care. “It was amazing,” he gushed, trying to catch his breath. He pulled away the ghutra the wind had plastered to his mouth. “And guess what? There’s a new group of humans at the—”
Groans interrupted him before he’d even finished the sentence.
“No,” Aqisa cut in. “I am not going to spy on humans with you again. You are obsessed.”
Ali persisted. “But we could learn something new! You remember the village we explored in the south, the sundial they used to regulate their canals? That was very helpful.”
Lubayd handed Ali his weapons back. “I remember the humans chasing us away when they realized they had ‘demonic’ visitors. They were firing quite a lot of those explosive stick … things. And I don’t intend to learn if there’s iron in those projectiles.”
“Those ‘explosive stick things’ are called rifles,” Ali corrected. “And you are all sadly lacking a spirit of enterprise.”
They made their way down the rocky ledge that led to the village. Etchings covered the sandstone: letters in an alphabet Ali couldn’t read, and carefully hewn drawings of long-vanished animals. In one high corner, an enormous bald man loomed over simple line drawings of figures, stylized flames twisting around his fingers. An original daeva, the village djinn believed, from before Suleiman blessed them. Judging from the figure’s wild eyes and sharp teeth, they must have terrorized the human settlers.
Ali and his friends crossed beneath the entrance facade. A pair of djinn were drinking coffee in its shade, ostensibly guarding it. On the rare occasion a curious human got too close, they had charms capable of conjuring rushing winds and blinding sandstorms to frighten them off.
They looked up as Ali and his companions passed. “Did he do it?” one of the guards asked with a smile.
Lubayd wrapped an arm around Ali’s shoulders proudly. “You’d think he’d been riding zahhak since he was weaned.”
“It was extraordinary,” Ali admitted.
The other man laughed. “We’ll make a proper northerner out of you yet, Daevabadi.”
Ali grinned back. “God willing.”
They crossed through the dark chamber, passing the empty tombs of the long-dead human kings and queens who once ruled here—no one would ever give Ali a straight answer as to exactly where their bodies had gone and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Ahead was a plain stone wall. To a casual observer—a human observer—little would mark it as special save the slight glow emanating from its oddly warm surface.
But it was a surface that all but sang to Ali, magic simmering from the rock in comforting waves. He placed his palm upon the wall. “Pataru sawassam,” he commanded in Geziriyya.
The wall misted away, revealing the bustling greenery of Bir Nabat. Ali paused, taking a moment to appreciate the newly fertile beauty of the place he’d called home for five years. It was a mesmerizing sight, far different from the famine-stricken shell it had been when he first arrived. Though Bir Nabat had likely been a lush paradise at the time of its founding—the remnants of water catchments and aqueducts, as well as the size and artistry of its human-crafted temples, indicated a time of more frequent rains and a flourishing population—the djinn who’d moved in after had never matched their numbers. They’d gotten by for centuries with a pair of remaining springs and their own scavenging.
But by the time Ali arrived, the springs had dwindled down to almost nothing. Bir Nabat had become a desperate place, a place willing to defy their king and take in the strange young prince they’d found dying in a nearby crevasse. A place willing to overlook the fact that his eyes occasionally gleamed like wet bitumen when he got upset and his limbs were covered in scars no blade could draw. That didn’t matter to the Geziris in Bir Nabat. The fact that Ali had uncovered four new springs and two untapped cisterns, enough water to irrigate Bir Nabat for centuries, did. Now small but thriving plots of barley and melons hemmed new homes, more and more people opting to replace tents of smoke and oryx hide with compounds of quarried stone and sandblasted glass. The date trees were healthy, thick and towering to provide cool shade. The village’s eastern corner had been given over to orchards: a dozen fig saplings growing strong between citrus trees, all carefully fenced off for protection from Bir Nabat’s booming population of goats.
They passed by the village’s small market, held in the shadow of the enormous old temple that had been carved into the cliff