a damn if you approve of my methods.”
Dara ran his hands through his hair. “There has to be a better way.” He could hear the plea in his voice.
“There isn’t. Your warriors swore oaths to me. If you go after Kaveh, we will be gone when you return. I will take them to Daevabad, release the poison myself, and hope it kills Ghassan before he realizes what’s happening and has Nahri, Jamshid, and every Daeva he can get his hands on slaughtered.” She stared at him. “Or you can help me.”
Dara’s hands curled into fists. He felt more trapped than he had in years, as though a net he’d unknowingly stepped into had snapped up around him. And, Creator forgive him, he could not see a way to escape that wouldn’t kill more people he loved.
He dropped his gaze, briefly closing his eyes. Forgive me, Tamima, he prayed softly. Manizheh might be right. This brutal act might be enough to force the other tribes into a more permanent submission.
But for standing at her side while she committed it, Dara did not imagine he would ever again see the garden where his sister waited for him.
He opened his eyes. His soul was heavy as iron. “My soldiers are asking questions,” he said slowly. “And I do not want this guilt on their consciences.” He fixed his gaze on his Nahid and bowed his head once again. “What would you have me tell them?”
“Take the bricks as well,” Ali said, shading his eyes against the bright sun to scan the mound of rubble that his workers had unearthed while ripping up the platform erected over Sheikh Anas’s ruined mosque. “We’ll find a way to reuse them.”
One of the men tugged a piece of rotting textile from the pile of debris. “Looks like old carpeting.” He tossed it at Ali’s feet. “Probably not worth saving, no?”
Ali’s eyes locked on the tattered fragment; what remained of the carpet’s geometric pattern was instantly familiar. Ali had prayed upon that carpet, had sat in rapturous silence as he listened to Sheikh Anas’s thunderous sermons.
“No,” he said, his throat thickening at the memory of his murdered sheikh. “Probably not.”
A heavy hand dropped on his shoulder, startling him from his thoughts. “The women and children are off with Aqisa,” Lubayd announced. “Tents are waiting for them outside the hospital and that grumpy doctor of yours is going to examine them.”
“That grumpy doctor has a name,” Ali replied wearily. “And I would recommend not getting on her bad side. But thank you.”
Lubayd squinted at him. “Everything all right, brother? You don’t look well.”
Ali sighed, turning away from the carpet. “This isn’t an easy place to be.” He glanced across the street where a few of the shafit men they’d freed were eating food his sister had sent over from the palace kitchens. Freshly arrived—or rather dragged—to Daevabad from the human world, they had no other homes to return to. “And these aren’t easy stories to hear.”
Lubayd followed his gaze. “I’d like to toss the purebloods who oversaw this place in the lake. A bunch of thieves and thugs—stealing jewelry, harassing women, beating the men who talked back.” He shook his head. “And under the guise of helping shafit newcomers find family. What a rotten scheme.”
“Not just newcomers,” Ali pointed out. “I’ve been speaking to plenty of people who were kidnapped and pressed into service, like the father and daughter we first came upon.”
“And you said it was a Geziri man at the top, correct? Tariq al whatever?” Lubayd looked disgusted. “Shameful. Such behavior goes against everything we’ve fought for.”
“Money changes people,” Ali said. “And I think quite a lot was made here.”
They started walking. “Speaking of money, are we threatening any more rich folk today?” Lubayd asked.
Ali shook his head, wiping the dust from his face with the end of his turban. “Not threatening—correcting a fiscal deficit. But no, not today. I’ve hammered out a repayment plan with Abul Dawanik,” he said, naming the Ayaanle trade envoy. “Their first payment should be in the Treasury by month’s end, and he agreed to make immediate arrangements to cover the costs of new uniforms for the Royal Guard and zulfiqars for the cadets. Their rations should be improved soon as well. Turns out the official in charge of contracting meals for the Citadel was taking a cut from the money he was granted. His secretary figured it out but was too afraid to approach my father.”
“I take it that secretary now