They didn’t hesitate to attack the ghouls infesting their sacred water and, in doing so, save the lives of the djinn above the surface. Gratitude welled in him, but Ali didn’t have to say anything. His emotions carried on the water, as did their relief and pleasure.
Then, from the bottom of the lake, the muddy bed itself seemed to stir. Tentacles snaked upward, encrusted in eons of debris. Bones and fishing hooks, crabs and the roots of drowned trees.
It was the lake marid that had possessed him.
Ali stilled in the water as the creature carefully approached, one of its tentacles brushing his arm. They exchanged no words; they both already knew each other, Tiamat having shared their worst memories. Ali’s torture, the lake marid’s dispossession and unfathomed loneliness.
Instead, Ali’s mind filled with new visions. The cliffs beneath the palace and how fiercely the lake beat against the rocks there, enough to spray the walls. Images of midnight blue water rising and falling, great swells licking up mountains and flooding the valleys.
And he knew what he needed to do.
He brushed his hand against the lake marid. Leaving his new kin to deal with the ghouls, Ali swam back to the surface and headed for the nearest ship, a drowned galleon of coral and reclaimed wood. An Ayaanle sailor cried out in alarm when Ali rose to his feet on the deck, but no one attacked him, so he took that as an encouraging sign.
Ali stared again at the docks. He’d stopped the fleet when the ghouls attacked, not wanting to lead the undead into the city, but he pulled on the water now, feeling the lake marid below lend its strength. They needed to get to the palace.
But he had to stop thinking like a djinn. Ali didn’t need a dock or dry streets—streets where his warriors might get set upon by enemies or pinned by the Afshin.
Ali could carve his own path.
Fixing his gaze on Daevabad’s cliffs, he drove his fleet directly at them.
A great wave rose beneath the ships, and then they were rushing forward, soaring across the water. The palace sat high atop the cliffs overlooking the lake, but cliffs could be devoured, swallowed. Usually it took ages. Now it would take seconds. Ali drove the water higher and higher, the lake marid cackling in his head, his kin cheering.
He landed his navy on the palace walls themselves.
That took far more care, Ali falling to his knees as he settled the fleet around him, trying to set the boats in places where they would do the least amount of damage and pulling the water back into the lake, rather than dumping it into the city.
By the time it had receded, Ali was spent. He released his hold on the marid magic and then—empty stomach notwithstanding—threw up, collapsing into the arms of a very bewildered sailor.
His vision blurred and went black, Ali’s efforts to remain conscious meeting with mixed success. He could hear running feet and more screams, bizarre beastly shrieks and the sound of blades hacking through flesh.
“Where is he?” Fiza. “Alizayd? Alizayd!”
“Over here!” the sailor holding him yelled.
A foot nudged his side. “Are you dead?” Fiza asked.
Ali spat blood. “Not yet.”
“Good. Might want to open your eyes.”
He opened his eyes—and immediately regretted doing so.
Blood beasts and dead-eyed simurgh soared across a black sky choked with smoke. Bursts of bloody fire rained down like ghastly shooting stars, and as Ali turned his head to glance below at the palace garden, he realized the animal shrieks he’d heard belonged to his father’s menagerie—the karkadann used for state executions included—now loosed and trampling through the grounds.
Banu Manizheh was apparently not going down without a fight.
“Is my sickle-sword still in my belt?” Ali asked weakly.
“Yes.”
“Can you put it in my hand?”
“Why, so you have a better chance of impaling yourself when you pass out again? Because you don’t look ready to do anything else with it.”
Despite Fiza’s words, she helped Ali back to his feet and placed the hilt of Sobek’s gift in his hand. As soon as the sword grazed his palm, Ali felt better—well, the world started spinning more slowly, anyway.
He gripped the ship’s railing in his other hand, studying the deck splintered against the palace’s exterior wall. Ali’s head was pounding, and his heart felt ready to explode, his body still trying to recover from all the marid magic he’d just done. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and he hadn’t slept in days.
But all that could come later. Daevabad came first.
“We made a pact, Fiza. You get me to Tiamat, and then we return to Daevabad and do right by your people.” Ali shoved away from the wall and wiped his mouth. “The battle’s just beginning.”
44
NAHRI
Nahri was dreaming, swaying back and forth, her head an aching weight.
She ran through the sugarcane, free as a bird. A weed ripped at her ankle, but she ignored the sting of pain. The blood would be gone by the time her mother caught her.
“Golbahar! Gol, come back here right now!”
“—a lie all along, Aeshma! Decades, and for what? You promised us freedom!”
“I promised we would see Anahid’s legacy destroyed, and we have. We just ripped through her very Temple! They have no magic, and they’re tearing each other apart. The only thing that’s going to be left of Daevabad and that race of weak-blooded traitors when Manizheh is done with them is ash.”
“I never cared about Anahid and her legacy!” Vizaresh shouted. “I knew I should have listened to Sahkr. All you were ever interested in was your vengeance against the Nahids. You let them cast aside Qandisha, our companion for millennia. You let this dirt-blooded child live after murdering my brother. Where is the Aeshma who battled with prophets and sent storms of wrath against Tiamat?”
“We have