Dara studied the smoky map of Daevabad he’d conjured, using his fingers to spin it this way and that as he thought. “On the chance we do find a way to pass the threshold and cross Daevabad’s lake, getting into the city itself poses the next problem.” He glanced up at his band of warriors. He’d chosen the group carefully: his ten cleverest, the ones he was grooming for leadership. “What would you suggest?”
Irtemiz paced the map, almost stalking it. “Is there a way we could scale the walls?”
Dara shook his head. “The walls cannot be scaled, nor can they be tunneled under or flown over—Anahid herself raised them, may she be blessed.”
Mardoniye spoke up, nodding at the city gates. “The gates are poorly defended. The Royal Guard keeps an eye out for boats crossing the lake—not for warriors arriving directly upon the beach from the water itself. We could force our way through.”
“And enter directly in the middle of the Grand Bazaar,” Dara pointed out.
Mardoniye’s eyes flashed with hatred. “Is that a bad thing?” He ran a hand over his scarred face, the skin mottled where it had come into contact with Rumi fire. “I would not mind getting some vengeance for what the shafit did to us.”
“Vengeance is not our mission,” Dara chided. “And right now we are merely discussing strategy—I want you to think. The Grand Bazaar is only blocks from the Citadel.” He nodded at the Citadel’s tower, looming over the Grand Bazaar from its perch beside the brass wall. “We would have hundreds—thousands—of Royal Guard down on us in minutes. We’d be annihilated before we even reached the palace.”
Bahram, another survivor from the Daeva Brigade, spoke next. “We could split up,” he suggested. “Half of us stay behind to delay the Guard while you take the lady and the rest to the palace.”
A chill went down Dara’s spine at how easily he suggested it. “It would be certain death for the warriors left behind.”
Bahram met his gaze, his eyes glittering. “We are all prepared to make that sacrifice.”
Dara glanced at his group. He didn’t doubt Bahram was right. The faces of his young soldiers were fierce with conviction. It should have filled Dara with pleasure. He’d poured himself into their training; he should be proud to stand at their side.
But by the Creator, he had fought at the side of so many young Daevas whose faces had sparked with equal conviction. He’d collected their bodies afterward, consigning them to the flames as martyrs in what was beginning to feel like a war with no end.
He sighed. This one would have an end, Dara would make sure of it—but he’d also take greater care with his men. “It would only be a delay. They’d slaughter you and be on the rest of us before we got far.”
“What about ghouls?” another man suggested. “The ifrit are our allies now, are they not? One of them was boasting about how he could summon an entire army of ghouls. The skinny one.”
Dara’s face twisted in disgust at the mention of the ifrit, whom he hated in particular, escalating ways. The remark about them being allies and the memory of their ghouls only fueled his revulsion. Not to mention that Vizaresh—the ifrit they were speaking of now—had once threatened Nahri. Threatened “to grind her soul into dust” for blood-poisoning his brother … a threat Dara wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon. “I do not wish to see those foul things in our city,” he said shortly.
Irtemiz grinned. “The ghouls or the ifrit?”
Dara snorted. His soldiers were all like family to him, but he had a particular fondness for Irtemiz, whose innate talent with a bow had come a long way under Dara’s careful hand and who’d managed to keep her good humor even during the hardest of training sessions.
“Both,” he replied. Then he gestured back at the map. “I want you to think about this and discuss solutions with each other while I’m away.” Dara didn’t quite share Manizheh’s confidence that some mysterious meeting with Aeshma and the marid would result in his being able to cross the magical threshold protecting Daevabad, but on the off chance it did, he wanted to be prepared.
“Should we keep practicing with Abu Sayf?”
Dara considered that. He’d managed to convince Abu Sayf to spar with his soldiers … well, no, perhaps convince wasn’t the right term. He’d threatened to scourge the younger, more irritating Geziri scout to death if the older man didn’t comply. They were going to face zulfiqars in their fight to retake Daevabad, and they’d been handed a rare opportunity to learn to fight against them with the two Geziri scouts as their prisoners. Dara had not liked making such a ghastly threat, but there was little he was unwilling to do if it would help prepare his young warriors.
