It took the rest of the night to save him. Though he’d vomited up most of the poison, what remained was pernicious, racing through his blood to whirl into solid form as it burst through his skin seeking air. Nahri would no sooner lance, clean, and heal a silver boil than another would bloom. By the time she was finished, Ali was a bloody wreck, and silver-soaked rags lay everywhere.
Fighting a wave of exhaustion, Nahri pressed a hand upon his damp brow. She closed her eyes, and that strange sensation rushed back: a deep, impenetrably dark curtain through which she could barely detect the thud of his heart. The scent of salt, of a cold and utterly alien presence.
But no hint of the destructive poison. She sat back, wiping her own brow and taking a deep breath. A violent tremor went through her body. It was a sensation that often overtook her after a particularly terrifying bit of Nahid healing, her nerves catching up only after she was done.
“He is all right?” Ali’s friend—Lubayd, as he’d introduced himself—spoke up. He was the only one in the room with her, her own bedroom. Ghassan had commandeered it, insisting on privacy for his son, and in response, Nahri had kicked both him and Hatset out, declaring that she couldn’t work with Ali’s worried parents hovering over her.
“I think so.” She hoped so anyway. She had dealt with poisonings—both intentional and not—plenty of times since arriving in Daevabad, but nothing that worked with such speed and deadliness. Though it was obvious the silver vapors would have eventually choked him, the way they’d turned to metal shards when Ghassan had used Suleiman’s seal … that was a diabolical bit of cruelty, and Nahri had no idea who might have devised something so vicious.
Looking relieved, Lubayd nodded and retreated to a corner of the room while Nahri returned to her work, leaning closer to Ali to examine one of the wounds on his chest. The poison had burst perilously close to his heart there.
She frowned, catching sight of a bumpy ridge of skin above the wound. A scar. A meandering, savage line as if some sort of spiked vine had crawled across his chest before being ripped away.
Her stomach knotted. Before she could think twice, Nahri yanked close a basin Nisreen had filled with water, dampened a cloth, and wiped away the blood that covered his limbs.
The scars were everywhere.
A ragged line of puncture marks on his shoulder where teeth the size of her thumb had pierced him. The imprint of a fishing hook in his left palm and whirls of ruined flesh that called to mind waterweeds and tentacles. Pocked divots over his stomach, like fish had attempted to feast on him.
She covered her mouth, horrified. The memory of him climbing back onto the boat came to her: his body covered in lake detritus, a crocodile snout clamped on his shoulder, fishing hooks snarled in his skin. Nahri had thought him already dead, and she’d been so panicked that she and Dara were about to follow that she’d given little thought to what had happened to him. The stories about “Alizayd the Afshin-slayer” gallivanting across Am Gezira certainly made it sound like he was fine. And Nahri hadn’t seen him again after the boat.
But Nisreen had. She’d treated Ali … and she’d never said anything about this.
Nahri stepped away from the bed, beckoning for Lubayd to follow as she passed. “We should give the king and queen a moment with him.”
Hatset and Ghassan were standing on opposite sides of the pavilion outside her room, neither one looking at the other. Zaynab and Muntadhir were sitting on the bench between them, Muntadhir holding one of his sister’s hands.
“Is he all right?” Hatset’s voice shook slightly.
“For now,” Nahri answered. “I’ve stopped the bleeding and there’s no trace of the poison left. That I can detect,” she clarified.
Ghassan looked as though he’d aged a half-century. “Do you know what it was?”
“No,” she said flatly. This wasn’t an answer she could risk massaging. “I have no idea what that was. I’ve never seen or read of anything like that.” She hesitated, remembering the fleeing cupbearer—and the thrown dagger that had interrupted that flight. “I don’t suppose his cupbearer …”
The king shook his head, grim. “Dead before he could be questioned. One of Alizayd’s companions acted a bit too rashly.”
“I daresay those companions and their rashness are probably the only reason our son is still alive.” Hatset’s voice was sharper that Nahri had ever heard it.
Muntadhir rose to his feet. “So he’ll live?”
Nahri forced herself to meet her husband’s eyes, not missing the tangle of emotion in them. “He’ll survive this.”
“All right.” Muntadhir’s voice was low and troubled enough that Nahri saw Hatset narrow her eyes at him. He didn’t seem to notice, instead turning abruptly away and disappearing down the steps that led to the garden.
Zaynab hurried after him. “Dhiru …”
Ghassan sighed, watching them for a moment before turning back to Nahri. “May we see him?”
“Yes. I need to prepare a tonic for his throat. But don’t wake him. He lost a lot of blood. I don’t even think he should be moved. Let him stay here for at least a few days.”
