Dara kept walking. These are the corridors you said would be filled with celebration, aren’t they? Music and joy: the victory you promised your young warriors who now lie slaughtered on the beach, their bodies left to rot. The warriors who trusted you.
Dara squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t stop the heat crackling down his limbs. He exhaled, smoky embers escaping his mouth, and opened his eyes to see fire swirling in his palms. Had the Qahtani emir not accused him of belonging to hell? Perhaps his current appearance was an apt one.
He could hear the cries of the infirmary’s injured long before he passed through the thick wooden doors. Inside was organized chaos. Manizheh might not have her healing magic, but she commanded a forceful presence and had pulled together a team to help her, including the followers she’d brought from their camp in northern Daevastana, servants who’d worked with Nahri in the infirmary, a few seamstresses who were taking their talents to flesh, and a midwife she’d plucked from the harem.
Dara spotted her across the room now, dismayed to see she’d replaced the quilted armor he’d insisted she wear during the attack with lighter clothes she must have pillaged: a man’s tunic and a blood-soaked apron stuffed with tools. Her silvering black hair was gathered in a hasty bun, strands of it falling in her face as she bent over a crying Daeva girl.
Dara joined her, prostrating himself and pressing his brow to the ground. The show of obedience was intentional. In the face of an incomplete conquest and a frightened city stripped of its magic, the strains in their relationship were petty concerns. He would not dare undermine her in public—people needed to believe her rule was absolute.
“Banu Nahida,” he intoned.
“Afshin.” There was relief in her voice. “Rise. I think we can put off the bowing for the time being.”
He did as she commanded but kept his tone formal. “I have done what I can to seal off the Daeva Quarter and the palace from the rest of the city. I cannot imagine the djinn have the resources to scale such high walls anytime soon, and if they try, I have archers and Vizaresh awaiting them.”
“Good.” Her attention shifted to a man across the room. “Did you find the saw?” she called out.
The Daeva servant hurried over. “Yes, Banu Nahida.”
“A saw?” Dara asked.
Manizheh inclined her head toward her patient. The girl was young, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of her wound: a grisly bite in the meat of her arm. The surrounding flesh was crimson and badly engorged.
“She’s a simurgh trainer in the royal menagerie,” Manizheh explained softly. “When the firebirds panic, they emit a venom in their saliva. Apparently the arena’s karkadann escaped when its magical gate fell away, and in the chaos, one of her birds bit her.”
Dara’s heart dropped. “What will you do?”
“If I had my abilities, I could draw the poison out before it reached her heart. Without magic, there’s only one thing I can do.”
The meaning of the saw became horribly clear, and whatever was between them, Manizheh seemed to have some mercy left for him. “She is the last patient I need to stabilize, and then I would like to catch up with you and Kaveh.” She nodded to a pair of doors. “He’s waiting in the other room.”
Dara bowed haltingly. “Yes, Banu Nahida.”
He weaved his way through the crowded infirmary. It was packed with the injured, and Dara didn’t miss that they were all Daevas. He doubted it meant casualties were confined to his tribe—on the contrary, he suspected that in the cold calculus of their world, it meant only after the Daevas were helped would Manizheh turn her attention to the rest of the djinn.
We are never going to have peace, he despaired as he pushed through the doors she had indicated. Not after this. Consumed by his thoughts, Dara only realized where Manizheh had sent him when the door fell shut behind him.
He was in Nahri’s room.
Compared to the rest of the conquered palace, Nahri’s room was quiet and untouched. Dara was alone, Kaveh nowhere to be seen. The apartment was pretty and well appointed and at first glance could have belonged to any Daeva noblewoman. A silver fire altar smoldered in a prayer niche, perfuming the air with cedar, and a pair of delicate gold earrings and a ruby ring had been left on a small painted table.
Looking closer, though, Dara saw signs of the woman he’d known, the woman he’d loved and betrayed. Books were stacked in a precarious tower beside the bed, and what appeared to be small, almost crude items—a reed bent to resemble a boat, a dried garland of jasmine blossoms, a carved wooden bangle—were set with reverence on the windowsill. An ivory hair comb and an abandoned cotton shawl lay on the table beside him, and it was everything Dara could do not to pick them up and touch the things Nahri had touched so recently, to see if her scent lingered.
She cannot be dead. She simply cannot be. Losing the battle with his aching heart, Dara ventured farther into the room, feeling like an intruder as he ran his fingers over the finely carved mahogany bedposts. He could still remember doing so six years ago. How full of himself he’d been that night, righteously indignant after learning the Qahtanis intended to force Nahri to marry Muntadhir. Dara had not doubted for a moment when he had slipped into her bedchamber that what he was doing was right, that Nahri would greet him with a relieved smile, take his hand, and escape Daevabad at his side. That he was saving her from a terrible fate she could not possibly want.
He had been so entirely, utterly wrong.
In hindsight, it was obvious he’d lost her here, that night, and Dara had no one but himself to blame. He had taken Nahri’s choice away from her—from her, the only person who’d seen something in him beyond the legendary Afshin, the abominable Scourge, and might have loved him for it.
“Afshin?”
Dara straightened up at Kaveh’s faint voice. The grand wazir stood at the steps that led to the garden, looking pale as parchment and about as stable as the gauzy curtain dancing in the breeze.
“Kaveh.” Dara crossed the room, reaching out a hand to steady the other man. “Are you all right?”
The grand wazir let himself be led to a cushion near the fire altar. Despite the warm day, he was shivering. “No. I … Manizheh said I should wait here, but I can’t.” His bloodshot gaze darted to Dara’s. “You’ve been all over the palace … is it true about the Geziris?”
Dara nodded grimly. “A few survivors removed their relics in time—the emir is one of them—but the rest are dead.”
Kaveh jerked back, one hand going to his mouth in horror. “Creator, no,” he whispered. “The poison, the vapor … it wasn’t supposed to spread beyond the spot in which it was unleashed.”
Dara went cold. “Manizheh told you that?”
Kaveh nodded, rocking back and forth. “H-how many …”
There was no point in pretending. Kaveh would learn the truth either way. “At least a thousand. There were … travelers staying in the garden that we didn’t anticipate.”
The grand wazir let out a strangled sound. “Oh my God, the camp.” He was pressing his fingers so hard against his skull it had to hurt. “There were children there,” he wept. “I saw them playing. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I only meant to kill Ghassan and his men!”