The City of Brass

by S. A. Chakraborty

  “Did you see it?” Nisreen asked.

  “Didn’t any of you?” Nahri asked in shock. The old woman gave her a disgruntled look.

  Nisreen smiled. “I told you that you could do it.” She touched Nahri’s shoulder. “Take a deep breath and keep the needle ready. You should spot it again any—”

  “There!” Nahri saw the salamander again, near the woman’s abdomen. Quickly, she plunged the needle into the woman’s stomach, but the bulge seemed to melt away.

  “Ay!” The old lady cried as a drop of black blood blossomed against her gown. “That hurt!”

  “Then stay still!”

  The woman whimpered as she clutched one of her son’s hands. “Don’t yell at me!”

  The bump reemerged near the old woman’s collar, and Nahri attempted to jab it again, drawing more blood and provoking another shriek. The salamander squirmed away—she could see a clear outline of its body now—and raced around the woman’s neck. “Eep!” the woman shrieked as Nahri finally just grabbed for the creature, her fingers closing on the woman’s throat. “Eep! You’re killing me! You’re killing me!”

  “I’m not . . . be quiet!” Nahri shouted, trying to focus on holding the salamander in place while raising the needle. She had no sooner uttered the words than the creature beneath her hand tripled in size, its tail wrapping around the woman’s throat.

  The old woman’s face instantly darkened, and her eyes turned red. She gasped and clawed at her throat as she struggled to breathe.

  “No!” Nahri desperately tried to will the parasite smaller, but nothing happened.

  “Madar!” the man cried. “Madar!”

  Nisreen dashed across the room and yanked free a small glass bottle from one of the drawers. “Move,” she said quickly. She edged Nahri aside and tipped the woman’s head back, prying open her jaws and pouring the contents of the bottle down her throat. The bulge vanished, and the woman started coughing. Her son pounded her back.

  Nisreen held up the bottle. “Liquefied charcoal,” she said calmly. “Shrinks most internal parasites.” She nodded at the old woman. “I’ll get her some water. Let her catch her breath, and we’ll try again.” She lowered her voice so only Nahri could hear. “Your intention needs to be more . . . positive.”

  “What?” Nahri was confused for a moment, and then Nisreen’s warning became clear. The salamander hadn’t started strangling the woman when the needle touched it.

  It had done so when Nahri commanded her to be quiet.

  I nearly killed her. Nahri took a step back and knocked one of the trays off the table. It clattered to the floor, and the glass vials smashed against the marble.

  “I-I need some air.” She turned toward the doors leading to the gardens.

  Nisreen stepped in front of her. “Banu Nahida . . .” Her voice was calm, but didn’t mask the alarm in her eyes. “You can’t just leave. The lady is under your care.”

  Nahri pushed past Nisreen. “Not anymore. Send her away.”

  She took the stone steps leading down to the garden two at a time. She hurried through the manicured plots of healing plants, startling two gardeners, and then beyond, following a narrow path into the royal garden’s wild interior.

  She gave little thought to where she was going, her mind spinning. I had no business touching that woman. Who was she kidding? Nahri was no healer. She was a thief, a con artist who occasionally got lucky. She’d taken her healing abilities for granted in Cairo where they were as effortless as breathing.

  She stopped at the edge of the canal and leaned against the crumbling remains of a stone bridge. A pair of dragonflies glistened above the rushing water. She watched them dart and dip under a fallen tree trunk whose dark branches pushed out of the water like a man trying not to drown. She envied their freedom.

  I was free in Cairo. A wave of homesickness swept over her. She longed for Cairo’s bustling streets and familiar aromas, her clients with their love problems, and her afternoons of pounding poultices with Yaqub. She’d often felt like a foreigner there, but now knew it wasn’t true. It took leaving Egypt to realize it was home.

