“We’ll get to that bit of bad luck later,” he said lightly. “First, you must understand that the earliest daevas were true creatures of fire, formed and formless all at once. And very, very powerful.”
“More powerful than you are now?”
“Far more. We could possess and imitate any creature, any object we desired, and our lives spanned eras. We were greater than peris, maybe even greater than marid.”
“Marid?”
“Water elementals,” he replied. “No one’s seen one in millennia—they’d be like gods to your kind. But the daevas were at peace with all creatures. We stayed in our deserts while the peri and marids kept to their realms of sky and water. But then, humans were created.”
Dara twirled his goblet in his hand. “My kind can be irrational,” he confessed. “Tempestuous. To see such weak creatures marching across our lands, building their filthy cities of dirt and blood over our sacred sands . . . it was maddening. They became a target . . . a plaything.”
Goose bumps erupted across her skin. “And how exactly did the daevas play?”
A flash of embarrassment swept his bright eyes. “In all sorts of ways,” he muttered, conjuring up a small pillar of white smoke that thickened as she watched. “Kidnapping newlyweds, stirring up sandstorms to confuse a caravan, encouraging . . .” He cleared his throat. “You know . . . worship.”
Her mouth fell open. So the darker stories about djinn really did have their roots in truth. “No, I can’t say that I do know. I’ve never murdered merchants for my own amusement!”
“Ah, yes, my thief. Forgive me for forgetting that you are a paragon of honesty and goodness.”
Nahri scowled. “So what happened next?”
“Supposedly the peri ordered us to stop.” Dara’s smoky pillar undulated in the wind at his side. “Khayzur’s people fly to the edge of Paradise; they hear things—at least they think they do. They warned that humans were to be left alone. Each elemental race was to stick to its own affairs. Meddling with each other—especially with a lesser creature—was absolutely forbidden.”
“And the daevas didn’t listen?”
“Not in the slightest. And so we were cursed.” He scowled. “Or ‘blessed,’ as the djinn see it now.”
“How?”
“A man was called from among the humans to punish us.” A hint of fear crossed Dara’s face. “Suleiman,” he whispered. “May he be merciful.”
“Suleiman?” Nahri repeated in disbelief. “As in the Prophet Suleiman?” When Dara nodded, she gasped. Her only education might have consisted of running from the law, but even she knew who Suleiman was. “But he died thousands of years ago!”
“Three thousand,” Dara corrected. “Give or take a few centuries.”
A horrifying thought took root in her mind. “You . . . you’re not three thousand years—”
“No,” he cut in, his voice terse. “This was before my time.”
Nahri exhaled. “Of course.” She could barely wrap her mind around how long three thousand years was. “But Suleiman was human. What could he possibly do to a daeva?”
A dark expression flickered across Dara’s face. “Anything he liked, apparently. Suleiman was given a seal ring—some say by the Creator himself—that granted him the ability to control us. A thing he went about doing with a vengeance after we . . . well, supposedly there was some sort of human war the daevas might have had a part in instigating—”
Nahri held up a hand. “Yes, yes, I’m sure it was a most unfair punishment. What did he do?”
Dara beckoned the smoky pillar forward. “Suleiman stripped us of our abilities with a single word and commanded that all daevas come before him to be judged.” The smoke spread before them; one corner condensed to become a misty throne while the rest dissipated into hundreds of fiery figures the size of her thumb. They drifted past the carpet, their smoky heads bowed before the throne.
“Most obeyed; they were nothing without their powers. They went to his kingdom and toiled for a hundred years.” The throne vanished, and the fiery creatures swirled into workers heating bricks and stacking enormous stones several times their size. A vast temple began to grow in the sky. “Those who made penance were forgiven, but there was a catch.”
Nahri watched the temple rise, entranced. “What was it?”
The temple vanished, and the daevas were bowing again to the distant throne. “Suleiman didn’t trust us,” Dara replied. “He said our very nature as shapeshifters made us manipulative and deceitful. So we were forgiven but changed forever.”
In an instant, the fire was extinguished from the bowing daevas’ smoky skin. They shrank in size, and some grew hunched, their spines bent in old age.
“He trapped us in humanlike bodies,” Dara explained. “Bodies with limited abilities that only lasted a few centuries. It meant that those daevas who originally tormented humanity would die and be replaced by their descendants, descendants Suleiman believed would be less destructive.”
“God forbid,” Nahri cut in. “Only living for a few centuries with magical abilities . . . what an awful fate.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “It was. Too awful for some. Not all daevas were willing to subject themselves to Suleiman’s judgment in the first place.”
The familiar hate returned to his face. “The ifrit,” she guessed.
He nodded. “The very same.”
“The very same?” she repeated. “You mean they’re still alive?”
“Unfortunately. Suleiman bound them to their original daeva bodies, but those bodies were meant to survive millennia.” He gave her a dark look. “I’m sure you can imagine what three thousand years of seething resentment does to the mind.”
“But Suleiman took their powers away, didn’t he? How much of a threat can they be?”
Dara raised his brows. “Did the thing that possessed your friend and ordered the dead to eat us seem powerless?” He shook his head. “The ifrit have had millennia to test the boundaries of Suleiman’s punishment and have risen to the task spectacularly. Many of my people believe they descended to hell itself, selling their souls to learn new magic.” He twisted his ring again. “And they’re obsessed with revenge. They believe humanity a parasite and consider my kind to be the worst of traitors for submitting to Suleiman.”
Nahri shivered. “So where do I fit in all this? If I’m just some lowly, mixed-blood shafit, why are they bothering with me?”
“I suspect it’s whose blood—however little—you have in you that provoked their interest.”
“These Nahids? The family of healers you mentioned?”
He nodded. “Anahid was Suleiman’s vizier and the only daeva he ever trusted. When the daevas’ penance was complete, Suleiman not only gave Anahid healing abilities, he gave her his seal ring, and with it the ability to undo any magic—whether a harmless spell gone wrong or an ifrit curse. Those abilities passed to her descendants, and the Nahids became the sworn enemies of the ifrit. Even Nahid blood was poisonous to an ifrit, more fatal than any blade.”