Fatumai, and it chastened him as much as it concerned him. There had been heart in the Tanzeem. They’d saved and sheltered shafit children, put books in hands and bread in mouths. Ali didn’t doubt for a second that they were believers, as God-fearing as he was.
He also didn’t doubt that quite a few of them had blood on their hands. “Are the rest of the children safe?”
She laughed, a hard sound. “You really don’t know your father, do you?”
Ali almost couldn’t bring himself to ask the question. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think it mattered to Ghassan that some were children?” She clucked her tongue. “Oh no, Brother Alizayd. We were a danger. A threat to be tracked down and exterminated. We came into his home and stole the heart of his youngest, so he sent his soldiers tearing through the shafit district in pursuit of us. Of anyone related to us. Family, neighbors, friends—he killed scores. We were so desperate to escape we tried to flee Daevabad itself.”
“Flee Daevabad? You were able to hire a smuggler?”
“‘Hire’ is not the word I’d use,” she said, a deadly finality in her voice. “Not that it mattered. I volunteered to stay behind with those who were too young for such travel and the ones who had too much magical blood to be able to pass in the human world.” Her voice quivered. “The rest … I kissed their brows and wiped their tears … and watched as your father’s firebirds burned the boat.”
Ali reeled. “What?”
“I’d rather not repeat it if you don’t mind,” she said flatly. “Hearing their screams as the lake tore them apart was bad enough. I suppose your father thought it was worth it to take out the handful of Tanzeem fighters who were with them.”
Ali abruptly sat down. He couldn’t help it. He knew his father had done some awful things, but sinking a ship full of fleeing child refugees was pure evil. It didn’t matter who Ghassan had been hunting.
He should not be king. The blunt, treasonous thought burst into Ali’s head in a moment of terrible clarity. It suddenly seemed simple, the loyalty and complicated love for his father that Ali had long struggled with snipped away as someone might cut a strained rope.
Fatumai paced farther into the chamber, oblivious to his pain or perhaps rightfully uncaring about the prince having a breakdown on the floor. She ran her hands along the stacked supplies. “A lively, organized place this seems,” she commented. “You have done extraordinary work, work that has truly changed the lives of innumerable shafit. Ironic, in a way, that it happened here.”
That immediately pulled him from his thoughts. “Meaning?”
She glanced back. “Oh, come, brother, let us not pretend. I am certain you know what once happened to the shafit in this so-called hospital. Your namesake certainly did, though it is absent from the songs spun about his mighty deeds.” She shrugged. “I suppose there’s little glory in tales of plague and vengeance.”
Her words were far too precise to be a mistake. “Who told you?” he asked haltingly.
“Anas, of course. Do you think you’re the only one with a skill for combing through old texts?” She leveled her gaze on Ali. “He thought it was a story that should be spread far more widely.”
Ali closed his eyes, his hands clenching into fists. “It belongs to the past, sister.”
“It belongs to the present,” Fatumai returned sharply. “It is a warning of what the Daevas are capable of. What your Nahid is capable of.”
His eyes shot open. “What we are all rather capable of. It was not Daevas who murdered your children on the lake. Nor was it Daevas who burned this place to the ground and slaughtered everyone inside fourteen centuries ago.”
She stared at him. “And why, brother? Tell me why the Geziris and shafit torched this place with such fury.”
Ali couldn’t look away and yet he couldn’t not answer. “Because the Nahid Council experimented on shafit here,” he confessed softly.
“Not just experimented,” Fatumai corrected. “They created a poison here. A pox that could be mixed with paint. Paint that could be applied to what, exactly, my warrior friend?”
“Scabbards,” he answered softly, sickness rising in his chest. “Their soldiers’ scabbards.”
“Their Geziri soldiers,” she clarified. “Let’s get our facts straight. For that’s all the Nahid Council said your tribe was good for. Fighting and, well … we’ll not say the impolite term, but making more soldiers to fill the ranks.” She met Ali’s stony gaze.