoulder was his mace, a crude metal hammer studded with barbs. Aeshma seemed to enjoy the effect it had on Dara’s temper, and took special delight in mentioning the times it had been bathed with Nahid and Afshin blood.
Our allies. Dara’s hand curled around the hilt of his knife.
“A knife?” Aeshma clucked his tongue in disappointment. “You could summon a sandstorm that would throw me across the lake if you would leave that useless body behind you.” His eyes brightened with viciousness. “And surely if you’re going to use a weapon, we might as well get a look at your famous scourge.”
Manizheh’s hand shot out as the air sparked with heat. “Afshin,” she warned him before fixing her attention on Aeshma. “I received your signal, Aeshma. What have you heard?”
“The same whispers and premonitions that started up when you brought your Scourge back to life,” the ifrit replied. “My companions have gone burning through all the marid haunts they know without response. But now there’s something else . . .” He paused, seeming to savor the moment. “The peris have left the clouds to sing their warnings on the wind. They say the marid have overstepped. That they broke the rules and are to be called to account—punished by the lesser being to whom they owe blood.”
Dara stared at him. “Are you drunk?”
Aeshma grinned, his fangs gleaming. “Forgive me, I forget at times one must speak simply to you.” His voice slowed to a mocking crawl. “The marid killed you, Afshin. And now they owe you a blood debt.”
Dara shook his head. “They might have been involved, but it was a djinn who wielded the blade.”
“And?” Manizheh cut in. “Think back on what you’ve told me of that night. Do you
truly believe some al Qahtani brat was capable of cutting you down on his own?”
Dara hesitated. He’d put arrows in the prince’s throat and lungs and knocked him into the lake’s cursed depths. Alizayd should have been dead twice over and instead he’d climbed back onto the boat looking like some sort of watery wraith. “What do you mean by a blood debt?” he asked.
Aeshma shrugged. “The marid owe you a favor. Which is convenient, because you want to break into their lake.”
“It’s not their lake. It’s ours.”
Manizheh laid a hand on Dara’s wrist as Aeshma rolled his eyes. “It was once theirs,” she said. “The marid helped Anahid build the city. Surely you were taught some of this? It’s said that the jeweled stones that pave the Temple grounds were brought by the marid as tribute.”
Afshin children were not exactly schooled in the finer points of their people’s history, but Dara had heard the story of the Temple’s stones. “So how does that get me across the threshold?”
“Forget your threshold,” Aeshma said. “Do you imagine water beings crossing deserts and mountains? They use the waters of the world to travel . . . and they once taught your Nahid masters to do the same.” Resentment flashed in his eyes. “It made hunting my people that much easier. We dared not even go near a pond lest some blood-poisoning Nahid spring from its depths.”
“This is madness,” Dara declared. “You want me to threaten the marid—the marid, beings capable of turning a river into a serpent the size of a mountain—based on the supposed whispers of peris and tales of a legendary magic neither Banu Manizheh nor I were alive to witness.” He narrowed his eyes. “You wish to kill us, is that it?”
“If I wanted to kill you, Afshin, believe me I’d have come up with a far simpler method and spared myself your paranoid company,” Aeshma replied. “You should be excited! You get to avenge yourself on the marid who killed you! You get to be their Suleiman.”
The comparison instantly extinguished Dara’s anger, replacing it with dread. “I am no Suleiman.” The denial surged from his mouth, his skin prickling at the thought of such blasphemy. “Suleiman was a prophet. He was the man who set our laws and granted us Daevabad and blessed our Nahids—”
Aeshma burst into laughter. “My, you really do rattle that off. I remain forever impressed by the training your Nahid Council beat into you.”
“Leave him alone,” Manizheh said sharply. She turned back to Dara. “No one is asking you to be Suleiman,” she assured him, her voice gentler. “You are our Afshin. That is all we need you to be.” The confidence in her eyes helped calm him. “But this blood debt is a good thing. A blessed thing. It might get us back to Daevabad. To my daughter.”
Nahri. Her face played in his memory. The betrayal in her dark eyes as Dara forced her hand in the infirmary, her screams as he was cut down.
Sixty-four, Kaveh had said coldly. Sixty-four Daevas who died in the chaos Dara had caused.
He swallowed the lump growing in his throat. “How do we summon the marid?”
Violent delight danced across the ifrit’s face. “We anger them.” He turned away. “Come! I’ve found something they’re going to be very upset to lose.”
We anger them? Dara stayed rooted to the sand. “My lady . . . this could be quite dangerous.”
“I know.” Manizheh’s gaze was locked on the retreating ifrit. “You should shift.”
This time, Dara obeyed, letting the magic take him. Fire raced down his limbs, claws and fangs bursting forth. He sheathed the knife, conjuring a new weapon from the smoke that swirled around his hips. He raised it, the familiar handle of the scourge warming in his hand.
It would not hurt to remind Aeshma of what he was capable of.
“Don’t believe everything they tell you,” Manizheh said, suddenly sounding on edge. “The marid. They are liars.” She turned abruptly on her heel, following Aeshma through the flames.
Dara stared at her another moment. What would they possibly have to tell me? Bewildered, he followed her, his unease growing.
Behind the veil of smoke, a figure writhed on the sandy beach. His hands and legs were bound, his mouth gagged. He was sobbing against the ball of fabric stuffed in his mouth, his wrists bloody where he’d tried to tear away his binds.
