A spectacle. Ali’s mouth went dry, but he rose to his feet. Anas had sacrificed himself so that Ali might escape; he deserved to have one friendly face at his execution. “Let me dress.”
Wajed ducked out, and Ali quickly changed into his uniform, a tunic the color of obsidian, a white waist-wrap, and a gray tasseled turban. He secured his zulfiqar to his waist and tucked his khanjar—the hooked dagger worn by all Geziri men—into his belt. At least he’d look the part of a loyal soldier.
He joined Wajed at the stairs, and they descended the tower into the Citadel’s heart. A large complex of sand-colored stone, the Citadel was home to the Royal Guard, housing the barracks, offices, and training ground of the djinn army. His ancestors had built it shortly after conquering Daevabad, its crenellated courtyard and stark stone tower an homage to Am Gezira, their distant homeland.
Even at this early hour, the Citadel was a hive of activity. Cadets drilled with zulfiqars in the courtyard and spearmen practiced on an elevated platform. A half-dozen young men crowded around a free-standing door, attempting to break past its locking enchantment. As Ali watched, one flew back from the door, the wood sizzling as his fellows burst into laughter. In the opposite corner, a Tukharistani warrior-scholar dressed in a long felt coat, fur hat, and heavy gloves presented an iron shield to a group of students gathered around him. He shouted an incantation, and a sheath of ice enveloped the shield. The scholar tapped it with the butt of a dagger, and the entire thing shattered.
“When’s the last time you saw your family?” Wajed asked as they reached the waiting horses at the end of the courtyard.
“A few months ago . . . well, more than a few, I suppose. Not since Eid,” Ali admitted. He swung into his saddle.
Wajed tsked as they passed through the gate. “You should make a greater effort, Ali. You’re blessed to have them so close.”
Ali made a face. “I’d visit more often if it didn’t involve going to that Nahid-haunted palace they call home.”
The palace came into view just then, as they rounded a bend in the road. Its golden domes gleamed bright against the rising sun, its white marble facade and walls shining pink in the rosy dawn light. The main building, an enormous ziggurat, sat heavy on the stark cliffs overlooking Daevabad’s lake. Surrounded by gardens still in shadow, it looked as if the massive step pyramid was being swallowed by the spiky tops of blackened trees.
“It’s not haunted,” Wajed countered. “It simply . . . misses its founding family.”
“The stairs vanished under me the last time I was there, uncle,” Ali pointed out. “The water in the fountains turns to blood so often that people don’t drink it.”
“So it misses them a lot.”
Ali shook his head but stayed quiet as they crossed the waking city. They ascended the hilly road leading to the palace and then entered the royal arena through the back. It was a place best suited for sunny days of competition, for boastful men juggling incendiaries and women racing scaled simurgh firebirds. For entertainment.
That’s exactly what this is for these people. Ali gazed at the crowd with scorn. Though it was early, many of the stone seats were already taken, filled with an assortment of nobles vying for his father’s attention, curious pureblood commoners, angry Daevas, and what looked to be the entire ulema—Ali suspected the clerics had been ordered to witness what happened when they failed to control the faithful.
He climbed up to the royal viewing platform, a tall stone terrace shaded by potted palm trees and striped linen curtains. Ali didn’t see his father but spotted Muntadhir near the front. His older half brother didn’t look any happier than Ali to be there. His curly black hair was mussed, and he seemed to be wearing the same clothes he’d probably gone out in last night, an embroidered Agnivanshi jacket heavy with pearls and a lapis-colored silk waist-wrap, both wrinkled.
Ali could smell the wine on Muntadhir’s breath from three paces away and suspected his brother had probably just been dragged from a bed not his own. “Peace be upon you, Emir.”
Muntadhir jumped. “By the Most High, akhi,” he said, his hand over his heart. “Do you have to creep up on me like some sort of assassin?”
“You should work on your reflexes. Where’s Abba?”
Muntadhir nodded rudely toward a thin man in Daeva clothing at the terrace edge. “That one insisted on a public reading of all the charges.” He yawned. “Abba wasn’t wasting his time on that—not when he has me to do it for him. He’ll be here soon enough.”
Ali glanced at the Daeva man: Kaveh e-Pramukh, his father’s grand wazir. Focused on the ground below, Kaveh didn’t appear to notice Ali’s arrival. A satisfied smile played on his mouth.
Ali suspected he knew why. He took a deep breath and then stepped to the edge of the terrace.
Anas kneeled on the sand below.
His sheikh had been stripped to the waist, burned and whipped, his beard hacked off in disrespect. His head was bowed, his hands bound behind him. Though it had only been two weeks since his arrest, he’d clearly been starved, his ribs visible and his bloody limbs thin. And those were only the wounds Ali could see. There would be others, he knew. Potions that made you feel as if you were being stabbed by a thousand knives, illusionists who could make you hallucinate the deaths of your loved ones, singers who could reach a pitch high enough to drive you to your knees while your ears bled. Men didn’t survive the dungeons of Daevabad. Not with their minds intact.
Oh, Sheikh, I’m so sorry . . . The sight before him—a single shafit man with no magical abilities surrounded by hundreds of vengeful purebloods—seemed a cruel joke.
“As for the crime of religious incitement . . .”
The sheikh swayed, and one of his guards jerked him upright. Ali went cold. The entire right side of Anas’s face was smashed, his eye swollen shut, his nose broken. A line of saliva dripped from his mouth, escaping past shattered teeth and swollen lips.
Ali pressed his zulfiqar’s scabbard. Anas met his stare. His eye flashed, the briefest of warnings before he dropped his gaze again.
Earn this. Ali remembered his sheikh’s last command. He dropped his hand away from the weapon, aware of the eyes of the audience upon him. He stepped back to join Muntadhir.
The judge droned on. “The illegal possession of weapons . . .”
There was an impatient snort from the other side of the arena, his father’s karkadann, caged and hidden by a fiery gate. The ground trembled as the beast stomped its feet. A horrid cross between a horse and an elephant, the karkadann was twice the size of both, its scaly gray skin stained and matted with gore. The dust in the arena was heavy with its smell, the musk of old blood. No one bathed a karkadann; none even got near save the pair of tiny sparrows caged next to the creature. As Ali listened, they began to sing. The karkadann settled down, placated for the moment.
“And as for the charge of—”
“By the Most High . . .” A voice boomed from behind Ali as the entire crowd shot to their feet. “Is this still going on?”