The Empire of Gold recap

Daevabad has fallen to Banu Manizheh and lost its magic, and Nahri and Alizayd are stranded in Egypt with Suleiman's seal and no way home. Hiding in Cairo, they are hunted by Manizheh's allies; guided by Sobek, an ancient marid bound to Ali's family line, they escape to Ta Ntry, where Ali's mother Hatset shelters them and where they uncover how Daevabad was really founded and what the Nahids and the marid did to build it. Nahri learns that she is Manizheh's daughter by a human father, which makes the champion of the shafit shafit herself. In occupied Daevabad, Muntadhir is kept alive as leverage over Jamshid, whom Manizheh means to make her heir, while Dara, sickened by what he has done and by what Manizheh has promised the ifrit, begins to break with her. Nahri and Ali return with allies and a bargain struck with the marid. Manizheh is defeated and killed, Ali is nearly killed and permanently changed, and Nahri ends the seal's absolute power rather than claim it, restoring Daevabad's magic and leaving the city to be governed jointly, shafit included.

Previously, in the Daevabad trilogy: Nahri, a con artist in Ottoman Cairo, discovered she carried the blood of the Nahids, the healer family that once ruled the hidden djinn city of Daevabad, and was brought there by Darayavahoush the Afshin. The city had been taken from the Nahids fourteen centuries earlier by the Qahtanis, who rule its six tribes and confine the part-human shafit to poverty. King Ghassan installed Nahri in his palace as Banu Nahida and married her to his heir Muntadhir; she became friends with his younger son Alizayd, who was exiled to the desert after his secret support for a shafit organization was exposed. Dara was killed on the city's lake by a marid-possessed Ali, and raised again by Banu Manizheh, the Nahid healer everyone believed dead for twenty years, who is Nahri's mother. Five years later Manizheh took Daevabad during the Navasatem festival: Dara destroyed the Citadel while the grand wazir Kaveh released a poison that killed the city's Geziri, King Ghassan among them. Muntadhir was left mortally wounded, Kaveh revealed that Jamshid is his son by Manizheh and therefore Nahri's half-brother, and Nahri finally met her mother. Suleiman's seal passed to Ali, who escaped into the lake with Nahri and surfaced in the Nile. With the seal-bearer gone from the island, Daevabad's magic went out entirely, leaving Manizheh in possession of a broken city and Nahri and Ali stranded in Egypt.

Nahri and Ali come ashore on the Nile with no magic, no money and no way back. Ali is carrying Suleiman's seal and the marid's changes to his body, and neither is behaving the way anyone expected. Nahri is home for the first time in years, in a Cairo that has moved on without her, and she is not entirely sorry about it. Far to the east, Daevabad has stopped working: the wards are down, conjured things have failed, the sick cannot be healed by magic, and Manizheh rules a city of terrified survivors by force alone. Muntadhir is kept alive in the palace because his life is what makes Jamshid cooperative, and Dara, who won the city for her, is discovering what occupying it actually requires of him.

Hiding in Cairo, Nahri returns to the apothecary Yaqub and to the work she did before any of this, treating human patients with human medicine, and finds she is better at that life than she wants to admit. Ali is a conspicuous problem: he cannot pass for human, the seal in his chest is a beacon, and the water keeps answering him. Manizheh's reach extends further than Egypt, and the pair are found. In Daevabad, Manizheh consolidates: she disposes of anyone who resists, presses Jamshid toward the throne she intends him to take, and keeps Muntadhir alive by inches. Dara's objections to her methods begin to be objections rather than misgivings, and she does not take them well.

Ali's marid inheritance turns out to have a name and an owner. Sobek, an ancient marid of the Nile, is bound by an old pact to the Ayaanle line Ali descends from, and his help comes framed entirely as debts and obligations. With his intervention Nahri and Ali get out of Egypt and cross to Ta Ntry, the Ayaanle homeland on the far side of the sea, where Hatset takes them in. Ta Ntry is wealthy, undamaged and full of people with opinions about what a Qahtani prince who cannot bleed properly is now good for. Nahri, who has spent two books being told what she is by people who benefit from the answer, starts asking her own questions about where the Nahids' power actually came from.

