Dara tightened his grip on her hand, pulling her through the crush of people. They crossed through a tall ornamental gate to enter a large plaza enclosed by copper walls gone green with age. It was less crowded than the bazaar, but there were at least a few hundred djinn milling about the simple fountain of black and white marble blocks at the plaza’s center.
The massive archway they had passed under was unadorned, but six other, smaller gates fronted the plaza, each decorated in a widely different style. Djinn, looking far better dressed and wealthier than the shafit in the bazaar, were vanishing through them. As she watched, a pair of flame-haired children chased each other through a gate of fluted columns with grapevines winding its length. A tall Ayaanle man pushed past her, headed for a gate marked by two narrow, studded pyramids.
Six gates for six tribes, she realized, as well as a gate for the bazaar. Dara pushed her toward the one directly across the plaza. The Daeva Gate was painted pale blue and held open by two brass statues of winged lions. A single Geziri guard stood there, clutching his coppery scythe as he tried to shepherd the nervous crowd through.
An angry voice caught her attention as they approached the fountain. “And what do you get for standing up for the faithful? For helping the needy and oppressed? Death! A gruesome death while our king hides behind the trousers of his fire-worshipping grand wazir!”
A djinn man dressed in a dirty brown robe and sweat-stained white turban had climbed on top of the fountain and was shouting to a growing group of men gathered below. He gestured angrily at the Daeva Gate. “Look, my brothers!” the man shouted again. “Even now, they are favored, guarded by the king’s own soldiers! And this, after they’ve stolen an innocent new bride from the bed of her believing husband . . . a woman whose only crime was leaving her family’s superstitious cult. Is this just?”
The crowd waiting to enter the Daeva Quarter grew, edging out toward the fountain. The two groups were mostly staying apart and giving each other wary glances, but Nahri saw a young Daeva man turn, looking annoyed.
“It is just!” the young Daeva argued back loudly. “This is our city. Why don’t you leave our women alone and crawl back to whatever human hovel your dirt blood came from?”
“Dirt blood?” the man on the fountain repeated. He climbed to a higher block so that he was more visible to the crowd. “Is that what you think I am?” Not waiting for an answer, he produced a long knife from his belt and dragged it down his wrist. Several people in the crowd gasped as the man’s dark blood dripped and sizzled. “Does this look like dirt to you? I passed the veil. I am as djinn as you!”
The Daeva man was not deterred. Instead, he stepped closer to the fountain, anger brewing in his black eyes. “That foul human word has no meaning for me,” he snapped. “This is Daevabad. Those who would call themselves djinn have no place here. Nor do their shafit spawn.”
Nahri pressed closer to Dara. “Sounds like you have a friend,” she muttered darkly. He scowled but said nothing.
“Your people are a disease!” the shafit man yelled. “A degenerate bunch of slavers still worshipping a family of inbred murderers!”
Dara hissed, and his fingers grew hot on her wrist. “Don’t,” Nahri whispered. “Just keep going.”
But the insult clearly angered the Daeva crowd that remained, and more of them turned toward the fountain. A gray-haired old man defiantly raised an iron cudgel. “The Nahids were Suleiman’s chosen! The Qahtanis are nothing but Geziri sand flies, filthy barbarians speaking the language of snakes!”
The shafit man opened his mouth to respond and then stopped, raising a hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?” He grinned, and the crowd went quiet. In the distance, she could hear chanting coming from the direction of the bazaar. The ground started to tremble, echoing with the pounding feet of a growing throng of marchers.
The man laughed as the Daevas started to nervously back away, the threat of a mob apparently enough to convince them to flee. “Run! Go huddle at your fire altars and beg your dead Nahids to save you!” More men poured into the plaza, anger in their faces. Nahri didn’t see many swords, but enough were armed with kitchen knives and broken furniture to alarm her.
“This will be your day of reckoning!” the man shouted. “We will tear through your homes until we find the girl! Until we find and free every believing slave you infidels hold!”
She and Dara were the last through the gate. Dara made sure she was past the brass lions and then turned to argue with the Geziri guard. “Did you not hear them?” He gestured at the growing mob. “Close the gate!”
“I cannot,” the soldier replied. He looked young, his beard little more than black fuzz. “These gates never close. It’s against the law. Besides, reinforcements are coming.” He swallowed nervously, clutching his scythe. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Nahri didn’t buy his false optimism, and as the chanting grew louder, the soldier’s gray eyes widened. Though she couldn’t hear the djinn instigator over the shouts of the crowd, she saw him gesticulate to the mob of men below. He pointed defiantly at the Daeva Gate, and a roar went through them.
Nahri’s heart raced. Daeva men and women, young and old, were rushing down the manicured streets and vanishing into the pretty stone buildings surrounding them. About a dozen men worked to quickly seal doors and windows, their bare hands the bright crimson of a blacksmith’s tools. But they’d only completed about half the buildings, and the mob was close. Farther down the street, a toddler wailed as its mother pounded desperately on a locked door.
Something hardened in Dara’s face. Before Nahri could do anything, he snatched the scythe away from the Geziri soldier and shoved him to the ground.
“Useless dog.” Dara gave the doors a halfhearted tug, and when they didn’t budge, he sighed, sounding more irritated than worried. He turned toward the crowd.
Nahri panicked. “Dara, I don’t think . . .”
He ignored her and crossed the plaza toward the mob, twisting the scythe in his hands as if to test the weapon’s weight. With the rest of the Daevas behind the gate, he was alone—a single man facing hundreds. The sight must have struck the crowd as amusing; Nahri caught sight of a few puzzled faces and heard laughter.
The shafit man hopped down from the fountain with a grin. “Can it be . . . is there at least one fire worshipper with some courage?”
Dara shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed the scythe at the crowd with the other. “Tell that rabble to go home. No one is tearing through any Daeva homes today.”
“We have cause,” the man insisted. “Your people stole back a convert woman.”
“Go home,” Dara repeated. Without waiting for a response, he turned back toward the gate. At Nahri’s side, one of the winged lions seemed to shudder. She startled, but when she glanced over, the statue was still.
“Or what?” The shafit man started after Dara.
Still standing with his back to the crowd, Dara caught Nahri’s eye as he pulled off the turban that partially covered his face.