But only under his eye; he didn’t trust the Geziris not to try something in his absence. “No. I do not want either of them unchained for even a moment.” He dismissed the group. “Now go. I will join you for dinner before I leave.”
He raised a hand to sweep the map away as they left, watching the buildings tumble together in a smoky wave. The miniature palace collapsed, the Citadel’s tower dissolving over the wall.
Dara stilled. He snapped his fingers, conjuring and then crushing the tower again, letting it topple. It was tall enough that the upper half could crash through the wall, ripping a hole into the heart of the Citadel itself—and creating an entrance into the city.
That is magic beyond me. Manizheh might think him invincible, but Dara was learning that the fantastic tales told about the powers of their mighty ancestors in the time before Suleiman were best taken with a little salt. He was willing to break himself to reclaim Daevabad, but he couldn’t afford to exhaust his magic at the very beginning of the invasion.
He tucked the idea away, crossing to the large carpet rolled in one corner. Dara hadn’t flown one in years, not since journeying to Daevabad with Nahri. He ran a hand down its woolen length.
I will find a way to get back to you. I promise.
But first Dara had a meeting with the devil himself.
HE AND MANIZHEH FLEW EAST, TRAVELING ACROSS A stunning landscape that spread before them like crumpled silk, emerald hills and dusty plains blending into each other, marked by deep blue lines of twisting rivers and streams. The sight brought Dara a rare peace. Khayzur, the peri who’d once nursed him back to health, had tried to teach Dara to appreciate such moments, to let the solace and beauty of the natural world sweep him away. It had been a difficult lesson to internalize. The first time he’d been brought back, Dara had awakened to the news that his world had died fourteen centuries earlier and that he was nothing but a blood-soaked memory to his people.
Not to everyone. It was impossible to sit on this rug as it cut through the sky and not think of the first days he’d spent with Nahri—days that had driven him to drink. He’d found her very existence a scandal, physical proof one of his blessed Nahids had broken their most sacred code and lain with a human. That she’d been a cunning thief who lied as easily as she breathed seemed proof of every negative stereotype Dara had heard about the shafit.
But then … she became so much more. He had felt shockingly free with her—free to be a normal man and not the celebrated Afshin or the despised Scourge, free to exchange flirtatious barbs with a quick-witted, beautiful woman, and delight in the unexpected stirring her magnetic, mocking grin caused in his shuttered heart. All because Nahri hadn’t known their history. She was the first person Dara had spoken to in centuries who knew nothing about his past—and so he’d been able to leave it behind.
He’d known theirs was foolish affection, had known it couldn’t last, and yet Dara had been desperate to keep the worst from her—a decision he still regretted. Had he been honest with Nahri and confessed it all … given her a chance to make her own choice … he could not help but wonder if she would have chosen to escape Daevabad at his side without him putting a blade to Alizayd al Qahtani’s throat.
Not that it mattered now. Nahri had seen exactly what Dara was on the boat that night.
“Are you all right?” Startled, Dara glanced up to find Manizheh watching him, a knowing expression on her face. “You look to be contemplating something weighty.”
Dara forced a smile. “You remind me of your ancestors,” he said, evading the question. “When I was a child, I used to think they could read minds.”
Manizheh laughed, a rare sound. “Nothing so fantastical. But when you spend two centuries attuned to every heartbeat, skin flush, and inhalation that surrounds you, you learn to read people.” She gave him a pointed look. “The question remains.”
Dara flinched. At first glance, there wasn’t much resemblance between Manizheh and her daughter. Manizheh was shorter and more compact, reminding him in no small way of his own mother, a woman who could cook up a meal for fifty, then break a spoon over her knee to stab a man. Manizheh’s eyes, though, the sharp black eyes that tugged down slightly at the outer edge—those were Nahri’s. And when they lit with challenge, they cut through Dara rather effectively.
“I am fine.” He swept his hand toward the distant ground. “Appreciating the scenery.”
“It is beautiful,” she agreed. “It reminds me of Zariaspa. Rustam and I used to spend summers with the Pramukhs when we were young.” Her voice turned wistful. “They were the happiest days of my life. We were always dashing about, climbing mountains, racing simurgh, experimenting with whatever forbidden plants and herbs we could.” A sad smile crossed her face. “The closest thing to freedom we experienced.”
