Oh, I know, believe me. For all Dara supposedly abhorred the shafit, Nahri had caught him staring at her more than once, and their dagger-throwing lesson hadn’t been the first time his hand had lingered upon her a bit too long.
She kept her gaze on him, studying the broad line of his shoulders and watching as he played nervously with his goblet, still avoiding her eyes. His fingers trembled on the stem, and for a moment Nahri could not help but wonder if they would do the same upon her skin.
Because things are not tumultuous enough between us without adding that to the mix. Before her mind could go any further, Nahri changed the subject again to one she knew would thoroughly ruin the mood. “So tell me about these Qahtanis.”
Dara startled. “What?”
“These djinn you keep insulting, the ones who supposedly fought my ancestors.” She took a sip of her wine. “Tell me about them.”
Dara made a face as if he’d eaten something sour. One objective achieved. “Must we really do this now? It’s late—”
She shook a finger at him. “Don’t make me go looking for another ghoul to threaten you into talking.”
He didn’t smile at the joke, instead looking more troubled. “It’s not a pleasant tale, Nahri.”
“All the more reason to get it over with.”
He took a sip of wine, a long sip, as if he needed a dose of courage. “I told you before that Suleiman was a clever man. Before his curse, all daevas were the same. We looked similar, spoke a single language, practiced identical rites.” Dara beckoned at their fire, and its tendrils of smoke rushed toward his hands like an eager lover. “When Suleiman freed us, he scattered us across the world he knew, changing our tongues and appearances to mirror the humans in our new lands.”
Dara spread his hands. The smoke flattened and condensed to form a thick map in the sky before her, Suleiman’s temple at the center. As she watched, blazing pinpricks of light spun out from the temple across the world, falling to the ground like meteorites and bouncing back as fully formed people.
“He divided us into six tribes.” Dara pointed at a pale woman weighing jade coins at the eastern edge of the map, China perhaps. “The Tukharistanis.” He gestured south at a bejeweled dancer twirling in the Indian subcontinent. “The Agnivanshi.” A tiny rider burst out of the smoke, galloping across southern Arabia and brandishing a fiery sword. Dara pursed his lips and with a snap of his fingers lopped off its head. “The Geziri.” To the south of Egypt, a golden-eyed scholar tossed a brilliant teal scarf over his shoulder as he scanned a scroll. Dara nodded at him. “The Ayaanle,” he said and then pointed to a fire-haired man mending a boat on the Moroccan coast. “The Sahrayn.”
“What about your people?”
“Our people,” he corrected and gestured toward the flat plains of what looked like Persia to her, or perhaps Afghanistan. “Daevastana,” he said warmly. “The land of the Daevas.”
She frowned. “Your tribe took the original name of the entire daeva race as your own?”
Dara shrugged. “We were in charge.”
He studied the map. The smoky figures silently shouted and gesticulated at each other. “It was said to be a violent, terrifying time. Most people embraced their new tribes, clinging together for survival and forming within the tribes caste groups determined by their new abilities. Some were shapeshifters, others could manipulate metals, some could conjure up rare goods, and so forth. None could do it all, and the tribes were too busy fighting each other to even consider revenge against Suleiman.”
Nahri smiled, impressed. “Surely even you must admit that was rather a brilliant move on Suleiman’s part.”
“Perhaps,” Dara replied. “But brilliant as he might have been, Suleiman failed to consider the consequences of giving my people solid, mortal bodies.”
The tiny figures continued to multiply, building small villages and crisscrossing the vast world in spindly caravans. Occasionally a miniature flying carpet dashed across the smoky clouds.
“What consequences?” Nahri asked, confused.
He gave her a playful smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That we could mate with humans.”
“And make shafit,” she realized. “People like me.”
Dara nodded. “Completely forbidden, mind you.” He sighed. “You may have realized by now that we’re not particularly good at following rules.”
“I’m guessing those shafit multiplied pretty quickly?”
“Very.” He gestured to the smoky map. “Like I say, magic is unpredictable.” A tiny city in the Maghreb burst into flames. “Made even more so in the hands of mix-blooded, untrained practitioners.” Enormous ships, in a variety of bizarre shapes crossed the Red Sea, and winged cats with human faces soared over the Hind. “Although most shafit don’t have any abilities, the few that do have the capacity to inflict terrible damage on their human societies.”
Damage like leading a pack of ghouls through Cairo and tricking bashas out of their wealth? Nahri had little argument there. “But why did the daevas—or djinn, or whatever you were calling yourselves at the time—even care?” she asked. “I thought your race didn’t think much of humans anyway.”
“They wouldn’t have,” Dara admitted. “But Suleiman made it quite clear that another would follow in his place to punish us again should we ignore his law. The Nahid Council struggled for years to contain the shafit problem, ordering that any humans suspected of having magical blood be brought to Daevabad to live out their lives.”
Nahri went still. “The Nahid Council? But I thought the Qahtanis were the ones—”
“I’ll get to that part,” Dara cut in, his voice a little colder—and slightly more slurred—than usual. He took another long sip of wine. The goblet never seemed to empty, so Nahri could only imagine how much he’d consumed by now. Far more than her, and her head was starting to swim.
A city rose from the smoky map in Daevastana, in the center of a dark lake. Its walls gleamed like brass, beautiful against the dark sky. “Is that Daevabad?” she asked.
“Daevabad,” Dara confirmed. His eyes dimmed as he stared at the tiny city, longing in his face. “Our grandest city. Where Anahid built her palace and from where her descendants ruled the realm until they were overthrown.”
“Let me guess . . . by all the kidnapped shafit they kept locked up?”
Dara shook his head. “No. No shafit could have ever done such a thing; they’re too weak.”
“Then who did?”
Dara’s face darkened. “Who didn’t?” When she frowned in confusion, he continued. “The other tribes never paid much heed to Suleiman’s decree. Oh, they claimed to agree that humans and daevas should be segregated, but they were the source of the shafit.”
He nodded at the map. “The Geziri were the worst. They were fascinated by the humans in their land, praising their prophets and adopting their culture—with some inevitably getting too close. They’re the poorest tribe, a pack of religious fanatics who believe what Suleiman did to us was a blessing not a curse. They often refused to surrender shafit kin, and when the Nahid Council grew more severe in their enforcement of the law, the Geziri didn’t react well.”