Crimson blood.
Manizheh spoke first. “A human? You plan to use a human to summon the marid?”
“Not just any human,” Aeshma explained. “A devotee of the marid—one who was hard to find. Humans have been giving up the old ways, but I spied him conducting rituals at high tide.” He inhaled, looking disgusted. “He’s theirs. I can smell it.”
Dara frowned. He could too, as a matter of fact. “Salt,” he said softly. He studied the human. “And something else . . . like a heaviness upon him. Something dark. Deep.”
Aeshma nodded, swinging his mace in one hand. “He’s been claimed.”
Manizheh was staring at the human, her expression unreadable. “And that claim is important to them?”
“Very,” Aeshma replied. “There’s power in worship, and the marid don’t have many followers left. They’re going to be very upset to lose one.”
The ifrit’s plan became horribly clear in Dara’s head. “Lose one . . . you cannot mean you intend—”
“I do not.” Aeshma gave them both a careful look. “If I’m wrong about the blood debt, the marid will be within their rights to slaughter whoever kills their acolyte.” He held the mace out to Manizheh. “This risk is yours, Banu Nahida.”
Dara instantly stepped between them. “No. Banu Manizheh . . . there—there are rules,” he stammered. “Our tribe has always obeyed Suleiman’s code; it’s what separates us from the djinn. We do not touch humans. We certainly do not kill them!”
She shook her head, grim resignation in her eyes as she reached for the mace. “We have to find a way to get into Daevabad, Afshin. We’re running out of time.”
Dread clawed up in his chest, but he lowered her hand. “Then I will do it.” This was not a sin he could let his Nahid commit herself.
Manizheh hesitated. Her lips were pressed tight, her spine rigid. And then she nodded, stepping back.
Dara took the mace. He headed for the human, closing himself off from the man’s sobs, from the voice screaming inside his own head.
He smashed his skull in with a single strike.
A moment of horrified silence seemed to hang in the air. Then Aeshma spoke, his voice strained. “Burn him. In the water.”
Sick to his soul, Dara grabbed the human he’d murdered by his bloody collar and dragged him farther into the shallows. The smell of viscera swept over him. Around the dead man’s wrist was a blue string knotted with jade beads. Had someone given that to him? Someone who’d be waiting for him to return?
Demon. The whispered accusations that followed Dara in Daevabad rose in his mind. Murderer.
Scourge.
Crimson blood stained the clear water, ballooning out from the body like a storm cloud overtaking the sky. The water simmered against his ankles. Dara hated it. He hated everything about this. Fire poured down his hands, rushing to consume the man’s body. For a moment, Dara could not help but wish it would consume him as well.
A high, thin screech tore the air—and then the lake attacked.
The water drew up so fast Dara didn’t even have time to move. A wave twice his height lunged for him, towering over him like a ravenous bear . . .
And then the wave fell apart, collapsing around his body with an angry hiss of steam. The water tried again, flattening and then twisting around his legs as if to drag him down and drown him. And again it lurched back, as though it were an animal that had been burned.
“Afshin!” he heard Manizheh cry. “Watch out!”
Dara looked up. His eyes went wide. In the churning depths, a ship was re-forming. Barnacle-covered wooden ribs and broken deck planks rushed together, a skeleton of sunken wrecks. An enormous anchor, the metal orange with rust, flew into place on the
bow like some sort of battering ram.
Dara stepped back as the boat rushed forward, his first instinct to protect Manizheh.
“Stand your ground!” Aeshma shouted. “Command it!”
Command it? Too shocked to argue and at an utter loss for how else to confront the nightmarish wreck hurtling toward him, Dara found himself raising his hands. “Za marava!” he cried, using the words the ifrit had taught him.
The ship burst into ash. The flakes drifted in the acrid air, falling like snow, and Dara stumbled, shaking badly.
But the lake wasn’t done. Water dashed over the dead human, frothing as it doused the flames covering his body.
And then the man stood up.
Water streamed from his limbs, seaweed wrapping his arms and crabs skittering up his legs. Triangular fins spiked from his shoulders, tracing down to meet reptilian clawed hands. Mollusks covered his crushed skull, and scales crept across his bloodied cheeks, a snarled mess of shells and decayed fishing nets replacing his soiled clothing. He straightened his broken neck with an abrupt crack and blinked at them, the whites of his eyes vanished under an oily dark film.
Dara recoiled in horror. “That is what Alizayd looked like,” he gasped as Manizheh and Aeshma rejoined him. “By the Creator . . . it really was them.”
The dead man eyed them, and the temperature plummeted, the air growing clammy with moisture.
“Daevas,” it hissed, speaking Divasti in a reedy, whispering voice that set Dara’s teeth on edge.
Aeshma stepped forward on the smoking sand. “Marid!” he greeted it, sounding almost cheerful. “So you salt-blooded old fiends are still around. I was beginning to fear your sea-beast of a mother had devoured you all.”
The marid hissed again, and Dara’s skin crawled. The thing before them, a dead, twisted nightmare from the depths of the dark water, seemed wrong in every sense of the word.
It bared a set of reptilian teeth. “You killed my human,” it accused him.
“You killed me,” Dara snapped. He had no doubt now, and fresh fury was coursing through him. “One of you did anyway. And for what? I did nothing to your people!”
The Kingdom of Copper Page 14