Dara cocked his head. “Perhaps you are fortunate you did not have an Afshin. That all sounds terribly risky. We never would have permitted it.”
Manizheh laughed again. “No, there weren’t any legendary guardians around to ruin our fun, and the Pramukhs were fairly indulgent as long as we brought Kaveh along. They seemed not to realize he was equally irresponsible.” She saw Dara’s skeptical expression and shook her head. “Do not let his stern grand wazir face fool you. He was a mud-splattered country boy when I met him, more accomplished at sneaking out to hunt for fire salamanders than reining in two restless Nahids.” She stared into the distance, her eyes dimming. “We weren’t permitted to go to Zariaspa as frequently when we were older, and I always missed him.”
“I suspect he felt the same,” Dara said carefully. He had seen the way Kaveh looked at Manizheh, and no one at camp had missed the fact that their visitor had yet to sleep in the tent they’d prepared for him. That had thrown Dara; clearly the prim grand wazir did have a hidden side. “I am surprised you didn’t bring him with us.”
“Absolutely not,” she said at once. “I don’t want the ifrit to know anything more than necessary about him.”
Dara frowned at the fierceness in her voice. “Why not?”
“Would you die for my daughter, Darayavahoush?”
The question surprised him, and yet the answer was already leaving Dara’s lips. “Yes. Of course.”
Manizheh gave him a knowing look. “And yet, would you let her die for you? Suffer for you?”
She has already suffered for me. “Not if I could help it,” Dara said quietly.
“Precisely. Affection is a weakness for people like us, a thing to be concealed from those who would harm us. A threat to a loved one is a more effective method of control than weeks of torture.”
She said the words with such cold certainty that a chill raced down his spine. “You sound as though you speak from experience,” he ventured.
“I loved my brother very much,” she said, staring into the distance. “The Qahtanis never let me forget it.” She dropped her gaze, studying her hands. “I will confess that my desire to attack during Navasatem has a personal edge.”
“How so?”
“Because Rustam spent the last one in the dungeons. I lost my temper, said something unwise to Ghassan’s father. Khader.” The name fell like a curse from her tongue. “An even harder man than his son. I don’t remember what it was, petty nonsense from an angry young woman. But Khader took it as a threat. He had my brother dragged from the infirmary and thrown into a lightless cell at the bottom of the palace. They say …” She cleared her throat. “They say that the bodies of those who die in the dungeon aren’t removed. You lie with corpses.” She paused. “Rustam spent the entire month of Navasatem there. He didn’t speak for weeks. Even years later … he could only sleep if lamps were blazing all night long.”
Dara felt sick. He thought unwillingly of his sister’s fate. “I am sorry,” he said softly.
“As am I. I’ve learned since that anonymity is far safer for those I love.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Though not without its own cruel drawbacks.”
He hesitated; Manizheh’s words indicated something that he couldn’t let pass. “Do you not trust the ifrit?” he asked. He’d made his poor opinion of the ifrit clear more than once, but Manizheh never wanted to hear it. “I thought they were your allies.”
“They are a means to an end, and I do not trust easily.” She leaned back on her palms. “Kaveh is dear to me. I will not have the ifrit learn that.”
“Your daughter …” Dara’s throat constricted. “When I said I would die for her, I hope you know I would do so for any Nahid. It was not because …” He grew flustered. “I would not overstep my station.”
A glint of amusement lit her face. “How old were you when you died, Afshin? The first time?”
Dara tried to recall. “Thirty?” He shrugged. “It was so long ago, and the last years were difficult. I do not remember exactly.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I do not understand.”
She gave him a wry smile. “At times you speak like a young man who’s yet to see a half-century. And as we discussed … I am a Nahid with a skill you compared to mind-reading.”
Heat filled his cheeks before he could check it, his heart skipping a beat … the very signs, of course, that he knew she’d been looking for.
Manizheh shaded her eyes. “Ah, I do believe that is the lake where we are to meet Aeshma. You can take us down.”
