The words washed over Nahri, half meaningless. She had never felt so weak, so bound, her mind and body wrapped in barbed wire. She caught an upside-down glimpse of burning gardens and a blood-filled fountain. The Grand Temple. A Daeva elder in priest’s garb lay slaughtered on the path.
The shadows swallowed her again.
Her throat was sore, her voice nearly gone. It had been the screaming, she knew, but she couldn’t say why she had been screaming. Couldn’t say why, after hours in the river, her hair smelled like smoke, her eyes swollen from crying tears she couldn’t remember. Instead she drifted down the Nile, her cheek pressed against scaly hide, her small fingers clutching a ridged back.
“Is that a child?”
“Oh, God—it’s a little girl. Beat the water, get the crocodile away!”
An explosion brought Nahri briefly back to the present, bricks and brass raining down. There was a hole in the city wall where there shouldn’t have been, the island’s wilderness beckoning.
“—because it’s not right! We followed you for years!”
“Will you not cease your nagging?” Aeshma snapped. “You want to have this argument now, when you’re the one who jumped out of your skin when you saw the peri’s blade and whimpered that we should flee to the clouds?”
The fishermen bundled her in a shawl, river mud still staining her face and clinging to her hair.
“It’s okay, little one. It’s okay.” One of the men knelt across from her. “What happened, child? How did you get in the river?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know.”
He tried again. “Then what’s your name?”
“I … I don’t know.” She started to cry. “I want …” But the word for what—who—she wanted wouldn’t come, as though it had been snipped from her mind.
“Oh no, there’s no need for tears.” The fisherman wiped her cheeks. “It’s okay, little river girl. We’ll take you back to Cairo and get it all sorted out, God willing. Ah, there it is. Bint el nahr. A title for a Nile princess.”
Bint el nahr.
Nahri.
The bonds around Nahri slipped just slightly.
“I don’t understand why you’re complaining. You got your prize, a bunch of new little pets. Go clap your hands as they sow mayhem, Vizaresh. Run away if following me is too frightening.”
“Not without the rest of the vessels,” Vizaresh hissed. “And not without the girl. You promised me she would die for Sahkr, and it is I who earned all this. I was the one who guided Manizheh’s hand when she enslaved the Afshin. I was the one who commanded the ghouls. You would not be here without my magic!”
Nahri was dropped to the ground. She landed in a bed of leaves, rocky earth beneath her. It was dark, the sky churning with smoke, and the air thick with rot. Far off, there were screams and screeches and the bellow of dying unnatural animals.
Open your eyes, little Gol. Banu Golbahar e-Nahid, a proper Daeva name. Nahri fell back into her memories.
“She doesn’t even have a real name, the little witch!” the boys yelled, chasing her down the street. “Nahri, bah. Probably the cast-off from some whore.”
“Your magic? You mean, your handful of cheap tricks?” Aeshma snarled. “I have rewarded them enough, you little pest. You should be grateful I’ve given you any vessels. Honored I even included you in this to begin with. You are nothing, Vizaresh. You never have been. Where were your worshippers? Your feasts? You were never more than a murmured name, a creature of spells and shadowy bridges.”
A warrior with wary green eyes, dragging a knife through the sand in one soot-covered hand.
“There is power in names. It’s not something my people give so freely.”
She scowled but decided to tell him the truth—for now. “My name is Nahri.”
Nahri. My name is Nahri. Again, the chains slipped, and the world came more into focus. They were in the woods, on a path winding through the hills beyond the city walls. The distant screams were louder, blending with the crash of waves and the closer sound of crickets.
Magic was returning to her in pieces. Nahri lay in the grass where Aeshma had dropped her, vines reaching out to wind around her skin.
Nahri. My name is Nahri.
Her vision cleared as though someone had peeled away the last strip of gauze covering her eyes. Nahri saw the arguing ifrit as Aeshma returned for her. Vizaresh was still standing on the path, watching Aeshma’s retreating back.
“I’m not nothing,” he whispered under his breath. His fiery gaze was wild and boiling with spite. With resentment long buried. “I’m not nothing.”
Aeshma snorted in derision. “You can chant that all you like. Not even you have the tricks to sell that spell. Now come—”
Vizaresh swung his ax and buried it in Aeshma’s back.
“I’m not nothing,” Vizaresh screeched, yanking the ax free with a sickening crunch.
Aeshma fell to his knees, spitting fire. His smug, sadistic smile had been wiped clean, replaced by genuine shock.
He scrabbled for his mace. “Traitor,” he said. “You cowardly, traitorous worm …”
“Survivor,” Vizaresh corrected. “One who intends to stay that way.”
He swung the ax clean across Aeshma’s throat and decapitated the other ifrit. Molten gold blood splashed across the path, splattering Nahri’s feet.
Vizaresh was breathing fast. For a moment, he looked almost as stunned as Aeshma by what he’d done, but then he recovered and began rooting around the gory remains of the other ifrit’s neck. He pulled free another chain—one made of gold like a bride might wear.
But there was far more than jewels hanging from it.
There were rings. Dozens of them. Anklets, bangles, and a handful of neck cuffs. All with one uniting feature.
Emeralds. The slave vessels from the Grand Temple, all of them. The vessels of the stolen souls who’d been resting quietly in the light of Anahid’s original altar, awaiting a Nahid who could free them. That hadn’t been Nahri, not
