NIGHT FELL THICK AND FAST ON THE NTARAN COAST, the ocean glowing in the light of a bright moon. It was mesmerizing, the sparkling water glittering and shattering as it rose and fell, and Ali found himself struggling not to stare, his own breathing in time with the sea.
“The tide is running high,” he murmured.
“I know. I thought you’d have a visitor by now.” Nahri sniffed, a feigned snobbishness—for with nightfall had come one of al Mudhib’s guards to watch over them. “That shafit woman certainly sounded like she had plans for you.”
I thought so too. From his spot on the deck, Ali had watched the pirates camp down for the night in a ring of tents set around a weak fire. Fiza had made a big show earlier of arguing with another shafit worker over the best way to break down the ship, insisting on taking apart an existing cabin and using it to build tracks to slide the pieces down the cliff before they touched the hull.
But if she’d made any headway in convincing her fellows to mutiny, Ali couldn’t tell, and it worried him. She’d given him a metal spike that Nahri had already discreetly used to pick her locks, but there was no doing the same to the half dozen the pirates had used on Ali. In the meantime, plenty of the crew had found reasons to drop by, gawking and making remarks so crude about the bound Daevabadi royals that it was everything Ali could do not to summon the sea right there and then to drown them.
He closed his eyes. Ali could sense the creek had risen with the tide, but it still wasn’t anywhere near enough water to carry the sandship off the cliff. Apprehension churned through him. Ali had wielded marid magic that powerful only once—when he’d submitted to it back on the beach in Daevabad. Now? With Suleiman’s seal in his heart?
The strains of drunken, extremely off-key singing came to him, and Ali straightened up, catching sight of a familiar figure weaving—well, staggering—in their direction, a bottle dangling from one hand.
“Is that Fiza?” he asked, his spirits falling. That was not how he hoped their accomplice would arrive.
The shafit pirate stumbled onto the boat, crashing heavily against one side. “You’re not dead yet!” she said by way of greeting, giggling as she crossed the deck.
Al Mudhib’s guard stepped between them. “You’re drunk, dirt-blood. Go sleep it off.”
Fiza pouted, taking another swig of her bottle. She waved her hand in the vague direction of Ali. “Oh no. We have an appointment.”
The guard grabbed her arm. “It makes no difference to me whether you leave on your own or I toss you off.” A nastier note entered his voice. “Besides, you’ve denied the rest of us. Why should the crocodile get a taste?”
Fiza smiled sweetly. “You’re right. You should get a taste.”
She smashed the wine bottle into his mouth.
The guard didn’t even have a chance to shout before Nahri, freed of her shackles, launched herself at his knees. He tripped, going down hard as the women pinned him, and then Fiza hit him with the bottle again and knocked him out.
“Always an asshole,” she muttered, sitting back on her heels. She reached under the robe she was wearing, pulling out al Mudhib’s pistol, Ali’s zulfiqar, and Nahri’s medical bag. “There,” she said, dumping it all on the ground. “Presents for everyone.”
Ali gaped. “How did you—”
One of the tents burst into flames.
There were shouts of surprise as the few men still awake jumped to their feet and ran to the tent. But then a second tent caught fire. A third and a fourth, the wild flames lighting up the night and illuminating the half dozen figures racing toward the ship.
“Up, up, up!” Fiza cried, waving to the rest of the shafit crew. She whirled on Ali and Nahri, both of whom were frozen in shock. “Come on, purebloods, be useful for once in your pampered lives!” Fiza’s mutineers were already cutting the ropes and kicking away the boards binding the ship to its cradle of broken trees.
Nahri cursed but lunged to Ali’s side. “No sense of discretion,” she said, sounding scandalized as she fumbled with his locks. “For God’s sake, we could have at least tried to sneak out of here.”
A blast of gunfire made them both jump, Nahri nearly stabbing him with the pick. She swore again, breaking into the last lock and then helping Ali unwind his chains.
Another pistol shot, this time coming from the opposite direction and slamming into the sandship’s mast, sending wooden splinters everywhere.
“Would you two hurry?” Fiza yelled, taking shelter behind a barrel as she fired back.
Ali climbed to his feet and kicked away the last shackles. With al Mudhib’s men closing in, and crossbow bolts and bullets flying past, he didn’t have time to indulge in his earlier doubts. Instead he raised his hands, staring at the shifting mass of salt water. It had been teasing at his consciousness all night. Remembering how difficult it had been to get the much smaller Nile to cooperate, when Ali called, he did so firmly.
COME.
The ocean, it turned out, was a lot more eager to play.
Beyond the shouts of the pirates and the crackle of the burning tents, the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach suddenly changed. There was a whisper, growing to a roar as the jungle bordering the creek was devoured, the trees smashed. None of which was visible—not yet. Instead, the destruction could only be heard, the noise getting louder and louder.
And then from the starlit dark, where there had been only a meandering beachside stream, came a rushing wave of water that would have breached the walls of Daevabad itself.
It was an incredible sight—well, it would have been incredible, had summoning it not felt like ripping Ali’s heart in two.
Fiza gasped. “God preserve me …” She jumped to the middle of the deck, shouting at the shafit who’d followed her. “Everyone, hold on!”
Nahri
