He inhaled and gagged as the scent of scorched hair and rotten meat washed over him. “What is that?”
As if in response, there was a sizzle and then a hissing splash as a wet projectile flashed from the sky and hurtled into the lake. A second. The third globule landed on the deck, blood-dark and smoldering as it soaked into a pile of ropes.
The ropes burst into flames. Another foul splash set the sails of the nearest ship on fire. A man screamed, diseased pustules breaking out across his skin as one of the globules struck him.
And then it was chaos. People dashed for cover under anything they could, yelling and swearing as the fiery blood showered down.
Spurred into action, Ali let his marid powers consume him. Energy surged through his limbs, unrestrained and eager. Another time, trying to harness such a thing might have made him black out, but the armor Sobek had given him cushioned the blow, magic rippling through the scaled hide of Ali’s helmet and vest.
They wanted to fight him with fiery rain? Ali raised his hands and emptied the clouds.
The torrential downpour that answered extinguished the flames, but Ali didn’t dare let it stop, shifting his focus to keep calling down the rain even as he urged the lake to carry his fleet toward the docks. It wasn’t easy; it felt like splitting his very mind in two, and Ali was so distracted by the effort that he didn’t notice anything else amiss until Fiza shouted:
“Alizayd, look down!”
Ali obeyed—just in time to see the swollen white hand that had been creeping over the deck, half the flesh nibbled away, seize his ankle.
It yanked hard, and Ali slipped, grabbing the rigging to keep himself from being dragged back into the lake. But the wraith that had seized him was only the first. Before he could cry out, more figures burst from the water below them, landing on the deck with silent, deadly purpose.
“Dear God,” Wajed breathed.
Ghouls. And not just any ghouls. For the tattered remains of the clothes clinging to their putrid flesh was familiar. Very familiar.
“My brothers,” Ali whispered. “No. Oh, God …”
It was the slain troops of the Royal Guard, the soldiers who’d been drowned and murdered the night of Manizheh’s first attack.
That’s not possible. None of this should be possible. The sky should not rain fire, and murdered djinn did not become ghouls.
It was blood magic. Jamshid had been right.
With a roar, Ali yanked free his zulfiqar and sliced off the hand gripping his ankle. He didn’t have time to contemplate all this. They needed to fight.
A shot rang out. Fiza frantically reloaded her pistol, the bullet having done nothing to slow the advancing ghoul. Ali rushed for her. Sick with grief, he nonetheless raised his zulfiqar and cut clean through the ghoul’s neck. The creature stumbled …
And then it kept going.
That had not happened with the human ghouls.
Fiza screamed, shooting again as the now-headless corpse reached for her. Out of options, Ali snatched up a belaying pin and knocked the reanimated body back into the lake.
It won them maybe a minute. The creature bobbed right back up like a cork, again coming for the ship.
Fiza stashed her pistol, and Ali tossed her the belaying pin, swapping his zulfiqar for the sickle-sword Sobek had given him. A cool surge of magic dashed down his arm when he touched it, a burst of water twining around his wrist.
“Zaydi!”
Wajed’s cry was enough warning for Ali to dive out of the way, avoiding a lunging ghoul. He whirled back around, cutting the ghoul straight across the chest with the marid blade.
It stopped dead in its tracks. It moaned and swayed, and then, with a sick squishing sound, the fluids burst from the wound. Water and rotting sludge drained from the bloated corpse with such force that the entire body shuddered, leaving nothing but a wrung-out husk on the deck.
Ali was suddenly very glad he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Around him, more than one man was retching. He stared at his sickle-sword.
His marid-gifted sword.
Then he sheathed it, running for the railing. “Keep knocking them back into the water!” he yelled.
“Where are you going?” Fiza cried.
“To get help!”
Ali launched himself back into the lake.
THE VIEW BENEATH THE SURFACE WAS NOT ENCOURAGING.
The water was so thick with the dead that swimming past them felt like cutting through a school of fish—fish who avoided him, thankfully, lurching away like Ali was a shark in their midst. Ghouls were clambering onto one another’s backs, digging what remained of their nails, their teeth—anything—to get onto the ships. The press of dead flesh reminded Ali of his time on the Nile, and he couldn’t help but shiver at the memory of how close he’d come to being eaten alive.
It was not a fate he’d see befall the army he’d brought to Daevabad or his loved ones inside the city, even if it meant inviting some almost equally alarming-looking allies.
Sobek had told Ali how important Daevabad’s lake was, but he could see it with his own eyes now. Feel it. Thousands of currents danced across the water in every direction, beams of pale gold rippling like dust twirling in the light. Ali reached out a hand and took hold of one.
Cousins, he begged. I could use your help.
At first nothing happened. Even below the water, Ali could hear his men screaming and dying. But gradually the light began to change, shifting in different parts of the lake as some of the currents abruptly snapped straight, like ribbons pulled tight. Then tunnels of water opened. A tropical green-blue from turbulent seas. Inky black from the deepest trenches. Languid brown from ponds and rivers. Crystal clear from streams. Icy white from turbulent rapids.
And from those tunnels came all kinds of marid.
All kinds of his kin.
They streamed through with the frantic, angry power of those who had seen their home invaded. Merpeople, carrying vicious spears. Half-otter half-crabs, chattering