He flushed again. “Banu Manizheh, I pray you know …”
She met his eyes. “Your affections are yours, Afshin.” Her gaze turned a little harder. “But do not let them be a weakness. In any way.”
Embarrassed, he merely nodded. He raised a hand, and the rug dipped, speeding toward a distant gleam of azure. The lake was enormous—more sea than lake—the water a brilliant aquamarine, the tropical hue at stark odds with the snowcapped mountains ringing its shore.
“Lake Ossounes,” Manizheh said. “Aeshma says it’s been sacred to the marid for millennia.”
Dara gave the lake an apprehensive look. “I am not flying over that much water on a rug.”
“We needn’t.” Manizheh pointed to a thin trail of smoke drifting from the easternmost shore. “I suspect that is him.”
They flew closer, zooming over rocky red bluffs and a narrow, marshy beach. It really was a stunning place. Lines of evergreens stood as sentinels against jutting hills and grassy valleys. A few clouds streaked the pale sky, and a hawk circled overhead. The air smelled fresh, promising cold mornings around pine-scented fires.
Longing stole into his heart. Though Dara had been born in Daevabad, this was the type of country he loved. Open skies and staggering vistas. One could take a horse and a bow and disappear into a land like this to sleep under the stars and explore the ruins of kingdoms lost to time.
Ahead, a fire blazed on the beach, the flames licking the air with a bit too much malicious delight.
Dara inhaled, catching the scent of ancient blood and iron. “Aeshma. He is near.” Smoke curled from under his collar. “I can smell that foul mace he carries, thick with the blood of our people.”
“Perhaps you should shift back into your natural form.”
Dara scowled. “This is my natural form.”
Manizheh sighed. “It isn’t, and you know it. Not anymore. The ifrit have warned you that your magic is too much for this body.” She tapped his tattooed arm, the skin pale brown and very much not aflame. “You leave yourself weak.”
Their carpet fluttered to the ground. Dara didn’t respond, but he didn’t shift either. He would do so if and when the marid appeared.
“Ah, there are my erstwhile allies.”
At the sound of Aeshma’s voice, Dara’s hand dropped to the long knife at his side. The bonfire split, and the ifrit strolled through the break with a black-fanged grin.
It was a grin that made Dara sick. That was what he looked like now when he shifted, his fire-bright skin, gold eyes, and clawed hands a mirror of the demons who’d enslaved him. That his ancestors had looked the same before Suleiman’s curse was of little comfort. It hadn’t been his ancestor’s grin he’d seen just before the fetid water of the well closed over his face.
Aeshma sauntered closer, his smile widening as if he could sense Dara’s displeasure. He probably could; it was not a thing Dara tried to conceal. Balanced on one shoulder was his mace, a crude metal hammer studded with barbs. Aeshma seemed to enjoy the effect it had on Dara’s temper, and took special delight in mentioning the times it had been bathed with Nahid and Afshin blood.
Our allies. Dara’s hand curled around the hilt of his knife.
“A knife?” Aeshma clucked his tongue in disappointment. “You could summon a sandstorm that would throw me across the lake if you would leave that useless body behind you.” His eyes brightened with viciousness. “And surely if you’re going to use a weapon, we might as well get a look at your famous scourge.”
Manizheh’s hand shot out as the air sparked with heat. “Afshin,” she warned him before fixing her attention on Aeshma. “I received your signal, Aeshma. What have you heard?”
“The same whispers and premonitions that started up when you brought your Scourge back to life,” the ifrit replied. “My companions have gone burning through all the marid haunts they know without response. But now there’s something else …” He paused, seeming to savor the moment. “The peris have left the clouds to sing their warnings on the wind. They say the marid have overstepped. That they broke the rules and are to be called to account—punished by the lesser being to whom they owe blood.”
Dara stared at him. “Are you drunk?”
Aeshma grinned, his fangs gleaming. “Forgive me, I forget at times one must speak simply to you.” His voice slowed to a mocking crawl. “The marid killed you, Afshin. And now they owe you a blood debt.”
Dara shook his head. “They might have been involved, but it was a djinn who wielded the blade.”
“And?” Manizheh cut in. “Think back on what you’ve told me of that night. Do you truly believe some al Qahtani brat was capable of cutting you down on his own?”
