Blood Passage (Dark Caravan Cycle #2) (22 page)

“Remarkable,” Malek said, trailing his fingers along the stone. “Just like in the story. They're locked from the inside. There's no getting into the city through them.”

Finally Nalia saw two pillars of flame in the distance. As she drew closer, she noticed that they were made not of fire, but brass that glowed with an otherworldly light. They stood on either side of an ornate gate, carved with a motif similar to those she'd seen in Marrakech: flowers and ancient script twisted together.

As they neared, the gates opened with a soft
whoosh
. “That was easy,” Nalia muttered.

Malek laughed with delight. “Welcome to the City of Brass.”

ZANARI LOOKED DOWN WHAT ONCE MUST HAVE BEEN the city's main street. In the light emanating from the pillars behind her, she could make out arcaded porticos made of mud brick the color of bruised peaches that flanked either side of a dusty cobblestone road. Long-dead vines hung over balconies where desert flowers had once bloomed. A large building with columns and a domed roof made of gold—a palace or temple—stood at the end of the road. It was a maze, an ancient puzzle. And over all of it, a solid dome of sand.

“It's like a
bisahm
,” she said, pointing up at the improbable sand sky. It shouldn't be there, suspended above them. It was hard to breathe, knowing Earth's largest desert was lying on top of them.

“Well, at least the Ifrit will have no idea we're down here,” Raif said.

Noqril made his way up to Zanari, standing closer than was necessary. He wrinkled his nose at the flecks of shimmering rock the flaming pillars brought out of the sky's sand. “You're sure the thing's not going to cave in and bury us alive?” he asked.

“It's a little late to ask that question, brother,” Zanari said. She moved closer to Raif. “How are we going to find a ring
here
?” she asked him. “Or these godsdamned stars? They could be anywhere.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I have no idea. Where do you suggest we start?”

“Stairways?” Nalia and Zanari said at the same time. She hadn't even noticed Nalia standing there, her face a mess of shadows in the light from their
chiaan
and the bronze pillars.

Zanari bit off her smile. She'd meant it when she'd told Nalia she could never forgive her for Kir's murder. And if Nalia didn't have a talk with Raif soon and end things with him, she wouldn't forgive her for that, either. Zanari wanted her brother back, not this lovesick boy who ran headlong into death at the slightest provocation.

Up ahead, Phara was pushing open the door of one of the small shops that lined the main street. Zanari hurried to catch up with the other jinni—anything to be away from Nalia and Raif and the confusion they caused her.

“Find something?” Zanari asked.

Phara looked up. “Honestly, I was just curious.”

“Need some company?”

Phara's answering smile made Zanari turn warm inside, as though she'd just gulped half a bottle of
savri
.

“Sure,” Phara said. “I hear you're quite the warrior, so you must promise to defend me if there are ghouls inside.”

Zanari laughed. “Who told you that?”

“Nalia,” Phara answered. “She said you fought the Ifrit beside her in Marrakech and that you helped her kill a
s'arawq
.”

Zanari frowned. “Oh.” That had been one of the proudest moments of her life, keeping up with a Ghan Aisouri.

Phara was looking at Zanari like she wanted to keep looking. No one ever looked at her like that. She'd seen plenty of jinn look at
Raif
like that. Male jinn with pretty lips, female jinn with doe eyes—they'd only ever seen her brother. And if they'd paid any attention to her, it was only to get closer to Raif. No one had ever just wanted Zanari.

But Phara . . . she was
only seeing Zanari.

Which was totally weird and unnerving and somehow made Zanari want to run away and get closer to Phara at the same time.

Fire and blood.
Zanari looked at the ceiling. The door. The window. Finally, Phara caught Zanari's eyes with her golden ones. “So?”

“So what?” Zanari managed.

“Will you protect me?” Phara blushed, a lovely pink that crept up her cheeks.

Zanari took out the scimitar strapped to her back. Protect. Yes. She could do that. “Absolutely.”

Phara pushed open the door and shone her golden
chiaan
into the tiny room.

“It seems to be some kind of . . . home store,” Zanari said.

The shelves were lined with earthenware jugs and simply
designed plates and bowls. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.

“Humans are so . . . I mean how do they do it?” Zanari said. “Their lives are so short, they can't manifest anything, they have no
chiaan.
Can you imagine, having to
buy
plates and bowls?”

