be a futile effort to learn what his father might do next. “You brash fool. You should have gone to your father yourself rather than having those charges read aloud. That is not our people’s way.”
“I’d say a fair number of Geziris disagree with you,” Ali argued. “As well as the majority of the Guard.”
Abu Nuwas snorted. “You offered to double their salaries. I’d avoid the moral high ground if I were you, Prince Alizayd.”
“My father erred when he chose to let his army go hungry rather than force the rich to pay their share.” Ali drummed his fingers on the desk, restless. There was not much to do besides wait for a response from the palace, and yet every minute dragged like an hour.
You should enjoy them, he thought darkly. There is a strong possibility they will be your last. He paced before the wide window, contemplating his options. It had to be near midnight.
A pair of flies flew lazily past his face. Ali batted them away, but movement caught his eye outside the window, along with a growing buzz. He stepped over to the sill.
Lubayd joined him. “What is that?”
Ali didn’t respond. He was just as astonished as his friend. What appeared to be hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of flies were swarming above the lake, buzzing and zipping as they rose steadily higher in the air, moving in skittering bursts toward the city.
A few more flew through the window. Lubayd caught one in his hands and then shook it hard to stun it. It fell to the stone sill.
“It looks like a sand fly, like one of the ones from back home.” Lubayd poked it and the fly crumbled into ash. “A conjured sand fly?”
Ali frowned, running a finger over the remains. “Who would bother conjuring up an enormous swarm of sand flies?” Was this some sort of bizarre Navasatem tradition he wasn’t aware of? He leaned out the window to watch as the last of the flies made their way past the lake and into the city itself.
Then he froze. Hidden by the twitching mass of flies overhead, something else had begun to move that had no business doing so. Ali opened his mouth to call out.
A presence thundered to life in his head.
He dropped to his knees with a gasp, the world going gray. He clutched his skull, crying out in pain as sweat erupted across his body. A scream that was not a scream, an urgent warning in a language without words, hissed in his mind, urging him to run, to swim, to flee.
It was gone nearly as quickly as it came. Lubayd was holding him, calling his name as he braced himself on the windowsill.
“What happened?” he demanded, shaking Ali’s shoulder. “Brother, talk to me!”
Abruptly, all the flies in the room fell dead, a rain of ash tumbling around them. Ali barely noticed, his gaze locked on the window.
The lake was moving.
The dead water shivered, shaking off its stillness as the lake danced, small swells and currents playing on its surface. Ali blinked, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him.
“Ali, say something!”
“The lake,” he whispered. “They’re back.”
“Who’s back? What are you …” Lubayd trailed off. “What in God’s name is that?” he cried.
The water was rising.
It lifted from the earth in an undulating mass, a body of rushing black liquid that pulled from the shore, leaving behind a muddy bed of jagged crevasses and the bones of ancient shipwrecks. It rose higher and higher, blocking the stars and mountains to tower over the city.
The rough outline of a reptilian head formed, its mouth opening to reveal glistening fangs. The bellowing roar that followed shook Ali to his bones, drowning out the alarmed cries from the sentries below.
He was too shocked to do anything other than stare in disbelief at the utter impossibility before him.
They turned the Gozan River into a beast, a serpent the size of a mountain that rose to howl at the moon. The seemingly ridiculous story of a now-dead Afshin and the girl who declared herself Manizheh’s daughter ran through Ali’s head as the lake-beast howled at the sky.
And then it abruptly turned, its terrifying visage aimed directly at the Citadel.
“Run!” Lubayd shouted, dragging him to his feet. “Get out!”
There was a violent tearing, and then the floor buckled beneath him. The room spun and Ali tumbled through the air.
He slammed hard against the opposite wall, the wind knocked from his lungs. He caught a glimmer through the window, the