Dara hesitated. He’d put arrows in the prince’s throat and lungs and knocked him into the lake’s cursed depths. Alizayd should have been dead twice over and instead he’d climbed back onto the boat looking like some sort of watery wraith. “What do you mean by a blood debt?” he asked.
Aeshma shrugged. “The marid owe you a favor. Which is convenient, because you want to break into their lake.”
“It’s not their lake. It’s ours.”
Manizheh laid a hand on Dara’s wrist as Aeshma rolled his eyes. “It was once theirs,” she said. “The marid helped Anahid build the city. Surely you were taught some of this? It’s said that the jeweled stones that pave the Temple grounds were brought by the marid as tribute.”
Afshin children were not exactly schooled in the finer points of their people’s history, but Dara had heard the story of the Temple’s stones. “So how does that get me across the threshold?”
“Forget your threshold,” Aeshma said. “Do you imagine water beings crossing deserts and mountains? They use the waters of the world to travel … and they once taught your Nahid masters to do the same.” Resentment flashed in his eyes. “It made hunting my people that much easier. We dared not even go near a pond lest some blood-poisoning Nahid spring from its depths.”
“This is madness,” Dara declared. “You want me to threaten the marid—the marid, beings capable of turning a river into a serpent the size of a mountain—based on the supposed whispers of peris and tales of a legendary magic neither Banu Manizheh nor I were alive to witness.” He narrowed his eyes. “You wish to kill us, is that it?”
“If I wanted to kill you, Afshin, believe me I’d have come up with a far simpler method and spared myself your paranoid company,” Aeshma replied. “You should be excited! You get to avenge yourself on the marid who killed you! You get to be their Suleiman.”
The comparison instantly extinguished Dara’s anger, replacing it with dread. “I am no Suleiman.” The denial surged from his mouth, his skin prickling at the thought of such blasphemy. “Suleiman was a prophet. He was the man who set our laws and granted us Daevabad and blessed our Nahids—”
Aeshma burst into laughter. “My, you really do rattle that off. I remain forever impressed by the training your Nahid Council beat into you.”
“Leave him alone,” Manizheh said sharply. She turned back to Dara. “No one is asking you to be Suleiman,” she assured him, her voice gentler. “You are our Afshin. That is all we need you to be.” The confidence in her eyes helped calm him. “But this blood debt is a good thing. A blessed thing. It might get us back to Daevabad. To my daughter.”
Nahri. Her face played in his memory. The betrayal in her dark eyes as Dara forced her hand in the infirmary, her screams as he was cut down.
Sixty-four, Kaveh had said coldly. Sixty-four Daevas who died in the chaos Dara had caused.
He swallowed the lump growing in his throat. “How do we summon the marid?”
Violent delight danced across the ifrit’s face. “We anger them.” He turned away. “Come! I’ve found something they’re going to be very upset to lose.”
We anger them? Dara stayed rooted to the sand. “My lady … this could be quite dangerous.”
“I know.” Manizheh’s gaze was locked on the retreating ifrit. “You should shift.”
This time, Dara obeyed, letting the magic take him. Fire raced down his limbs, claws and fangs bursting forth. He sheathed the knife, conjuring a new weapon from the smoke that swirled around his hips. He raised it, the familiar handle of the scourge warming in his hand.
It would not hurt to remind Aeshma of what he was capable of.
“Don’t believe everything they tell you,” Manizheh said, suddenly sounding on edge. “The marid. They are liars.” She turned abruptly on her heel, following Aeshma through the flames.
Dara stared at her another moment. What would they possibly have to tell me? Bewildered, he followed her, his unease growing.
Behind the veil of smoke, a figure writhed on the sandy beach. His hands and legs were bound, his mouth gagged. He was sobbing against the ball of fabric stuffed in his mouth, his wrists bloody where he’d tried to tear away his binds.
Crimson blood.
Manizheh spoke first. “A human? You plan to use a human to summon the marid?”
“Not just any human,” Aeshma explained. “A devotee of the marid—one who was hard to find. Humans have been giving up the old ways, but I spied him conducting rituals at high tide.” He inhaled, looking disgusted. “He’s theirs. I can smell it.”