The king nodded, heading toward her room. But Hatset caught Nahri’s wrist.
“Do you truly know nothing about this poison?” she asked. “Nothing in your mother’s old notes?”
“We’re healers, not assassins,” Nahri shot back. “And I’d be a fool to get involved with anything like this.”
“I’m not accusing you,” Hatset said, a little of the edge leaving her voice. “I just want to make sure if you think of anything—suspect anything—you come to me, Banu Nahida.” Her expression grew intent. “I am not my husband,” she added softly. “I reward loyalty—I don’t terrorize people into it. And I’ll not forget what you did for my son tonight.”
She let go of Nahri’s wrist, following Ghassan without another word. Her mind spinning, Nahri continued on to the infirmary.
Nisreen was already at work on the tonic, transferring a spoonful of bright orange, freshly ground salamander skin from a stone mortar into a honey-colored potion simmering in a glass flask suspended over an open flame. A puff of smoke burst from the flask and then the mixture turned crimson, uncomfortably close to the color of human blood.
“I started without you,” Nisreen called over her shoulder. “I figured you could use the help. It just needs another moment or two to simmer.”
Nahri’s stomach tightened. Reliable Nisreen, always two steps ahead of what Nahri needed. Her mentor and closest confidante.
The only person left in Daevabad that she thought she could trust.
She joined her, pressing her hands against the worktable and fighting the emotion bubbling up inside her. “You lied to me,” Nahri said quietly.
Nisreen glanced up, looking taken aback. “What?”
“You lied to me about Ali. After Dara’s de—after that night on the boat.” Her voice was unsteady. “You said Ali was fine. You said he had scratches.” She gave Nisreen an incredulous stare. “There’s not a patch of skin on him bigger than my palm that isn’t scarred.”
Nisreen stiffened. “You’ll forgive me not thinking much of his wounds when Dara and a dozen other Daevas lay dead, and Ghassan was contemplating executing you.”
Nahri shook her head. “You should have told me. You dismissed me when I tried to talk about that night, you had me doubting my very memories …”
“Because I didn’t want them to consume you!” Nisreen put down the mortar, turning her full attention on Nahri. “My lady, you were singing to shadows and cutting open your wrists to try and bring Dara back. You didn’t need to know more.”
Nahri flinched at the blunt depiction of her grief, but Nisreen’s last words still set her blood boiling. “Whether or not I needed to know more was not your decision to make. Not with this, not with the hospital, not with anything.” She threw up her hands. “Nisreen, I can’t have this. I need at least one person in this cursed city I can trust, one person who will tell me the truth no matter what.”
Nisreen’s dark eyes flicked away. When she spoke again, her voice was soft with both pity and disgust. “I didn’t know what to tell you, Nahri. He was barely recognizable as a djinn when they brought him in. He was hissing and spitting like a snake, shrieking in some language no one could recognize. The things clinging to his skin attacked us as we removed them. We had to tie him down after he tried to strangle his own father!”
Nahri’s eyes widened, but Nisreen clearly wasn’t done. “What do you think brought down the ceiling of your infirmary?” She jerked her head up. “It was Alizayd, whatever was in Alizayd.” Nisreen lowered her voice further. “I assisted your mother and uncle for a century and a half, and I witnessed things I could never have imagined, but, Banu Nahri … nothing comes close to what I saw happen to Alizayd al Qahtani.” She reached for the simmering glass flask with a gloved hand and poured the potion into a jade cup that she then thrust at Nahri. “His friendship was a weakness you should have never permitted yourself and now he’s a threat you barely understand.”
Nahri made no move to take the cup. “Taste it.”
Nisreen stared at her. “What?”
“Taste it.” Nahri jerked her head toward the door. “Or get out of my infirmary.”
Without dropping her gaze, Nisreen lifted the cup to her mouth and took a sip. She put it back down with a thud. “I would never risk you like that, Banu Nahida. Never.”
“Do you know who might have been capable of making that poison?”
Nisreen’s black gaze didn’t so much as waver. “No.”
Nahri took the cup. Her hands were shaking. “Would you tell me if you did? Or would that be another truth I’m not capable of handling?”
Nisreen sighed. “Nahri …”
But she was already walking away.
LUBAYD WAS ON THE PAVILION STEPS, SOME DISTANCE from the entrance to her bedroom.
“I wouldn’t interrupt them if I were you,” he warned.
Nahri brushed past. “They’re the ones interrupting me.” She continued toward her room but paused at the curtained door, stepping into the shadow of a rose lattice. She could hear the voices of the royal couple inside.
