Ali’s head was pounding as he stumbled into his small room at the hospital. The late afternoon light burned his eyes through the window, so he yanked the curtains shut, exhausted from supervising preparations for tonight’s opening.
A mountain of paperwork greeted him on the desk. He picked up the first piece of parchment. It was an invitation from one of the Sahrayn trade ministers, a suggestion they meet after Navasatem to discuss some thoughts Ali had on restoring the city’s port.
Bitterness swept through him, hard and fast. There would be no “after Navasatem” for Ali.
The words swam before him. Ali was exhausted. He’d pushed himself to the breaking point trying to fix things in Daevabad and now none of it mattered. He was being tossed out either way.
He dropped the letter and then collapsed onto his bed cushion. It does matter, he tried to tell himself. The hospital was complete, wasn’t it? Ali could at least give Nahri and Subha that.
He closed his eyes, stretching out his limbs. It felt heavenly to lie flat and still for a moment, the allure of sleep tempting. Irresistible.
Just let yourself rest. That’s what everyone had been telling him to do anyway. He took a deep breath, settling deeper into the cushion as sleep stole over him, wrapping him in a peace as cool and still as water …
The lake is quiet when he arrives, emerging from the silty current that brought him here. The chill of it is a shock, a sharp departure from the warmer waters he prefers. Though this lake is sacred to his people, the Great Tiamat’s dazzling cloak of shed scales lining the bottom, it is not his home. Home is the vast twining river that cuts through desert and jungle alike, with waterfalls that crash into hidden pools and a spread of delta that blossoms to greet the sea.
He moves with the current, cutting through a school of rainbow-hued fish. Where are the rest of his people? The lake should be thick with marid, scaled hands and tentacled limbs grasping him in welcome, sharing new memories in quiet communion.
He breaks the water’s surface. The air is still, laden with the fog that drifts over the lake like an ever-present storm cloud. Rain-soaked emerald mountains loom in the distance, melting into a pebbly beach.
A crowded beach. His kin have swarmed it, hissing and snapping teeth and beaks and claws. On the shore itself is a sight he has never seen in this holy place: a group of humans, protected by a thick band of fire.
Disbelief washes through him. No humans should be able to cross into this realm. None should be able to, save the marid. He swims closer. The dryness encroaching upon his skin hurts. The fire before him is already changing the atmosphere, sapping the air of its life-giving moisture.
A ripple dances over the lake’s surface when the other marid spot him, and he is pulled forward on a current. As he is embraced, he opens his mind to his people, offering them memories of the rich flood he gifted his humans last season in exchange for the boats and fishermen he devoured.
The visions they offer in return are not as pleasant. Through the eyes of his kin, he sees the mysterious invaders arriving on the beach, crossing over the threshold as though it were nothing. He sees one of them accidentally venture past the fire’s safety and then tastes its flesh when it is dragged into the water, seized by tendrils of seaweed and drowned, its memories consumed for information. What those memories reveal is shocking.
The invaders are not humans. They are daevas.
Such a thing should be impossible. The daevas are supposed to be gone, vanquished by the human prophet-king Suleiman a century earlier. He studies them again from the waterline. Suleiman has changed them, has taken the fire from their skin and left them shadows of the fiends they once were.
One moves. Anger swirls inside him as he recognizes her from the dead daeva’s memories. It is Anahita the thief; a so-called healer who’d spent centuries luring away the marid’s human worshippers. She’s been reduced to a slip of a thing, a ragged young woman with unruly black curls barely checked by the faded shawl draped over her head. As he watches, she lights a stick of cedar from a brass bowl of flames and presses it to the brow of her dead fellow, her lips moving as if in prayer.
Then she stands, her attention turning to the lake. She steps over the protective ring of fire.
Water snakes, his elders and mates, instantly rush at her. They hiss at her bare, mud-splattered feet, twining around her ankles.
Anahita hisses back, “Be still.”
He freezes, along with the rest of his kin. For her words come out in the marid’s tongue, a language no daeva should be able to speak.
