The stench hit him first, blood, rot, and waste, so thick he covered his nose, trying not to gag. With a snap, Dara conjured a trio of fiery floating globes that filled the cell with golden light. It revealed what he’d dreaded all those years, though the remains of the infamous “carpet” looked nearly worn away, reduced to blackened bones and scraps of cloth.
Muntadhir was chained to the opposite wall, iron cuffs binding his wrists and ankles. Daevabad’s once-dashing emir was still dressed in his ruined clothes from the night before, bloodstained trousers and a dishdasha so torn it hung around his neck like a scarf. A shallow gash stretched across his stomach, a nasty wound to be certain, but nothing like how it had looked before magic vanished: the skin flushed with the ominous green-black of the zulfiqar’s poison, the steadily spreading tendrils of inescapable death.
Muntadhir jerked back against the sudden light, blinking. He met Dara’s eyes, and hatred ripped across his face.
Then he noticed Manizheh.
Muntadhir’s mouth fell open, a strangled sound leaving his throat. But then he laughed, a hysterical, bitter laugh. “Of course,” he said. “Of course it was you. Who else would be capable of such a thing?”
Manizheh’s tone was almost polite. “Hello, Emir.”
Muntadhir shuddered. “I watched you burn on the funeral pyre.” He glared at Dara. “I watched you turn to ash. What devil’s deal did the two of you make to return and visit such slaughter on my people?”
Dara tensed, but Manizheh was implacable. “Nothing so dramatic, I assure you.” She pointed at his wound. “May I check that? It should be cleaned and may require stitching.”
“I would rather it kill me. Where is my brother?” Muntadhir’s voice broke with worry. “Where is Nahri? What have you done with them?”
“I don’t know,” Manizheh replied. “The last I saw of them, Alizayd had seized Suleiman’s seal ring, grabbed my daughter, and jumped into the lake. No one has heard from them since.”
And here I thought we were trying the truth. Yet Dara would be lying if he said that wasn’t a story he wished he could believe as well. It would be easier to have a new reason to hate Alizayd than confront the unsettling truth that Nahri had chosen another side.
“I don’t believe you,” Muntadhir retorted. “The lake kills anyone who goes in it. Ali would never—”
“Wouldn’t he?” Manizheh countered. “Your brother has partnered with marid before. Maybe he thought they would help him.”
Muntadhir’s expression stayed flat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Dara spoke up. “Come on, al Qahtani. You’ve seen him use water magic. He did so right in front of us. And you were on the boat that night he fell in the lake, and they possessed him.”
The emir didn’t flinch. “Ali didn’t fall in the lake,” he said coolly, reciting the words with the ease of an often-told lie. “He was caught in the ship’s netting and recovered in time to strike you down. God be praised for such a hero.”
“Odd,” Dara said, matching his chill. “Because I remember you wailing his name as he vanished beneath the surface.” He stepped closer. “I’ve met the marid, Emir. You may think me a monster, but you have no idea what these creatures are. They use the rotting bodies of their murdered acolytes to communicate. They despise our kind. And do you know what they called your brother? A mistake. A mistake they were very angry about and one which delivered them into my debt. Now he has vanished into their domain with your wife and one of the most powerful magical objects in our world.”
Muntadhir met his stare. “If they have escaped you, I don’t care who helps them.”
Manizheh cut in. “Where would they go, Muntadhir?”
“Why? So you can poison that place as well?” Muntadhir laughed. “Oh, right; you can’t now, can you? Do you think I didn’t notice? Except for your Scourge, magic is gone.” He snorted. “Congratulations, Manizheh, you’ve done what no invader has accomplished before: you’ve broken Daevabad itself.”
“We’re not the ones who took the seal out of the city,” Dara shot back. “That is why this happened to magic, is it not?”
Muntadhir’s eyes went wide with feigned innocence. “Certainly seems like a strange coincidence.”
“Then how do we restore it?” Manizheh asked. “How do we get our magic back?”
“I don’t know.” Muntadhir shrugged. “Perhaps you should go make friends with a human prophet. Best of luck, truly. I’m guessing you have about a week before Daevabad devolves into anarchy.”
The emir’s haughty sarcasm was grating on the last of Dara’s nerves, but Manizheh still seemed unaffected. “You don’t strike me as a man who would enjoy watching his home slip into anarchy. That doesn’t fit the gentle boy I remember, the polite young prince who always joined his mother for breakfast in the harem. Poor Saffiyeh, taken so early—”
Muntadhir lunged against his chains. “You don’t say her name,” he seethed. “You murdered my mother. I know you stayed away on purpose when she was sick. You were jealous of her, jealous of all of us. You were probably scheming even then to slaughter all the djinn trying to be nice to you!”
“Trying to be nice to me,” she repeated faintly, sounding disappointed. “I had thought you cleverer than that. A shame that, for all the fondness you are said to have for the Daevas, you never saw through your father’s lies.”
Wildness twisted across Muntadhir’s blood-streaked face. “Nothing he did deserved the kind of death you visited on my people.”
“If you rule by violence, you should expect to be removed by violence.” Manizheh was curter now. “But it need not continue. Help us, and I will grant mercy to those Geziris who survived.”
“Fuck you.”
Dara hissed, still deeply conditioned on behalf of the Nahids, but Manizheh waved him off, stepping closer to Muntadhir. Dara eyed the emir’s shackles, not liking any of this.
“It isn’t only your mother I remember you visiting,” Manizheh
