From a window at the top of the Citadel’s stone tower, Ali surveyed the lake below. On this moonless night, it was darker than usual, a perfectly still pane of black reflecting the sky. In the distance, a narrow band of golden beach was all that separated it from the equally dark mountains.
He inhaled, the crisp air bracing. “The gates are closed?”
“Yes, my prince,” Daoud replied. “The shafit district is as secure as possible. The gate in the Grand Bazaar has been sealed with magic and fortified with iron bars. Our people did the same.” He cleared his throat. “The recitation of your speech by the muezzins had quite an effect.”
The recitation of my speech will be the first charge they read at my trial. Ali had ordered his father’s cruel plans revealed to the entire Geziri Quarter: sung by its muezzins and cried out by every imam and sheikh who knew him—respected clerics whose word would be trusted. The plans were followed by a far simpler call:
Ghassan al Qahtani asks that you abide the slaughter of our shafit kin.
Zaydi al Qahtani asks you to stop it.
His plan very much had the desired effect … more than even Ali had anticipated. Whether his people were feeling nostalgic for the proud cause that had brought them to Daevabad, fed up with corruption, or simply believed the Afshin-slayer who’d wandered their land digging wells and breaking bread with their relatives was the right man to follow, Ali couldn’t say. But they had revolted, Geziri men and women spilling into the streets and seizing any soldiers who tried to stop them from going to the shafit district. Both neighborhoods were now under his control, a mix of soldiers loyal to Ali and well-armed civilians taking up positions throughout.
“The hospital?” he asked, disquiet rising in his heart. “Was the Banu Nahida …”
“She had just left,” Daoud replied. “With the grand wazir and his son. They apparently went rushing out in some haste. We have soldiers positioned outside the hospital, but per your orders, none will go inside. The freed slave Razu is guarding the entrance and threatening to turn anyone who crosses her into a spider.” The man said these words with a nervous glance, as if expecting Razu to pop out and transform him into an insect right then and there.
“Good. Make it known that if a single Daeva is harmed tonight by one of our men, I’ll execute the perpetrator myself.” The thought of the wounded Daevas still inside the hospital made Ali sick. He couldn’t imagine how terrified they must have been to learn they were trapped in the building while the surrounding neighborhoods rebelled under the leadership of the “Afshin-slayer.”
Ali’s gaze fell on Wajed’s desk. Needing access to its wealth of city maps, Ali had taken over the Qaid’s office, but doing so felt like carving out a piece of his heart. He could not stand in this room without recalling the hours he’d spent staging battles with rocks and sticks as a young child while the Qaid worked above him. He’d read every book in here and examined every battle diagram, Wajed quizzing him with a far gentler affection than his own father ever had.
He will never forgive me for this, Ali knew. Wajed was loyal to the end, his father’s closest companion since their shared childhood.
He turned to Lubayd. “Do you really think Aqisa can sneak into the harem?”
“I think Aqisa can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to,” Lubayd replied. “Probably better than you or I.”
Good. Ali needed Aqisa to get his letter to Zaynab; his sister would at least try to help him, this he knew. “God willing, my sister can convince Muntadhir to support us.”
“And then?” Lubayd crossed his arms. “You’ve taken the Citadel. Why are you going to hand it back to anyone, let alone the brother you’ve been fighting with for months?” His gaze grew pointed. “People aren’t taking to the street to make Muntadhir king, Ali.”
“And I’m not doing this to be king. I want my brother and sister on my side. I need them on my side.” For Ali was fairly certain his father had a plan in place on the chance Ali rebelled and took the Citadel. He’d made his opposition to the king quite clear and it was no secret he was well liked by the soldiers with whom he’d grown up. He knew his father; there was no way Ghassan hadn’t come up with a strategy to defuse him.
But for Muntadhir, his devoutly loyal emir? For the Princess Zaynab, the proclaimed light of his eyes? Ali suspected his father’s reaction would be murkier, slower, and emotional. Ali might have taken the Citadel, but success lay with his siblings. His life lay with his siblings. He’d offered terms to his father—a letter outlining the steps he wanted to take to ensure security while they investigated the attack—but Ali knew the moment he ordered the muezzins to reveal Ghassan’s plans for the shafit that there was no going back. His father would not forgive such a breach in loyalty.
