tide?” she repeated. “If you’re imagining the boat floating off the next time the water rises, let me be the first to puncture that dream. The creek goes barely halfway up the cliff.”
“Tonight it’s coming higher.”
“Implying you cause the sea to rise doesn’t make me want to trust you. What’s to say I don’t report all this to al Mudhib, watch as he cuts out your tongue, and then break down the hull myself?”
Nahri took over. “Because you know he’s wrong. Come on—one conversation with your captain, and I’m ready to mutiny. You’re a good fighter; you seem clever. Why serve him?”
The other woman glanced quickly over her shoulder and then with a swift, discreet motion, swept her braids behind her head and pulled down her collar. Stretching across her jugular was what looked like a dull gray tattoo of a snake.
“It’s an iron alloy,” she explained, barely above a whisper. “Al Mudhib is—was—a metal mage. He bewitches the liquid metal to dig under our skin. It subdues our magic and can’t be removed without killing us.”
Nahri had paled. “He’s done that to all the shafit here?”
Fiza nodded, adjusting her collar. “Ten years indenture, and he lets you go with enough silver to start a new life. It hurts, but trust me when I say there are worse options for shafit. I’m five years in,” she added more fiercely. “And you’re asking me to throw that away and risk my life for a pair of purebloods?”
Ali didn’t know what to say. Every time he thought he’d heard the worst of what the shafit were subjected to, the bar was lowered yet again.
But Nahri had only grown more determined. “I’ll get it out of you. I’m a surgeon, a Nahid healer. When I get my magic back, I’ll get that abominable thing out of you and anyone else who comes with us.”
“And why should I trust some exiled Daeva? Your people aren’t exactly known for looking fondly on mine.”
“Maybe because I don’t enslave shafit with poisoned metal scraps!” Nahri hissed. “Would you rather spend six months traveling to a war zone? My mother is likely to kill all of you, especially if she doesn’t want whatever information we might have shared getting out. And even if she doesn’t kill you, you’ll still belong to al Mudhib.”
“Or you could be free in a night,” Ali offered. “Rich in a week. If magic comes back, Nahri gets that brand out of your neck. If we fail and magic never returns, you can still take your gold, your ship, and live in the human world.”
“Or I get a knife to the gut when we get caught twiddling our thumbs on a stuck boat going nowhere. Because like I said, the tide doesn’t—”
Ali made the soup in her bowl shoot into the air.
The movement was small and quick, not enough to be noticed by anyone except them, but Fiza shoved backward, her eyes going wide.
“I can do it,” he declared. “And I will.” Ali lowered his voice. “You’re Daevabadi, and, Fiza, what happened to our home is bad. If we’re returned to Manizheh, if she gets Suleiman’s seal, there may be no fighting back.” He looked at her earnestly. “Please. If you still have loved ones there …”
“Fiza!” The shafit girl stilled, and Ali glanced up to see one of the pirates scowling their way from where he was lounging next to a spitted haunch of meat smoking over a low fire. “Al Mudhib isn’t feeding you to whore around. Go get some more wood for the fire.”
Fiza’s eyes flashed. Ali saw her gaze briefly flicker to the camp of idle men and then over to the shafit servants scrubbing pots and making rope. She glanced at the ocean, her expression shifting.
Then she threw back her head and laughed.
“Can you blame me?” Without warning, she dropped onto Ali, straddling his waist. “I’ve never seen a real prince before.” Fiza pressed against him, running her nails down his chest.
Ali jumped as her fingers slid lower. “Whoa, wait—”
A thin metal object slid under his belt. “Should be all you need if the two of you are as skilled as you believe yourselves to be,” Fiza whispered in his ear, her breath hot against his neck. She laughed again, louder this time, and then slapped his cheek. “Maybe I’ll come back for you after midnight, pretty man. They say you’re touched by the marid. Be curious to see what the tide may bring.”
She was gone the next moment,