He made an irritated sound and reached into his pocket. Nahri jumped, expecting a weapon, but instead he pulled free a pile of clothing that looked too big to have fit the space and tossed it in her direction without opening his eyes. “There is a pool near the cliff. I suggest you visit it. You smell even viler than the rest of your kind.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I don’t know yet.” She could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I’ve called someone for help. We will wait.”
Just what she needed—a second djinn to weigh in on her fate. She picked up the bundle of clothes. “Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?”
He let out a drowsy laugh. “Good luck getting out of the desert.”
The oasis was small, and it wasn’t long before she came upon the pool he had mentioned, a shadowy pond fed by the steady trickle of springs from a rocky ledge and surrounded by scrubby brush. She saw no sign of horses or camels; she couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten here.
With a shrug, Nahri pulled off her ruined abaya, stepped in, and submerged.
The press of the cool water was like the touch of a friend. She closed her eyes, trying to digest the madness of the past day. She’d been kidnapped by a djinn. A daeva. Whatever. A magical creature with too many weapons who didn’t seem particularly enamored of her.
She drifted on her back, tracing shapes in the water and staring at the palm-fringed sky.
He thinks I have daeva blood. The idea that she was in any way related to the creature who’d summoned a sandstorm last night seemed laughable, but he had a point about ignoring the implications of her healing abilities. Nahri had spent her entire life trying to blend in with those around her just to survive. Those instincts were warring even now: her thrill at learning what she was and her urge to flee back to the life she’d worked so hard to establish for herself in Cairo.
But she knew her odds of surviving the desert alone were low, so she tried to relax, enjoying the pool until her fingertips wrinkled. She scoured her skin with a palm husk and massaged her hair in the water, relishing the sensation of being clean. It wasn’t often she got to bathe—back home, the women at the local hammam made it clear she was unwelcome, perhaps fearing she’d put a hex on the bathwater.
There was little that could be done to save her abaya, but she washed what remained, stretching it out on a sunny rock to dry before turning her attention to the clothing the daeva had given her.
It was obviously his; it smelled of burnt citrus and was cut to accommodate a muscular man, not a chronically famished woman. Nahri rubbed the ash-colored fabric between her fingers and marveled at its quality. It was soft as silk, yet sturdy as felt. It was also completely seamless; try as she might, she couldn’t find a single stitch. She could likely sell it for a good sum if she escaped.
It took effort to get the clothes to fit; the tunic hung comically large around her waist and ended past her knees. She rolled the sleeves up as best she could and then turned her attention to the pants. After ripping a strip from her abaya to use as a belt and rolling up the hems, they stayed on reasonably well, but she could only imagine how ridiculous she looked.
With a sharp rock, she cut a longer section of her abaya for a headscarf. Her hair had dried in a wild mess of black curls that she attempted to braid before tying the makeshift scarf around her head. She drank her fill from the waterskin—it seemed to refill on its own—but the water did little to help the hunger gnawing at her stomach.
The palm trees were thick with swollen gold dates, and overripe ones, covered in ants, littered the ground. She tried everything she could think of to get at the ones in the trees: shaking the trunks, throwing rocks, even a particularly ill-fated attempt at climbing, but nothing worked.
Did daevas eat? If so, he must have some food, probably hidden in that robe of his. Nahri made her way back to the small grove. The sun had risen, hot and searing, and she hissed as she crossed a patch of scorched sand. God only knew what had happened to her sandals.
The daeva was still asleep; his gray cap was tipped over his eyes, his chest slowly rising and falling in the fading light. Nahri crept closer, studying him in a way she’d been too wary to do before. His robe rippled in the breeze, undulating like smoke, and hazy heat drifted from his body as though he was a hot stone oven. Fascinated, she moved even closer. She wondered if daeva bodies were like those of humans: full of blood and humors, a beating heart and swelling lungs. Or perhaps they were smoke through and through, their appearance only an illusion.
Closing her eyes, she stretched her fingers toward him and tried to concentrate. It would have been better to touch him, but she didn’t dare. He struck her as the type to wake in a foul mood.
After a few minutes, she stopped, growing disturbed. There was nothing. No beating heart, no surging blood and bile. She could sense no organs, nothing of the sparks and gurgles of the hundreds of natural processes that kept her and every other person she’d ever met alive. Even his breathing was wrong, the movement of his chest false. It was as though someone had created an image of a person, a man out of clay, but forgotten to give it a final spark of life. He was . . . unfinished.
Not an ill-formed piece of clay, though . . . Nahri’s gaze lingered on his body, and then she stilled, catching sight of a green flash on the daeva’s left hand.
“God be praised,” she whispered. An enormous emerald ring—large enough for a sultan—rested on the daeva’s middle finger. The base looked to be badly battered iron, but she could tell from a single glance that the jewel was priceless. Dusty but perfectly cut, with not a single blemish. Something like that had to be worth a fortune.
As Nahri contemplated the ring, a shadow passed overhead. Idly, she glanced up. Then, with a yelp, she dove into the thick brush to hide.
Nahri peeked through a screen of leaves as the creature flew across the oasis, enormous against the spindly trees, and then landed next to the sleeping daeva. It was something only a deviant mind could dream up, an unholy cross between an old man, a green parrot, and a mosquito. All bird from the chest down, it bobbed like a chicken as it moved forward on a pair of thick, feathered legs ending in sharp talons. The rest of its skin—if it could be called skin—was covered in silvery gray scales that flashed as it moved, reflecting the light of the setting sun.
It paused to stretch a pair of feathered arms. Its wings were extraordinary, the brilliant, lime-colored feathers nearly as long as she was tall. Nahri started to rise, wondering whether to warn the daeva. The creature was focused on him and seemingly oblivious to her, a situation she preferred. Yet if it killed him, there’d be no one to get her out of the desert.
The birdman let out a chirp that made every hair on her body rise, and the sound roused the daeva, solving her problem. He blinked his emerald eyes slowly, shading his face to see who stood before him. “Khayzur . . .” He exhaled. “By the Creator, am I glad to see you.”
The creature extended a delicate hand and pulled the daeva into a brotherly embrace. Nahri’s eyes widened. Was this the person the daeva had been waiting for?
They settled themselves back on the rug. “I came as soon as I got your signal,” the creature squawked. Whatever language they were speaking it wasn’t Divasti; it was full of staccato bursts and low whoops like birdsong. “What’s wrong, Dara?”