  And I’ll never see it again. Nahri wasn’t naive; behind Ghassan’s polite words, she suspected that she was more prisoner than guest in Daevabad. With Dara gone, there was no one she could turn to for help. And it was clear she was expected to start producing results as a healer.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek as she studied the water. That a patient had appeared in her infirmary barely two weeks after her arrival in Daevabad was not an encouraging sign, and she couldn’t help but wonder how Ghassan might punish her incompetence should it continue. Would her privileges—the private apartment, the fine clothes and jewels, the servants and the fancy foods—start disappearing with each failure?

  The king might be pleased to see me fail. Nahri hadn’t forgotten the way the Qahtanis had received her: Alizayd’s open hostility, Zaynab’s attempt to humiliate her . . . not to mention that flicker of fear in Ghassan’s face.

  Movement caught her eye, and she glanced up, welcoming any distraction from her grim thoughts. Through a screen of purple dappled leaves, she could see a clearing up ahead where the canal widened. A pair of dark arms splashed through the water’s surface.

  Nahri frowned. Was someone . . . swimming? She assumed all djinn were as wary of water as Dara.

  A little concerned, Nahri picked her way over the bridge. Her eyes went wide when she entered the clearing.

  The canal rose up straight in the air.

  It was like a waterfall in reverse, the canal rushing from the jungle to pool against the palace wall before cascading up and over the palace. It was a beautiful, if not entirely bizarre sight that utterly captivated her before another splash from the misty pool drew her eye. She raced over, spotting someone struggling in the water.

  “Hold on!” After the tumultuous Gozan, this little pool was nothing. She charged right in and grabbed the closest flailing arm, pulling hard to bring whoever it was to the surface.

  “You?” Nahri made a disgusted sound as she recognized a very bewildered Alizayd al Qahtani. She immediately let go of his arm, and the prince fell back with a splash, the water briefly closing over his head again before he straightened up, coughing and spitting water.

  He wiped his eyes and squinted as if not quite believing who he saw. “Banu Nahri? What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you were drowning!”

  He drew up, every bit the arrogant royal even when wet and confused. “I was not drowning,” he huffed. “I was swimming.”

  “Swimming?” she asked, incredulous. “What kind of djinn swim?”

  A flicker of embarrassment crossed his face. “It’s an Ayaanle custom,” he mumbled, snatching a neatly folded shawl from the canal’s tiled edge. “Do you mind?”

  Nahri rolled her eyes but turned around. On a sunny patch of grass ahead, a woven rug was laid out, crowded with books, a sheaf of notes, and a charcoal pencil.

  She’d no sooner heard him splash out than he marched past her toward the rug. The shawl was wrapped around his upper body with the same fastidiousness Nahri had seen shy new brides cover their hair. Water dripped from his soaked waist-wrap.

  Alizayd retrieved a skullcap from the rug and pulled it over his wet head. “What are you doing here?” he demanded over his shoulder. “Did my father send you?”

  Why would the king send me to you? But Nahri didn’t ask; she had little desire to continue talking to the obnoxious Qahtani prince. “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving . . .”

  She trailed off as her eyes alighted on one of the open books on the rug. An illustration covered half the page, a stylized shedu wing crossed with a scythe-ended arrow.

  An Afshin mark.

  Nahri immediately went for the book. Alizayd got there first. He snatched it up, but she seized another, twisting away when he tried to grab it.

  “Give that back!”

  She ducked under his arm and quickly flipped through the
book, searching for any more illustrations. She came upon a series of figures drawn on one of the pages. A half-dozen djinn, their arms exposed to show black tattoos spiraling up their wrists, and on some, spreading across their bare shoulders. Tiny lines, like rungs in an unsupported ladder.

  Like Dara’s.

  Nahri had not given his tattoos much thought, assuming they had to do with his lineage. But as she stared at the illustration, a finger of cold traced her spine. The figures appeared to be from various tribes, and all had expressions of pure anguish drawn on their faces. One woman had her eyes lifted to some invisible sky, her arms outstretched and her mouth open in a wordless scream.

  Alizayd grabbed the book back, taking advantage of her distraction.

  “Interesting subject you’re studying,” she said, her voice biting. “What is that? Those figures . . . that mark on their arms?”

