The Kingdom of Copper

by S. A. Chakraborty

  “Ours was not the hand that slayed you,” the marid corrected, an odd defensiveness creeping into its breathy voice. A muddy snail glided along the scaled fin of its shoulder. “You were killed by a man of your own race.”

  “So kill him again,” Aeshma said casually. “He has murdered your acolyte and set aflame your holy waters. Smash him to bits with another ship. Drown him.” The ifrit stepped closer, ignoring the glare Dara threw at him. “But you can’t, can you? It’s being whispered all around. Your people broke the rules . . .” His tongue darted across his lips, hungry anticipation on his fiery face. “He could burn the world’s waters and you could do nothing.”

  The marid hesitated. “An error was made in taking the boy,” it finally said.

  “An error?” Fire burst from Dara’s hands. “You slaughtered me in cold blood and taking Alizayd was the error?”

  The marid made an angry clicking sound, and a thick fog rose from the water. “Blame your Nahid,” it hissed, glaring at Manizheh with hate in the glittering depths of its eyes. “She who was warned, she who seeks to upend what was wrought in blood!” The unnatural fog slid over his skin like a snake and Dara shivered. “If you could see the destruction you portend, Darayavahoush e-Afshin, you would throw yourself in the sea.”

  Shock froze Dara’s tongue, but Aeshma waved a dismissive hand. “Ignore it. The marid like to pretend at prophecy, but they are demented fools whose wits are as scattered as their waters.” His bright golden eyes filled with scorn. “A millennium or two ago, I remember these shores being lined with shining temples, a ceaseless horde of humans willing to throw themselves in your waters and declare you their gods. Your kind laughed as Suleiman punished my people.” His face was dark with anger. “I am glad I have lived to see the same done to you.”

  The marid hissed again. “This creature is no Suleiman.” Its oily eyes narrowed on Dara. “He is nothing but a blood-soaked pawn.”

  “And yet you owe him a debt.” Manizheh’s cool voice cut through the charged air like a knife. “A debt you would presumably like to be free of. So perhaps we could have a conversation instead of arguing over old wars.”

  The marid tilted its head, considering them. The water at its feet contracted and surged out, as if the creature was taking a breath. “Speak,” it finally replied.

  “We wish to return to Daevabad.” Manizheh pointed at Dara. “My Afshin can no longer cross the mountain threshold, but there are legends that my ancestors had another way. That they could slip into the lake as though it were a doorway and reemerge in whichever waters were on their minds, in any place in the world their hearts most desired.”

  “That was magic never meant for daevas. The lake was ours. It was sacred.” Hurt crept into the creature’s voice. “It was the birthplace of Tiamat. She enchanted it so that we could pay homage to her from any water.”

  “Tiamat?” Dara repeated, confused. “As in Bet il Tiamat? The southern ocean?”

  “Not precisely,” Aeshma replied. “Tiamat was one of their gods, their mother. A giant sea monster born in the chaos of creation with a penchant for destroying whatever dirt-blood civilizations provoked her ire.” He grinned. “She hated daevas.”

  “She had cause to hate daevas,” the marid hissed. “Anahid stole her lake. We removed the enchantment when Anahid’s descendants grew too weak to control us. They deserved to be torn apart for daring to enter our waters.” It turned on Manizheh, snapping its teeth. “And it is not just Daevabad you seek, daughter of Anahid. Do not think us so easily fooled. You are after Suleiman’s seal.”

  Manizheh shrugged, unruffled as ever. “I am after what belongs to me. Daevabad was granted to the Nahids by the Creator, as was Suleiman’s seal. Their return is equally ordained.” She gestured to Dara. “Why would our greatest warrior be given back to us with such extraordinary abilities if it was not the will of the Creator?”

  The marid gestured to its murdered human husk. “This is not the will of the Creator. It is the ill-fated scheme of a power-hungry woman.” Its gaze flickered to Dara. “And you are worse. Twice undead and with the blood of thousands on your hands . . . and still you serve those who made you into this abomination.”

  The sudden charge took Dara aback and then it cut him deep, striking the darkest part of his heart, a shadowed part he dared not touch.

  There is a city called Qui-zi.

