She opened her mouth to reply, but then the female sauntered over to Dara.
“My Scourge, it has been far too long.” She licked her painted lips. “Look at that slave mark, Aeshma. A beauty. Have you ever seen one as long?” She sighed, her eyes creasing in pleasure. “And oh, how he earned them.”
Dara paled.
“Don’t you remember, Darayavahoush?” When he said nothing, she gave him a sad smile. “A pity. I’ve never seen a slave so ruthless. Then again, you were always willing to do anything to stay in my good graces.”
She leered at him, and Dara recoiled, looking sick. A surge of hatred swept through Nahri.
“Enough, Qandisha.” Aeshma waved his companion off. “We are not here to make enemies.”
Something brushed against Nahri’s shins under the black water. She ignored it, focusing her attention on the ifrit. “What do you want?”
“First: for you to get out of the water. There is no safety in there for you, little healer.”
“And there’s safety with you? One of your people in Cairo promised the same and then set a pack of ghouls on us. At least there’s nothing in here trying to eat me.”
Aeshma raised his eyes. “A terribly ill choice of words, Banu Nahida. The denizens of air and water have already done you both more harm than you know.”
She frowned, trying to untwist his words. “What do you . . .” She stopped speaking. A shudder went through the river, like something impossibly large heaving itself along the muddy bottom. She eyed the water around her. She could’ve sworn she saw a flash of scales in the distance, a wet glistening that vanished as quickly as it had come.
The ifrit must have noticed her reaction. “Come now,” he urged. “You are not safe.”
“He’s lying.” Dara’s voice was barely more than a growl. The daeva was still, his hate-filled gaze fixed on the ifrit.
The skinny one suddenly straightened up, sniffing the burning air like a dog before rushing into the brush where the murdered ifrit lay.
“Sakhr!” The skinny ifrit cried, his luminous eyes wide in disbelief as he touched the throat Nahri had torn open. “No . . . no, no, no!” He threw his head back and let out a screech of despair that seemed to rend the very air before bending back over the dead ifrit and pressing his forehead to the corpse’s.
His grief took her completely by surprise. Dara said the ifrit were demons. She wouldn’t have thought they cared for each other at all, let alone so deeply.
The wailing ifrit silenced his cry as he caught sight of her, and hate filled his golden eyes. “You murderous witch!” he accused her, rising to his feet. “I should have killed you in Cairo!”
Cairo . . . Nahri backed up until the water surged around her waist. Baseema. He was the one who’d possessed Baseema, who doomed the little girl and sent the ghouls after them. Her fingers twitched on her dagger.
He charged forward, but Aeshma grabbed him and threw him to the ground. “No! We made a deal.”
The skinny ifrit jumped to his feet and immediately started after her again, snapping and hissing as he tried to wriggle free of Aeshma’s grasp. The dirt beneath his feet sparked. “The devil take your deal! She blood-poisoned him—I’m going to rip out her lungs and grind her soul to dust!”
“Enough!” Aeshma threw him to the ground again and raised his mace. “The girl is under my protection.” He glanced up and met Nahri’s eyes. There was a much colder look to his face now. “But the slave is not. If Manizheh wanted her bloody Scourge, she should have told us.” He lowered his weapon and gestured at Dara. “He’s yours, Vizaresh.”
“Wait!” Nahri cried as the skinny ifrit leaped on Dara. Dara smashed him across the face with his bow, but then Qandisha—bigger than both men—simply grabbed Dara by the throat and lifted him off his feet.
“Drown him again,” Aeshma suggested. “Maybe this time it will take.” The river danced and boiled around his feet as he started after Nahri.
Dara tried to kick Qandisha, his cry abruptly ending when she plunged him under the dark water. The ifrit laughed as Dara’s fingers clawed at her wrists.
“Stop!” Nahri screamed. “Let him go!” She hopped back, hoping to lose Aeshma in the deeper water and swim back to Dara.
But as Aeshma closed in, the river swept back, almost like a wave drawing up. It pulled from the bank, pulled from her ankles, and in seconds, it was gone from her feet altogether, leaving her standing in a foot of muck.
Absent the sound of the rushing current, the world went quiet. There was not even a hint of wind, the air saturated with the scent of salt, smoke, and wet silt.
Taking advantage of Aeshma’s distraction, Nahri darted toward Dara.
“Marid . . . ,” the female ifrit whispered, her golden eyes wide with fright. She dropped Dara and grabbed the other ifrit by his skinny arm, yanking him away. “Run!”
The ifrit were fleeing by the time Nahri reached Dara. He was holding his throat, sucking for air. As she tried to pull him to his feet, his eyes locked on something past her shoulder, and the color left his face.
She glanced behind her. She immediately wished she hadn’t.
The Gozan was gone.
A wide, muddy trench stood in the river’s place, wet boulders and deep ridges marking its former path. The air was still smoky, but the storm clouds had vanished, revealing a swollen moon and a rich spread of stars that lit up the sky. Or at least would have lit up the sky had they not been steadily blinking out as something darker than night rose in front of them.
The river. Or what had been the river. It had drawn back and thickened, rapids and tiny waves still rippling across its surface, swirling and churning, defying gravity to rise. It wriggled and undulated in the air, slowly towering over them.
Her throat tightened in fear. It was a serpent. A serpent the size of a small mountain and made entirely of rushing black water.
The watery snake writhed, and Nahri got a glimpse of a head the size of a building, with whitecaps for teeth, as it opened its mouth to roar again at the stars. The sound broke across the air, some horrifying combination of a crocodile’s bellow and the break of a tidal wave. Behind the serpent, she spied the sandy hills where Dara said Daevabad lay hidden.
He was frozen in terror now, and knowing how frightened he was of water, she didn’t expect that to change. She tightened her grip on his wrist. “Get up.” She pulled him forward. “Get up!” When he moved too slowly for her liking, she slapped him hard across the face and pointed toward the sandy dunes. “Daevabad, Dara! Let’s go! You can kill all the djinn you want once we get there!”
Whether it was the slap or the promise of murder, the terror holding him seemed to break. He grabbed her outstretched hand, and they ran.