Anahita continues. “You know now what we are … trust that I know you as well.” Her eyes burn. “I know the scaled wraiths who caught the feet of wading children in the Euphrates, the ones who swallowed merchant ships as a passing curiosity. I know you … and Suleiman knew you too. Knew what you did.” She raises her small chin. A dark mark stands out on her cheek, a stylized star with eight points. “And he tasked me with bringing you to heel.”
Her arrogance is too much. His kin swarm the shore, churning the lake into waves that flash pointed teeth and sharp silver spines. Creatures from times forgotten, from when the world was simply fire and water. Plated fish and massive snout-nosed crocodiles.
“Fool,” another marid whispers. “We will drag you into our depths and extinguish everything that you are.”
Anahita smiles. “No,” she replies. “You won’t.” The star symbol on her cheek flashes.
The world breaks.
The sky shatters into smoking pieces that dissipate like dust in water as the veil comes falling down, revealing a painfully azure sky from the realm beyond. The mountains groan as dunes of golden sand rush to swallow them, their life snuffed out.
The lake is next, evaporating from around them in a hot mist. He screams as pain wracks his body, and the holiest of their waters vanishes in the blink of an eye. The creatures of their domain—their fish and their snakes and their eels—shriek and die twitching. Sprawled on the cracked mud, he watches Anahita stride towards the lake’s center.
“Here,” Anahita declares as the earth buckles before her, rocks and debris racing to pile upon one another. She climbs them, a path smoothing before her feet. She glances back and the mark on her face abruptly stops glowing. “This is where we will build our city.”
The lake dashes back. The sky and the mountains reassemble. He slips gratefully into the water, longing to fully immerse himself in its depths, to soothe his wounds by burrowing into the cold mud at the bottom. But there is something new, something dead and oppressive, in the heart of their sacred lake.
An island, growing to dwarf the woman who stands on a rocky precipice. Anahita closes her eyes, her fingers spinning a hot wind into a smoky boat that she blows back to her followers. She makes her way down to the new shore and then sits, lifting her face to the sun—now bright as it has never been before. She trails one hand through the water. A shining black-and-gold pearl winks from a brass ring upon her finger, and a searing pain tears through him when it dips beneath the lake’s surface.
Anahita must see their helpless rage, for she speaks again. “You are being called to account as my people were by Suleiman. You will aid in the construction of my city, let my people sail unimpeded, and in return we shall have peace.”
The lake sparks with heat, a crackle of lightning splitting the blue sky. It strikes the beach, consuming the daeva they killed in a blast of sacred fire.
“But know this.” The flames reflect in Anahita’s black eyes. “If you take another daeva life, I will destroy you.”
Dead fish dot the lake. Horror is rising through his people. He senses lesser marid hurrying to the bottom, spring sprites and pond guardians desperate to escape into the streams that run far below the earth, below mountains and plains, and deserts and seas.
Streams that are steadily closing up, trapping them here with this daeva demon.
But he is no spring sprite. His is the river of salt and gold and he will not see his people subjugated. He calls to the lake, urging it to fight, to swallow these invaders whole.
Scaled hands grab him, tentacles wrapping his limbs. NO. It is a command, the voices of the lake’s elders weaving together into a collective. GO. BEFORE SHE SEES YOU.
He tries to wrestle free, but it is useless. They are dragging him down, using the dying shreds of their magic to wrench open one last portal. He is shoved through.
FIND A WAY TO SAVE US. He gets a final glimpse of the dark lake, the pleading eyes of his people. THEY ARE COMING BACK.
“Ali, wake up. Wake up!”
Ali howled in rage, lashing out at the creatures holding him. “Get off me!” he hissed, his voice coming out in a breathless, slippery tongue. “GET OFF ME.”
“Lubayd, shut him up.” It was Aqisa, barring the door, her dagger drawn.
“Prince Alizayd!” There was knocking on the door. “Is everything all right?”
Aqisa swore out loud and then yanked her turban away, her black braids spilling to her shoulders. Concealing the dagger behind her back, she pulled open the door just enough to reveal her face. “We do not wish to be interrupted,” she said brusquely and then slammed it shut.