Dara frowned. He could too, as a matter of fact. “Salt,” he said softly. He studied the human. “And something else … like a heaviness upon him. Something dark. Deep.”
Aeshma nodded, swinging his mace in one hand. “He’s been claimed.”
Manizheh was staring at the human, her expression unreadable. “And that claim is important to them?”
“Very,” Aeshma replied. “There’s power in worship, and the marid don’t have many followers left. They’re going to be very upset to lose one.”
The ifrit’s plan became horribly clear in Dara’s head. “Lose one … you cannot mean you intend—”
“I do not.” Aeshma gave them both a careful look. “If I’m wrong about the blood debt, the marid will be within their rights to slaughter whoever kills their acolyte.” He held the mace out to Manizheh. “This risk is yours, Banu Nahida.”
Dara instantly stepped between them. “No. Banu Manizheh … there—there are rules,” he stammered. “Our tribe has always obeyed Suleiman’s code; it’s what separates us from the djinn. We do not touch humans. We certainly do not kill them!”
She shook her head, grim resignation in her eyes as she reached for the mace. “We have to find a way to get into Daevabad, Afshin. We’re running out of time.”
Dread clawed up in his chest, but he lowered her hand. “Then I will do it.” This was not a sin he could let his Nahid commit herself.
Manizheh hesitated. Her lips were pressed tight, her spine rigid. And then she nodded, stepping back.
Dara took the mace. He headed for the human, closing himself off from the man’s sobs, from the voice screaming inside his own head.
He smashed his skull in with a single strike.
A moment of horrified silence seemed to hang in the air. Then Aeshma spoke, his voice strained. “Burn him. In the water.”
Sick to his soul, Dara grabbed the human he’d murdered by his bloody collar and dragged him farther into the shallows. The smell of viscera swept over him. Around the dead man’s wrist was a blue string knotted with jade beads. Had someone given that to him? Someone who’d be waiting for him to return?
Demon. The whispered accusations that followed Dara in Daevabad rose in his mind. Murderer.
Scourge.
Crimson blood stained the clear water, ballooning out from the body like a storm cloud overtaking the sky. The water simmered against his ankles. Dara hated it. He hated everything about this. Fire poured down his hands, rushing to consume the man’s body. For a moment, Dara could not help but wish it would consume him as well.
A high, thin screech tore the air—and then the lake attacked.
The water drew up so fast Dara didn’t even have time to move. A wave twice his height lunged for him, towering over him like a ravenous bear …
And then the wave fell apart, collapsing around his body with an angry hiss of steam. The water tried again, flattening and then twisting around his legs as if to drag him down and drown him. And again it lurched back, as though it were an animal that had been burned.
“Afshin!” he heard Manizheh cry. “Watch out!”
Dara looked up. His eyes went wide. In the churning depths, a ship was re-forming. Barnacle-covered wooden ribs and broken deck planks rushed together, a skeleton of sunken wrecks. An enormous anchor, the metal orange with rust, flew into place on the bow like some sort of battering ram.
Dara stepped back as the boat rushed forward, his first instinct to protect Manizheh.
“Stand your ground!” Aeshma shouted. “Command it!”
Command it? Too shocked to argue and at an utter loss for how else to confront the nightmarish wreck hurtling toward him, Dara found himself raising his hands. “Za marava!” he cried, using the words the ifrit had taught him.
The ship burst into ash. The flakes drifted in the acrid air, falling like snow, and Dara stumbled, shaking badly.
But the lake wasn’t done. Water dashed over the dead human, frothing as it doused the flames covering his body.
And then the man stood up.
Water streamed from his limbs, seaweed wrapping his arms and crabs skittering up his legs. Triangular fins spiked from his shoulders, tracing down to meet reptilian clawed hands. Mollusks covered his crushed skull, and scales crept across his bloodied cheeks, a snarled mess of shells and decayed fishing nets replacing his soiled clothing. He straightened his broken neck with an abrupt crack and blinked at them, the whites of his eyes vanished under an oily dark film.
Dara recoiled in horror. “That is what Alizayd looked like,” he gasped as Manizheh and Aeshma rejoined him. “By the Creator … it really was them.”
