The City of Brass

by S. A. Chakraborty

  She heard Dara snarl. He was on the other end of the boat but drew his bow in the blink of an eye, aiming an arrow at Ali’s throat. Nahri couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. They were completely outnumbered.

  “Afshin!” Jamshid appeared at the warship’s edge. “Don’t be a fool. Lower your weapon.”

  Dara didn’t move, and the soldiers fanned out as if preparing to board. Nahri raised her hands.

  “Zaydi!” There was a shout from the ship as Muntadhir pushed through the line of soldiers. He took in the sight of his bloodied brother in irons, an arrow aimed at his throat. Hatred twisted his handsome face, and he lunged forward. “You bastard!”

  Jamshid grabbed him. “Muntadhir, don’t!”

  Dara gave Muntadhir an incredulous look. “What are you doing aboard a warship? Are the ballasts filled with wine?”

  Muntadhir let out an angry hiss. “Wait until my father arrives. We’ll see how bravely you talk then.”

  Dara laughed. “Wait for my baba. The anthem of every Geziri hero.”

  Muntadhir’s eyes flashed. He glanced back, seeming to judge how far the other ships were and then gestured angrily at the archers. “Why are your arrows pointed at him? Target the girl and see how fast the great Scourge surrenders.”

  The smile vanished from Dara’s face. “Do that, and I will kill every last one of you.”

  Ali immediately stepped in front of her. “She’s as innocent as I am, Dhiru.” She saw him glance at the other ships as well, seeming to make the same calculation as his brother.

  And then it hit her. Of course they wanted to wait for Ghassan; Dara was completely defenseless in the face of Suleiman’s seal. If they delayed until the king arrived, he was doomed.

  He did this to himself. Nahri knew that. But her mind flashed back to their journey, to the sorrow that constantly haunted him, his anguish when he talked about his family’s fate, the bloody memories of his time as a slave. He’d spent his life fighting for the Daevas against the Qahtanis. It was no small wonder he was desperate to save her from what must seem the worst possible fate.

  And God, the thought of him in irons, dragged before the king, executed in front of a jeering crowd of djinn . . .

  No. Never. She turned, a sudden heat in her chest. “Let him go,” she begged. “Please. Let him leave, and I’ll stay here. I’ll marry your brother. I’ll do whatever your family wants.”

  Ali hesitated. “Nahri . . .”

  “Please.” She grabbed his hand, willing the reluctance in his eyes to vanish. She couldn’t let Dara die. The thought alone broke her heart. “I beg you. That’s all I want,” she added, and at the moment, it was true, her only desire in the world. “I only wish for him to live.”

  There was a moment of strange stillness on the ship. The air grew uncomfortably hot, the way it might at an approaching monsoon.

  Dara let out a choked gasp. Nahri whirled around in time to see him stumble. His bow dipped in his hands as he frantically tried to catch his breath.

  Horrified, she lurched toward him. Ali grabbed her arm as Dara’s ring suddenly blazed.

  When he looked up, Nahri stifled a cry. Though Dara’s gaze was focused on her, there was no recognition in his bright eyes. There was nothing familiar in his face: his expression was wilder than it had been at Hierapolis, the look of something hunted and hurt.

  He whirled on the soldiers. He snarled, and his bow doubled in size. The quiver transformed as well, growing flush with a variety of arrows that vied to outdo each other in savagery. The one he held notched ended in an iron crescent, its shaft studded with barbs.

  Nahri went cold. She remembered her last words. The intent behind them. She couldn’t have truly—could she? “Dara, wait! Don’t!”

  “Shoot him!” Muntadhir screamed.

  Ali shoved her down. They hit the deck hard, but nothing whizzed over their heads. She looked up.

  The soldiers’ arrows had frozen in midair.

  Nahri strongly suspected King Ghassan was going to be too late.

  Dara snapped his fingers, and the arrows abruptly reversed direction to flit through the air and cut through their owners. His own swiftly joined them, his hands moving so fast between the quiver and bow that she couldn’t follow the motion with her eyes. When the archers fell back under the onslaught, Dara snatched up Ali’s zulfiqar.

