The City of Brass

by S. A. Chakraborty

  Shafit? Nahri stayed her curiosity, her attention focused on Ali. If it’s a normal injury, it shouldn’t matter that he’s a djinn. You’ve healed wounds like this in the past.

  She knelt at Ali’s side. “Help me get his shirt off. I need to examine him.”

  Ali’s tunic was so badly destroyed that it was small effort to finish ripping it open. She could see three jagged wounds, including one that seemed to go all the way through to his back. She pressed her palms against the largest one and closed her eyes. She thought back to how she’d saved Dara and tried to do the same, willing Ali to heal and imagining the skin healthy and whole.

  She braced herself for visions, but none came. Instead, she caught the scent of salt water, and a briny taste filled her mouth. But her intentions must have been clear; the wound twitched under her fingers, and Ali shivered, letting out a low groan.

  “By the Creator . . . ,” Jamshid whispered. “That’s extraordinary.”

  “Hold him still,” she warned. “I’m not done.” She lifted her hands. The wound had started to close, but his flesh was still discolored and looked almost porous. She lightly touched his skin, and foamy black blood rose to the surface, like pressing on a soaked sponge. She closed her eyes and tried again, but it stayed the same.

  Though the room was cool, sweat poured from her skin, so much so that her fingers grew slick. Wiping them on her shirt, she moved on to the other wounds, the salty taste intensifying. Ali hadn’t opened his eyes, but the rhythm of his heart stabilized under her fingertips. He took a shaky breath, and Nahri sat back on her heels to examine her half-completed work.

  Something seemed wrong. Maybe it’s the iron? Dara had told her on their journey that iron could impair purebloods.

  I could stitch it. She’d done some stitching with Nisreen, using silver thread treated with some sort of charm. It was supposed to have restorative qualities and seemed worth a try. Ali didn’t look like he was going to keel over and die if she took a few minutes to retrieve some supplies from the infirmary. But it was still a guess. For all she knew, his organs were destroyed and leaking into his body.

  Ali murmured something in Geziriyya, and his gray eyes slowly blinked open, growing wide and confused as he took in the unfamiliar room. He tried to sit up, letting out a low gasp of pain.

  “Don’t move,” she warned. “You’ve been injured.”

  “I . . .” His voice came out in a croak, and then she saw his gaze fall on the knife. His face crumpled, a devastated shadow overtaking his eyes. “Oh.”

  “Ali.” She touched his cheek. “I’m going to get some supplies from the infirmary, okay? Stay here with Jamshid.” The Daeva guard didn’t look particularly pleased by that but nodded, and she slipped out.

  The infirmary was quiet; the patients she hadn’t killed asleep and Nisreen gone for now. Nahri set a pot of water to boil on the glowing embers in her fire pit and then retrieved the silver thread and a few needles, all the while studiously ignoring the sheikh’s now-empty bed.

  When the water came to a boil, she added a sludgy spoonful of bitumen, some honey, and salt, following one of the pharmaceutical recipes Nisreen had shown her. After a moment of hesitation, she crumbled in a prepared opium pod. It would be easier to stitch Ali up if he was calm.

  Her mind ran rampant with speculation. Why would Ali possibly want to hide an attempt on his life? She was surprised the king himself wasn’t in the infirmary to ensure that his son got the best treatment, while the Royal Guard swept the city, breaking down doors and rounding up shafit in search of conspirators.

  Maybe that’s why he wants it kept quiet. It was obvious Ali had a soft spot for the shafit. But she wasn’t about to complain. Just a few hours earlier, she feared Ghassan would punish her for accidentally killing the sheikh. Now his youngest—his favorite, according to some gossip she’d overheard—was hiding in her bedroom, his life in her hands.

  Balancing her supplies and the tea, Nahri tucked a copper ewer of water under one arm and headed back to her room. She edged the door open. Ali was in the same position he’d been in when she left. Jamshid paced the bedchamber, looking like he sorely regretted whatever chain of events had led him to this moment.

  He glanced up when she approached and quickly crossed to take the tray of supplies. She nodded at a low table in front of the fireplace.

