THEY FLEW LOW TO THE GROUND, NAHRI HOPING TO remain as discreet as possible while upon a massive magical lion with rainbow-colored wings. But perhaps she needn’t have worried—for the sight before her was more than enough distraction for any unfortunate travelers. Where there had once been simply another dusty plain after the Gozan River, an illusion to hide the city, now jutted a massive ring of gloomy mountains, the deep forests a bizarre contrast to the rocky desert. It might have made for a marvel, two so very different worlds shoved up against each other.
But it was no marvel. For as Nahri drew nearer, she saw rot had overtaken the trees, their bark covered in bulging pustules and their leaves leached of color. Entire stands had fallen, crumbling into windswept dunes of ash. A jagged gash ripped through a hill covered in dying wildflowers; from its depths burst fingers of serrated rock like protruding knives. The stone was stained dark crimson, the exact shade of Nahri’s blood.
An excellent omen. Just really promising all around. But Nahri pushed on. She’d made her choice, and so she flew over the fallen divide between her worlds.
A wave of heat stole over her, the ring scorching against her skin. Nahri clutched Mishmish, struggling to hang on as a burst of raw, jittery energy—as if she’d had way, way too many cups of tea—rushed through her body. She suddenly felt … connected, intertwined with the world below, as if it were a patient whose body she’d opened with her healer’s sight to examine.
A very sick patient. Acting on instinct—or perhaps not even on instinct, but rather the world itself pulling her close, drawing what it needed as magic swirled in her hands, in her heart, dancing from her body in waves—Nahri held fast to Mishmish, feeling like they were being tossed about in a tumultuous, unseen sea.
Her patient began to heal.
The diseased trees beneath her sprouted new growth, their rotted bark falling away to reveal healthy wood. Buds and shiny new leaves unfurled, a sped-up spring. Color blossomed in waves as Nahri flew overhead, pale blue flowers and pink clover racing across the landscape, moss sheathing the jagged rocks in a curtain of softness. The magic raced ahead, a welcome mat of green unrolling before her.
“Oh, wow,” she whispered. Nahri had no other words, only tears pricking her eyes.
She was home.
Her healing touch abruptly ended at the beach. The lake beyond stayed unaffected, its water churning with the violence of a tropical cyclone. Waves smashed against the shore, frothy whirlpools spinning with fallen tree branches and debris. If water could be angry, the marid’s lake was furious, lashing out at everything it could. But it didn’t hold Nahri’s attention.
Nothing did, not when her city finally came into view.
Daevabad, in all its glory and infamy. The mighty brass walls embellished with the facades of its founders, her ancestors. The crush of ziggurats and minarets, temples and stupas; the dizzying array of clashing architecture and eras—each group, each voice leaving its defiant mark on the city of djinn. The shafit stolen from Persepolis and Timbuktu, the wandering scholars and warrior-poets from every corner of the world. The laborers who, when their work was left unacknowledged in official chronicles, had instead emblazoned their names in graffiti. The women who, after erecting universities and libraries and mosques, were kept silent because of “respectability,” had stamped their presence on the cityscape itself.
Yet everything was a touch off. There were empty spaces where conjured buildings should have stood, ugly pockmarks on the skyline. The brass walls were tarnished, the edifices riddled with missing bricks and blackened mortar. Defying any weather pattern Nahri knew, somehow the eastern half of the island was draped in snow while the sun scorched the western side so fiercely that small fires smoldered in the scrubby hills. A hazy black cloud revealed itself to be a swarm of flies, and the ruined Citadel lay bare to the sky like a scar, its tower half drowned in the lake.
Like the mountains, Daevabad was sick. But there was no magic leaping from her hand now, and Nahri feared that whatever damage had befallen her city was going to need more than a single Nahid flitting through the air to fix it.
She took a deep breath as they approached the walls—she and Mishmish would be visible in seconds. Creator, if you have ever listened to my prayer, help me save my home. Guide me like you guided Anahid.
Make my hand steady when it needs to be.
Then Nahri and her shedu soared over the walls and into the city of Daevabad.
They flew directly into the Grand Bazaar. The crowded marketplace of djinn shoppers and arguing bargain hunters—the place she’d originally wandered through, wide-eyed and dazzled at Dara’s side—was almost unrecognizable. Most of the shops were shuttered, and several had been ransacked. There were no browsing families now, only knots of people sticking to the shadows, blades sheathed at their waists.
Knots of people who very swiftly noticed the enormous flying lion. Alarmed cries rang out, followed by an awful metal racket, like someone had upended an entire rack of kitchen pans.
“The Scourge!” she heard someone wail. “He’s back!”
“He’s not!” Nahri shouted down at a group of men in tattered military uniforms. Oh, how lovely—one was loading a rifle.
But they must have heard her, for the tone of the shouting immediately changed.
“It’s the Banu Nahida!” a woman cried. “Banu Nahri!”
Nahri’s name carried on the wind, and the clanging went wild, people stepping into the street and leaning out of windows to gape upward. And while being cheered was certainly more encouraging than being shot, Nahri didn’t slow down. Signs of decay and disease were everywhere, from buildings sheared in half to public water pumps submerged in fetid ponds. With relief, Nahri noted the
