Nahri strongly suspected King Ghassan was going to be too late.
Dara snapped his fingers, and the arrows abruptly reversed direction to flit through the air and cut through their owners. His own swiftly joined them, his hands moving so fast between the quiver and bow that she couldn’t follow the motion with her eyes. When the archers fell back under the onslaught, Dara snatched up Ali’s zulfiqar.
His bright gaze locked on Muntadhir, and his mad eyes flashed with recognition. “Zaydi al Qahtani,” he declared. He spat. “Traitor. I’ve waited a long time to make you pay for what you did to my people.”
Dara had no sooner made his lunatic assertion than he charged the ship. The wooden railing burst into flames at his touch, and he vanished into the black smoke. She could hear men screaming.
“Free me,” Ali begged, thrusting his wrists into her lap. “Please!”
“I don’t know how!”
The body—sans head—of an Agnivanshi officer landed beside them with a thud, and Nahri shrieked. Ali pushed awkwardly to his feet.
She grabbed his arm. “Are you mad? What are you possibly going to do like that?” she asked, gesturing to his bound wrists.
He shook her off. “My brother’s over there!”
“Ali!” But the prince was already gone, disappearing into the same black smoke as Dara.
She recoiled. What in God’s name had just happened to Dara? Nahri had spent weeks at his side—surely she had wished for things out loud without . . . well, whatever it was she had just done.
He’s going to kill everyone on that boat. Ghassan would arrive to find his sons murdered, and then he’d hunt them to the ends of the earth, hang them in the midan, and their tribes would go to war for a century.
She couldn’t let that happen. “God preserve me,” she whispered, and then she did the most un-Nahri-like thing she could imagine.
She ran into danger.
Nahri boarded the ship, climbing up the broken oars and anchor chains, while trying very hard not to look at the cursed water gleaming below. She’d never forgotten what Dara told her about it shredding djinn flesh.
But the carnage on the trireme put the deadly lake out of mind. Fire licked down the wooden deck and crept up the rigging for the black sail. The line of archers lay where they’d fallen, pierced with dozens of arrows. One screamed for his mother as he clutched his ruined stomach. Nahri hesitated but knew she had no time to waste. She picked over the bodies, coughing and waving smoke away from her face as she stumbled over a stack of bloody oilcloth.
She heard screams from across the ship and spied Ali racing ahead. The smoke briefly dissipated, and then she saw him.
It was suddenly clear why—over a thousand years later—Dara’s name still provoked terror among the djinn. His bow slung on his back, he had Ali’s zulfiqar in one hand and a stolen khanjar in the other and was using them to make quick work of the soldiers remaining around Muntadhir. He moved less like a man and more like some raging war god of the long-ago era in which he’d been born. Even his body was illuminated, seemingly on fire just below the skin.
Like the ifrit, Nahri recognized in horror, suddenly unsure of just who or what Dara truly was. He shoved the zulfiqar into the throat of the last guard between him and Muntadhir and yanked it out bloody.
Not that the emir noticed. Muntadhir sat on the bloody deck with the arrow-riddled body of a soldier cradled in his arms. “Jamshid!” he screamed. “No! God, no—look at me, please!”
Dara raised the zulfiqar. Nahri drew to a stop, opening her mouth to shout.
Ali threw himself on the Afshin.
She’d barely noticed the prince, awestruck by the horrible sight of Dara doing death’s work. But he was suddenly there, taking advantage of his height to jump on Dara’s back and loop his bound wrists around the Afshin’s neck like a noose. He drew up his legs, and Dara staggered under the sudden weight. Ali kicked the zulfiqar out of his hands.
“Muntadhir!” he screamed, adding something in Geziriyya that she couldn’t understand. The zulfiqar had landed barely a body’s length away from the emir’s feet. Muntadhir didn’t look up; he didn’t even seem to have heard his brother’s cry. Nahri ran, picking over bodies as quickly as she could.
Dara let out an aggravated sound as he tried to shake the prince loose. Ali pulled up his hands, pressing the iron bindings tight against the Afshin’s throat. Dara gasped but managed to elbow the prince in the stomach and slam his back hard into the ship’s mast.
Ali didn’t let go. “Akhi!”
Muntadhir startled and looked up. In a second he had dived for the zulfiqar, at the same time Dara finally succeeded in throwing Ali over his head. He grabbed his bow.
The young prince hit the wet deck hard and slid to the boat’s edge. He scrambled to his feet. “Munta—”
Dara shot him through the throat.
27
Nahri
Nahri screamed and rushed forward as a second arrow went through Ali’s chest. The prince staggered back, and his heel caught against the edge of the boat, throwing him off balance.
“Ali!” Muntadhir lunged for his brother but wasn’t fast enough. Ali toppled into the lake with barely a splash. There was a large gulp, like the sound of a heavy rock landing in a still pool, and then silence.
Nahri ran to the railing, but Ali was gone, the only sign of his presence a ripple in the dark water. Muntadhir dropped to his knees with a wail.
Her eyes welled with tears. She spun on Dara. “Save him!” she cried. “I wish for you to bring him back!”
Dara swooned, staggering at her command, but Ali didn’t reappear. Instead Dara blinked, and the brightness left his eyes. His confused gaze wandered the bloody deck. He dropped the bow, looking unsteady. “Nahri, I—”
Muntadhir jumped to his feet and snatched up the zulfiqar. “I’ll kill you!” Flames swirled up the blade as he charged the Afshin.
Dara parried the other man away with his khanjar as easily as he might have swatted a gnat. He blocked another of Muntadhir’s attempts and then casually ducked the third, elbowing the emir hard in the face. Muntadhir cried out; a spray of black blood spouted from his nose. Nahri didn’t need to be a swordsman to see how clumsily he moved in comparison with the deadly swift Afshin. Their blades clashed again, and Dara shoved him away.
But then Dara stepped back. “Enough, al Qahtani. Your father doesn’t need to lose a second son tonight.”
Muntadhir didn’t look particularly desirous of Dara’s mercy—nor capable of being reasoned with. “Fuck you!” he sobbed, slashing wildly with the zulfiqar as blood ran down his face. Dara moved to defend himself. “Fuck you and your sister-fucking Nahids. I hope you all burn in hell!”