group lost to time whose ruined settlement the djinn now called home.
His companions were just below, waving their arms and beating a metal drum to draw the ire of the zahhak. It dived for them, letting out a screech. Steeling himself, Ali waited until the zahhak drew close to his friends, opening its jaws to breathe an angry plume of scarlet fire that they narrowly ducked. Then he jumped.
He tumbled hard to the ground, Aqisa yanking him back just before the zahhak scorched the place he’d landed. With another offended shriek, it soared off, clearly having had enough of djinn for one day.
Lubayd hauled Ali to his feet, clapping his back and letting out a whoop. “I told you he would do it!” He grinned at Ali. “Worth the risk?”
Every part of his body ached, but Ali was too exhilarated to 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 face, its carefully sculpted columns and pavilions laden with magical goods. Ali smiled, returning the nods and salaams of various djinn merchants, a sense of calm stealing over him.
One of the vendors quickly stepped to block his path. “Ah, sheikh, I’ve been looking for you.”
Ali blinked, pulled from his euphoric daze. It was Reem, a woman from one of the artisan-caste families.
She waved a scroll in front of him “I need you to check this contract for me. I’m telling you … that shifty southern slave of Bilqis is cheating me. My enchantments have no equal, and I know I should be seeing higher returns on the baskets I sold him.”
“You do realize I’m one of those shifty southerners, correct?” Ali pointed out. The Qahtanis originally hailed from Am Gezira’s mountainous southern coast—and were rather proud descendants of the djinn servants Suleiman had once gifted Bilqis, the human queen of ancient Saba.
Reem shook her head. “You’re Daevabadi. It doesn’t count.” She paused. “It’s actually worse.”
Ali sighed and took the contract; between spending the morning digging a new canal and getting tossed around by a zahhak in the afternoon, he was beginning to yearn for his bed. “I’ll have a look.”
“Bless you, sheikh.” Reem turned away.
Ali and his friends kept walking but didn’t get far before Bir Nabat’s muezzin came huffing over to them.
“Brother Alizayd, peace and blessings upon you!” The muezzin’s gray eyes flitted over Ali. “Aye, you look half-dead on your feet.”
“Yes. I was about to—”
“Of course, you were. Listen …” The muezzin lowered his voice. “Is there any way you could give the khutbah tomorrow? Sheikh Jiyad hasn’t been feeling well.”
“Doesn’t Brother Thabit usually give the sermon in his father’s place?”
“Yes, but …” The muezzin lowered his voice even further. “I can’t deal with another of his rants, brother. I just can’t. The last time he gave the khutbah, all he did was ramble about how the music of lutes was leading young people away from prayer.”
Ali sighed again. He and Thabit didn’t get along, primarily because Thabit fervently believed all the gossip coming out of Daevabad and would rail to anyone who would listen that Ali was an adulterous liar who’d been sent to corrupt them all with “city ways.” “He won’t be happy when he learns you asked me.”
Aqisa snorted. “Yes, he will. It will give him something new to complain about.”
“And people enjoy your sermons,” the muezzin added quickly. “You choose