PROLOGUE
MANIZHEH
Behind the battlements of the palace that had always been hers, Banu Manizheh e-Nahid gazed at her family’s city.
Bathed in starlight, Daevabad was beautiful—the jagged lines of towers and minarets, domes and pyramids—astonishing from this height, like a jumble of jeweled toys. Beyond the sliver of white beach, the dappled lake shimmered with movement against the black embrace of mountains.
She spread her hands on the stone parapet. This was not a view Manizheh had been permitted while a prisoner of the Qahtanis. Even as a child, her defiance had made them uneasy; the palace magic’s public embrace of the young Nahid prodigy and her obvious talent curbing her life before she was old enough to realize the guards that surrounded her day and night weren’t for her protection. The only other time she’d been up here had been as Ghassan’s guest—a trip he’d arranged shortly after he became king. Manizheh could still remember how he’d taken her hand as they’d gazed at the city their families had killed each other for, speaking dreamy words about uniting their peoples and putting the past behind them. About how he’d loved her since they were children, and about how sad and helpless he’d felt all those times his father had beaten and terrorized her and her brother. Surely she must have understood that Ghassan had had no choice but to stay silent.
In her mind’s eye, Manizheh could still see his face that night, the moon shining upon his hopeful expression. They’d been younger; he’d been handsome. Charming. What a match, people would have said. Who wouldn’t want to be the beloved queen of a powerful djinn king? And indeed, she’d laced her fingers between his and smiled—for she still wore such an expression in those days—her eyes locked on the mark of Suleiman’s seal, new upon his face.
And then she’d closed off his throat.
It hadn’t lasted. Ghassan had been quicker with the seal than she’d anticipated, and as her powers fell away, so did the pressure on his throat. He’d been enraged, his face red with betrayal and lack of air, and Manizheh remembered thinking that he would hit her. That he’d do worse. That it wouldn’t matter if she screamed—for he was king now and no one would cross him.
But Ghassan hadn’t done that. He hadn’t needed to. Manizheh had gone for his heart and so Ghassan did the same with ruthless effectiveness: having Rustam beaten within a hair of his life as she was forced to watch, breaking her brother’s bones, letting them heal and then doing it again, torturing him until Rustam was a howling mess and Manizheh had fallen to her knees, begging Ghassan for mercy.
When he finally granted it, he’d been even angrier at her tears than he’d been at her initial refusal. I wanted things to be different between us, he’d said accusingly. You shouldn’t have humiliated me.
She took in a sharp breath at the memory. He’s dead, she reminded herself. Manizheh had stared at Ghassan’s bloody corpse, committing the sight to memory, trying to assure herself that her tormentor was truly gone. But she wouldn’t have him burned, not yet. She intended to examine his body further, hoping for clues as to how he’d possessed Suleiman’s seal. Manizheh hadn’t missed that his heart had been removed—carved from his chest with surgical precision and making it clear who’d done the removing. Part of her was grateful. Despite what she’d told Nahri, Manizheh knew almost nothing about how the seal ring was passed to another.
And now, because of Nahri, Manizheh knew the first step after finding them would be to cut out the heart of Nahri’s djinn prince.
Manizheh returned her gaze to the city. It was startlingly quiet, adding an eerie facade to the entire experience. Daevabad might have been a kingdom at peace in the dead of night, safe and still under the helm of its rightful guardians.
A lie a distant wail betrayed. The cries were otherwise fading, the violence of the night giving way to sheer shock and terror. Frightened people—hunted people—didn’t scream. They hid, hunkering down with their loved ones in whatever shelter they could find, praying the darkness might pass them by. Everyone in Daevabad knew what happened when cities fell. They were raised on stories of vengeance and their enemy’s rapacity; depending on their roots, they were told hair-raising tales of Zaydi al Qahtani’s violent conquest of Daevabad, Darayavahoush e-Afshin’s scourging of Qui-zi, or the innumerable sacks of human cities. No, there wouldn’t be screaming. Daevabad’s people would be hiding, weeping silently as they clutched their children close, the sudden loss of their magic only one more tragedy this night.
They are going to think another Suleiman has come. It was the conclusion any sensible person would arrive at. Had Suleiman’s great judgment not started with the stripping of their ancestors’ magic? They probably expected to see their lives shattered and their families torn apart as they were forced to toil for another human master, powerless to fight back.
Powerless. Manizheh pressed her palms harder against the cold stone, aching to feel the palace’s magic. To conjure dancing flames or the shimmer of smoke. It seemed impossible that her abilities were gone, and she could only imagine the injuries piling up in the infirmary, injuries she now couldn’t heal. For a woman who’d endured the ripping away of everything she loved—the shy country noble she might have married, the dark-eyed infant whose weight in her arms she’d yearned to feel again, the brother she’d betrayed, her very dignity as she bowed before the Qahtanis year after year—the loss of her abilities was the worst. Her magic was her life, her soul—the power beneath the strength that had enabled her to survive everything else.
Perhaps an apt price to pay, then, for using healing magic to kill, a voice whispered in her head. Manizheh pushed it away. Such doubt wouldn’t help her or her people right now. Instead she’d lean on anger, the fury that coursed in her when she watched years of planning be upended by a quick-fingered shafit girl.
Nahri. The defiance in her dark eyes. The slight, almost rueful shrug as she shoved their family’s most cherished treasure onto the finger of an unworthy sand fly.
I would have given you everything, child. Everything you could have possibly wanted. Everything I never had.
“Enjoying your victory?”
Aeshma’s mocking voice set her teeth on edge, but Manizheh didn’t so much as twitch. She’d been dealing with the ifrit long enough to know how to handle him—how to handle everyone, really. You simply offered no target—no weaknesses, no doubt. No allies or loved ones. She kept her gaze forward as he joined her at the wall.
“A long time I’ve waited to look upon Anahid’s city.” There was cruel triumph in his voice. “But it’s not quite the paradise of the songs. Where are the shedu rumored to patrol the skies and the gardens of jeweled trees and rivers of wine? The fawning marid servants conjuring rainbows of waterfalls and a library teeming with the secrets of creation?”
Manizheh’s stomach twisted. Gone for centuries. She’d immersed herself in the great stories of her ancestors, and they painted an utterly unfamiliar Daevabad from what she saw now. “We will bring them back.”
A glance revealed cold pleasure rippling across Aeshma’s fiery visage. “She loved this place,” he continued. “A sanctuary for the people she dragged back together, her carefully tended paradise that allowed no sinners.”