“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
Ali jumped at the adhan. Even the call to prayer sounded strange, the human intonation falling on different beats. He felt like he was dreaming, as if the awful circumstances to which he’d awoken weren’t real.
It’s real, all of it. Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your friends, your family, your home. You left them when they needed you most.
Ali clutched at his head but started walking faster, following the sound of the nearest muezzin through the winding streets like a man bewitched. This was something he knew, and all Ali wanted to do right now was pray, to cry out to God and beg Him to make this right.
He fell in with a crowd of men streaming into an enormous mosque, one of the largest Ali had ever seen. He didn’t have shoes to kick off, as he was already barefoot, but he paused as he entered anyway, his mouth falling open at the vast courtyard. The interior lay exposed to the sky, surrounded by four covered halls held up by hundreds of richly decorated stone arches. The skill and devotion displayed in the intricate patterns and soaring domes—done with painstaking effort by human hands, not by the simple snap of a djinn’s fingers—stunned him, briefly pulling Ali from his grief. Then the glisten and splash of water caught his eye: an ablution fountain.
Water.
A worshipper shouldered roughly past, but Ali didn’t care. He stared at the fountain like a man dying of thirst. But it wasn’t hydration he craved; it was something deeper. The strength that had run through his blood on Daevabad’s beach when he’d commanded the lake’s waves. The peace that had eased him when he’d coaxed springs out of Bir Nabat’s rocky cliffs.
The magic that the marid’s possession—the possession that had ruined and saved his life—had granted him.
Ali stepped up to the fountain, his heart in his throat. He was surrounded by humans, and this would be a violation of every interpretation of Suleiman’s law his people had, but he needed to know. Ali extended a hand just above the water. He called to it with his mind.
A ribbon of liquid leapt onto his palm.
Tears stung his eyes and then Ali faltered, a spasm stabbing through his chest. The pain wasn’t awful, but it was enough to break his concentration. The water fell away, streaming through his fingers.
But he had done it. His water abilities might be weakened, but they were there, unlike his djinn magic.
Ali wasn’t sure what that meant. Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer.
It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape. Ali could not begin to imagine how the two men he stood between—an elder in a crisp galabiyya and a pale, jittery boy—would react if they knew their arms were brushing those of a djinn. This was probably another violation of Suleiman’s law, and yet Ali found it impossible to care, aching only to call out to his Creator, whom he so obviously shared with the worshippers around him.
Tears were brimming in his eyes by the time he finished. Ali stayed kneeling in numb silence as the other worshippers slowly left. He stared at his hands, the scarred outline of a hook marking one palm.
We’re okay, Zaydi. The poisoned lines creeping over his brother’s stomach and the pain Muntadhir couldn’t hide in his last smile as he reassured Ali. We’re okay.
Ali promptly lost the battle with his tears. He fell forward, biting his fist in a poor effort to contain his wail.
Dhiru, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Ali was crying so hard now that his entire body shook. To his ears, his sobs rang out across the vast space, echoing off the lofty walls, but none of the humans seemed to hear him at all. He was utterly alone here, in a world he was not only forbidden to be in, but one that seemed to deny his very existence. And wasn’t that what he deserved for failing his people?
The salty taste of blood burst in his mouth. Ali dropped his hand away, fighting the mad desire to do something reckless and destructive. To hurl himself back into the Nile. To climb these high walls and jump off. Anything that would allow him to escape the grief tearing him open.
Instead, he pressed his face into his hands and rocked back and forth. Merciful One, please help me. Please take this from me. I can’t survive this. I can’t.
Hours passed. Ali stayed rooted to the spot he’d claimed, falling apart in his grief in a span of time that felt endless. His voice faded as his throat grew sore, and his tears dried up, his head pounding with dehydration. Numb, he was barely aware of the humans bustling around him, but he pulled himself from the ground each time they came to pray. It was a tether, a fragile line anchoring him from complete loss.
When night fell, Ali climbed the steps that spiraled around the minaret, feeling like the restless creature he’d heard humans believed djinn to be—the unseen spirits who haunted ruins and crept through graveyards. He pulled himself onto the small, ornate roof and then finally slept, tucked between the cold stones beneath the stars.
He woke just before dawn to the sounds of the muezzin shuffling up the steps. Ali froze, not wanting to frighten the man, and then listened quietly as the call to fajr rose in waves across the city. From this height, Ali could see much of Cairo: a labyrinth of pale brown
