The Kingdom of Copper

by S. A. Chakraborty

  Ali shut his mouth, suddenly aware that it had fallen open, that he was staring like an addled fool, and that he was very much somewhere he shouldn’t be. A glance revealed neither guards nor servants nearby. Nahri was alone, perched in a wide swing, an enormous volume open in her lap, notes scattered haphazardly on an embroidered rug below her, along with a tray holding an untouched cup of tea. As Ali watched, she frowned at the text as if it had personally offended her.

  And suddenly all he wanted to do was step forward and drop down by her side. To ask her what she was reading and resume their bizarrely companionable friendship of hunting through the catacombs of the Royal Library and arguing about Arabic grammar. Nahri had been a light for him during a very dark time, and Ali hadn’t realized until he was standing here quite how much he’d missed her.

  Then stop stalking her like a ghoul. Nerves fluttering in his stomach, Ali forced himself to approach. “Sabah el-noor,” he greeted softly in the Egyptian dialect she’d been teaching him.

  Nahri jumped. The book fell from her lap as her startled black eyes swept his face.

  They locked on the zulfiqar at his waist, and the earth buckled beneath his feet.

  Ali cried out, stumbling as a root burst from the grass to snake around his ankle. It jerked forward, and Ali fell hard, the back of his head hitting the ground.

  Black spots blossomed across his vision. When they cleared, he saw the Banu Nahida standing over him. She did not look pleased. “Well . . . ,” Ali started weakly. “Your powers have come a remarkably long way.”

  The root tightened painfully around his ankle. “What the hell are you doing in my garden?” Nahri demanded.

  “I . . .” Ali tried to sit up, but the root held firm. It twisted up his ankle, disappearing under his robe to snake around his calf. The feeling was far too similar to the weeds that had grabbed him under the lake, and he found himself fighting panic. “Forgive me,” he blurted out in Arabic. “I only—”

  “Stop.” The flat word in Djinnistani was like a slap across the face. “Don’t you dare speak Arabic to me. I won’t hear my language on your lying tongue.”

  Ali stared at her in shock. “I . . . I’m sorry,” he repeated in Djinnistani, the words coming more slowly to him. The root was at his knee now, hairy tendrils sprouting and spreading. His skin crawled, a painful prickle shooting down the scars the marid had left on him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, and water beaded on his brow. It’s just a root. It’s just a root. “Please, can you get that thing off me?” It was taking every bit of strength he had not to reach for his zulfiqar and hack it off. Nahri would probably let the earth swallow him whole if he drew his blade.

  “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

  Ali opened his eyes. There was no mercy in Nahri’s expression. Instead, she was slowly spinning one finger, a mirror of the movement the root was making around his leg.

  “I wanted to see you.” The words rushed from him as though she’d dosed him with one of her ancestor’s truth serums. And it was the truth, he realized. Ali had wanted to see her, Darayavahoush’s dagger be damned.

  Nahri dropped her hand, and the root released. Ali took a shaky breath, embarrassed by how deeply it had frightened him. By the Most High, he could face assassins armed with arrows and blades and yet a root reduced him to near tears?

  “I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You certainly shouldn’t have,” she snapped back. “I have one place in Daevabad that’s mine, one place not even my husband will set foot in, and here you are.” Her face twisted in anger. “But I suppose Alizayd the Afshin-slayer does whatever he likes.”

  Ali’s cheeks burned. “I’m not,” he whispered. “You were there. You know what killed him.”

  Nahri clucked her tongue. “Oh no, I was corrected. Firmly. Your father said he’d murder every Daeva child in the city if I dared utter the word ‘marid.’” Tears were brimming in her eyes. “Do you know what he made me say instead? What he made me say Dara tried to do? What you supposedly interrupted?”

  Her words cut him to the bone. “Nahri . . .”

  “Do you know what he made me say?”

  Ali dropped his gaze. “Yes.” The rumors had followed him to Am Gezira—there was a reason, after all, that people had no trouble believing the otherwise mild-mannered prince had killed another man.

  “I saved you.” She let out a high, humorless laugh. “I healed you with my own hands. More than once, even. And in return, you said nothing as we got on that boat, though you knew your father’s men would be waiting. My God, I even offered to let you come with us! To escape your father’s wrath, to escape this cage and see the rest of the world.” She hugged her arms around herself, pulling her chador close as if to put a wall between them. “You should be proud, Ali. Not many people can outwit me, but you? You had me believing you were my friend until the very end.”

  Guilt crashed over him. Ali had no idea she’d felt that way. Though he’d considered her a friend, Nahri had seemed to keep him at a careful distance, and the realization that their relationship had meant more to her—and that he’d destroyed it—made him sick.

