His mother was waiting. Ali froze, but neither Wajed nor Hatset seemed surprised to see each other.
Hatset crossed her arms. “Did you really think he wouldn’t tell me?”
“Yes,” Ali replied, shooting Wajed a look. “What happened to Geziri solidarity?”
“She’s more frightening than you.”
“And I’m not here to stop you, baba,” his mother assured him. “Everything in my blood screams at me to, but I know I can’t. However, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t help.”
“We filled the hold,” Wajed explained. “All of us. Jamshid and that nutty scholar tried to come up with offerings that might please Tiamat. Gold and incense and silks and ivory.”
Guilt and gratitude rolled over Ali. “You didn’t have to empty half the treasury for me,” he protested. “You might need that for the war.”
Hatset hugged him. “There is nothing I wouldn’t give for you. I am so sorry for the words I spoke before, but I won’t burden you with my regrets or my grief, my love. Just know how utterly honored and proud I am to call you my son.”
“It is I who am blessed to have such a mother.” Ali stepped back, quickly wiping his eyes. “Qaid, you will protect my family?”
Wajed touched his heart and brow in the Geziri salute. “To my dying breath, my king.” He gave Ali a small, sad smile. “I had to call you that at least once.”
“Then let me do the kingly thing and leave before my emotions get the better of me.” Ali stepped into the surf, the sea licking at his legs, and climbed the hull. “If God wills it, I will return.” Under his breath, he added, “—I promise.”
And then Ali fixed his eyes on the horizon. This time when he called to the water, he didn’t have to flinch. The ocean rose around him, the boat bobbing madly, and pulled him out to sea. It happened so fast that Ali didn’t even get a chance to look at his mother again, a curtain of fog rushing between them. In moments, there was nothing but water surrounding him—the clouds threatening another downpour and Tiamat’s sea, dark as indigo.
Sail east, Issa had told him. As far as you can. It is the deepest heart of the ocean where she is said to rest.
But “sail east” was advice easier given than enacted in the dark of a monsoon night with the tide and waves shoving his boat every which way. This wasn’t the languid Nile—the river whose lord Ali now knew he descended from—and the ocean fought him when he reached for the currents, attempting to coax the water into carrying the boat along. He tried to steady the rudder, nearly getting the wind knocked out of him when a wave pitched the boat hard. The rain picked up again, the wind howling past his ears as the ship groaned and creaked, planks protesting.
It was so loud that Ali didn’t think much of it when he heard a squeak on the wood, his arms full of the sail he was attempting to adjust.
Until a voice spoke up behind him. “You’re doing that wrong.”
Ali stilled and then slowly turned around.
To see Fiza standing at the entrance to the hold with her pistol pointed at his head.
“NO, DON’T DROP IT,” FIZA WARNED WHEN ALI MOVED to let go of the sail. “I’d rather see your hands on that than on your weapons. And don’t try anything magical. If you, the ocean, the fog, or so much as a stray drop of rain make any strange moves, you’re going to get a bullet in your brain, and there’s no Nahid around to save you.”
“Fiza, you really should not be here.”
“And why’s that?” She let out a laugh, but it sounded forced. “I’ve got a ship, more treasure than I can spend in ten lifetimes, and my enemy at the end of a gun. For a pirate, I’d say I’m doing well.”
My enemy. The blood-stained bandage wrapped around her head caught his attention. “I’m sorry for hurting you,” Ali said softly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, Nahri told me. Some evil marid got in your head and made you do it. An even worse one wants to eat you up, or it will devour the whole coast. So what’s this, then? Are you running? You’re certainly carting enough riches to set up a nice new life somewhere the beach isn’t bleeding and Afshins aren’t after your head.”
“You know I’m not running.”
Fiza’s hand trembled on the pistol. “Yesterday I would have believed that. I was starting to believe in you, in all these things you’ve been saying about a new Daevabad and equality for my people. I was getting ready to follow you, you bastard,” she said, her voice breaking. “You made me think it might be possible. That if I went home, if I was some kind of hero, maybe all the other things I’ve done wouldn’t matter.”
She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t ask. Despite her constant mocking and evasion, Ali had long had the impression that Fiza had survived much, much worse.
He so desperately didn’t want to see her die now. “Fiza, you can’t follow me. Not where I’m going. Nahri didn’t lie, and I don’t think the marid have any intention of letting me leave.”
“So this was all for nothing, then? Nahri’s and your big plans? You go get eaten by the ocean, and the murderers running Daevabad slaughter everyone I grew up with?”
With Nahri and his mother, Ali could put on a noble face. But he wasn’t going to lie to another shafit he’d failed. Part of him hoped she’d just shoot him and get this all over with. “Seems like it. Take me east a bit farther, if you don’t mind, and then throw my body over the side. Keep the ship and the treasure. Someone deserves to escape all this.”
Ali dropped his hands from the sail.
Fiza didn’t shoot him.