  He set it down. “I’m going to go get his brother,” he whispered in Divasti.

  She glanced at Ali. The blood-covered prince looked to be in shock, his shaking hands wandering over the ruined sheets. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Better than two Daevas getting caught trying to cover up an attempt on his life.”

  Excellent point. “Be fast.”

  Jamshid left, and Nahri returned to the bed. “Ali? Ali,” she repeated when he didn’t respond. He startled, and she reached for him. “Come closer to the fire. I need the light.”

  He nodded but didn’t move. “Come on,” she said gently, pulling him to his feet. He let out a low hiss of pain, one arm clutched against his stomach.

  She helped him onto the couch and pressed the steaming cup into his hands. “Drink.” She pulled over the table and laid out her thread and needles, then went to her hammam to retrieve a stack of towels. When she returned, Ali had abandoned the cup of tea and was draining the entire ewer of water. He let it fall back to the table with an empty thud.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Thirsty?”

  He nodded. “Sorry. I saw it, and I . . .” He looked dazed, whether from the opium or the injury she didn’t know. “I couldn’t stop.”

  “There’s probably barely any liquid left in your body,” she replied. She sat and threaded her needle. Ali was still holding his side. “Move your hand,” she said, reaching for it when he didn’t comply. “I need to . . .” She trailed off. The blood covering Ali’s right hand wasn’t black.

  It was the dark crimson of a shafit—and there was a lot of it.

  Her breath caught. “I guess your assassin didn’t get away.”

  Ali stared at his hand. “No,” he said softly. “He didn’t.” He glanced up. “I had Jamshid throw him in the lake . . .” His voice was oddly distant, as if marveling over a curiosity not connected to him, but grief clouded his gray eyes. “I . . . I’m not even sure he was dead.”

  Nahri’s fingers trembled on the needle. When a Qahtani gives an order in Daevabad, you obey. “You should finish your tea, Ali. You’ll feel better, and it’ll make this easier.”

  He had no reaction when she started stitching. She made sure her movements were precise; there was no room for error here.

  She worked in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the opium to take full effect, before finally asking, “Why?”

  Ali set his cup down—or tried to. It fell from his hands. “Why what?”

  “Why are you trying to hide the fact that someone wanted to kill you?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t expect me to fix the results without knowing what happened. The curiosity will kill me. I’ll have to invent some salacious story to amuse myself.” Nahri kept her tone light, occasionally glancing up from her work to gauge his reaction. He looked exhausted. “Please tell me it was because of a woman. I would hold that over you for—”

  “It wasn’t a woman.”

  “Then what?”

  Ali swallowed. “Jamshid went to get Muntadhir, didn’t he?” When Nahri nodded, he started to shake. “He’s going to kill me. He’s . . .” He suddenly pressed a hand to his head, looking like he was fighting a swoon. “Sorry . . . do you have some more water?” he asked. “I-I feel terribly strange.”

  Nahri refilled the ewer from a narrow cistern set in the wall. She started to pour him a cup, but he shook his head.

  “The whole thing,” he said, taking it and draining it as quickly as he had the first. He sighed with pleasure. She looked at him askance before returning to her stitches.

 
“Be careful,” she advised him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone drink so much water so quickly.”

  He didn’t respond, but his increasingly glazed eyes took in her bedchamber again. “The infirmary is much smaller than I remember,” he said, sounding confused. Nahri hid a smile. “How can you fit patients in here?”

  “I’ve heard your father wants me treating more.”

  Ali waved dismissively. “He just wants their money. But we don’t need it. We have so much. Too much. The Treasury is sure to collapse from its weight one day.” He stared at his hands as he waved again. “I can’t feel my fingers,” he said, sounding surprisingly untroubled by this revelation.

  “They’re still there.” The king’s earning money off my patients? It shouldn’t have surprised her, but she felt her anger quicken anyway. Collapsing Treasury, indeed.

  Before she could question him further, a surge of wetness under her fingers caught her attention, and she glanced down in alarm, expecting blood. But the liquid was clear and as she rubbed it between her fingers, she realized what it was.