“It's true that their time and abilities are limited,” Phara agreed. “But think about what they've managed to do without
chiaan
. The knowledge they have, the skills. Have you ever tried to drive an automobile?”

Zanari shook her head. “I've only been on Earth a few weeks.”

“Well, it's hard, trust me. You can't make them do what you want, like with a camel. Well, actually, camels are stubborn as all hells but at least you can scold them. With automobiles, there are so many controls and
other
automobiles and humans in them and . . . You should have seen me trying to drive in Tangier. Gods, I was awful!”

Zanari's eyes slid over to where Phara stood near a shelf of vases. She was lovely, all gentle curves, elegant in her healer's robes.

“The sooner I can leave this realm, the better,” Zanari said. Every minute spent on Earth was a minute that her land plunged further into chaos and suffering, a minute where she questioned ever returning to her ravaged land. The guilt over wanting to abandon Arjinna was a thorny, thrashing thing inside her.

“You don't like Earth?” Phara was genuinely surprised.

Zanari tilted her head to the side, thinking. Most of her time in the human realm had been spent tracking a cannibal intent on eating Nalia and any other jinni he could get his hands on. Not
the best introduction to another realm. And yet somehow, it had taken hold of her imagination.

“I'm not sure what I think of Earth,” Zanari said. “I haven't exactly been sightseeing.”

“It's a wonderful place,” Phara said. “And humans aren't so bad, once you get used to them.”

“But wouldn't you rather be in Arjinna?” Zanari asked. “To be in your own land and dance under the Three Widows during harvest time?”

“I've never been to Arjinna.”

Zanari nearly dropped the delicate bowl she was holding. “
What?
Not once?”

Phara shook her head. “I was born in the desert among the Dhoma, as was my mother before me, and her mother before her.”

“Phara, that's just . . .
wrong.
Oh my gods, you've never seen the Water Temple of Lathor? The Infinite Lake? The Qaf Mountains?
Are you serious?
”

Phara laughed. The sound was like toasting wine glasses. She smiled, sly. “Maybe when you win the revolution, you can show me these things.”

“I'd love to.” She looked away before she did something stupid, like kiss Phara's full, pink lips. Her eye caught an arch at the back of the store. “Should we see what's in there?”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Where's your sense of adventure?”

“I'm a healer, remember? My idea of an adventure is gathering herbs for my poultices.”

“Well, allow me to broaden your horizons.” Zanari moved
forward, one hand holding a glowing ball of
chiaan
, the other gripping her scimitar.

She edged through a decaying wooden doorframe, Phara close behind. Zanari raised the light
in her hand as they got deeper into the pitch-black room. First, it was just shadows and a musty scent and then . . . and then the room became a crypt. The ball of light in Zanari's hand faltered as fear surged through her, cold and hot and
gods
. A fully clothed skeleton sat in a wooden chair, clutching a blanket. The bones had a macabre gleam in the flickering jade light of Zanari's
chiaan.
Phara dug her fingernails into Zanari's arm.

“I'm not sure about this whole broadening-my-horizons thing,” Phara said.

“Yeah, this wasn't really what I had in mind.”

Zanari moved closer to the long-dead corpse and reached out a finger to move back the blanket the skeleton's bones were curled around. When she saw what was underneath, she jerked away, her face pale. Wrapped in its decaying folds was a much smaller skeleton.

“Oh my gods,” Phara said, noticing the infant's remains. “The poor thing.” She looked around the room. “Zanari . . . I think . . . I think they must have starved to death.”

“That is a really awful way to go.” That was one thing jinn never had to worry about—even the lowliest Djan could produce food.

“Manifesting that sandstorm to cover an occupied city was pretty low, even for the Ghan Aisouri,” Zanari said, when they'd returned to the main room. “I knew she'd probably magicked the
dune, but
gods,
all these people . . .”

Phara leaned against a table in the center of the small store. “Are you saying that this Ghan Aisouri—Antharoe—are you saying that she buried the humans in this city alive and left my ancestors here
on purpose
?”

“Antharoe did the expedient thing. It would have taken too much effort to evacuate the city. She might not have known about the bottles of jinn, but if she did, I doubt she looked very hard for them.” Zanari wiped a finger in the table's dust. “Just another day in the life of the Ghan Aisouri.”

