Ali hacked through another vine. “Well, like I said, he promised your family he’d keep you safe.”
“I guess.” But Nahri still felt like they were missing another piece. She kept walking, stepping carefully over the broken twigs covering the sandy ground. Her feet hurt, and the growing number of mosquito bites covering her bare skin itched like mad. They’d been traveling all morning, and the hot sun pierced the leafy canopy, the shade little relief.
Ahead Ali was marching like a damned automaton, his sword rising and falling. Dressed only in his waist cloth, he looked like he might have been plucked from the stone carvings they’d seen of clashing kings and divine warriors, his body all lithe muscle and supernatural grace. The slats of sunlight coming through the jungle striped his bare skin, illuminating gashes and bite marks from the ghouls’ attack. Lifting the seal earlier had begun to heal them, but not entirely. For all that he looked like a divine warrior, Ali was still very mortal.
I almost lost him last night. Even thinking it made her stomach lurch—and that, in turn made Nahri even more anxious. To say their friendship had a tumultuous history was an understatement, but it wasn’t until she admitted it out loud on the beach that Nahri really realized the depth of what had grown between them. She didn’t have anyone else like Ali, her occasionally still infuriating, overly idealistic ancestral enemy who’d become the best friend—the partner she’d been ready to spend the rest of her days with back in Egypt.
You shouldn’t be thinking like that, she chided herself. By the Most High, hadn’t Nahri learned what happened when she got attached to people? Even saying something like that in her head seemed to be tempting fate.
They fell into silence as the temperature climbed and the sun rose higher. Finally, when Nahri was nearing exhaustion, the ground began to rise in a rocky hill—or rather not a hill, but some sort of crumbling brick foundation swallowed by weeds, roots sprawling over silvery stones. A wide creek twisted around it, the rich brown water coloring the azure currents where it met the ocean.
“Looks like a ruin,” Ali commented. “Sobek did say that’s where the djinn he knew of liked to congregate.”
They waded through the creek. Though it only went up to her knees, Nahri shivered. She suspected it was going to take her a long time to regain her comfort with water after last night. They stopped at the foundation wall, its height twice hers. It stretched to the water’s edge, melting away in the gloom of jungle.
“Climb or go around?”
Nahri wrung out the bottom of her dress. “Is nap not an option?” When Ali narrowed his eyes, she sighed. “Climb, I suppose.”
“I’ll help you,” he offered, sheathing his weapons and taking her medical bag.
They climbed, emerging in a thick knot of scrubby greenery that scratched her skin. Nahri started to beat it away, but then Ali tugged her down.
“Company,” he warned softly. “Look.”
Following his gaze, she peered through the leaves. A massive ship lay badly beached on the foundation wall, trees smashed beneath its bulk as if it had dropped from the sky. The hull was painted in meandering stripes of warm beige and olive green, as though to blend in with the landscape. Its front third jutted over the creek, silvery sails tied up.
“That’s a sandship,” Ali said under his breath.
“Are you sure?” Nahri asked, studying the boat. “Maybe it’s human.”
“Not with those sails. Look, you can see the tide line halfway up the foundation wall. The water doesn’t go high enough to beach it like that. And, well, there’s them,” he added as two rather obviously djinn sailors came around the hull, both with the distinctive crimson-streaked black hair of the Sahrayn—and what seemed like an excess of weapons gleaming from their waists and arms.
Her heart beat faster. “I guess we go make friends.”
Ali grabbed her wrist. “No.” Alarm colored his voice. “That boat should be flying Ayaanle colors, no matter the crew’s heritage, to be permitted in these waters. The Ayaanle and Sahrayn are as much enemies as they are allies; they’ve bickered over their border for years. The only thing that keeps them from all-out war are those ships. The Ayaanle need them to trade goods, and the Sahrayn need the money they earn transporting those goods. There are a dozen treaties and taxes governing what flags—”
Nahri shushed him, deciding a history of intertribal trade was not what Ali was trying to tell her. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning we go around.”
Silently cursing, Nahri followed his lead, retreating down the wall.
They hadn’t touched the ground when a voice spoke up behind her.
“Stay right there, crocodile.”
Nahri froze. The voice was speaking Djinnistani with an accent she couldn’t pin. Careful not to move, she glanced down from the corner of her eye.
Three men, their faces covered, were waiting for them at the bottom of the wall. The first held a crossbow and was clearly Sahrayn, if the bright hue of his metal-toned eyes was anything to judge by. Another was small, carrying a scythe-ended staff, while the third man was massive, carrying a similarly sized mace and a sword at his waist. They were dressed in motley clothes: torn pants, a stolen Geziri belt, and Ayaanle turbans.
At her side, Ali had stilled. His face was only half turned, Suleiman’s mark not yet visible to the others.
The djinn holding the crossbow spoke again, his words directed at Ali. “Drop the weapons, Ayaanle. I do apologize for ruining whatever forbidden entertainments you had planned with your pretty human friend, but if you don’t hand over your sword, I’m going to put holes in both of you.”
Nahri didn’t even see Ali let go of the tree.
One moment he was at her side, and the next, he’d launched himself at the djinn holding the crossbow, sending the