“—should burn in hell for sentencing your child to such a fate. He was eighteen, Ghassan. Eighteen and you sent him to die in Am Gezira after some lake demon tortured him!”
“Do you think I wanted to?” Ghassan hissed. “I have three children, Hatset. I have thirty thousand times as many subjects. Daevabad comes first. I have always told you that. You should have concerned yourself with his safety before your relatives and their dirt-blooded friends attempted to lure him into treason!”
Nahri stood utterly still, well aware that the two most powerful people in Daevabad were having an argument it seemed to be courting death to overhear. But she couldn’t make herself turn away.
And Hatset wasn’t done. “Daevabad comes first,” she repeated. “Fine words for a king doing his best to destroy everything our ancestors fought for. You’re letting the shafit be sold off to the highest bidder while your emir drinks himself into an early grave.”
“Muntadhiris not drinking himself into a grave,” Ghassan said, defending his son. “He has always been more capable than you grant him. He’s making peace with the Daevas, a peace long overdue.”
“This isn’t peace!” Rage and exasperation warred in Hatset’s voice. “When will you realize that? The Daevas don’t want your peace; they want us gone. Manizheh despised you, your grand wazir would cut your throat in your sleep if he could, and that girl you bullied into marrying Muntadhir is not going to forget what you’ve done to her. The moment she gets pregnant, you’ll be the one poisoned. She and the Pramukhs will shuffle Muntadhir off into an opium den, and just like that, we’ll be under Nahid rule again.” Warning laced into her voice. “And the Daevas will pay us back in blood for everything your family has done to them.”
Nahri stepped back, her hand going to her mouth in shock. The queen had just neatly and horribly pulled together the strands of a future Nahri hardly dared consider—and the tapestry it created when presented by the other side was awful. A calculated scheme of revenge, when Nahri only wanted justice for her tribe.
Justice was what Dara wanted too, wasn’t it? And look at the price he was willing to pay for it. Nahri swallowed, her legs feeling a bit unsteady.
Ghassan raised his voice. “And this is why Alizayd talks and acts the way he does. Why he recklessly throws himself into aiding every shafit he comes across. Because of you.”
“Because he wants to fix things, and all you’ve ever told him to do is shut his mouth and wield a weapon. I’ve heard the stories coming out of Am Gezira. He has done more good for people there in five years than you have in fifty.”
Scorn filled Ghassan’s voice. “It is not his leadership in Am Gezira that you desire, wife. Do not think I am so naive. And I will not have you interfere again. The next time you overstep, I will send you back to Ta Ntry. For good. You will never see either of your children again.”
There was a moment of silence before the queen responded. “And that, Ghassan?” Her voice was chillingly quiet. “That you would reach for such a threat with the mother of your children? That is why people hate you.” Nahri heard the door open. “And it breaks my heart when I remember the man you used to be.”
The door shut. Nahri leaned in and peered through the roses, catching sight of Ghassan staring at his unconscious son. He inhaled sharply and then was gone, sweeping out in a swirl of black robes.
Nahri was shaking as she entered her room. I should have been more aggressive in my dowry demands, she suddenly thought. Because she had not been paid enough to marry into this family.
She returned to Ali’s side. His chest was rising and falling in the light of her fireplace, reminding her of the first time she’d healed him. The quiet night she’d accidentally killed her first patient and then saved a prince, the first time she’d had to grudgingly admit to herself that the man she insisted was only a mark was becoming the closest thing she had to a friend.
Nahri squeezed her eyes shut. Ali and Nisreen. Muntadhir. Dara. Everyone she let get a glimpse past the walls Muntadhir had accused her of keeping around her heart had lied to her or used her. Nahri had once quietly feared that it was her, that growing up alone on Cairo’s streets with abilities that terrified everyone had broken her, shaped her into a person who didn’t know how to forge a genuine bond.
But it wasn’t her. Or at least not just her. It was Daevabad. Daevabad had crushed everyone in it, from its tyrant king to the shafit laborer scurrying through her garden. Fear and hate ruled the city—built up by centuries of spilled blood and the resulting grievances. It was a place where everyone was so busy trying to survive and ensure their loved ones survived that there was no room to build new trust.
She let out a breath, opening her eyes to see Ali stir in his sleep. A pained grimace creased his face, breath rasping in his throat. The sight shook away her dark thoughts and reminded her of the potion still clutched in her hand. Her work was not done.
She pulled a cushioned stool closer. Besides his scars, Ali looked like he’d lived a rougher life in Am Gezira than she would have imagined, his body lean and wiry and his nails bitten low. She frowned as she caught sight of another mark just under his jaw. Rather than the ragged imprints the marid left, this one was a clean slash.
