Dara didn’t know what to say. Manizheh had known damn well the vapor would spread—she and Dara had fought bitterly about it. Why had she kept it from Kaveh? Was it because she feared the man she loved would protest? Or was it to spare him the shared guilt since she’d already made the decision to proceed?
She spared him nothing. Manizheh had made Kaveh into an instrument of mass murder, and for that, Dara had no reassuring platitudes. He knew the feeling all too well.
He tried to change the subject. “Is there any news of Jamshid?”
Kaveh wiped his eyes. “Ghassan only said he was holding him with people he trusted.” He started to shake harder. “Afshin, if he was at the Citadel … if he died when we attacked it …”
“You have no reason to believe he was there.” Dara knelt in front of the other man, gripping his arm. “Kaveh, you need to pull yourself together.”
“You’re not a father. You don’t understand.”
“I understand that there are thousands of Daevas who will be slaughtered for our actions if we lose control of this city. Manizheh is out there amputating limbs because she has no magic. She has the ifrit buzzing all around her, searching for a weakness. She needs you. Daevabad needs you. We will find Jamshid and Nahri. I pray as much as you do that the Creator has spared them. But we are helping neither if we don’t secure this city.”
The door opened and Manizheh stepped in. She took one look at them, and weariness creased her expression. “Well, don’t you two look hopeful.”
Dara stiffened. “I was updating Kaveh about the number of Geziri dead.” He met her eyes. “It seems the vapor spread farther than anticipated. Nearly all the Geziris in the palace are dead.”
He had to give her credit—Manizheh didn’t so much as flinch. “A pity. But then I suppose war is often more violent than expected. Had their people ruled justly, we wouldn’t have had to resort to such desperate means. But quite frankly, a few hundred dead djinn—”
“It is not a few hundred,” he cut in. “It is at least a thousand, if not more.”
Manizheh held his gaze, and though she did not directly rebuke him for interrupting her, Dara did not miss the warning in her eyes. “A thousand, then. They still aren’t our most pressing issue. Not when compared with our loss of magic.”
There was a moment of silence before Kaveh spoke. “Do you think it’s a punishment?”
Dara frowned. “A punishment?”
“From the Creator,” Kaveh whispered. “Because of what we did.”
“No,” Manizheh said flatly. “I don’t think the Divine had anything to do with this. Quite frankly, I don’t see the Divine anywhere in this awful city, and I refuse to believe Zaydi al Qahtani could have sacked the place and not suffered similar heavenly retribution if that were the case.” She sat down, looking rueful. “Though I don’t imagine you’ll be the only person to leap to that conclusion.”
Dara paced, too agitated to stay still. A thousand responsibilities pulled at him. “How do we rule a city with no magic? How do we live without magic?”
“We can’t,” Kaveh replied, dourer by the moment. “Our society, our economy, our world depends on magic. Half the goods traded in the city are conjured. People rely on enchantments to wake them up, to take them to work, to cook their food. I doubt one in twenty of us could even light a fire without magic.”
“Then we need to get it back,” Manizheh said. “As soon as possible.”
Dara stopped pacing. “How? We don’t even know why it’s gone.”
“We can make some guesses. You’re both fretting, but we’re not completely in the dark. You still have your magic, Afshin, as do the ifrit.”
He scowled at the comparison. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the magic that vanished is that which Suleiman granted our ancestors after their penance,” she explained. “You have yours because you’re untouched by Suleiman’s curse. The ifrit have their tricks because it is a different sort of magic, things they learned to circumvent his curse. It cannot be coincidence that our powers only vanished when Nahri and Alizayd took Suleiman’s ring and jumped into the lake.”
Dara paused, following her reasoning. “You are certain?”
“Quite,” Manizheh replied, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Nahri slipped it on his finger, they vanished into the lake, and moments later, the veil fell and my abilities were gone.” She looked grim. “I watched the water. They didn’t resurface.”
“I checked the cliffs as well.” It had nearly killed Dara to do so, the prospect of discovering Nahri dashed upon the rocks too awful to contemplate. “I found nothing. But the fall is not long. Perhaps they swam back, and I missed them. They could be hiding elsewhere on the island, Alizayd using the seal to stop magic.”
Manizheh shook her head. “It was too sudden. Ghassan went into seclusion for days when he first took the seal and looked like he’d been on the wrong end of a plague when he returned. I do not think this could be Alizayd’s doing.”
Kaveh cleared his throat. “I will say what neither of you want to: they are just as likely dead. That is a fall that could kill a man. For all we know, they drowned, and their bodies sank beneath the water.”
Dara’s heart twisted, but Manizheh was already responding. “The ring-bearer being dead should not have affected magic like this. After all, how many hours did Ghassan lie slain with it?”
Dara pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nahri is not dead,” he said stubbornly. “It is not possible. And I do not believe for one moment that the marid let their little pawn drown.”
Kaveh looked confused. “Why would the marid care? From what Manizheh told me, I got the impression Alizayd was nothing to them, merely the first convenient body to jump in that night they cut you down.”
“For someone who was merely convenient, he’s certainly been well rewarded. That sand fly killed my men with water magic. Vizaresh said he found Alizayd controlling the lake as though he were marid himself.”
“You might have mentioned that a bit sooner,” Kaveh sputtered. “They jumped in a marid-cursed lake, Afshin! If Alizayd is under the protection of those creatures—”
“The marid told me they wouldn’t interfere with us again,” Dara argued. “I made clear the consequences.”
“Enough.” Manizheh raised a hand. “I cannot think with you two shouting like that.” She pursed her lips, looking troubled. “What if he didn’t need to be under their protection?”
“What do you mean?” Dara asked.
“I mean that it might not have been Alizayd,” Manizheh suggested. “We were the ones who insisted the marid restore the lake’s original enchantment, the one that let Nahids travel through the waters—it’s how we returned to Daevabad. What if Nahri somehow used it to get them away?”
Kaveh opened his mouth, looking even paler. Dara was genuinely surprised he hadn’t fainted yet.
“That … that could fit. Back at the camp, you both said there was no evidence Suleiman’s seal had ever left Daevabad. Maybe this is why,” Kaveh continued, gesticulating like an over-exuberant lecturer. “Because if you remove the seal from Daevabad, everything falls apart. Does it otherwise not seem strange the Qahtanis never took the seal back to Am Gezira? That they wouldn’t have tried to build an empire closer to their home and allies?”