  Water. It trickled through the fissures of Ali’s half-healed wounds, washing free the blood and seeping past her stitches, smoothing out his skin as it passed. Healing him.

  What in God’s name . . . Nahri gave the ewer a puzzled glance, wondering if there’d been something in it she wasn’t aware of.

  Strange. But she kept at her work, listening to Ali’s increasingly nonsensical ramblings and occasionally assuring him that it was okay that the room looked blue and the air tasted of vinegar. The opium had improved his mood, and oddly enough she started to relax as she noticed improvement with each stitch.

  If only I could find such success with magical illnesses. She thought of the way the old man’s frightened eyes locked on hers as he breathed his last. It was not something she would ever forget.

  “I killed my first patient today,” she confessed softly. She wasn’t sure why, but it felt better to say it out loud, and God knew Ali was in no state to remember. “An old man from your tribe. I made a mistake, and it killed him.”

  The prince dropped his head to stare at her but said nothing, his eyes bright. Nahri continued. “I always wanted this . . . well, something like this. I used to dream of becoming a physician in the human world. I saved every coin I could, hoping one day to have enough to bribe some academy to take me.” Her face fell. “And now I’m terrible at it. Every time I feel like I master something, a dozen new things are thrown upon me with no warning.”

  Ali squinted and looked down his long nose to study her. “You’re not terrible,” he declared. “You’re my friend.”

  The sincerity in his voice only worsened her guilt. He’s not my friend, she’d told Dara. He’s a mark. Right . . . a mark who’d become the closest thing she had to an ally after Dara.

  The realization unsettled her. I don’t want you caught up in any political feuds if Alizayd al Qahtani ends up with a silk cord around his neck, Dara had warned. Nahri shuddered; she could only imagine what her Afshin would think of this midnight liaison.

  She briskly finished her last stitch. “You look awful. Let me clean off the blood.”

  In the time it took her to dampen a cloth, Ali was asleep on the couch. She pulled off what remained of his bloody tunic and tossed it into the fire, adding her ruined bedding as well. The knife she kept, after wiping it down. One never knew when these things would come in handy. She cleaned Ali up as best she could and then—after briefly admiring her stitches—covered him with a thin blanket.

  She sat across from him. She almost wished Nisreen was here. Not only would the sight of the “Qahtani zealot” sleeping in her bedroom likely give the other woman a heart attack, but Nahri would happily throw her hateful comments back in her face by pointing out how successfully she’d healed him.

  The door to the servants’ entrance smashed open. Nahri jumped and reached for the knife.

  But it was only Muntadhir. “My brother,” he burst out, his gray eyes bright with worry. “Where . . .” His gaze fell upon Ali, and he rushed to his side, dropping to the ground. He touched his cheek. “Is he all right?”

  “I think so,” Nahri replied. “I gave him something to help him sleep. It’s best if he doesn’t jostle those stitches.”

  Muntadhir lifted the blanket and gasped. “My God . . .” He stared at his brother’s wounds another moment before letting the blanket fall back. “I’m going to kill him,” he said in a shaky whisper, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m going to—”

  “Emir-joon.” Jamshid had joined them. He touched Muntadhir’s shoulder. “Talk to him first. Maybe he had a good reason.”

  “A reason? Look at him. Why would he cover something like this up?” Muntadhir let out an aggravated sigh before glancing back at her. “Can we move him?”

  She nodded. “Just be careful. I’ll come check on him later. I want him to rest for a few days, at least until those wounds heal.”

  “Oh, he’ll be resting, that’s for sure.” Muntadhir rubbed his temples. “A sparring accident.” She raised her eyebrows, and he explained. “That’s how this happened, do you understand?” he asked, looking between her and Jamshid.

  Jamshid was skeptical. “No one’s going to believe I did this to your brother. The reverse, maybe.”

  “No one else is going to see his wounds,” Muntadhir replied. “He was embarrassed by the defeat, and he came to the Banu Nahida alone, assuming their friendship would buy him some discretion . . . which is correct, yes?”