Ali writhed against the hand Lubayd had clamped over his mouth. Water was pouring from his skin, tears streaming down his face.
“Ali, brother.” Lubayd was trembling as he held Ali down. A gash marred his cheek, four straight lines as though claws had swept across his face. “Stop.”
Still shaking, Ali managed a nod and Lubayd dropped his hand. “They were burning the lake,” Ali wept, the marid’s raw grief still roiling within him.
Lubayd looked bewildered and afraid. “What?”
“The lake. The marid. They were in my head and—”
Lubayd’s hand instantly went back to Ali’s mouth. “I didn’t hear that.”
Ali pulled free. “You don’t understand …”
“No, you don’t understand.” Lubayd jerked his head toward the rest of the room.
His small bedroom was in chaos. It looked like a tropical storm had blown through, leaving the curtains in wet tatters and a pool of glimmering water on the floor. Most of his belongings were soaked, and a foggy mist clung to the bed.
Ali’s hand went to his mouth in shock and then he recoiled, smelling blood on his fingertips.
Horrified, Ali looked again at Lubayd’s face. “Did I …”
Lubayd nodded. “You … you were screaming in your sleep. Shouting in some language I’ve never—”
“No, he wasn’t.” Aqisa’s voice was sharp. Intent. “You had a nightmare, understand?” She headed for the windows, tugging down the ruined curtains and letting them drop to the floor. “Lubayd, help me clean this up.”
Nausea rose swift and punishing in Ali’s stomach. The air smelled of salt, and a cold sweat broke out across his brow. The nightmare was growing murkier by the minute, but he could still feel the marid’s despair, its ache to get back to its people.
They are coming back. Those were the only words he remembered and the warning echoed in his head, dread he didn’t understand wrapping tight around his heart. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “Something is going to happen.”
“Yes, you’re going to get thrown in the lake if you don’t shut your mouth.” Aqisa shoved aside the wet curtain she was using to mop the floor and then tossed her turban cloth to Lubayd. “Wipe that blood off your face.” She looked between the men. “No one can see this, understand? Nothing happened. We’re not in Bir Nabat and this isn’t some new spring we can all pretend you were lucky enough to discover.”
The words pierced Ali’s daze, upending the delicate dance he and his friends usually did around this subject. “What?” he whispered.
Lubayd was stuffing ruined papers into a dripping cloth sack. “Ali, brother, come on. There was a damn oasis bubbling beneath your body when we found you in the desert. There are times you don’t emerge from the water in the cistern back home for hours.”
“I—I didn’t think you noticed,” Ali stammered as fear sent his heart racing. “Neither of you ever spoke—”
“Because these are not things to be discussed,” Aqisa said bluntly. “Those … creatures. You cannot speak of them, Ali. You certainly can’t run around shouting that they’re in your head.”
Lubayd spoke up again, looking almost apologetic. “Ali, I don’t spin my wild stories just to annoy you. I do it so people don’t spread other stories about you, understand? Tales that might not have a happy ending.”
Ali stared at them. He didn’t know what to say. Explanations, apologies, they ran through his mind, leaving him at a loss.
The adhan came then, calling the faithful to maghrib prayer. Across the city, Ali knew court would be ending, his father announcing the official beginning to Navasatem as the sun dipped below the horizon.
Aqisa straightened up, coming around the bed cushion with a garment bag. “These are the clothes your sister sent you for tonight’s ceremony.” She dropped it in his lap. “Get dressed. Forget what we discussed here. You’re about to have your family and every gossiping, back-stabbing noble in this city crawling through these corridors. You can’t be trembling like a leaf and rambling about the marid.” She eyed him. “It was a nightmare, brother. Say it.”
“It was a nightmare,” he repeated, his voice hollow. He’d been having them for months, hadn’t he? He was overworked, he was exhausted. Was it any surprise that a dream might have been more visceral today? More gut-wrenching? That his water abilities might have reacted accordingly?
It was a nightmare. Only a nightmare. It had to be.