The king might be pleased to see me fail. Nahri hadn’t forgotten the way the Qahtanis had received her: Alizayd’s open hostility, Zaynab’s attempt to humiliate her . . . not to mention that flicker of fear in Ghassan’s face.
Movement caught her eye, and she glanced up, welcoming any distraction from her grim thoughts. Through a screen of purple dappled leaves, she could see a clearing up ahead where the canal widened. A pair of dark arms splashed through the water’s surface.
Nahri frowned. Was someone . . . swimming? She assumed all djinn were as wary of water as Dara.
A little concerned, Nahri picked her way over the bridge. Her eyes went wide when she entered the clearing.
The canal rose up straight in the air.
It was like a waterfall in reverse, the canal rushing from the jungle to pool against the palace wall before cascading up and over the palace. It was a beautiful, if not entirely bizarre sight that utterly captivated her before another splash from the misty pool drew her eye. She raced over, spotting someone struggling in the water.
“Hold on!” After the tumultuous Gozan, this little pool was nothing. She charged right in and grabbed the closest flailing arm, pulling hard to bring whoever it was to the surface.
“You?” Nahri made a disgusted sound as she recognized a very bewildered Alizayd al Qahtani. She immediately let go of his arm, and the prince fell back with a splash, the water briefly closing over his head again before he straightened up, coughing and spitting water.
He wiped his eyes and squinted as if not quite believing who he saw. “Banu Nahri? What are you doing here?”
“I thought you were drowning!”
He drew up, every bit the arrogant royal even when wet and confused. “I was not drowning,” he huffed. “I was swimming.”
“Swimming?” she asked, incredulous. “What kind of djinn swim?”
A flicker of embarrassment crossed his face. “It’s an Ayaanle custom,” he mumbled, snatching a neatly folded shawl from the canal’s tiled edge. “Do you mind?”
Nahri rolled her eyes but turned around. On a sunny patch of grass ahead, a woven rug was laid out, crowded with books, a sheaf of notes, and a charcoal pencil.
She’d no sooner heard him splash out than he marched past her toward the rug. The shawl was wrapped around his upper body with the same fastidiousness Nahri had seen shy new brides cover their hair. Water dripped from his soaked waist-wrap.
Alizayd retrieved a skullcap from the rug and pulled it over his wet head. “What are you doing here?” he demanded over his shoulder. “Did my father send you?”
Why would the king send me to you? But Nahri didn’t ask; she had little desire to continue talking to the obnoxious Qahtani prince. “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving . . .”
She trailed off as her eyes alighted on one of the open books on the rug. An illustration covered half the page, a stylized shedu wing crossed with a scythe-ended arrow.
An Afshin mark.
Nahri immediately went for the book. Alizayd got there first. He snatched it up, but she seized another, twisting away when he tried to grab it.
“Give that back!”
She ducked under his arm and quickly flipped through the book, searching for any more illustrations. She came upon a series of figures drawn on one of the pages. A half-dozen djinn, their arms exposed to show black tattoos spiraling up their wrists, and on some, spreading across their bare shoulders. Tiny lines, like rungs in an unsupported ladder.
Like Dara’s.
Nahri had not given his tattoos much thought, assuming they had to do with his lineage. But as she stared at the illustration, a finger of cold traced her spine. The figures appeared to be from various tribes, and all had expressions of pure anguish drawn on their faces. One woman had her eyes lifted to some invisible sky, her arms outstretched and her mouth open in a wordless scream.
Alizayd grabbed the book back, taking advantage of her distraction.
“Interesting subject you’re studying,” she said, her voice biting. “What is that? Those figures . . . that mark on their arms?”
“You don’t know?” When she shook her head, a dark look crossed his face, but he offered no further explanation. He tucked the books under his arm. “It doesn’t matter. Come on. I’ll take you back to the infirmary.”
Nahri didn’t move. “What are the marks?” she asked again.
Alizayd paused, his gray eyes seemingly sizing her up. “It’s a record,” he finally said. “Part of the ifrit curse.”
“A record of what?”
Dara would have lied. Nisreen would have deflected and changed the subject. But Alizayd just pressed his mouth in a thin line and answered, “Lives.”
“What lives?”
“The human masters they’ve killed.” His face twisted. “It supposedly amuses the ifrit to see them add up.”
The human masters they’ve killed. Nahri’s mind went back to the countless times she’d observed that tattoo wrapped around Dara’s arm, the tiny black lines dull in the light of his constant fires. There had to be hundreds of them.
Aware of the prince watching her, Nahri fought to keep her face composed. After all, she’d seen that vision in Hierapolis; she knew how thoroughly controlled Dara had been by his master. Surely he couldn’t be blamed for their deaths.
Besides, however ghastly the meaning of Dara’s slave mark, Nahri suddenly realized a much nearer threat lurked. She glanced again at the books in Alizayd’s hand, and a surge of protectiveness flooded through her, accompanied by a prickle of fear. “You’re studying him.”
The prince didn’t even bother lying. “It’s an interesting tale the two of you have concocted.”
Her heart dropped. Nahri, the pieces don’t fit . . . Dara’s hurried words came back to her, the mystery about their origins that had led him to lie to the king and race after the ifrit. He’d suggested the Qahtanis might not even realize something wasn’t right.
But it was clear that at least one of them had some suspicions.
Nahri cleared her throat. “I see,” she finally managed, not entirely masking the alarm in her voice.
Alizayd dropped his gaze. “You should go,” he said. “Your minders are likely getting worried.”
Her minders? “I remember the way,” Nahri retorted, turning back toward the garden’s wild interior.
“Wait!” Alizayd stepped between her and the trees. There was a hint of panic in his voice. “Please . . . I’m sorry,” he rushed on. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He shifted on his feet. “It was rude . . . and it’s hardly the first time I’ve been rude to you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m getting accustomed to it.”
A wry expression crossed his face, nearly a smile. “I would beg that you not.” He touched his heart. “Please. I’ll take you back through the palace.” He nodded to the wet leaves sticking to her chador. “You needn’t go traipsing back through the jungle because I have no manners.”
Nahri considered the offer; it seemed sincere enough, and there was the slight chance she could accidentally knock his books into one of the fiery braziers of which the djinn seemed so fond. “Fine.”