The dead man eyed them, and the temperature plummeted, the air growing clammy with moisture.
“Daevas,” it hissed, speaking Divasti in a reedy, whispering voice that set Dara’s teeth on edge.
Aeshma stepped forward on the smoking sand. “Marid!” he greeted it, sounding almost cheerful. “So you salt-blooded old fiends are still around. I was beginning to fear your sea-beast of a mother had devoured you all.”
The marid hissed again, and Dara’s skin crawled. The thing before them, a dead, twisted nightmare from the depths of the dark water, seemed wrong in every sense of the word.
It bared a set of reptilian teeth. “You killed my human,” it accused him.
“You killed me,” Dara snapped. He had no doubt now, and fresh fury was coursing through him. “One of you did anyway. And for what? I did nothing to your people!”
“Ours was not the hand that slayed you,” the marid corrected, an odd defensiveness creeping into its breathy voice. A muddy snail glided along the scaled fin of its shoulder. “You were killed by a man of your own race.”
“So kill him again,” Aeshma said casually. “He has murdered your acolyte and set aflame your holy waters. Smash him to bits with another ship. Drown him.” The ifrit stepped closer, ignoring the glare Dara threw at him. “But you can’t, can you? It’s being whispered all around. Your people broke the rules …” His tongue darted across his lips, hungry anticipation on his fiery face. “He could burn the world’s waters and you could do nothing.”
The marid hesitated. “An error was made in taking the boy,” it finally said.
“An error?” Fire burst from Dara’s hands. “You slaughtered me in cold blood and taking Alizayd was the error?”
The marid made an angry clicking sound, and a thick fog rose from the water. “Blame your Nahid,” it hissed, glaring at Manizheh with hate in the glittering depths of its eyes. “She who was warned, she who seeks to upend what was wrought in blood!” The unnatural fog slid over his skin like a snake and Dara shivered. “If you could see the destruction you portend, Darayavahoush e-Afshin, you would throw yourself in the sea.”
Shock froze Dara’s tongue, but Aeshma waved a dismissive hand. “Ignore it. The marid like to pretend at prophecy, but they are demented fools whose wits are as scattered as their waters.” His bright golden eyes filled with scorn. “A millennium or two ago, I remember these shores being lined with shining temples, a ceaseless horde of humans willing to throw themselves in your waters and declare you their gods. Your kind laughed as Suleiman punished my people.” His face was dark with anger. “I am glad I have lived to see the same done to you.”
The marid hissed again. “This creature is no Suleiman.” Its oily eyes narrowed on Dara. “He is nothing but a blood-soaked pawn.”
“And yet you owe him a debt.” Manizheh’s cool voice cut through the charged air like a knife. “A debt you would presumably like to be free of. So perhaps we could have a conversation instead of arguing over old wars.”
The marid tilted its head, considering them. The water at its feet contracted and surged out, as if the creature was taking a breath. “Speak,” it finally replied.
“We wish to return to Daevabad.” Manizheh pointed at Dara. “My Afshin can no longer cross the mountain threshold, but there are legends that my ancestors had another way. That they could slip into the lake as though it were a doorway and reemerge in whichever waters were on their minds, in any place in the world their hearts most desired.”
“That was magic never meant for daevas. The lake was ours. It was sacred.” Hurt crept into the creature’s voice. “It was the birthplace of Tiamat. She enchanted it so that we could pay homage to her from any water.”
“Tiamat?” Dara repeated, confused. “As in Bet il Tiamat? The southern ocean?”
“Not precisely,” Aeshma replied. “Tiamat was one of their gods, their mother. A giant sea monster born in the chaos of creation with a penchant for destroying whatever dirt-blood civilizations provoked her ire.” He grinned. “She hated daevas.”
“She had cause to hate daevas,” the marid hissed. “Anahid stole her lake. We removed the enchantment when Anahid’s descendants grew too weak to control us. They deserved to be torn apart for daring to enter our waters.” It turned on Manizheh, snapping its teeth. “And it is not just Daevabad you seek, daughter of Anahid. Do not think us so easily fooled. You are after Suleiman’s seal.”