In Ta Ntry, the founding story of Daevabad comes apart. The version every tribe has been taught, in which Suleiman rewarded the Nahids with the seal and Anahid built the brass city as a refuge, leaves out how the city was actually raised and who was compelled to raise it. The marid's grievance against Daevabad turns out to be very old and very specific, and it explains a great deal about the lake, its curse, and what happened to Ali in it. Nahri and Ali begin assembling something like a plan and something like an alliance, drawing in the Ayaanle and the shafit, including a ship's captain named Fiza who is willing to be paid for the risk. In Daevabad, Zaynab and the survivors organize what resistance a magicless occupied city allows.

Nahri learns the truth about herself. Manizheh bore her in Egypt, to a human father, and hid what that meant: the Banu Nahida who fought to open a hospital to the shafit is shafit herself, the exact thing her mother's faction holds in contempt. Dara, meanwhile, learns the rest of his own history, including how the Nahids he served used him and what was done to him and his family afterwards, and he learns what Manizheh has actually promised the ifrit in exchange for their help. The bargain involves djinn souls, and it is not a price he is willing to see paid. Manizheh's response to being questioned is to remind him what he is bound by, and Dara begins looking for the seam in it.

Restoring Daevabad's magic means dealing with the marid on the marid's terms, which means going to the eldest of them, Tiamat, who remembers the original offence and has waited a very long time to collect on it. The bargain that comes out of it is expensive, and Ali pays most of it. With a marid agreement, an Ayaanle-backed force and a shafit fleet, Nahri and Ali turn back toward the city, knowing that the seal Ali carries is the one thing Manizheh cannot take Daevabad's magic back without, and that bringing it home means bringing it within her reach.

The return to Daevabad begins. The lake, the veil and the ruined defences all behave differently in a city with no magic, and the assault does not go to anyone's plan. Manizheh has been waiting for exactly this, because it delivers the seal to her doorstep, and the fighting inside the city turns on which of the Nahids, Qahtanis and Afshins present will do what they have been told. Dara's break with Manizheh becomes open. Jamshid, Muntadhir and Zaynab are forced to act from inside the palace rather than around it, and Nahri arrives at the confrontation with her mother that the whole trilogy has been arranging.

The last battle for Daevabad settles everything. Dara turns on Manizheh rather than carry out the last of what she asks of him, and Manizheh is killed. Ali is nearly killed as well and survives only through marid intervention, which leaves him permanently changed. Nahri finishes holding what everyone has been fighting for and refuses to keep it: instead of taking Suleiman's seal and ruling as her ancestors did, she ends the arrangement that put absolute magical authority into a single pair of hands, and Daevabad's magic comes back to the city and to everyone in it. The Nahid dynasty is not restored, the Qahtani monarchy is not restored, and the shafit are not put back behind their walls.

In the epilogue, Daevabad is rebuilding under a shared government in which the shafit are represented for the first time, with the surviving Qahtanis, Nahri and Jamshid all carrying part of the work. Muntadhir has been healed of the wound that was killing him. Jamshid takes up the position among the Daeva that his parentage gives him. Nahri does not take a throne; she takes the hospital she rebuilt and the practice she wanted from the beginning, with Ali beside her. Dara is alive and unbound, facing what he did with fourteen centuries of obedience behind him and nobody left to give him orders.

The trilogy closes with Manizheh's defeat. Dara turns on the woman who raised him from the dead rather than carry out the last of what she asks, and Manizheh is killed in the final confrontation for Daevabad. Ali is very nearly killed in it and survives only through marid intervention, which leaves him permanently altered. Nahri, holding the power that three books of characters have fought and murdered to control, declines to keep it: rather than take Suleiman's seal for herself and rule as her ancestors ruled, she ends the arrangement that placed absolute magical authority in one person's hands, and Daevabad's magic returns to the city and to its people. What follows is not a restoration of the Nahid dynasty. Daevabad is left to be governed jointly, with the shafit represented for the first time in its history rather than confined, and with the surviving Qahtanis, Nahri and Jamshid sharing the work of holding it together. Muntadhir survives and is healed at last of the wound that had been killing him. Jamshid takes up the place among the Daeva that his parentage gives him. Nahri does not become queen: she takes the hospital she rebuilt and the practice she wanted from the first chapter of the first book, with Ali beside her. Dara survives, freed of the magic that made him someone else's weapon, and is left to answer for what he did while he was one.