It looks like someone tried to cut his throat. Though Nahri couldn’t imagine who would be foolish enough to attempt to assassinate a Qahtani prince in the depths of Am Gezira. She reached out and touched his chin, his skin clammy beneath her fingertips as she turned his head to examine a mottled patch of scar tissue on his temple. She could no longer make out the lines of the eight-pointed star that had been carved there—a version of Suleiman’s seal, apparently by way of the marid—but she hadn’t forgotten the sight of it flashing on his face that night.
She stared at him. What did they do to you? And perhaps a question that burned even more—why? Why had the marid been so determined to come after Dara?
Movement near her hand caught her eye. Nahri started. The potion in the cup was moving, the liquid’s surface rippling like it was being struck by invisible drops.
Ali’s eyes fluttered open, his gaze dazed and feverish. He tried to draw a breath and then coughed, pain twisting his face.
Nahri reacted immediately. “Drink this,” she commanded, sliding her hand under his head to raise him up. “No, don’t try to talk,” she added as he moved his lips. “Your throat was shredded. Even you can hold your tongue for a moment.”
She helped him finish the contents of the cup. Ali was shivering violently, and she eased him back onto the pillow when he was done. “Does anything feel sharp in your body?” she asked. “Anything like a buzzing beneath your skin?”
“No,” he croaked. “What-what happened?”
“Someone tried to poison you. Obviously.”
Despair swept his face. “Oh,” he whispered, his gaze dropping to his hands. “Even in Daevabad then,” he added with a soft bitterness that took her aback. The tonic was clearly doing its job, his voice smoother though filled with misery. “I thought they might stop.”
Nahri frowned. “Who might stop?”
Ali shook his head stiffly. “It doesn’t matter.” He glanced up, worry flashing in his eyes. “Was anyone else hurt? My mother—”
“Your mother is fine.” That was a lie, of course. Hatset had watched her son almost die in her arms. “No one else was hurt, but your cupbearer was killed trying to escape.”
Ali looked pained. “I wish they had not done that. He was only a boy.” He covered his mouth as he began to cough again, his hand coming away flecked with blood.
Nahri refilled the cup with water from her pitcher. “Drink,” she said, pressing it into his hands. “I suspect your throat will be raw for the next few days. I’ve done what I could, but the poison was a powerful one.”
He took a sip, but his eyes didn’t leave her face. “I thought you had done it,” he said quietly.
She drew back, annoyed that the accusation hurt. “Yes, I know. You and everyone else. Your people don’t make secret what they think of me.”
Guilt blossomed in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He lowered the cup, running his thumb against the edge. “I only meant that I wouldn’t have blamed you if you wanted me dead.”
“Wanting you dead and actually killing you are very different things,” she said sharply. “And I’m no murderer.”
“No, you’re not,” Ali said. “You’re a healer.” He met her eyes again. “Thank you for saving my life.” He bit his lip, a little desperate humor creeping across his face. “I think this is the fourth time.”
Nahri struggled to remain expressionless, cursing the part of her heart that wanted to soften at his words. His breathing ragged and his eyes bright with pain, Ali didn’t look the “Afshin-slayer” right now; he looked sick and weak—a patient who needed her. An old friend who missed her.
A weakness. Not trusting her emotions, Nahri abruptly stood up. “It’s my duty,” she said brusquely. “Nothing more.” She turned for the door. “A servant will bring you fresh clothing. I have other patients.”
“Nahri, wait,” he rasped. “Please.”
Hating herself, she stopped. “I’m not doing this with you, Ali.”
“What if I told you that you were right?”
Nahri glanced back at him. “What?”
Ali stared her, his expression beseeching. “You were right. About that night, about the boat.” Shame filled his face. “I did know the Royal Guard would be waiting for us.”
She shook her head. “Glad to know you’re just as brutal when being honest as you are when lying.”
He tried to push up, wincing in pain. “I didn’t know what else to do, Nahri. I’d never fought someone who could use magic the way Darayavahoush did. I’d never heard of someone who could use magic the way he did. But I knew … so much else about him.” Sick regret crossed his face. “All those books I didn’t want you to read. If he had taken you, if he had killed me—our people would have gone to war.” Ali shuddered. “And I knew all too well the kinds of things he did during wars.”
Do you know why he’s called the Scourge of Qui-zi? The regret that hung on Dara like a cloak, the open fear his name had provoked. “He wouldn’t have started another war,” she tried to insist, her voice hoarse. “I wouldn’t have let him.” But even as she said it, she knew she didn’t quite believe it. There was a reason Muntadhir’s accusation had struck so close to the bone.