  The calm with which those words had been spoken, by an authority Dara was raised never to doubt. The screams of the people who lived there, the shafit that the Nahid Council had assured him were soulless deceptions. The belief he’d desperately clung to until he’d met a shafit woman—Nahri—whose company made him fear that everything he’d been told about the mixed-bloods was a lie.

  Except Nahri wasn’t shafit. That had been the lie, a deception put in place by the very creature before him. A marid curse, a marid lie.

  “Can you do it?” he demanded of the marid, abruptly done with these games. “Is it possible for us to travel through the waters back to Daevabad?”

  “We will not help a Nahid retake Suleiman’s seal.”

  “That is not what I asked,” he said through his teeth. “I asked if you could.”

  The marid drew up. “We do not take commands from fire-born devils.”

  That was answer enough for Dara.

  It took very little to call up the raw power burning bright and angry inside him. Dara had spilled so much blood. It couldn’t be for nothing, and if the marid needed to learn that lesson the hard way, so be it.

  He scorched the ground in a burst of heat that baked the clay beneath his feet, shaking the entire lake bed. The water churned as it came to a vicious boil, steaming away in gigantic clouds of vapor. More fire poured down his hands, dashing to consume everything that had been safely nestled in the lake’s embrace. The waterweeds that had been dancing and the fossilized teeth of creatures lost to time; a pair of writhing eels and the remains of countless fishing boats. A flock of cranes beat a hasty retreat, the frightened cry of birds filling the air.

  The marid howled as its sanctuary burned, falling to its knees and screeching in pain as if it had taken the blow itself. Its clawed hands scrabbled at the dust.

  Dara approached, kneeling at its side. He took the marid by its chin, its skin like pebbles beneath his fingertips. He forced its oily gaze to meet his. “You take commands from this fire-born devil,” he said coldly. “You will obey those commands or I will burn every water you consider sacred, every place your kind has ever called home. I will reduce it all to ash and dust and murder every human follower you have left on the wreckage of your shores.”

  The marid jerked free. It stared at its burning sanctuary. In the puddles that remained, writhing fish were ablaze, looking like a sick parody of a Daeva fire altar.

  The marid’s gaze lingered on the charred remains of a water snake. “When Suleiman punished your people, he shed no blood. He offered a choice . . . a choice to spend your penance building a temple to the Creator, not a command to take part in a war.”

  The words came far easier to Dara now. “I am no Suleiman.”

  “No,” the marid agreed. “You are not.” It seemed to have grown smaller, its teeth and scales dull.

  A moment passed, the only sound the crackling of flames. The fire was spreading to the trees, to the evergreen forest he’d briefly longed to escape into.

  The marid spoke again, its voice lower. “You will consider the blood debt paid if we let you pass through Daevabad’s lake?”

  A loud crack from ahead caught his attention. The flames had taken a large tree on the opposite shore. It had stood alone, a towering sentinel, but as Dara watched, it broke, shattering from its base. It fell, landing across the smoking lake like the husk of a bridge.

  He went very still. “No. That is not my only price,” he said softly. “Before you killed me on the lake, you attacked me at the Gozan. You transformed the river itself into a serpent, a beast as large as a mountain. Could you do that
to the lake?”

  “Perhaps.” The marid tensed. “Briefly. The lake is Tiamat’s birthplace. Its waters are not easily controlled.” It frowned. “Why would you want to do such a thing?”

  Dara’s eyes returned to the burning tree. “I want to bring down a tower.”

  8

  Ali

  Daevabad’s lake stretched before him, a pane of murky green glass.

  No ripples played upon the dark water, nor did any leaping fish break its surface. The only movement came from the clumps of dead leaves that floated past. The thick, cold air smelled of earthen decay and lightning, an eerie silence hanging over the boat. The lake looked dead, a place cursed and left abandoned long ago.

  Ali knew better.

  As if in a trance, he stepped closer to the deck’s edge, his skin prickling as he watched the ferry course through the water. Its stern looked like a blunt knife dragged through oil, leaving not a single wave in its wake. They had yet to pass the veil, and with the morning’s thick fog, nothing was visible behind them. It felt as though they were suspended in time, the lake endless.

