Nahri waved a hand in front of her face, coughing on the fumes. “Your timing couldn’t be better.”
Jamshid grinned back, a mix of fear and pride on his face. “See what happens when guilt gets the better of you?”
Nahri flushed, because that was indeed what had happened.
She hadn’t been able to abandon Jamshid, not after he’d thrown her own words back at her. She’d gotten close—but in the end, Nahri couldn’t do it. Instead, she’d returned to where she’d drugged him, waited until the poison was out of his body, and then wept as she begged for forgiveness.
Jamshid had been furious, rightfully betrayed and hurt.
But then he’d helped her plot.
And now they were here. Nahri grabbed him by the shoulder. “Were you able to find—”
She shut her mouth. Dara was coming for her again.
Jamshid shoved Nahri behind him and drew his sword. “Stop where you are, Afshin!”
“He can’t. He doesn’t have a choice!” Nahri said in a rushed explanation. “Manizheh enslaved him.”
“She exaggerates.”
Their mother had joined them.
“Dara, stand down,” Manizheh continued tersely, and Dara swayed, falling back. With Jamshid’s arrows still sticking out of his back, he looked like a puppet with cut strings.
But the woman controlling those strings had eyes for only one person.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Manizheh whispered, the ghost of hope in her voice. “Jamshid.”
Jamshid was gazing at their mother with a look of open, fragile wonder. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.
Manizheh stepped closer, seeming to drink him in. A lifetime of longing flickered in her eyes, a wave of regret not even their mother, normally so careful, could conceal. “You were in their custody for so long … Are you all right? Have they hurt you?”
“I’m—I’m okay,” Jamshid stammered out. “But my father …” Grief edged his voice. “Is what your messenger said true?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’m so very sorry, my child. I wished you to be here when we returned him to the flames but didn’t want to delay his soul’s rites.” She nodded at his sword—Jamshid hadn’t lowered it. “You can put that down. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
Nahri opened her mouth, having a number of very rude responses to that, but Jamshid beat her to a reply.
“You have hurt me,” he choked out. Something seemed to have broken inside him, words and emotions he must have locked away long ago. “You left me. You took my magic away, magic that might have healed me when I couldn’t walk. You, Baba, you all lied. My entire life is a lie.”
“I had no choice.” Manizheh moved closer still, looking like she wanted nothing more than to touch him. “I knew you’d be freer and happier in Zariaspa than you could have ever been trapped in Daevabad as my son.”
Jamshid was shaking. “I don’t believe you.” But even so, he’d slightly lowered his sword.
“I understand. And I’m sorry.” Manizheh took a deep breath. “I can only imagine how many questions you have. How angry and frightened you both must be,” she added, looking at Nahri as well. “I would even understand if you hate me. But I promise that I’ll explain everything in time. We’re together again now, and that’s all that matters.”
Nahri watched anguish roll over Jamshid’s face. “It’s not. I’m sorry. But there was a reason Nahri arrived here before me.”
The earth began to tremble.
It was a slight movement initially, no more than a shudder. But then a second tremor came, enough to provoke a shower of smoldering leaves from the burning branches above. It must have rained recently, for the garden was pocked with puddles, and the one nearest began to ripple. The water rose and fell as though a great plunger were thrusting in and out.
“Banu Manizheh!” A very out-of-breath scout raced down the path. He skittered to a stop, looking hastily at Mishmish and the two young Nahids. But not even the presence of a shedu and Manizheh’s estranged children stopped his warning.
“There’s something wrong with the lake,” he panted. “These mists—they appeared from nowhere. And the water is rising, the waves breaking over the walls.”
Hope rushed through Nahri so fast it left her breathless.
Manizheh clearly didn’t miss Nahri’s reaction, her eyes narowing at her children. “The top of the palace, Afshin,” she ordered. “Now.”
With a burst of magic smelling like decayed viscera, the garden beneath them abruptly rose as though the patch of grass had been carved out and shoved upward. Jamshid grabbed Nahri’s arm to steady her. His simurgh didn’t make it, tumbling into the rain of falling rocks and twisted roots, but Mishmish flew clear, flapping his wings to follow as they tumbled unceremoniously to the top of the palace ziggurat.
The sky was dimming, great walls of fog rising to veil the sun. Nahri rushed to the edge of the parapet, her heart in her throat.
Please, she prayed. Let me have this.
Vast clouds of mist blossomed across the surface of the lake, dancing over the dark water. Pale shapes swam just below—jagged spikes and great billowing fins. Curves that might have been sails and enormous bristling spears.
And then the boats began to emerge.
First there were just a handful. Then dozens. Scores. Calling them boats might have been a kindness, for they were more like the cobbled-together skeletons of hundreds of different shipwrecks with barnacle-encrusted booms and massive rusted anchors set as battering rams. More slipped out of the fog as Nahri watched, dhows and galleons, ancient triremes and the pleasure boats of forgotten sun kings. Banners flew from their masts, hastily painted with vibrant colors and sigils.
Tribal sigils. Nahri exhaled as Jamshid joined her. “So Fiza wasn’t lying,” she whispered.
“Fiza definitely wasn’t lying.”
He’s building an army. The unbelievable words came back to Nahri, the words Fiza had shouted when she came soaring out of the sea on a skiff of teak and sandblasted glass, sailing so fast along an unnatural wave that it looked like she was flying, landing on Shefala’s beach literally