  “You don’t know?” When she shook her head, a dark look crossed his face, but he offered no further explanation. He tucked the books under his arm. “It doesn’t matter. Come on. I’ll take you back to the infirmary.”

  Nahri didn’t move. “What are the marks?” she asked again.

  Alizayd paused, his gray eyes seemingly sizing her up. “It’s a record,” he finally said. “Part of the ifrit curse.”

  “A record of what?”

  Dara would have lied. Nisreen would have deflected and changed the subject. But Alizayd just pressed his mouth in a thin line and answered, “Lives.”

  “What lives?”

  “The human masters they’ve killed.” His face twisted. “It supposedly amuses the ifrit to see them add up.”

  The human masters they’ve killed. Nahri’s mind went back to the countless times she’d observed that tattoo wrapped around Dara’s arm, the tiny black lines dull in the light of his constant fires. There had to be hundreds of them.

  Aware of the prince watching her, Nahri fought to keep her face composed. After all, she’d seen that vision in Hierapolis; she knew how thoroughly controlled Dara had been by his master. Surely he couldn’t be blamed for their deaths.

  Besides, however ghastly the meaning of Dara’s slave mark, Nahri suddenly realized a much nearer threat lurked. She glanced again at the books in Alizayd’s hand, and a surge of protectiveness flooded through her, accompanied by a prickle of fear. “You’re studying him.”

  The prince didn’t even bother lying. “It’s an interesting tale the two of you have concocted.”

  Her heart dropped. Nahri, the pieces don’t fit . . . Dara’s hurried words came back to her, the mystery about their origins that had led him to lie to the king and race after the ifrit. He’d suggested the Qahtanis might not even realize something wasn’t right.

  But it was clear that at least one of them had some suspicions.

  Nahri cleared her throat. “I see,” she finally managed, not entirely masking the alarm in her voice.

  Alizayd dropped his gaze. “You should go,” he said. “Your minders are likely getting worried.”

  Her minders? “I remember the way,” Nahri retorted, turning back toward the garden’s wild interior.

  “Wait!” Alizayd stepped between her and the trees. There was a hint of panic in his voice. “Please . . . I’m sorry,” he rushed on. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He shifted on his feet. “It was rude . . . and it’s hardly the first time I’ve been rude to you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m getting accustomed to it.”

  A wry expression crossed his face, nearly a smile. “I would beg that you not.” He touched his heart. “Please. I’ll take you back through the palace.” He nodded to the wet leaves sticking to her chador. “You needn’t go traipsing back through the jungle because I have no manners.”

  Nahri considered the offer; it seemed sincere enough, and there was the slight chance she could accidentally knock his books into one of the fiery braziers of which the djinn seemed so fond. “Fine.”

  He nodded in the direction of the wall. “This way. Let me just change.”

  She followed him across the clearing to a stone pavilion fronting the wall and then through an open balustrade into a plain room about half the size of her bedroom. One wall was taken up by bookshelves, the rest of the room sparsely decorated with a prayer niche, a single rug, and a large ceramic tile inscribed with what looked like Arabic religious verses.

  The prince went straight to the main door, an enormous antique of carved teak. He stuck his head out and made a beckoning motion. In seconds, a member of the Royal Guard appeared, silently installing himself at the open door.

  Nahri gave the prince an incredulous look. “Are you afraid of me?”

  He bristled. “No. But it is said that when a man and woman are alone in a closed room, their third companion is the devil.”

  She raised an eyebrow, struggling to contain her mirth. “Well then, I suppose we should take precaution.” She eyed the water dripping from his waist-wrap. “Didn’t you need to . . . ?”

  Ali followed her gaze, made a small, embarrassed noise, and then promptly vanished through a curtained archway—the books still in hand.

  What an odd person. The room was extraordinarily plain for a prince, nothing like her lavish apartment. A thin sleeping pallet had been neatly folded and placed upon a single wooden chest. A low floor desk looked out upon the garden, its surface covered with papers and scrolls all set at disturbingly perfect right angles to one another. A stylus rested alongside an immaculate inkpot.