  Tell me your name. Ali shivered at the memory, the marid’s soft whisper like a finger of ice stroking his spine. The soft buzzing of insects rose in his ears. The water really was so close. It would be nothing to climb over the ship’s railing. To trail his hands in its cool depths. To submerge.

  Aqisa’s hand came down on his wrist. “A little close to the edge, don’t you think?”

  Ali started, pulled from his daze. He was holding the railing, one foot slightly raised though he had no memory of doing so. And the buzzing sound was gone.

  “I . . . did you hear that?” he asked.

  “All I hear is Lubayd emptying the contents of his stomach,” Aqisa replied, jerking a thumb at their friend as he did just that, violently retching over the boat’s railing.

  Ali shivered again, rubbing his arms. It felt as though something damp and heavy had been clinging to his skin. “Odd,” he muttered.

  Lubayd made his staggering way over to them, his face pale. “I hate this blasted thing,” he declared. “What kind of djinn sail boats? We’re fire creatures, for the love of God.”

  Ali gave him a sympathetic look. “We’re almost there, my friend. The veil should be falling before us at any moment.”

  “And have you a plan yet for when we arrive?” Aqisa asked.

  “No?” Ali had sent missives to the palace several times during the journey to Daevabad, suggesting that Ayaanle traders be sent out from the capital to intercept them. He’d even offered to simply leave the cargo on the beach outside the city. Each letter received the same reply, written in the hand of a different scribe. Your return pleases us. “I suppose the only thing we can do is wait and see how we’re received.”

  Another hush descended, and this time all three of them went still. The scent of smoke washed over him, along with the familiar tingling as they crossed the veil.

  And then Daevabad was towering before them.

  The city dwarfed their ship, a lion to a gnat. The thick fog was a mere skirt around its massive, glinting brass walls, and its looming bulk blotted out the sky. Peeking over the wall were the tops of sandblasted glass minarets and delicate floating stupas, ancient mud-brick ziggurats and brightly tiled temples. And guarding all of them was the stark crenellated tower of the Citadel, standing tall and proud as a symbol of Am Gezira.

  Lubayd exhaled. “That’s Daevabad? That’s where you’re from?”

  “That’s where I’m from,” Ali echoed softly. The sight of his old home made him feel as though someone had reached into his chest and turned over his heart. He looked up at the facades of the long-dead Nahids carved into the city’s brass walls as the boat drew near. Their distant metal gazes seemed ethereal, bored, the arrival of some exiled sand-fly prince a mere footnote in the long history they’d witnessed. Though the Nahid Council had been overthrown centuries earlier, no one had torn down their statues. The common refrain was that the Qahtanis didn’t care: they were so confident and secure in their reign that they weren’t bothered by ruined remembrances of the defeated Nahids.

  But as with many things in Daevabad, the truth was more complicated. The facades couldn’t be torn down. Not by anyone. Zaydi’s workers had no sooner taken a chisel to their surface than boils broke out across their skin, brass erupting through the fetid wounds until all that was left was ashy bone and puddles of cooling metal.

  No one had tried since.

  The docks were silent and deserted, save for a pair of cargo dhows and a Sahrayn sandship, the port in even worse repair than it had been when Ali left. Even so, the decay only added to the majesty. It was like stepping into some long-abandoned paradise, a massive world built by beings they could scarcely understand.

  “Praise God . . . ,” Lubayd whispered as they slid past a statue of a warrior holding a bow twice Ali’s height and familiar enough to make his stomach turn. “I did not expect to ever see such a sight in my life.”

  “I did,” Aqisa muttered darkly. “I just assumed we’d have an army behind us when it happened.”

  A dull ache pounded in Ali’s head. “You can’t talk like that here,” he warned. “Not even in jest. If the wrong person in Daevabad hears you . . .”

  Aqisa snorted, caressing the hilt of her khanjar. “I’m not worried.” She gave Ali a pointed stare. “I saw how well their future Qaid survived in the desert.”

  Ali threw her a wounded look.

  Lubayd groaned. “Can we delay bloodshed for at least a few days? I didn’t cross a cursed lake in a giant wooden bowl so I could be beheaded for treason before I had a chance to sample some royal cuisine.”

