“So they killed her warrior,” Ali said, the pieces tumbling into place. There it was: the reason he’d been possessed. “Or made me do it, anyway.”
“I suspect you were an opportunity they seized without much thought. My kin would have been looking for a way to get rid of him without directly staining their hands. To suddenly have a warrior like you in their waters—another daeva, or a djinn, or whatever nonsense you call yourself—who could wield the blade in their place? They must have thought it a blessing.”
A blessing. There was that word again. “They tortured me,” Ali replied, his voice hollow. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”
“You were there, and you were useful.” There was no cruelty in the statement. It was just that, a statement.
“But their plan didn’t work,” Ali pointed out. “Darayavahoush came back even more powerful. So what went wrong?”
Sobek halted without warning, and Ali nearly crashed into his scaly back. He turned around, staring as if he might break into Ali’s mind again. God, did those eyes make his skin crawl. It was the gaze of a predator from another world, another age—the gulf between them insurmountable.
“Our exchange was not for your illumination,” the marid finally replied. “It was for mine. Give me the girl a moment.”
Ali tried to step back, but Sobek slipped Nahri from his arms as if a wave had stolen her.
“Be calm, you prickly creature,” Sobek demanded as Ali tried to pull free of the ribbons of water wrapping his limbs, the visible exasperation out of place on the ancient being’s face. “Seize the current to your left.”
“Seize the current?” Ali repeated, baffled. “But I’m not marid.”
“You still have hands, do you not? Seize it, or I shall toss your woman into it and offer you another challenge.”
The marid moved as if to do so, and in a burst of panic, Ali obeyed. He threw his hand to the golden mists, grasping. He expected his fingers to close on nothing.
Instead it was as though he’d plunged his hand into a waterfall, freezing it with his touch. The power drove him to his knees, and Ali cried out, knives of pain raking down his arm. The ring scorched his heart.
Sobek was there the next moment, laying his free hand against Ali’s brow. The pain was numbed to a dull ache. Ali opened his eyes.
“God be praised,” he whispered. The world around them was suddenly even more wondrous, brighter, as though he’d stepped into a new level of existence. Ali could see a thousand currents, ten thousand, more possibilities and places than he’d ever imagined existed all spread out before him. Snowcapped mountains and tropical seas. Meandering northern streams and a cyclonelashed shore. The placid fountain of a simple mudbrick courtyard and a puddle in a gray, rain-soaked city.
The one in your hand. Sobek’s voice burst inside his mind. Dive, little mortal.
Acting on instinct, Ali let himself fall forward, dragging the current in his hand over them all. The moment he let go, all the paths vanished, and he tumbled to the white sand, breathing hard.
The marid magic lingered. Ali tingled with it, tendrils of water dancing up his arms. A pearly path of sand stretched before him, the fish that passed overhead dashing away. He could feel the raw power pouring off Sobek.
Nahri, though, was a different flavor. A tantalizing one. Salty blood and scalding magic. The kind that burned down the world and invited water to re-create anew. It was there, in her delicate veins and fragile skin that could be so easily pierced. So easily taken.
Ali gagged, and the awful hunger vanished—though he’d swear his teeth had briefly sharpened. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing.” The marid’s eyes danced. “You still have it,” he murmured, as if to himself. “A dozen generations removed, and it still persists.”
Ali was still struggling to catch his breath, his palms braced on the sand. Beyond, a herd of hippopotamuses thundered past the gleam of the watery tunnel.
“How does all this work?” he asked, climbing to his feet. “The way you get inside my mind, the way we travel?”
Sobek beckoned him forward, and they kept walking. “It is a difficult thing to put into words. My kind do not communicate like yours. We join with one another and share what is in our minds, our souls. We are … we are like the water, yes? There may be many streams, but they all come from the same river.” A dismissive tone entered his voice. “Not like daevas. You are all separate burning embers.”
Ignoring the comment, Ali pressed on. “And the currents, all the paths I saw?”
“There is water everywhere. Not just lakes and rivers, but streams far below the surface and rain in the clouds. That is how we travel—or rather how those of us who are capable of travel do.” Sobek seemed to be warming to the topic, more eager to explain this than the marid’s violent history with the Nahids. “I am among the first generation of my people, so I can take this solid form, but most of my kin cannot be seen by mortal eyes. They exist as part of their birth water, possessing other small creatures in their domain when they wish.”
“Not always when they wish,” Ali said sharply. But there was something else, something he was missing … “Wait, can you travel to any water? Could you take us through the lake? Back to Daevabad?” he asked, hope rising in his chest.
The warmth vanished from Sobek’s face. “No.” He dumped Nahri back into Ali’s arms and stormed forward.
Ali stumbled after him. “What do you mean, no? Because you can’t or because you’re unwilling?”
Sobek spun on him, baring his teeth. “Because I will not see the seal ring returned to that foul city. Not for anything. If there is any light in the catastrophe my cousin’s heedlessness wrought, it is that