  His bright gaze locked on Muntadhir, and his mad eyes flashed with recognition. “Zaydi al Qahtani,” he declared. He spat. “Traitor. I’ve waited a long time to make you pay for what you did to my people.”

  Dara had no sooner made his lunatic assertion than he charged the ship. The wooden railing burst into flames at his touch, and he vanished into the black smoke. She could hear men screaming.

  “Free me,” Ali begged, thrusting his wrists into her lap. “Please!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  The body—sans head—of an Agnivanshi officer landed beside them with a thud, and Nahri shrieked. Ali pushed awkwardly to his feet.

  She grabbed his arm. “Are you mad? What are you possibly going to do like that?” she asked, gesturing to his bound wrists.

  He shook her off. “My brother’s over there!”

  “Ali!” But the prince was already gone, disappearing into the same black smoke as Dara.

  She recoiled. What in God’s name had just happened to Dara? Nahri had spent weeks at his side—surely she had wished for things out loud without . . . well, whatever it was she had just done.

  He’s going to kill everyone on that boat. Ghassan would arrive to find his sons murdered, and then he’d hunt them to the ends of the earth, hang them in the midan, and their tribes would go to war for a century.

  She couldn’t let that happen. “God preserve me,” she whispered, and then she did the most un-Nahri-like thing she could imagine.

  She ran into danger.

  Nahri boarded the ship, climbing up the broken oars and anchor chains, while trying very hard not to look at the cursed water gleaming below. She’d never forgotten what Dara told her about it shredding djinn flesh.

  But the carnage on the trireme put the deadly lake out of mind. Fire licked down the wooden deck and crept up the rigging for the black sail. The line of archers lay where they’d fallen, pierced with dozens of arrows. One screamed for his mother as he clutched his ruined stomach. Nahri hesitated but knew she had no time to waste. She picked over the bodies, coughing and waving smoke away from her face as she stumbled over a stack of bloody oilcloth.

  She heard screams from across the ship and spied Ali racing ahead. The smoke briefly dissipated, and then she saw him.

  It was suddenly clear why—over a thousand years later—Dara’s name still provoked terror among the djinn. His bow slung on his back, he had Ali’s zulfiqar in one hand and a stolen khanjar in the other and was using them to make quick work of the soldiers remaining around Muntadhir. He moved less like a man and more like some raging war god of the long-ago era in which he’d been born. Even his body was illuminated, seemingly on fire just below the skin.

  Like the ifrit, Nahri recognized in horror, suddenly unsure of just who or what Dara truly was. He shoved the zulfiqar into the throat of the last guard between him and Muntadhir and yanked it out bloody.

  Not that the emir noticed. Muntadhir sat on the bloody deck with the arrow-riddled body of a soldier cradled in his arms. “Jamshid!” he screamed. “No! God, no—look at me, please!”

  Dara raised the zulfiqar. Nahri drew to a stop, opening her mouth to shout.

  Ali threw himself on the Afshin.

  She’d barely noticed the prince, awestruck by the horrible sight of Dara doing death’s work. But he was suddenly there, taking advantage of his height to jump on Dara’s back and loop his bound wrists around the Afshin’s neck like a noose. He drew up his legs, and Dara staggered under the sudden weight. Ali kicked the zulfiqar out of his hands.

  “Muntadhir!” he screamed, adding something in Geziriyya that she couldn’t understand. The z
ulfiqar had landed barely a body’s length away from the emir’s feet. Muntadhir didn’t look up; he didn’t even seem to have heard his brother’s cry. Nahri ran, picking over bodies as quickly as she could.

  Dara let out an aggravated sound as he tried to shake the prince loose. Ali pulled up his hands, pressing the iron bindings tight against the Afshin’s throat. Dara gasped but managed to elbow the prince in the stomach and slam his back hard into the ship’s mast.

  Ali didn’t let go. “Akhi!”

  Muntadhir startled and looked up. In a second he had dived for the zulfiqar, at the same time Dara finally succeeded in throwing Ali over his head. He grabbed his bow.

  The young prince hit the wet deck hard and slid to the boat’s edge. He scrambled to his feet. “Munta—”

  Dara shot him through the throat.

  27

  Nahri

  Nahri screamed and rushed forward as a second arrow went through Ali’s chest. The prince staggered back, and his heel caught against the edge of the boat, throwing him off balance.