“I pray your brother has better sense than you.” It was Abu Nuwas, bound on the floor and very angry. Ali had brought him up in what he suspected would be a futile effort to learn what his father might do next. “You brash fool. You should have gone to your father yourself rather than having those charges read aloud. That is not our people’s way.”
“I’d say a fair number of Geziris disagree with you,” Ali argued. “As well as the majority of the Guard.”
Abu Nuwas snorted. “You offered to double their salaries. I’d avoid the moral high ground if I were you, Prince Alizayd.”
“My father erred when he chose to let his army go hungry rather than force the rich to pay their share.” Ali drummed his fingers on the desk, restless. There was not much to do besides wait for a response from the palace, and yet every minute dragged like an hour.
You should enjoy them, he thought darkly. There is a strong possibility they will be your last. He paced before the wide window, contemplating his options. It had to be near midnight.
A pair of flies flew lazily past his face. Ali batted them away, but movement caught his eye outside the window, along with a growing buzz. He stepped over to the sill.
Lubayd joined him. “What is that?”
Ali didn’t respond. He was just as astonished as his friend. What appeared to be hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of flies were swarming above the lake, buzzing and zipping as they rose steadily higher in the air, moving in skittering bursts toward the city.
A few more flew through the window. Lubayd caught one in his hands and then shook it hard to stun it. It fell to the stone sill.
“It looks like a sand fly, like one of the ones from back home.” Lubayd poked it and the fly crumbled into ash. “A conjured sand fly?”
Ali frowned, running a finger over the remains. “Who would bother conjuring up an enormous swarm of sand flies?” Was this some sort of bizarre Navasatem tradition he wasn’t aware of? He leaned out the window to watch as the last of the flies made their way past the lake and into the city itself.
Then he froze. Hidden by the twitching mass of flies overhead, something else had begun to move that had no business doing so. Ali opened his mouth to call out.
A presence thundered to life in his head.
He dropped to his knees with a gasp, the world going gray. He clutched his skull, crying out in pain as sweat erupted across his body. A scream that was not a scream, an urgent warning in a language without words, hissed in his mind, urging him to run, to swim, to flee.
It was gone nearly as quickly as it came. Lubayd was holding him, calling his name as he braced himself on the windowsill.
“What happened?” he demanded, shaking Ali’s shoulder. “Brother, talk to me!”
Abruptly, all the flies in the room fell dead, a rain of ash tumbling around them. Ali barely noticed, his gaze locked on the window.
The lake was moving.
The dead water shivered, shaking off its stillness as the lake danced, small swells and currents playing on its surface. Ali blinked, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him.
“Ali, say something!”
“The lake,” he whispered. “They’re back.”
“Who’s back? What are you …” Lubayd trailed off. “What in God’s name is that?” he cried.
The water was rising.
It lifted from the earth in an undulating mass, a body of rushing black liquid that pulled from the shore, leaving behind a muddy bed of jagged crevasses and the bones of ancient shipwrecks. It rose higher and higher, blocking the stars and mountains to tower over the city.
The rough outline of a reptilian head formed, its mouth opening to reveal glistening fangs. The bellowing roar that followed shook Ali to his bones, drowning out the alarmed cries from the sentries below.
He was too shocked to do anything other than stare in disbelief at the utter impossibility before him.
They turned the Gozan River into a beast, a serpent the size of a mountain that rose to howl at the moon. The seemingly ridiculous story of a now-dead Afshin and the girl who declared herself Manizheh’s daughter ran through Ali’s head as the lake-beast howled at the sky.
And then it abruptly turned, its terrifying visage aimed directly at the Citadel.
“Run!” Lubayd shouted, dragging him to his feet. “Get out!”
There was a violent tearing, and then the floor buckled beneath him. The room spun and Ali tumbled through the air.
He slammed hard against the opposite wall, the wind knocked from his lungs. He caught a glimmer through the window, the black water rushing up …
And then Ali crashed into darkness.