halted the question at his lips.
Trying to change the subject, he asked a different one. “The ifrit called you Sobek. Is that your name?”
“It is among the names mortals have given me.”
“Mortals know of you?”
“Mortals worshipped me.” Hunger again surged into Sobek’s voice, the cold dispassion fleeing like a drawn tide. “They filled shining temples with my visage and built cities in my name. I am the reason this land is great.”
Ali’s mouth was dry. “And what did this cost them?”
“Brides.” Ali gave him a shocked look, but Sobek didn’t seem to notice, lost in a reverie that had changed the marid’s entire misty expression. His face was all crocodile now, bloodlust in his yellow eyes and saliva glistening from his teeth. “Women, with that first flush of fertility, mortality … the power in such coupling, in their blood …” Sobek’s voice turned wistful. “It is unlike anything else.”
Ali swayed on his feet, but it was not exhaustion this time. The open craving and arrogance in Sobek’s voice, the way he met Ali’s eyes as though confiding a shared desire, it made Ali ill. And though he was trying to check his tongue in the presence of such a powerful creature, his heart could not let this stand.
“That’s evil.” He stared at Sobek. “Did you not think those women would rather have lived and had families of their own instead of being dishonored and drowned?”
“I did not always drown them.” Sobek didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by Ali’s revulsion. “They were the ones who chose to settle on my riverbanks. And no matter what blood it cost, they always rejoiced when they saw my floods. I never had to take the unwilling—I couldn’t. You know the laws between our races. I cannot kill a lesser being without their consent.”
“And you still call it consent when you threatened families with famine and pretended to be the Creator?”
Sobek’s gaze flickered over him, seeming to finally recognize Ali’s disgust. A bit of the hunger left his expression, but if Ali feared anger, he needn’t have: Sobek merely looked weary—and perhaps a little annoyed.
“You are of those who call themselves djinn, are you not?” the marid asked. “I assume then you share one of the faiths of the humans in this land, the faiths that displaced me. A rather ironic twist of fate for us both.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When your woman lay in your arms, your first words asked my price.” Sobek snagged Ali’s elbow, jerking him forward as the path behind them crashed down in a thundering waterfall. “In my experience, no man asks that unless part of him is willing to pay.”
Ali recalled his wrenching despair when Nahri wouldn’t wake up. He opened his mouth, but that was not a charge he could deny. “She is not my woman,” he said instead.
The look Sobek gave him was withering. “I have been in your head.” He turned back around, sparing Ali a response. “You are from a different time, mortal. A kinder one. You could not understand mine.”
“But you were punished even in your time,” Ali pointed out. “I saw your memory. Suleiman sent Anahid to punish the marid for abusing humans.”
Fury rippled across Sobek’s gray-green face, the fog churning at his feet. “Anahid went too far. She humiliated us, stole our lake, and forced my kin into servitude.”
“So what happened? Did you help my ancestors take Daevabad from the Nahids? Was that supposed to be your revenge?”
“In part.” Sobek raised his hand, snatching at the air, and a ribbon of gold mist froze in his fist like he’d pulled a rope tight. He jerked it over the three of them, and it was as if they’d entered a new world. The river was wilder here, crashing down boulders far above their heads and tumbling into the whirlpools of waterfalls.
Ali gaped in awe, but now that he had Sobek answering questions, he wasn’t stopping. “But Manizheh and her … champion made the lake rise to attack my Citadel. That’s marid magic. Why would your people help them now?”
Sobek hissed. “No marid would ever help a daeva by choice. If my cousins aided this Manizheh and the abomination at her side, it was because they had no choice.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sobek tugged another current into his hand, a calm pool rippling over them. “It took us a long time to pry free of the Nahids. My people are proud, and we did not suffer their humiliations lightly. To bend ourselves to a daeva