  “Ali!” Muntadhir lunged for his brother but wasn’t fast enough. Ali toppled into the lake with barely a splash. There was a large gulp, like the sound of a heavy rock landing in a still pool, and then silence.

  Nahri ran to the railing, but Ali was gone, the only sign of his presence a ripple in the dark water. Muntadhir dropped to his knees with a wail.

  Her eyes welled with tears. She spun on Dara. “Save him!” she cried. “I wish for you to bring him back!”

  Dara swooned, staggering at her command, but Ali didn’t reappear. Instead Dara blinked, and the brightness left his eyes. His confused gaze wandered the bloody deck. He dropped the bow, looking unsteady. “Nahri, I—”

  Muntadhir jumped to his feet and snatched up the zulfiqar. “I’ll kill you!” Flames swirled up the blade as he charged the Afshin.

  Dara parried the other man away with his khanjar as easily as he might have swatted a gnat. He blocked another of Muntadhir’s attempts and then casually ducked the third, elbowing the emir hard in the face. Muntadhir cried out; a spray of black blood spouted from his nose. Nahri didn’t need to be a swordsman to see how clumsily he moved in comparison with the deadly swift Afshin. Their blades clashed again, and Dara shoved him away.

  But then Dara stepped back. “Enough, al Qahtani. Your father doesn’t need to lose a second son tonight.”

  Muntadhir didn’t look particularly desirous of Dara’s mercy—nor capable of being reasoned with. “Fuck you!” he sobbed, slashing wildly with the zulfiqar as blood ran down his face. Dara moved to defend himself. “Fuck you and your sister-fucking Nahids. I hope you all burn in hell!”

  Nahri couldn’t judge his grief. She stood frozen at the edge of the boat, her heart breaking as she stared at the still water. Was Ali already dead? Or was he being torn apart right now, his screams silenced by the black water?

  More soldiers poured from the ship’s hold, some holding broken oars like batons. The sight stirred her from her grief, and she climbed to her feet, her legs shaking. “Dara . . .”

  He glanced up and abruptly raised his left hand. The ship cracked, a wall of splintered wood rising twice her height to separate them from the soldiers.

  Muntadhir swung the zulfiqar at Dara again, but the Afshin was ready. He hooked his khanjar in the forked sword’s tip and twisted it from Muntadhir’s hands. The zulfiqar went skittering across the deck, and Dara kicked the emir in the chest, sending him sprawling.

  “I’m sparing your life,” he snapped. “Take it, you fool.” He turned around and walked away, heading in her direction.

  “That’s right . . . run, you coward!” Muntadhir shot back. “That’s what you do best, isn’t it? Run away and let the rest of your tribe pay for your actions!”

  Dara slowed.

  Nahri watched Muntadhir’s grief-stricken eyes trail the deck, taking in Jamshid’s arrow-riddled body and the spot where his brother had been shot. A look of pure anguish, of spite—ragged and unthinking—filled his face.

  He stood up. “Ali told me, you know, what happened to your kin when Daevabad fell. What happened when the Tukharistanis broke into the Daeva Quarter looking for you, looking for vengeance, and found only your family.” Muntadhir’s face twisted in hate. “Where were you, Afshin, when they screamed for you? Where were you when they carved the names of the Qui-zi dead into your sister’s body? She was only a child, wasn’t she? Long names, those Tukharistanis,” he added savagely. “I bet they were only able to fit a few before—”

  Dara screamed. He was on Muntadhir in less than a second, striking the emir so hard across the face that a bloody tooth flew from his mouth. The khanjar smoked in his other hand, and as he raised it, it transformed, the blade turning dull and splitting into a dozen or so leather strands studded with iron.

  A whip.

  “You want me to be the Scourge?” Dara shrieked as he lashed Muntadhir. The emir cried out and raised his arms to protect his face. “Will that please your filthy people? To make me into a monster yet again?”

  Nahri’s mouth fell open in horror. Do you know why people call him the Scourge? she heard the dead prince ask.

  Dara brought the whip down again, ripping a strip of flesh from Muntadhir’s forearms. Nahri wanted to flee. This was not the Dara she knew, the one who taught her to ride a horse and slept by her side.