Because on that awful night, a desperate Dara had shown how far he would go. He had forced her hand in a way she hadn’t considered him capable of, with a reckless violence that had stunned her.
And a small part of her still wondered if she should have seen it coming.
“I couldn’t take that risk.” Ali’s face was drawn, a sheen of dampness on his brow. “You’re not the only one with a duty.”
Silence fell between them. Nahri struggled to maintain her composure, hating that Ali’s haunted confession touched her. She almost wanted to believe him. To believe that the boy who’d taught her to conjure a flame was real, and that the man he’d become was not manipulating her yet again, to believe that not everyone and everything in this miserable city had to be second-guessed.
A weakness. Nahri shuttered the thought, ignoring the loneliness that pierced her chest upon doing so. “And the rest?”
He blinked. “The rest?”
“The marid,” she prompted, steadying her voice.
He stared at her in disbelief, turning his palms to reveal his scars. “You can’t believe I wanted this.”
“What did the marid want? Why did they use you to kill Dara?”
Ali shivered. “We weren’t exactly having a conversation down there. They were showing me things … the destruction of Daevabad, of Am Gezira. They said he was going to do it. Showed him doing it … but it didn’t look like him.”
Nahri narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
Ali frowned as though he were trying to remember. “They showed him turning into something else. His skin and eyes were like fire, his hands black claws …”
A chill went down her spine at the description. “They showed Dara becoming an ifrit?”
“I don’t know,” Ali replied. “I try not to think about that night.”
You’re not the only one. Nahri stared at him, a wary, charged tension filling the space between them. She felt raw, the dredged-up details of that awful night—a night she tried so hard not to dwell on—leaving her more exposed than she liked.
But it was a vulnerability she could see echoed in Ali’s face, and though her heart was warning her to get out of this room, she couldn’t turn away an opportunity to learn more about the dangerous rift she feared was growing in the family that controlled her life.
“Why are you back in Daevabad, Alizayd?” she asked baldly.
Ali hesitated but answered. “An Ayaanle trader, a cousin of mine, fell ill while crossing Am Gezira.” He shrugged—a poor attempt at casualness. “I offered to do him the favor of taking his cargo, thinking I’d enjoy the opportunity to celebrate Navasatem with my family.”
“Surely you can lie better than that.”
He flushed. “That’s the reason I’m here. There’s nothing more to it.”
Nahri drew closer. “Your mother seems to think there’s more to it. Muntadhir seems to think there’s more to it.”
Ali’s gaze shot to hers. “I could never hurt my brother.”
That lay between them for another long moment, Nahri crossing her arms and holding his gaze until he looked away, still a little shamefaced.
His attention fell on the books stacked haphazardly on the table next to her bed. He cleared his throat. “Er … are you reading anything interesting?”
Nahri rolled her eyes at the blatantly obvious attempt to change the subject. “Nothing that concerns you.” And nothing that should have concerned her. She was never going to rebuild the hospital, let alone find some mysterious shafit surgeon to work with her.
Clueless as usual, Ali didn’t seem to pick up on the malice in her voice. “Who is ibn Butlan?” he asked, leaning close to read from the Arabic scrawled on the top book. “The Banquet of the Physicians?”
She reached possessively for the armful of books. “Mind your own business. Were you not just weeping about how many times I’ve saved your life? Surely you owe me some privacy.”
That shut him up, but as Nahri crossed to dump the books on her couch, something clicked into place in her head.
Ali did owe her. She turned over Ghassan and Hatset’s argument. He was reckless when it came to the shafit, so self-righteous about helping them that he flung himself into things without thinking them through.
She straightened up, turning to him. “You know the shafit neighborhoods.”
His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Yes … I mean, I suppose so.”
She tried to tamp down the excitement swirling in her chest. No. This was a fool’s quest. If Nahri had any sense, she’d be staying away from Ali and holding her tongue about the hospital.
And will you do so forever? Was Nahri going to let Ghassan destroy her ability to hope for a better future, to harden her into the threat Hatset suggested she would one day become? Was that the life she wanted in Daevabad?
Ali drew back. “Why are you looking at me like that? It is alarming.”
She scowled. “I’m not looking at you like anything. You don’t know me.” She snatched the cup. “I’m going to get you some food. Touch my books again and I’ll put ice spiders in your coffee. And don’t die.”
Confusion rippled across his face. “I don’t understand.”
“You owe me a debt, al Qahtani.” Nahri strode off, yanking her door open. “I don’t intend to let it go unpaid.”