Nahri glanced at her, surprised by the sorrow in the older woman’s expression. “You loved him.”
“I think we loved each other as much as we could. His loyalty was to Daevabad first and mine to Ta Ntry. Then when our children were born, I had no idea how fiercely I’d love them and how desperate I’d be to protect them from political fates that now seem unbearable.” She shook her head. “And I could not forgive him for banishing Ali. I think I could have excused Ghassan a great many awful things, but sending our son to die—he stomped out himself the part of my heart he’d once claimed.”
Nahri flinched. She knew how that felt.
Hatset was studying her. “Here, now I have spilled the details of my marriage, so you must do the same. I know you did not love Muntadhir, but do you think you could have one day ruled at his side?”
Nahri considered the question. A few weeks ago, she would have ducked it—this wasn’t the first time Hatset had tried to pry into her marriage. Muntadhir and Ali had been rivals, and Muntadhir’s alliance with the Daevas through his Nahid wife had been one of his strongest hands.
But that had all crashed down, and she found herself answering with more honesty than she usually did. “I don’t know. I was willing to sacrifice a lot for my people, but I don’t think I could have stood at Muntadhir’s side if he’d turned into his father. And if he’d managed to change and stand up to his father, I think one of the first things he would have done was divorce me. We were terribly matched.”
Hatset offered a grim smile. “A diplomatic statement. Prickliness aside, I do respect you, Banu Nahida. You have an admirable pragmatism, a willingness to hold contrary ideas in your head. I expected Manizheh’s daughter to be clever—but your wisdom, that I did not prepare for.”
“I am glad to be a surprise,” Nahri said drily. “Did you know her? My mother, I mean.”
“Not well, though I’m not sure anyone save her brother knew her well. Ghassan and I were only married a few years when she vanished, and I avoided her at court.”
“Because of Ghassan?”
“No, not because of my husband’s infatuation.” Hatset turned to look Nahri in the face. “Because she scared me, Banu Nahri, and I am not a woman who frightens easily. I still remember Ghassan bringing me to the infirmary to meet ‘his esteemed Nahids,’ as he called them. It made my skin crawl—they were so obviously prisoners, and it shocked me that my husband couldn’t see that. Rustam was so jumpy in his presence that he couldn’t hold a cup steady.”
Yet you were willing to make us prisoners again. But Nahri didn’t say that. “And Manizheh?”
“I’d heard the Daevas whisper that she was a goddess. I dismissed it as fire-worshipper superstition,” Hatset said, a note of apology in her voice. “But it was an apt description, and Manizheh knew it. You could see the rage, the resentment boiling behind her eyes, that inferior creatures such as we would dare to contain her. I remember thinking that I had no doubt if the winds of politics ever changed, she would not suffer a moment’s hesitation in killing us all.” Regret crossed her face. “And in a small way, I cannot blame her.”
Neither can I. Nahri despised the violence her mother had wrought, but she couldn’t blame her for striking back. Manizheh had gotten to Nahri that night on the roof, tugging hard at the part of her that wanted to stop bowing. That wanted to stop being afraid.
Nahri had denied her. And now she was surrounded by people she didn’t trust, with no clear path forward.
Hatset was staring at her as though she could read Nahri’s mind. “They won,” she said. “At least for now. Your mother sits on the throne, your Afshin stands at her side, and the Daevas reign supreme over the wreckage of the Citadel and the ruin of the Qahtanis. So how does the consummate survivor—a woman who submits to the marriage bed of her enemy, who denounces the Afshin she is said to have loved—end up here instead of with them, Suleiman’s seal on the brow of my son?”
“I would hope most people who saw what I did at the palace would stand against her.” Nahri shivered, remembering the screams of Ghassan’s guards as they clawed at their heads. “The poison my mother conjured was awful, and most of the Geziris it killed were completely innocent. Servants and scribes and normal people who just had the bad luck to get caught in the games of the powerful on the wrong night. Children.” She paused, seeing the little boys in their bloody festival clothes again. Nahri didn’t imagine she’d ever forget them. “It’s a con,” she said, freshly angry.
“A con?”
“It’s supposed to be the mark of a wise leader, right? The willingness to make sacrifices for a greater good? But nobody ever asks those ‘sacrifices’ if they’re willing—they get no say in whether or not their kids die for some supposed greater good. And I come from people like that,” she said, recalling Yaqub’s jaded description of Egypt’s latest war. “From a country that’s been fought over by foreigners for centuries. We die, and we bleed, and it’s a debt the powerful never repay.” Nahri trembled. “I don’t want to be part of that.”
Hatset looked at her for a very long moment. It was an assessing sort of stare. When the queen spoke again, it sounded like she’d come to some sort of decision. “As I said, wise.”
“Or foolish. Because I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight someone who’s always going to be more willing to exact violence.”
“You outwit them.” Hatset turned away. “Come. There is someone you should see.”
Nahri was thrown by the comment. “There is?”
“You