  He fought for words. “I didn’t know what else to do that night, Nahri. Darayavahoush was acting like a madman. He would have started a war!”

  She trembled. “He wouldn’t have started a war. I wouldn’t have let him.” Her voice was curt, but it looked like she was struggling to maintain her composure. “Is this enough for you, then? You’ve seen me. You’ve intruded upon my privacy to dredge up the worst night of my life. Is there anything else?”

  “No, I mean, yes, but . . .” Ali inwardly cursed. It scarcely seemed the right moment to pull out Dara’s dagger and admit his father had stolen it and kept it as some sort of war trophy. He tried another tack. “I . . . I tried to write you . . .”

  “Yes, your sister gave me your letters.” She tapped the ash on her forehead. “They made good fodder for my fire altar.”

  Ali glanced at the mark. In the shadowy grove, he hadn’t noticed it at first, and it surprised him. In the time he’d known her, Nahri had never seemed all that keen on the religious rituals of her people.

  She saw him take it in and her eyes lit with challenge. He couldn’t blame her. He’d been rather . . . loud when voicing his opinions about the fire cult. A bead of cold sweat dripped down his neck, soaking into the collar of his dishdasha.

  Her gaze seemed to trace the movement of the water trickling down his throat. “They’re all over you,” she whispered. “If you were anyone else, I would have heard your heartbeat, sensed your presence . . .” She raised a hand and he flinched, but thankfully, no plants attacked. Instead, she simply studied him. “They changed you, didn’t they? The marid?”

  Ali went cold. “No,” he insisted, to himself as much as to her. “They did nothing.”

  “Liar,” she taunted softly, and he couldn’t keep the anger from his face at that. “Oh, do you not like being called a liar? Is that worse than being a man who strikes a bargain with a water demon?”

  “A bargain?” he repeated in disbelief. “You think I asked for what happened that night?”

  “For aid in killing your people’s greatest enemy? For the fame of finally finishing off the man your ancestor couldn’t?” Scorn filled her eyes. “Yes, Afshin-slayer, I do.”

  “Then you’re wrong.” Ali knew Nahri was upset, but she wasn’t the only one whose life had been turned upside down that night. “The marid wouldn’t have been able to use me to kill your Afshin if he hadn’t knocked me into the lake in the first place. And how they took me, Nahri?” His voice broke. “They ripped through my mind and made me hallucinate the deaths of everyone I loved.” He yanked up his sleeve. His scars were stark in the faded sunlight: the ragged marks of triangular teeth and a strip of ruined flesh that twisted around his wrist. “And that’s while they were doing this.” He was shaking, the memory of the aw
ful visions stealing over him. “Some bargain.”

  He would swear he saw a flicker of shock on her face, but it lasted only a second. Because between being thrown to the ground and pulling up his sleeve, Ali realized too late what had become visible at his waist.

  Nahri’s gaze locked on the distinctive hilt of Darayavahoush’s dagger. The leaves in the grove shuddered. “What are you doing with that?”

  Oh no. “I-I meant to give it to you,” Ali said quickly, fumbling to pull the dagger from his waist.

  Nahri lunged forward and ripped it from his hands. She ran her fingers over the hilt, gently pressing the carnelian and lapis stones as wetness brimmed in her eyes.

  He swallowed, aching to say something. Anything. But no words would erase what was between them. “Nahri . . .”

  “Get out.” She said it in Arabic, the language that had once been the foundation of their friendship, the one with which he’d taught her to conjure flames. “You want to avoid a war? Then get out of my garden before I bury this in your heart.”

  10

  Nahri

  Nahri sank to her knees as Ali vanished beyond the trees. Dara’s dagger was heavy in her hands. No, like this, she remembered him correcting her when he taught her how to throw it. Dara’s hot fingers grazing her skin, his breath tickling her ear. His laugh on the wind when she swore in frustration.

  Tears blurred her eyes. Her fingers curled around the hilt, and she pressed her other fist hard against her mouth, fighting the sob rising in her chest. Ali was probably still close and she’d be damned if he was going to hear her cry.

  I should have buried this in his heart anyway. Leave it to Alizayd al Qahtani to intrude upon her one sanctuary in Daevabad and upend all her emotions. She was as angry at his nerve as at her own reaction; Nahri rarely lost her composure so badly. She argued plenty with Muntadhir, she looked forward to the day Ghassan burned on his funeral pyre with open relish, but she didn’t weep before them like some sad little girl.

  But they hadn’t tricked her. Ali had. Despite Nahri’s best intentions, she’d fallen for his friendship. She’d liked spending time with someone who shared her intellect and her curiosity, with someone who didn’t make her feel self-conscious about her ignorance of the magical world or her human skin. She’d liked him, his endearing exuberance when he rattled on about obscure economic theory, and the quiet kindness with which he’d treated the palace’s shafit servants.

