smoke from the balcony directly across the street.
A dark projectile smashed into the carved balustrade above her head.
Nahri shouted in surprise, shielding her head from a rain of wooden shards. There was movement on the balcony, a glint of metal and then another explosion of white smoke.
Aqisa yanked her off the shedu. “Get down!” she cried, throwing herself over Nahri.
In the next moment, the shedu shattered, another projectile hitting the head with enough force to cleave it off. Stunned and with Aqisa pinning her hard against the wooden deck, Nahri lay still. She heard more screaming and then another cracking sound.
Gunfire, she finally recognized, her memories of Cairo catching up to her. The hulking Turkish cannons, the deadly French muskets … not things an Egyptian girl like her, living on the streets and already evading the authorities, would have ever touched, but weapons she’d seen and heard many times. The type of weapons barely known to djinn, she recalled, remembering Ali’s fear when she’d handled the pistol at the Sens.
There was another shot, this one hitting the base of the juggernaut.
They’re targeting me, Nahri realized. She tried to push Aqisa off, to no avail. “They’re after me!” she shouted. “You need to get the children away!”
An object crashed to the wooden deck an arm’s length from her face. Some sort of cracked ceramic jug, with a fiery rag stuffed in one end. Nahri caught the eye-watering smell of pine and tar as a dark sludge seeped out. It touched the flames.
The fireball that exploded was enough to sear her face. Instinctively, Nahri rolled, dragging a shocked Aqisa to her feet. The pieces came together horribly in her head, the pitch-filled pots and wild flames immediately familiar from her people’s worst stories about the shafit.
“Rumi fire!” she screamed, trying to grab the little girls. Another jar struck the street, fire engulfing a pair of riders so quickly they didn’t even have time to scream. “Run!”
And then it was chaos. The surrounding crowds broke, people pushing and shoving to get away from the spreading flames. Nahri heard the Royal Guard shouting, trying to impose order as their zulfiqars flashed in the light.
Nahri choked down her panic. They had to save the children. She and Aqisa swiftly led them to the other side of the chariot. Daevas on horseback had already thrown up ropes, men climbing to help them down.
Aqisa grabbed her collar. “Water!” she said urgently. “Where is the nearest pump?”
Nahri shook her head, coughing as she tried to think. “Water doesn’t work on Rumi fire.”
“Then what does work?”
“Sand,” she whispered, gazing in rising horror at the damp stone streets and wooden buildings surrounding her. Sand was the only thing misty Daevabad didn’t have in abundance.
Aqisa abruptly yanked her back again as a metal ball slammed into the wood where Nahri’s head had just been. “They’re up there,” she warned, jerking her head toward a balcony. “Three of them.”
Nahri dared a quick peek. A trio of men were hunched inside the screened structure, two of them armed with what looked like muskets.
Rage burned through her. From the corner of her eye, she spotted an Agnivanshi soldier with a bow quickly climbing the jeweled trees of the chariot next to hers. He pulled himself onto one of the branches, nocking an arrow in the same movement.
There was a shout, and then one of the attackers fell from the balcony, an arrow buried in his back. The archer turned for the other men.
A blast of a musket brought him down. As Nahri cried out, the soldier fell dead to the ground, the bow tumbling from his hands.
“Get down, Nahri!” Nisreen yelled, drawing her attention back as another shot splintered off the deck and the last of the children were spirited away.
Nahri jumped, Aqisa urging her into a sprint as the chariot cracked in half from the heat of the spreading flames.
A knot of Daevas pulled her into their midst. Nisreen was there, ripping Nahri’s distinctive chador off. “Get the Banu Nahida away,” she ordered.
“No, wait—” Nahri tried to protest as hands pushed her onto a horse. Through a break in the crowd, she spotted Jamshid. He was riding hard—dangerously hard—one hand clutching his saddle while he dipped to reach for the bow on the ground …
A clay jar of Rumi fire struck him directly in the back.
“Jamshid!” Nahri lunged forward as he toppled from the horse. His coat was on fire, flames dancing over his back. “No!”
Everything seemed to slow. A riderless horse galloped