  “That’s not the punishment for treason,” Ali murmured.

  “What’s the punishment for treason then?”

  “Being trampled to death by a karkadann.”

  Lubayd paled and this time, Ali knew it wasn’t due to seasickness. “Oh,” he choked out. “Don’t you come from an inventive family?”

  Ali returned his gaze to the brass walls. “My father doesn’t deal lightly with disloyalty.” He ran his thumb over the scar on his neck. “Believe me.”

  They left the camels and the bulk of their cargo at the caravanserai beside the city gate, Lubayd affectionately cooing into the ears of the animals of which he’d grown fond while Aqisa and Ali waited impatiently. Half-expecting to be arrested the moment they docked, Ali was surprised to find no one waiting for them. Uncertain of what else to do, he ordered two camels loaded with the most precious pieces of the Ayaanle’s cargo: trunks of raw gold, cases of finely worked jewelry, and a crate of rare books for the royal library that he’d broken into more than once during the long journey.

  The gifts secure, they’d headed for the palace. Ali wrapped one end of his ghutra across his face before they set out; his mixed Ayaanle and Geziri features were not entirely uncommon in cosmopolitan Daevabad, but throw a zulfiqar in the mix, and he might as well shout his name from the rooftops.

  The Grand Bazaar was a riot of color and chaos, the crowd thick with arguing shoppers, wide-eyed tourists, and beasts of various magical persuasions. The sound of haggling in a dozen different tongues filled Ali’s ears, the competing scents of shafit sweat, djinn smoke, fried sweetmeats, enchanted perfumes, and bins of spices making him heady with nostalgia. He dodged a baby simurgh as it belched a plume of green fire, accidentally stepping on the foot of a Sahrayn woman in a snakeskin cape who cursed him in such vulgar terms they bordered on artistry.

  Ali only grinned, his giddiness hidden beneath his ghutra. However he’d been brought back to Daevabad, there was no denying that the spectacle of his old home made his heart beat faster. The mysterious whispers on the lake seemed distant, the prickling in his mind gone for now.

  But as they moved deeper into the crowd, the conditions of the bazaar swept away his nostalgia. Never clean to begin with—in fact, Ali had threatened to cut out the tongue of the openly corrupt sanitation minister d
uring his brief tenure as Qaid—Daevabad’s streets looked positively filthy now. Rotting garbage collected in piles, and the narrow canals cut into the road to drain away rain and sewage were overflowing with debris. More unsettling was the fact that he saw few members of the Royal Guard patrolling the streets—and those he did see were dressed in threadbare uniforms, the younger ones armed with regular swords instead of the costlier zulfiqars. He pressed on, growing more troubled by the minute. Musa had claimed that Daevabad had fallen upon hard times, but Ali had dismissed it as a means of goading him into returning home.

  They were halfway to the midan, crossing a crowded intersection deep in the heart of Daevabad’s shafit district, when a child’s scream split the air.

  Ali stopped, pulling the camel he was leading to a halt. The sound had come from a crude platform standing among the ruins of a stone building. Upon the platform was a Geziri man clad in brightly patterned yellow silk. He was forcing another man, a shafit in a dirty waist-wrap, to the front of the platform.

  “Baba!” The scream came again, and then a little girl burst from a wooden stockade set behind the platform. She ran to the shafit man, throwing herself in his arms.

  Ali stared, struggling to comprehend what was happening. A crowd of djinn stood below the platform, all dressed in rather expensive-looking garb. There were more shafit as well—men, women, and children—trapped behind the stockade, hemmed in by several well-armed djinn.

  The shafit man was refusing to let go of his daughter. He was shaking, rubbing her back and whispering into her ear as she sobbed. He stepped back as the guards made a halfhearted attempt to pull his daughter away, glaring at them.

  The Geziri djinn crossed his arms over his fine silks and then sighed, striding to the front of the platform.

  A too-wide grin came over his face. “How’s this pair for you who’ve not yet had the good fortune to spot some weak-blooded kin? They’re both Daevabadi-born and fluent in Djinnistani. And our friend here is a talented cook. We found him running a snack stall in the bazaar. He’d be an asset in the kitchen of any long-lost relation.”