He nodded. “The very same.”
“The very same?” she repeated. “You mean they’re still alive?”
“Unfortunately. Suleiman bound them to their original daeva bodies, but those bodies were meant to survive millennia.” He gave her a dark look. “I’m sure you can imagine what three thousand years of seething resentment does to the mind.”
“But Suleiman took their powers away, didn’t he? How much of a threat can they be?”
Dara raised his brows. “Did the thing that possessed your friend and ordered the dead to eat us seem powerless?” He shook his head. “The ifrit have had millennia to test the boundaries of Suleiman’s punishment and have risen to the task spectacularly. Many of my people believe they descended to hell itself, selling their souls to learn new magic.” He twisted his ring again. “And they’re obsessed with revenge. They believe humanity a parasite and consider my kind to be the worst of traitors for submitting to Suleiman.”
Nahri shivered. “So where do I fit in all this? If I’m just some lowly, mixed-blood shafit, why are they bothering with me?”
“I suspect it’s whose blood—however little—you have in you that provoked their interest.”
“These Nahids? The family of healers you mentioned?”
He nodded. “Anahid was Suleiman’s vizier and the only daeva he ever trusted. When the daevas’ penance was complete, Suleiman not only gave Anahid healing abilities, he gave her his seal ring, and with it the ability to undo any magic—whether a harmless spell gone wrong or an ifrit curse. Those abilities passed to her descendants, and the Nahids became the sworn enemies of the ifrit. Even Nahid blood was poisonous to an ifrit, more fatal than any blade.”
Nahri was suddenly very aware of how Dara was speaking of the Nahids. “Was poisonous?”
“The Nahid family is no more,” Dara said. “The ifrit spent centuries hunting them down and killed the last, a pair of siblings, about twenty years ago.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “So what you’re saying—” she started, her voice hoarse, “is that you think I’m the last living descendant of a family that a group of crazed, revenge-obsessed former daevas have been trying to exterminate for the last three thousand years?”
“You wanted to know.”
She was sorely tempted to push him off the carpet. “I didn’t think . . .” She trailed off as she noticed ash drifting up around her. She looked down.
The carpet was dissolving.
Dara followed her gaze and let out a surprised cry. He backed away to a more solid patch in the blink of an eye and snapped his fingers. Its edges smoking, the rug sped up as it descended toward the glistening Euphrates.
Nahri tried to appraise the water as they skimmed through the air above it. The current was rough but not as turbulent as it had been in other spots; she could probably make it to shore.
She glanced up at Dara. His green eyes were so bright with alarm that it was difficult to look at his face. “Can you swim?”
“Can I swim?” he snapped, as if the very idea offended him. “Can you burn?”
But their luck held. They were already at the shallows when the carpet finally burst into burning crimson embers. Nahri tumbled into a knee-high patch of river while Dara leaped for the rocky shore. He sniffed disdainfully as she staggered toward the riverbank covered in muck.
Nahri adjusted the makeshift strap of her bag. And then she stopped. She didn’t have Dara’s ring, but she had her supplies. She was in the river, safely separated from the daeva by a band of water she knew he wouldn’t cross.
Dara must have noticed her hesitation. “Still tempted to try your luck alone with the ifrit?”
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me,” she pointed out. “About the djinn, about what happens when we get to Daevabad.”
“I will. I promise.” He gestured at the river, his ring sparkling in the light of the setting sun. “But I’ve no desire to spend the coming days being looked at like some villainous abductor. If you want to return to the human world, if you wish to risk the ifrit to return to bartering your talents for stolen coins, stay in the water.”
Nahri glanced back at the Euphrates. Somewhere across the river, across deserts vaster than seas, was Cairo, the only home she’d ever known. A hard place but familiar and predictable—completely unlike the future Dara offered.
“Or follow me,” he continued, his voice smooth. Too smooth. “Find out what you really are, what really exists in this world. Come to Daevabad where even a drop of Nahid blood will bring you honor and wealth beyond your imagining. Your own infirmary, the knowledge of a thousand previous healers at your fingertips. Respect.”
Dara offered his hand.
Nahri knew she should be suspicious, but, God, his words struck her heart. For how many years had she dreamed of Istanbul? Of studying proper medicine with respected scholars? Learning to read books instead of pretending to read palms? How often had she counted her savings in disappointment and put aside her hopes for a greater future?
She took his hand.
He pulled her free of the mud, his fingers scalding her own. “I’ll cut your throat in your sleep if you’re lying,” she warned, and Dara grinned, looking delighted at the threat. “Besides, how are we supposed to get to Daevabad? We’ve lost the rug.”
The daeva nodded eastward. Set against the dark river and distant cliffs, Nahri could make out the bare brick lines of a large village.
“You’re the thief,” he challenged. “You’re going to steal us some horses.”
6
Ali
Wajed came for him at dawn.
“Prince Alizayd?”
Ali startled and looked up from his notes. The sight of the city’s Qaid—the commander of the Royal Guard—would have made most djinn startle, even if they weren’t expecting to be arrested for treason at any minute. He was a massively built warrior covered in two centuries’ worth of scars and welts.
But Wajed only smiled as he entered the Citadel’s library, the closest thing Ali had to his own quarters. “Already hard at work, I see,” he said, motioning to the books and scrolls scattered on the rug.
Ali nodded. “I have a lesson to prepare.”
Wajed snorted. “You and your lessons. Were you not so dangerous with that zulfiqar, one would think I’d raised an economist instead of a warrior.” His smile faded. “But I fear your students—however few they are—will have to wait. Your father’s had it with Bhatt. They can’t get any more information out of him, and the Daevas are clamoring for his blood.”
Though Ali had been expecting this moment since he’d first heard Anas had been captured alive, his stomach twisted, and he struggled to keep his voice even. “Was he—?”
“Not yet. The grand wazir wants a spectacle, says it’s the only thing that will satisfy his tribe.” Wajed rolled his eyes; he and Kaveh had never gotten along. “So we’ll both need to be there.”