Phara took in a shuddering breath. “It's starting to make more and more sense, why my family stayed on Earth for so long.”

Zanari frowned. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder why we stay. What we're fighting for. It's been so bad for so long.” She looked up. “Part of me feels like we should just get as many jinn out of Arjinna as we can. Come here and . . . start over.”

Phara shook her head. “The way your eyes light up when you talk about the Water Temple of Lathor and dancing under the moons—that's what you're fighting for. You'd never be happy here.”

Zanari wasn't so sure.

The door pushed open and they both jumped. “Hey, we've been looking for you two,” Raif said. “You okay?”

Zanari nodded. “Other than finding corpses.”

“Yeah. Didn't realize we were in a graveyard.” A shadow passed over Raif's eyes and he looked old and tired and too much like their father. He cleared his throat.

“We're gonna set up camp and get some rest,” he said. “Better
stick with the group until we know what we're dealing with down here.”

“Good point,” Zanari said.

He headed back to the cluster of jinn standing on the main road. As Zanari moved to follow him, Phara grabbed her hand. The healer's
chiaan
felt like a gentle desert breeze. The confusion, hurt, and frustration inside Zanari faded until all that was left was a deep peace.

Gods, that's nice.

“I—” Phara stopped, blushing. “There's a
sadr
that my mother used to say whenever I was discouraged. I don't know if you're religious, but . . . well. It helped me. Still does.”

Zanari wasn't religious. But at the moment she wanted to be.

“I try to honor the gods,” Zanari said, careful. Hesitant. Among jinn, this topic was eggshells—things that break if you held them too tightly. “But it feels like they don't listen anymore. Like maybe they never did.” Zanari sighed. She didn't have the words for these thoughts, these feelings. This wasn't the sort of thing the
tavrai
talked about. Dthar Djan'Urbi's scimitar-wielding daughter didn't have the sweet vocabulary of a Dhoma healer raised in the peace of a sun-kissed desert.

“I don't mean to offend,” she finished. Healers, Zanari knew, were very devout. They had to be, in order to work their magic.

“Truth doesn't offend. You're speaking your heart—there's nothing wrong with that, Zanari.” Phara interlaced her fingers with Zanari's long, thin ones.

“I'd like to hear it,” Zanari whispered. “The
sadr
.”

The
sadrs
came from the jinn holy book, the
Sadranishta
,
hundreds of prayers to the gods. Zanari knew some of them, the ones the traveling priests had said around Djan fires after a day's work in the fields. Like the others in her caste, she'd never been able to read the holy book. Even after she'd been taught the language of letters, the words were too ancient for her newly educated mind to comprehend and, besides, the few copies that existed were locked away in the temples and palace.

Phara spoke, her voice soft with memory.
“You cannot have the moon without the night. Its light needs the darkness to kiss. Who else can hold it but the shadows? What else can make it shine?”

The words slipped inside Zanari and filled her to the brim with something warm and sweet and good. They were nectar. Phara leaned close, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “The revolution is Arjinna's moon, no? If you leave, what will be left? Only darkness.”

Her lips, just inches away from Zanari's, seemed to catch the slivers of light that slipped in through the shop's dusty windowpanes.

“This is getting complicated,” Zanari said, her eyes on those lips.

“The whole world is complicated. Maybe this moment—the present—is the only thing that makes sense.”

“Zan, what in all hells is taking so—” Raif pushed through the door, then stopped when he saw how close they were standing, his eyes going wide. “I'll . . . um . . . yeah.”

He grinned, then scurried out. Phara giggled. “I was wondering what it took to surprise the leader of the Arjinnan revolution.”

Zanari thought of the look in Raif's eyes when he told her
that Nalia had killed Kir. “He doesn't like surprises, that's for sure,” she said.

“But some surprises are good,” Phara said softly, a hopeful look in her eye.

Zanari smiled. “Yeah. Some surprises are good.”

She'd thought that when something like this happened to her—whatever
this
was—that it would be fireworks and magic and all-consuming want. Like it had been for Raif and Nalia. But
this
was a slow-moving river on a hot summer's day, bees lazily buzzing, the feel of warm grass beneath her fingers.