He squeezed her hand. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that last part. But—oh!” Ali dropped her hand. “I nearly forgot!” He rose to his feet and loped off.
“Forgot what?” Nahri called.
But he was already returning. “I hung it on a tree to dry out.”
Nahri recognized the black bag in his hands. “My instruments!” she exclaimed in delight. She jumped up and pulled the bag from him, quickly examining it. All seemed in order, and she breathed a sigh of relief, the sight of the tools lightening the mantle of despair heavy upon her. “Oh, Ali … thank you!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck. “How in God’s name did you find this?”
“I …” She seemed to have caught him off guard. Then Nahri was suddenly very aware of his shirtless state. She blushed, stepping back, and Ali continued. “Sobek—the marid found it for me. I asked him to retrieve it.”
“You asked a marid to fetch my bag?” Nahri shuddered. “You frighten me sometimes. But thank you. And thank you as well for all that back on the beach,” she added, her cheeks going warmer with embarrassment. “You’re a good friend. Probably the best one I’ve ever had.” She hardened her voice. “But if you tell anyone I cried, I’ll kill you.”
Ali looked like he was trying not to smile. “Consider me properly threatened.”
“Good. Let’s go, then. We’ve wasted enough time, and I’d like to know what happened last night that left you on a first-name basis with a marid.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Ali, nothing about this trip has gone well. You know we have a long walk.”
NAHRI STEPPED OVER THE ROTTING REMAINS OF A fallen palm tree, pushing a sweat-soaked tendril of hair from her face. Leery of walking on the open beach, they’d stuck to the edge of the forest. “So he was a crocodile or just looked like one?”
Ahead, Ali cut through a net of green vines. “He seemed like something in between,” he answered. “Like he was both at once. The more I tried to look at him, the harder it became to distinguish.”
“And he knew of me?”
“He claimed he was the marid who cursed your appearance. He said it was part of a pact with your human kin, meant to protect you.”
“My human kin?” Nahri stopped in her tracks. “I have family in Egypt? Did he tell you anything else?”
Ali glanced back, apologetic. “He said they were dead. I’m sorry, Nahri. He refused to tell me anything more. That’s why he put you to sleep. He said it was best you didn’t remember.”
I had family in Egypt. I am Egyptian—truly. It was a bittersweet revelation, because deep in her heart, Nahri feared she’d never see Egypt again. And yet it only threw another knot into the tangled tapestry of her past. Her mother was a Daevabad-raised Banu Nahida whose every movement had been watched. Nahri had supposedly been born in Daevastana, on the road between Daevabad and Zariaspa. Where in that story was there room for an Egyptian father, a shafit? And how had Nahri been returned to his homeland as a child?
“Every time I learn something new, it just dredges up more questions.” Nahri kicked a desiccated coconut. “I hate it. I hate puzzles. You can’t come up with a plan if you don’t have all the pieces.”
“For what it’s worth, he confirmed some of what we thought about the marid’s involvement in the city’s fall. He accused Anahid of stealing the lake and using Suleiman’s seal to force his kin into servitude—that’s why they helped my ancestors overthrow the Nahid Council. When they heard rumors a powerful new Nahid had arisen and intended to take the seal and Daevabad back, they became determined to stop her.”
With the sun well risen, the day was sweltering, but a cold sweat broke out on Nahri’s back. “So that’s why the marid killed Dara. Because they feared Manizheh would use him to conquer Daevabad.” Of course, it was a connection to the Nahids that doomed Dara once again.
Ali slashed at a branch. “It’s also why they took me. Sobek said they would have been wary of killing a daeva directly, so they conspired to make sure it was one of Dara’s own people who wielded the blade. But it wasn’t enough, and now the marid owe him some sort of blood debt for killing a lesser being. They can’t harm him and have no choice but to help him.”
“You also couldn’t harm him.”
Ali seemed to go slightly still, but then he was pressing forward again, waving a mosquito away from his face. “Well, I still have the marid’s magic on me. Maybe that’s why.”
“Maybe,” Nahri echoed softly. “Did he tell you anything else?”
“No, but what he showed me, the way we traveled, my God, it was incredible. Like the river itself was suspended above us. All the fish and the gold glittering in the sand, the stars reflecting in the water.” Admiration filled Ali’s voice. “He showed me how they chase currents, and it was as if you could glimpse the entire world through all its different waters.”
“How very lovely for the people who tortured you.”
“Trust me, I haven’t forgotten that part. And there was plenty about him that wasn’t lovely. The things Sobek talked about doing to humans—” Ali shuddered. “God forbid, I can’t even say them aloud.”
Things too atrocious to say aloud sounded more like the magical world Nahri knew. She gave the ocean, sparkling through the trees, an uneasy
