“When he was enslaved by the ifrit, you mean,” she corrected coldly. “Does that mean it was the Qahtanis who gave him up?”
Ali looked at her beseechingly. “I don’t know. This was centuries before you and I were born. My father didn’t know. My grandfather likely didn’t know. I’m not excusing it, I’m not justifying it, but I can’t offer explanations I don’t have.”
Nahri dropped back down, still looking enraged. “Do you know how long he was a slave? Do you know how Manizheh is going to react if she learns her brother and parents are rotting beneath the palace?”
Ali tried to offer some hope. “The crypt is well hidden. Maybe they won’t find it?”
“‘Well hidden.’” She let out an exasperated sound. “Ali, what if this is beyond us?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Dara and Zaydi al Qahtani were seasoned military commanders. Manizheh is considered the most powerful Nahid healer in centuries. My ancestors, your father, they ruled tens of thousands and ran governments. And they still failed to fix all of this. Everything they did only caused more violence. If they couldn’t make peace, how in God’s name are you and I going to?”
Ali wished he had an answer for her. “I don’t know, Nahri. I don’t think there’s going to be a simple fix. It might be a lifetime of work. It might be a peace we don’t live long enough to see.”
“That’s your inspirational rallying speech?” Her expression grew darker when he had no response. “Then do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Learn how to lie by the time we get to Ta Ntry.”
13
DARA
Dara’s promise to Manizheh about Irtemiz did not last a day.
He examined the weapons in his chest, selecting knives and a sword and securing them to his waist. His bow and quiver went next. Dara could always conjure arms, but considering he was jumping directly into a trap designed to kill him, he figured he might as well take the extra precaution.
Yes, you would not want Manizheh to be denied the chance to murder you herself when she learns you disobeyed her direct order.
But he wasn’t leaving Irtemiz with his enemies. Not Irtemiz, the spirited country girl he’d shaped into a talented archer, the one who reminded him of the little sister he hadn’t been able to save. And Dara had a trick up his sleeve not even Manizheh, let alone some wretched sand flies and dirt-bloods, knew.
The old daeva wind magic.
Dara hadn’t used it since the night before Navasatem, when he’d become formless to fly over the icy mountains and cold lakes of northern Daevastana. For one, he hadn’t had a spare moment since they took the palace—revolution, it turned out, was time-consuming. But more than that, Dara didn’t trust himself with the temptation. The wind magic had been intoxicating, offering a thrilling escape from all this madness, one that tugged nearly as hard on his heart as did his duty to his people.
Now, however, he would use it to achieve both.
It took a few moments to recall how to summon the magic, and then he was gone, his body vanishing from the balcony of his small room in a swirl of dead leaves. In another moment, the city was below him, around him, part of him.
And had he lungs, Dara would have choked on the miasma of rot that clung to the island. Everything was dulled, as if he’d submerged in a murky pool. It was nothing like his previous experience in which he could taste a buzz on the air, molten energy in the warm earth, and life in the inviting, mysterious waters.
He floated farther, Daevabad dark and unmoving below him. Though Dara remembered its nights being livelier, he supposed cities embroiled in civil strife shut down the moment the shadows grew deeper, if people dared creep about at all. Beyond, he spotted the gleaming desert past the threshold, bright with starlight and life.
Daevabad is sick, he realized, dread sinking deeper into his soul. The island and its lake stood out like a festering wound on the world, as though a vital piece had been stolen away. The loss of Suleiman’s seal—it had to be.
By the Creator, Nahri, please be alive. Please bring it back. Dara couldn’t imagine any way Nahri and the current holder of Suleiman’s seal could return to Daevabad that didn’t end with one of them dead, but the true toll of all this was suddenly so clear. They’d broken their world, and now their home—the home of tens of thousands—was dying.
Awful as that thought was, Dara could do nothing to save Daevabad tonight. But he could save the life of someone who’d trusted him.
Fixing the hospital in his mind, Dara found himself there in the next moment, spinning down and landing on the roof, light as a bird. It was a disorienting experience; there was the ghost of stone beneath what might have been his feet—except glancing down, he didn’t see his feet. Trying to pull himself back into the material world, he cloaked himself in shadows and crept to the roof’s edge.
Nostalgia swept him. The hospital looked different, but the bones of the old institution were still there. In his youth, Dara had spent plenty of time in the hospital—most warriors-intraining did—and his memories returned to him, of Nahid healers in facemasks and aprons forcing foul potions down his throat and resetting snapped bones.
It was quiet now, the breeze rustling the trees in the courtyard the only sound. An arcaded corridor surrounded the garden, and in the eastern corner, he noticed the flicker of firelight beyond the pale bricks.
This is a trap. It had been there in every goading, mocking line of that Geziri woman’s speech. The djinn wanted him dead. A smart man wouldn’t take this risk—one didn’t risk catastrophe for a single life, and until recently, Dara himself would have made the same cruel calculus.
But there was another part of the equation worth examining:
They have never beaten me.
Dara had been cut down only
