Nahri pressed closer to Dara. “Sounds like you have a friend,” she muttered darkly. He scowled but said nothing.
“Your people are a disease!” the shafit man yelled. “A degenerate bunch of slavers still worshipping a family of inbred murderers!”
Dara hissed, and his fingers grew hot on her wrist. “Don’t,” Nahri whispered. “Just keep going.”
But the insult clearly angered the Daeva crowd that remained, and more of them turned toward the fountain. A gray-haired old man defiantly raised an iron cudgel. “The Nahids were Suleiman’s chosen! The Qahtanis are nothing but Geziri sand flies, filthy barbarians speaking the language of snakes!”
The shafit man opened his mouth to respond and then stopped, raising a hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?” He grinned, and the crowd went quiet. In the distance, she could hear chanting coming from the direction of the bazaar. The ground started to tremble, echoing with the pounding feet of a growing throng of marchers.
The man laughed as the Daevas started to nervously back away, the threat of a mob apparently enough to convince them to flee. “Run! Go huddle at your fire altars and beg your dead Nahids to save you!” More men poured into the plaza, anger in their faces. Nahri didn’t see many swords, but enough were armed with kitchen knives and broken furniture to alarm her.
“This will be your day of reckoning!” the man shouted. “We will tear through your homes until we find the girl! Until we find and free every believing slave you infidels hold!”
She and Dara were the last through the gate. Dara made sure she was past the brass lions and then turned to argue with the Geziri guard. “Did you not hear them?” He gestured at the growing mob. “Close the gate!”
“I cannot,” the soldier replied. He looked young, his beard little more than black fuzz. “These gates never close. It’s against the law. Besides, reinforcements are coming.” He swallowed nervously, clutching his scythe. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Nahri didn’t buy his false optimism, and as the chanting grew louder, the soldier’s gray eyes widened. Though she couldn’t hear the djinn instigator over the shouts of the crowd, she saw him gesticulate to the mob of men below. He pointed defiantly at the Daeva Gate, and a roar went through them.
Nahri’s heart raced. Daeva men and women, young and old, were rushing down the manicured streets and vanishing into the pretty stone buildings surrounding them. About a dozen men worked to quickly seal doors and windows, their bare hands the bright crimson of a blacksmith’s tools. But they’d only completed about half the buildings, and the mob was close. Farther down the street, a toddler wailed as its mother pounded desperately on a locked door.
Something hardened in Dara’s face. Before Nahri could do anything, he snatched the scythe away from the Geziri soldier and shoved him to the ground.
“Useless dog.” Dara gave the doors a halfhearted tug, and when they didn’t budge, he sighed, sounding more irritated than worried. He turned toward the crowd.
Nahri panicked. “Dara, I don’t think . . .”
He ignored her and crossed the plaza toward the mob, twisting the scythe in his hands as if to test the weapon’s weight. With the rest of the Daevas behind the gate, he was alone—a single man facing hundreds. The sight must have struck the crowd as amusing; Nahri caught sight of a few puzzled faces and heard laughter.
The shafit man hopped down from the fountain with a grin. “Can it be . . . is there at least one fire worshipper with some courage?”
Dara shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed the scythe at the crowd with the other. “Tell that rabble to go home. No one is tearing through any Daeva homes today.”
“We have cause,” the man insisted. “Your people stole back a convert woman.”
“Go home,” Dara repeated. Without waiting for a response, he turned back toward the gate. At Nahri’s side, one of the winged lions seemed to shudder. She startled, but when she glanced over, the statue was still.
“Or what?” The shafit man started after Dara.
Still standing with his back to the crowd, Dara caught Nahri’s eye as he pulled off the turban that partially covered his face.
“Get back, Nahri,” he said, wiping off the mud that concealed his tattoo. “Let me handle this.”
“Handle it?” Nahri kept her voice low, but anxiety swelled inside her. “Did you not hear the guard? There are soldiers coming!”
He shook his head. “They’re not here now, and I’ve seen enough Daevas killed in my lifetime.” He turned back toward the mob.
Nahri heard a few gasps of disbelief from the men nearest them, and then whispers began to race through the crowd.
The shafit man burst into laughter. “Oh, you poor soul, what in God’s name have you done to your face? You think you’re an Afshin?”
A stout man twice Dara’s size in a blacksmith’s apron stepped forward. “He has slave eyes,” he said dismissively. “He’s obviously deranged—who but a madman would wish to be one of those demons?” He raised an iron hammer. “Step aside, fool, or be struck down first. Slave or not, you’re still only one man.”
“I am only one man, aren’t I? How kind of you to share your concerns—perhaps we should even the odds.” Dara waved his hands toward the gate.
Nahri’s first thought was that he motioned for her—which, while flattering, was a deeply flawed estimation of her abilities. But then the brass lion at her side shivered.
She backed away as it stretched, the metal groaning as the statue arched its back like a house cat. The one on the other side of the gate shook out its wings, opened its mouth, and roared.
Nahri wouldn’t have thought any sound could rival the terror-inducing howl of the marid’s river serpent, but these came close. The first lion cried back to its fellow just as loudly, a horrible growl mixed with the grating of rocks that shook her to her core. It belched a fiery plume of smoke, like coughing up a hair ball, and then strolled toward Dara with a sinewy grace completely at odds with its metal form.
Judging from the screams of the mob, Nahri suspected animating winged lions that breathed flames was not a regular occurrence in the djinn world. About half ran for the exits, but the rest hoisted their weapons, looking more determined than ever.
Not the shafit man—he looked entirely bewildered. He gave Dara a searching look. “I-I don’t understand,” he stammered as the ground started to rumble. “Are you working with—”
The shafit blacksmith was not similarly deterred. He raised an iron hammer and rushed forward.
Dara had barely raised his scythe when an arrow slammed into the blacksmith’s chest, followed swiftly by another tearing through his throat. Dara glanced back in surprise as trumpeting filled the air around them.
A massive beast emerged from the gate leading to the bazaar. Twice the size of a horse, with gray legs as thick as tree trunks, the creature flapped a pair of fanlike ears and raised its long trunk to let out another angry bellow. An elephant, Nahri realized. She had seen one once, on a private estate she had robbed.
The elephant’s rider ducked under the gate, a long silver bow in his hands. He coolly surveyed the chaos in the plaza. The archer appeared about her age—not that that meant anything among the djinn; Dara could pass as a man in his thirties, and he was older than her civilization. The rider also looked Daeva; his eyes and wavy hair were as black as hers, but he wore the same uniform as the Geziri soldiers.