  Nahri sensed this wasn’t the best moment to bargain. She ducked her head. “Of course.”

  “Good.” He kept his gaze on her a moment longer, something conflicted in its depths. “Thank you, Banu Nahri,” he said softly. “You saved his life tonight—that’s a thing I won’t forget.”

  Nahri held the door as the two men made their way out, the unconscious Ali between them. She could still detect the steady beat of his heart, recalling the moment he’d gasped, the wound closing beneath her fingers.

  It wasn’t a thing she would forget either.

  She closed the door, picked up her supplies, and then headed back to the infirmary to put them away—she couldn’t risk making Nisreen suspicious. It was quiet, a stillness in the misty air. Dawn was approaching, she realized, early morning sunlight filtering through the infirmary’s glass ceiling, falling in dusty rays on the apothecary wall and her tables. Upon the sheikh’s empty bed.

  Nahri stopped, taking it all in. The hazy shelves of twitching ingredients that her mother must have known like the back of her hand. The wide, nearly empty half of the room that would have been filled with patients griping about their maladies, assistants twining among them, preparing tools and potions.

  She thought again of Ali, of the satisfaction she’d felt watching him sleep, the peace she’d felt after finally doing something right after months of failing. The favorite son of the djinn king, and she’d snatched him back from death. There was power in that.

  And it was time for Nahri to take it.

  She did it on the third day.

  Her infirmary looked like it had been ransacked by some sort of lunatic monkey. Peeled and abandoned bananas lay everywhere—she’d thrown several in frustration—along with the tattered remains of damp animal bladders. The air was thick with the stench of overripe fruit, and Nahri was fairly certain she’d never eat a banana again in her life. Thankfully, she was alone. Nisreen had yet to come back, and Dunoor—after retrieving the requested bladders and bananas—had fled, probably convinced Nahri had gone entirely mad.

  Nahri had dragged a table outside the infirmary, into the sunniest part of the pavilion facing the garden. The midday heat was oppressive; right now the rest of Daevabad would be resting, sheltering in darkened bedrooms and under shady trees.

  Not Nahri. She held a bladder carefully against the table with one hand. Like the scores before it, she’d filled the bladder with water and carefully laid a banana peel on top.


  In the other hand, she held the tweezers and the deadly copper tube.

  Nahri narrowed her eyes, furrowing her brow as she brought the tube closer to the banana peel. Her hand was steady—she’d learned the hard way that tea would keep her awake but also make her fingers tremble. She touched the tube to the peel and pressed it down just a hair. She held her breath, but the bladder didn’t burst. She removed the tube.

  A perfect hole pierced the banana skin. The bladder beneath was untouched.

  Nahri let out her breath. Tears pricked her eyes. Don’t get excited, she chided. It might have been luck.

  Only when she repeated the experiment a dozen more times—successful in each instance—did she let herself relax. Then she glanced down at the table. There was one banana peel left.

  She hesitated. And then she placed it over her left hand.

  Her heart was beating so loudly she could hear it in her ears. But Nahri knew if she wasn’t confident enough to do this, she’d never be able to do what she planned next. She touched the tube to the peel and pressed down.

  She pulled it away. Through a narrow, neat hole she could see unblemished flesh.

  I can do this. She just needed to focus, to train without a hundred other worries and responsibilities dragging her down, patients she was ill-prepared to handle, intrigue that could destroy her reputation.

  Greatness takes time, Kartir had told her. He was right.

  Nahri needed time. She knew where to get it. And she suspected she knew the price.

  She took a ragged breath, her fingers falling to brush the weight of the dagger on her hip. Dara’s dagger. She’d yet to return it—in fact, she’d yet to see him again after their disastrous encounter at the Grand Temple.

  She drew it from its sheath now, tracing the hilt and pressing her palm over the place he would have gripped. For a long moment, she stared at it, willing another way to present itself.

  And then she put it down.

  “I’m sorry,” Nahri whispered. She rose from the table, leaving the dagger behind. Her throat tightened, but she did not allow herself to cry.