  But she didn’t flee. Instead, acting on a crazy impulse, she jumped to her feet and grabbed his wrist as he raised the whip again. He whirled around, his face wild with grief.

  Her heart thudded. “Stop, Dara. Enough.”

  He swallowed, his hand trembling under her own. “It’s not enough. It won’t ever be. They destroy everything. They murdered my family, my leaders. They eviscerated my tribe.” His voice broke. “And after everything, after they take Daevabad, after they turn me into a monster, they want you.” His voice choked on the last word, and he raised the whip. “I will flay him until he’s bloody dust.”

  She tightened her grip on his arm and stepped between him and Muntadhir. “They haven’t taken me. I’m right here.”

  His shoulders dropped, and he bowed his head. “They have. You won’t forgive me the boy.”

  “I . . .” Nahri hesitated, glancing at the spot where Ali had gone over. Her stomach turned, but she pressed her mouth in a firm line. “It doesn’t matter right now,” she said, hating the words as she spoke them. She nodded at the approaching ships. “Can you make it to shore before they get here?”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  She pressed the hand holding the whip. “I’m not asking you to.” Dara glanced down, his bright eyes meeting her own. She took the whip from him. “But you need to let this go. Let it be enough.”

  He took a deep breath, and Muntadhir let out a groan as he curled in on himself. The hate returned to Dara’s face.

  “No.” Nahri took his face in her hands and forced him to look in her eyes. “Come with me. We’ll leave, travel the world.” It was obvious there was no going back to what they’d had before. But she’d have said anything to get him to stop.

  Dara nodded, his bright eyes wet. She tossed the whip in the lake and took his hand. She had just started to lead him away when Muntadhir stammered behind them, a strange mix of hope and alarm in his voice.

  “Z-Zaydi?”

  Nahri spun around. She gasped, and Dara threw a protective arm in front of her as the flicker of relief died in her chest.

  Because the thing that was climbing up onto the boat was definitely not Alizayd al Qahtani.

  The young prince stepped into the firelight and swayed like one not accustomed to land. He blinked, a slow reptilian movement, and she saw that his eyes had gone completely black, even the whites vanished under an oily dark cover. His face was gray, and his blue lips moved in a silent whisper.

  Ali stepped forward and mechanically scanned the ship. His clothes were shredded, and water streamed from his body like a sieve, pouring from his eyes, ears, an
d mouth. It bubbled up from under his skin and dripped from his fingertips. He took another jerky step toward them, and in the improved light, Nahri could see his body, encrusted with all manner of lake debris. The arrows and iron shackles were gone; instead, waterweeds and disembodied tentacles tightly wrapped his limbs. Shells, shimmering scales, and razor-sharp teeth were embedded in his skin.

  Muntadhir slowly stood up. The blood drained from his face. “Oh, my God. Alizayd . . .” He took a step closer.

  “I wouldn’t do that, sand fly.” Dara was pale as well. He pushed Nahri behind him and reached for his bow.

  Ali jerked to attention at the sound of Dara’s voice. He sniffed the air and then turned on them. Water puddled at his feet. He’d been whispering since he climbed aboard, but as he drew nearer, she suddenly understood the words, muttered in a language unlike anything she’d ever heard. A flowing language that rushed and slithered and swam over his lips.

  Kill the daeva.

  Except of course it wasn’t “daeva” he used, but rather a sound Nahri knew she could never reproduce, the syllables full of hate and pure . . . opposition. As if this other thing, this daeva, had no right to exist, no right to sully the waters of the world with smoke and flames and fiery death.

  From behind his wet robe, Ali drew an enormous scimitar. The blade was green and mottled with rust, looking like something the lake had swallowed centuries ago. In the firelight, she saw a bloody symbol roughly carved high upon his left cheek.

  “Run!” Dara cried. He shot Ali, and the arrow dissolved upon contact. He grabbed the zulfiqar and rushed the prince.

  The symbol blazed bright on Ali’s cheek. A wave of pressure burst through the air, and the entire ship shook. Nahri flew back into a stack of wooden crates. A jagged piece of wood sliced deep into her shoulder. It burned as she sat up, a wave of weakness and nausea sweeping over her.