Every bump sent a new jolt of pain into her bruised body, and Nahri could barely speak above a murmur when the cart’s driver—the husband of one of the women at the river—asked where next. It was all she could do not to fall apart. To say this was a lean plan was an understatement. And if it failed, she had no idea where to turn next.
Fighting despair and exhaustion in equal measure, Nahri opened her palm. “Naar,” she whispered to herself, hoping against hope as she said the word aloud, as Ali had once taught her. “Naar.”
There was not the slightest hint of heat, let alone the conjured flame she was aching to hold. Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
They finally arrived, and Nahri shifted in the cart, her limbs protesting. “Can you help me carry him?” she asked.
The driver glanced back, looking confused. “Who?”
Nahri gestured in disbelief to Ali, less than an arm’s length from the driver’s face. “Him.”
The man jumped. “I … Weren’t you alone? I could have sworn you were alone.”
Apprehension darted down her spine. Nahri had been under the vague understanding that humans couldn’t see most djinn—especially not pure-blooded ones like Ali. But this man had helped lift Ali’s body into the cart when they’d started out. How could he have already forgotten that?
She fought for a response, not missing the fear blooming in his eyes. “No,” she said quickly. “He’s been here the entire time.”
The man swore under his breath, sliding from the donkey’s back. “I told my wife we had no business helping strangers coming from that accursed place, but did she listen?”
“The Nile is an accursed place now?”
He shot her a dark look. “You did not just come from the Nile, you came from the direction of … that ruin.”
Nahri was too curious not to ask. “Are you talking about the village to your south? What happened there?”
He shuddered, pulling Ali from the cart. “It is better not to discuss such things.” He hissed as his fingers brushed Ali’s wrist. “This man is burning up. If you brought fever into our village—”
“You know what? I think I can actually carry him the rest of the way myself,” Nahri said with false cheer. “Thanks!”
Grumbling, the driver dumped Ali into her arms and then turned away. Struggling to adjust to the weight of his body, Nahri managed to drape one of Ali’s arms around her neck, then made her laborious way toward the small shop at the end of the dark alley—the small shop upon which she was pinning all her hopes.
The bells still rang when she opened the door, and the familiar sound as well as the aroma of herbs and tonics nearly made her double over with emotion.
“We’re closed,” came a gruff voice from the back, the old man not bothering to look up from the glass vial he was filling. “Come back tomorrow.”
At his voice, Nahri promptly lost the battle with her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
The elderly pharmacist dropped the glass vial. It shattered on the floor, but he didn’t appear to notice.
Yaqub stared back at her, his brown eyes wide with astonishment. “Nahri?”
2
DARA
It was shocking, truly, how easy it was to kill people.
Dara stared at the devastated Geziri camp before him. Spread across the manicured grounds of the palace’s public garden, it had been a beautiful place, fit for the honored guests of a king. Towering date palms from their homeland were set in giant ceramic pots among the smaller fruit trees, and glittering mirrored lanterns hung over paths of amber pebbles. Though magic had been stripped from the camp like everywhere else in Daevabad, the silk tents gleamed in the sunlight, and the gentle burble of the water fountains carried through the silence. The aroma of flowers and frankincense contrasted sharply with the acrid smell of burnt coffee and sour meat, meals that had been ruined when the people eating them were all abruptly murdered. There was the heavier smell of blood, of course, clinging to the patches of copper vapor still lingering in the air.
But Dara was becoming so accustomed to the scent of blood that he’d stopped noticing it.
“How many?” he asked quietly.
The steward standing next to him was shaking so badly it was a miracle the man was still standing. “At least a thousand, m-my lord. They were travelers from southern Am Gezira, here for Navasatem.”
Travelers. Dara’s gaze dropped from the tents and the trees—the dreamy setting for a fairy-tale feast—to the carpets so soaked with blood it was running in tiny streams into the surrounding garden. The Geziri travelers—many of whom he assumed had never been to Daevabad, who must have so recently gazed upon the city’s famed markets and palaces with wonder—had died swiftly but not instantly. There had been enough time for many to run, only to die clutching their heads on the pebbled paths. More had died holding each other, and dozens had died in what must have been a panicked stampede to escape a small plaza set up with handicrafts. The vapor Manizheh conjured had not discriminated between young and old, or woman from man, instead killing all with equal brusqueness. Young women with embroidery, old men stringing lutes, children holding sticky sweets.
“Burn them,” Dara commanded, his voice low. He had not been able to raise his voice today, as though if he gave any opening to the part of him that wanted to scream, the part of him that wanted to throw himself in the lake, he would be undone. “Along with any other Geziri bodies found in the palace.”
The steward hesitated. He was a Daeva man, a Creator-fearing one if the ash mark on his brow was anything to judge by. “Should we … should we make some effort to learn their identities? It doesn’t seem right to—”
“No.” At Dara’s curt response, the steward flinched, and Dara tried to explain. “It is better if the true toll is not known in case we need to adjust the number.”
The other man paled. “There are children.”
Dara cleared his throat, swallowing the lump rising there. He looked directly at the steward, letting his eyes brook no further discussion. “Find one of their clerics and have him pray over them. Then burn them.”
The steward swayed on his feet. “As you command.” He bowed and then scurried away.
Dara let his gaze fall on the dead again. It was utterly silent in the bloody garden, the close air feeling like a tomb. The palace walls loomed high overhead, their height tripled by his magic. Dara had done the same for the entire Daeva Quarter, taking advantage of the pandemonium to thoroughly seal his tribe off from the rest of the city. He’d done more magic than he ever had before, not even caring he’d had to stay in his fiery form to conserve his strength.
And looking at the murdered Geziris, he was glad. For if their kin on the other side of the city had somehow survived the vapor, Dara doubted even the loss of magic would keep them from coming for vengeance.
Devil, a voice whispered in his mind as he returned to the palace. It sounded like Nahri. Murderer.
Scourge.
He shoved the voice away. Dara was the weapon of the Nahids, and weapons didn’t have feelings.
The halls were desolate, his steps ringing on the ancient stones—many of which had cracked during the quake that had shaken the city when its magic was ripped away. The djinn who hadn’t managed to escape the royal complex, along with any Daevas caught protecting them, had been rounded up and herded into the ruined library. Many were inconsequential—bloodied scholars and civil servants, wailing harem companions, and terrified shafit servants—but among the mix, Kaveh had pointed out a few dozen nobles: men and women who would make for useful hostages, should their tribesmen start feeling mutinous. There was also a handful of surviving Geziris, the few besides Muntadhir who’d managed to remove their relic in time.