Ali had finally broken the other evening and begged to know what he had done wrong. “You try spending all day attempting to decipher ancient texts while being glared at by soldiers.”
He and Fiza emerged from the thicket of boats, climbing the sandy slope that led back to the town. With every step Ali took away from the ocean, he could feel it entreating him back, making him yearn for the touch of the surf twining around his ankles, the promised ease of floating in the warm, buoyant water and letting his muscles unwind.
No t a chance. Ali hadn’t set as much as a toe in the sea since arriving in Shefala, and he had no intention of doing so anytime soon.
“It’s going to rain,” Fiza said, tugging him from his thoughts. She was looking at the gray sky with open displeasure. “I hate the monsoon. That much water should not fall from the sky.”
But Ali’s attention was still on the boats crowding the beach. “I wish I had a navy,” he mused.
“Excuse me, you wish you had a what?”
“A navy. Or perhaps that’s not the right word.” Ali’s crash course in sailing down the Nile aside, he knew little about ships. “A fleet, then, like the one Zaydi was said to have brought to Daevabad’s lake. With ships and djinn from all over the magical world.”
“And how long did it take Zaydi to assemble such a fleet?”
“Decades,” Ali admitted. “But still, could you imagine such a thing?”
“Alizayd, I’m learning your grasp on reality isn’t the firmest, but you do know there’s no way to simply conjure up a hundred ships, sail them to dozens of different djinn ports, convince people to follow you, and then arrive in a landlocked lake, yes?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I once convinced the most fearsome, cunning pirate on the Ntaran coast to mutiny.”
Fiza broke off a twig and threw it at his head. “You didn’t convince me of anything. I took advantage of your desperation.”
“What if I put you in charge? You could be an admiral.”
“The only thing more unlikely than you getting your hands on a fleet is thinking you’d get that many djinn to take orders from a shafit criminal.”
Ali clucked his tongue. “You underestimate yourself. Your crew greatly admires you, and you’ve got an excellent mind for details and management—”
Fiza groaned. “Was another man complimenting me so, I’d think he was trying to get in my bed, but you’re worse—you’re trying to properly recruit me now, aren’t you?”
“Is it working?”
“No.” They passed under a pair of shade trees. It really did suddenly seem so much darker, slivers of bruise-colored sky visible beyond the leafy canopy. As if to mock Fiza’s earlier comment, it began to drizzle. “I’m only here because your mother’s kitchens are incredible, and Nahri still needs to find a way to get this out of my neck.” She yanked down her collar, revealing the metal snake below her skin.
Ali didn’t buy Fiza’s indifference. “Every time I see that brand, it makes me angry. It must make you furious.” He turned to address her properly. “Fiza, I know someone like me has little right to ask you to risk your life, but—”
A spike of pain cracked his skull.
Ali gasped, falling to his knees. He reached for his head, and his fingers came away wet—but with rainwater, not blood. It felt like he’d been hit with a hammer, every beat of his heart sending a new ache thudding through his temple.
“Aye, are you all right?” Fiza asked.
Ali winced. “I think something hit me.” He touched the spot again. Though it felt like he’d been struck across the brow, oddly enough the pain now felt … deeper, throbbing in waves beneath his skull.
“I don’t see anything.” When Ali didn’t reply, she knelt at his side. “You don’t look right. Should I get Nahri?”
“I …” But Ali was having trouble putting words together. He was shivering now, sweat breaking out across his face as the rain began to fall harder. The pain in his head was lessening, replaced by a drumming buzz underneath his damp skin. Each raindrop seemed to ping against something inside him, as though Ali were the surface of a pond, the light patter rippling across him.
I had a pain in my head like this once—moments before the lake rose to swallow the Citadel. “Fiza,” he whispered, “we need to get those people off the beach.”
Without warning, the rain turned drenching. The wind howled, tearing at Ali’s