A human. How quickly that word had risen unbidden in her mind. The realization threw her, making her fumble for an answer even more awkward. “It’s sort of a long story—”
“Oh, have you somewhere to be? An appointment?” Yaqub wagged a trembling finger. “Child, you should be happy for all the wars. They distracted people from the rumors flying around after you disappeared.”
“Rumors?”
His expression darkened. “A girl was found murdered in El Arafa, surrounded by decaying bodies, ransacked tombs, broken graves—like the dead themselves awoke, God forbid. People said she was shot with an arrow that looked like it came from the time of the Prophet. Wild stories, including gossip that she’d taken part in a zar earlier in the evening. And that it was led by …”
“Me,” Nahri finished. “Her name was Baseema. The girl, I mean.”
She didn’t miss the way he drew back ever so slightly. “You weren’t actually involved in her death, were you?”
Creator, Nahri was so tired of lying to people she cared about. “Of course not,” she said hoarsely.
“Then why did you vanish?” Yaqub sounded hurt. “I was very worried, Nahri. I know I’m not your family, but you might have sent word.”
More guilt, but at least this Nahri could answer somewhat honestly. “I would have if I could, my friend. Believe me.” She thought fast. “I was … taken—rescued. But the place I ended up, the people—they were on the controlling side,” she explained, in what had to be the mildest assessment of Ghassan al Qahtani ever uttered. “In fact, that’s why we’re here. We’re sort of … political exiles.”
Yaqub’s fuzzy gray brows had been rising higher in disbelief as she spoke, but now he just looked confused. “We?” he repeated.
“Me and him,” Nahri replied, nodding at Ali, his sleeping form visible through the open door.
Yaqub glanced back and then jumped. “Oh, goodness, I’d completely forgotten about him!”
“Yes, he seems to have that effect.” Not that Nahri was complaining. If Ali woke up in Cairo, it might be better for everyone that humans had trouble seeing—and perhaps more importantly, hearing—the djinn prince with the habit of saying exactly the wrong thing.
If he wakes up. Even thinking it made her want to rush back in and check on him.
Yaqub was still staring at Ali’s feet, squinting as though that would keep him from popping out of view again. “And who exactly is ‘he’?”
“A friend.”
“A friend?” He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “What is a ‘friend’? You are not married?”
Nahri’s guilt left her in one fell swoop. “I vanish in a cemetery full of exhumed skeletons only to show up in your shop six years later, and your primary concern about the man you can barely see is whether or not he’s my husband?”
Yaqub flushed but remained stubborn. “So you and your not-husband are political exiles, you said? From where?”
A magical court of djinn. “An island,” she answered. “It’s this tiny island kingdom. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
“An island where?”
Nahri swallowed. “Afghanistan?” she tried. “I mean, you know, in that general area.”
Yaqub crossed his arms over his chest. “An island. In Afghanistan? Where? Near the endless desert steppe or the rocky mountains weeks from the sea?”
His sarcastic response only made Nahri more heartsick. How quickly they’d fallen back into their verbal sparring matches, the biting remarks she’d always trusted more than if Yaqub had treated her with pity.
And suddenly she wanted to tell him. Ali might be dying, the magic that had been part of her identity since she was a child was gone, and her world had been torn apart. She wanted someone to tell her it was all going to be okay, to hug her as she wept the tears she rarely let fall.
She looked at Yaqub, at the gentleness in his warm, human-brown eyes and the weary lines in his face. What horrors had he seen in the wars Nahri had missed? How had he survived, managing his shop and feeding his family in a city filled with hostile foreigners—a city where his faith marked him out as different and possibly suspicious, a sickening situation Nahri could empathize with all too well?
Nahri would not shake his world further. “Grandfather, you always made it clear you didn’t want to know certain things about me. Trust that this isn’t a tale you want to hear.”
Yaqub’s eyes dimmed, a quiet sadness crossing his face. “I see.” There was tense silence for a moment, but when he spoke again, his voice was understanding. “Are you in trouble?”
Nahri had to bite back a hysterical laugh. She’d tricked Manizheh—a woman who controlled people’s limbs with her mind and summoned back dead Afshin from ash—and stolen the seal ring her mother had been after for decades. Yes, Nahri would say she was in trouble.
She lied again. “I think I’m safe for now. For a little while, at least,” she added, praying that part was true. Nahri didn’t put tracking her and Ali out of Manizheh’s skill set, but Daevabad was a world away and presumably consumed by utter chaos. Hopefully her mother would be too busy with her new throne to come hunting for them so soon.
But she would come eventually. Nahri hadn’t missed the hunger in Manizheh’s face when she spoke of Suleiman’s seal.
Or maybe she’ll send Dara. God forgive her, Nahri almost wanted to see him. She wanted to confront him, to understand how the man who’d escorted her to Daevabad, the charismatic warrior who teased her and conjured his mother’s stew, had knowingly taken part in an assault meant to end with the murder of every Geziri man, woman, and child.
And then what? Will you kill him? Could she? Or would Dara simply sweep Nahri’s opinions and pleas aside once again, rip Ali’s heart from his chest, and then drag her back to face Manizheh?
“Nahri?” Yaqub was staring at her.
She glanced down, realizing