Manizheh shrugged, unruffled as ever. “I am after what belongs to me. Daevabad was granted to the Nahids by the Creator, as was Suleiman’s seal. Their return is equally ordained.” She gestured to Dara. “Why would our greatest warrior be given back to us with such extraordinary abilities if it was not the will of the Creator?”
The marid gestured to its murdered human husk. “This is not the will of the Creator. It is the ill-fated scheme of a power-hungry woman.” Its gaze flickered to Dara. “And you are worse. Twice undead and with the blood of thousands on your hands … and still you serve those who made you into this abomination.”
The sudden charge took Dara aback and then it cut him deep, striking the darkest part of his heart, a shadowed part he dared not touch.
There is a city called Qui-zi.
The calm with which those words had been spoken, by an authority Dara was raised never to doubt. The screams of the people who lived there, the shafit that the Nahid Council had assured him were soulless deceptions. The belief he’d desperately clung to until he’d met a shafit woman—Nahri—whose company made him fear that everything he’d been told about the mixed-bloods was a lie.
Except Nahri wasn’t shafit. That had been the lie, a deception put in place by the very creature before him. A marid curse, a marid lie.
“Can you do it?” he demanded of the marid, abruptly done with these games. “Is it possible for us to travel through the waters back to Daevabad?”
“We will not help a Nahid retake Suleiman’s seal.”
“That is not what I asked,” he said through his teeth. “I asked if you could.”
The marid drew up. “We do not take commands from fire-born devils.”
That was answer enough for Dara.
It took very little to call up the raw power burning bright and angry inside him. Dara had spilled so much blood. It couldn’t be for nothing, and if the marid needed to learn that lesson the hard way, so be it.
He scorched the ground in a burst of heat that baked the clay beneath his feet, shaking the entire lake bed. The water churned as it came to a vicious boil, steaming away in gigantic clouds of vapor. More fire poured down his hands, dashing to consume everything that had been safely nestled in the lake’s embrace. The waterweeds that had been dancing and the fossilized teeth of creatures lost to time; a pair of writhing eels and the remains of countless fishing boats. A flock of cranes beat a hasty retreat, the frightened cry of birds filling the air.
The marid howled as its sanctuary burned, falling to its knees and screeching in pain as if it had taken the blow itself. Its clawed hands scrabbled at the dust.
Dara approached, kneeling at its side. He took the marid by its chin, its skin like pebbles beneath his fingertips. He forced its oily gaze to meet his. “You take commands from this fire-born devil,” he said coldly. “You will obey those commands or I will burn every water you consider sacred, every place your kind has ever called home. I will reduce it all to ash and dust and murder every human follower you have left on the wreckage of your shores.”
The marid jerked free. It stared at its burning sanctuary. In the puddles that remained, writhing fish were ablaze, looking like a sick parody of a Daeva fire altar.
The marid’s gaze lingered on the charred remains of a water snake. “When Suleiman punished your people, he shed no blood. He offered a choice … a choice to spend your penance building a temple to the Creator, not a command to take part in a war.”
The words came far easier to Dara now. “I am no Suleiman.”
“No,” the marid agreed. “You are not.” It seemed to have grown smaller, its teeth and scales dull.
A moment passed, the only sound the crackling of flames. The fire was spreading to the trees, to the evergreen forest he’d briefly longed to escape into.
The marid spoke again, its voice lower. “You will consider the blood debt paid if we let you pass through Daevabad’s lake?”
A loud crack from ahead caught his attention. The flames had taken a large tree on the opposite shore. It had stood alone, a towering sentinel, but as Dara watched, it broke, shattering from its base. It fell, landing across the smoking lake like the husk of a bridge.
He went very still. “No. That is not my only price,” he said softly. “Before you killed me on the lake, you attacked me at the Gozan. You transformed the river itself into a serpent, a beast as large as a mountain. Could you do that to the lake?”
“Perhaps.” The marid tensed. “Briefly. The lake is Tiamat’s birthplace. Its waters are not easily controlled.” It frowned. “Why would you want to do such a thing?”
Dara’s eyes returned to the burning tree. “I want to bring down a tower.”