  “Your quarters don’t look very . . . lived in,” she commented.

  “I haven’t lived in the palace long,” he called from the other room.

  She drifted toward the bookshelves. “Where are you from originally?”

  “Here.” Nahri jumped at the close sound of his voice. Alizayd had returned without making a sound, now dressed in a long gray waist-wrap and striped linen tunic. “Daevabad, I mean. I grew up in the Citadel.”

  “The Citadel?”

  He nodded. “I’m training to be my brother’s Qaid.”

  Nahri tucked that bit of information in her head for later, captivated by the crowded bookshelves. There were hundreds of books and scrolls there, including some half her height and a good number thicker than her head. She ran a hand along the multihued spines, overtaken by a sense of longing.

  “Do you like to read?” Alizayd asked.

  Nahri hesitated, embarrassed to admit her illiteracy to a man with such a large personal library. “I suppose you could say I like the idea of reading.” When his only response was a confused frown, she clarified. “I don’t know how.”

  “Truly?” He seemed surprised, but at least not disgusted. “I thought all humans could read.”

  “Not at all.” She was amused by the misconception—maybe humans were as much of a mystery to the djinn as the djinn were to humans. “I’ve always wanted to learn. I hoped I’d have the opportunity here, but it seems it’s not to be.” She sighed. “Nisreen says it’s a waste of time.”

  “I imagine many in Daevabad feel the same way.” Even as she touched the gilded spine of one of the volumes, Nahri could tell he was studying her.

  “And if you could . . . what would you read about?”

  My family. The answer was immediate, but there was no way she was revealing that to Alizayd. She turned to face him. “The books you were reading outside looked interesting.”

  He didn’t bat an eye. “I fear those particular volumes are unavailable right now.”

  “When do you think they’ll be available?”

  She saw something soften in his face. “I don’t think you’d want to read these, Banu Nahri. I don’t think you’d like what they say.”

  “Why not?”

  He hesitated. “War isn’t a pleasant topic,” he finally said.

  That was a more diplomatic response than Nahri would have expected considering the tenor of their earlier conversation. Hoping to keep him talking, she decided to answer his initial question a different way. “
Business.” At Alizayd’s visible confusion, she explained. “You asked what I would read about if I could. I would like to know how people run businesses in Daevabad, how they make money, negotiate with each other, that sort of thing.” The more she thought about it, the better idea it seemed. After all, it was her own brand of business savvy that had kept her alive in Cairo, hustling travelers and knowing the best way to swindle a mark.

  He went entirely still. “Like . . . economics?”

  “I suppose.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure my father didn’t send you?”

  “Quite.”

  Something seemed to perk up in his face. “Economics, then . . .” He sounded strangely excited. “Well, I certainly have enough material on that.”

  He stepped closer to the shelves, and Nahri moved away. He really was tall, towering over her like one of the ancient statues that still dotted the deserts outside Egypt. He even had the same stern, slightly disapproving face.

  He plucked a fat blue-and-gold volume from the top shelf. “A history of Daevabad’s markets.” He handed her the book. “It is written in Arabic, so it might prove more familiar.”

  She cracked open the spine and flicked through a few pages. “Very familiar. Still completely incomprehensible.”

  “I can teach you to read it.” There was an uncertainty in his voice.

  Nahri gave him a sharp look. “What?”

  Alizayd spread his hands. “I can teach you . . . I mean, if you want me to. After all, Nisreen doesn’t command my time. And I can convince my father that it would be good for relations between our tribes.” His smile faded. “He is very . . . supportive of such endeavors.”

  Nahri crossed her arms. “And what do you get out of it?” She didn’t trust the offer at all. The Qahtanis were too clever to take at face value.

  “You are my father’s guest.” Nahri snorted, and Alizayd almost smiled again. “Fine. I must admit an obsession with the human world. You can ask anyone,” he added, perhaps picking up on her doubt. “Particularly your corner of it. I’ve never met anyone from Egypt. I’d love to learn more about it, hear your stories, and perhaps even improve my own Arabic.”