  It was a lie. Everything about him was a lie. Including what he’d just been spouting about the marid. It had to be.

  She took a deep breath, unclenching her fist. The stones on the dagger’s hilt had left an impression in her palm. Nahri had never expected to see Dara’s blade again. In the wake of his death, she’d once asked Ghassan about the dagger, and he said he’d had it melted.

  He’d lied. He’d given it as a prize to his son. His Afshin-slaying son.

  She wiped her eyes with trembling hands. She hadn’t known that Ali was already back. In fact, she’d been making a conscious effort to avoid hearing news of him. Muntadhir’s stress—and the increasingly shaky grip he had on his wine consumption—had been all the information she’d needed about his brother’s progress toward the city.

  Footsteps approached on the other side of the grove. “Banu Nahida?” a female voice squeaked. “Lady Nisreen asked me to retrieve you. She said Jamshid e-Pramukh is waiting.”

  Nahri sighed, glancing at the book she’d been studying before Alizayd had interrupted her. It was a Nahid text on curses that were said to prevent healing. One of the novitiates at the Grand Temple had found it while sorting their old archives, and Nahri had it brought immediately to her. But the Divasti was so confusing and archaic, she feared she was going to have to send it right back for translation.

  Not that Jamshid would wait. He’d been pleading with her for weeks to try healing him again, his desperation mirroring Muntadhir’s spiral. Nahri didn’t have to ask why. She knew not being able to personally protect Muntadhir as the captain of his guard was killing Jamshid.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ll be right there.” She set the book aside—on top of an Arabic volume about hospitals. Or at least Nahri thought it was about hospitals; she hadn’t actually had time to read it. Muntadhir might have shot down her nascent dreams of restoring her ancestors’ hospital, but Nahri wasn’t ready to give up.

  She rose to her feet, slipping the dagger’s sheath in her waistband, beneath her gown. She forced herself to put Ali out of mind. To put Dara out of mind. Her first responsibility was to her patients, and right now it might be a relief to let work swallow her.

  The infirmary was its usual lively self, crowded and smelling of sulfur. She passed through the patient area and behind the curtain that sectioned off her private work space. The curtain was slippery in her hands, its silk enchanted to dampen noise on both sides. She could step back here and talk frankly with Nisreen about a poor diagnosis without someone overhearing them.

  The curtain could also hide the sounds of a man screaming in pain.

  Jamshid and Nisreen were waiting for her, Jamshid lying on a pallet, looking pale but determined.

  “May the fires burn brightly for you, Banu Nahida,” he greeted her.

  “And for you,” Nahri returned, bringing her fingertips together. She tied her scarf back to hold her braids and washed her hands in the basin, splashing some cold water on her face.

  Nisreen frowned. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Your eyes . . .”

  “I’m fine,” Nahri lied. “Frustrated.” She crossed her arms, deciding to throw the emotions Ali had upset in a different direction. “That book is written in some blasted ancient script I can’t decipher. I’ll have to send it back to the Grand Temple for a translation.”

  Jamshid glanced up, his panic clear. “But surely that doesn’t mean we can’t have a session today?”

  Nahri paused. “Nisreen, would you leave us for a moment?”

  Nisreen bowed. “Of course, Banu Nahida.”

  Nahri waited until she was gone to kneel at Jamshid’s side. “You’re rushing this,” she said, as gently as she could. “You shouldn’t be. Your body is recovering. It just needs time.”

  “I don’t have time,” Jamshid replied. “Not anymore.”

  “You do,” Nahri argued. “You’re young, Jamshid. You have decades, centuries before you.” She took his hand. “I know you want to be at his side again. Capable of jumping on a horse and firing a dozen arrows. And you will be.” She met his gaze. “But you need to accept that it might take years. These sessions . . . I know how badly they hurt you, the toll they take on your body . . .”

  “I want to do this,” he said stubbornly. “The last time you said you’d gotten close to fixing the damaged nerves you believe are causing most of the weakness in my leg.”

  God, how Nahri suddenly wished she had another decade in the infirmary behind her, or a senior healer at her side to guide her through this conversation. The look in her patients’ eyes when they begged her for certainty was difficult enough when they weren’t friends.

  She tried another tactic. “Where is Muntadhir? He usually comes with you.”

  “I told him I changed my mind. He has enough to worry about without seeing me in pain.”

  By the Creator, he really wasn’t making this any easier. “Jamshid—”

  “Please.” The word cut through her. “I can handle the pain, Nahri. I can handle being bedridden for a few days. If you think it’s going to do worse than that, we can stop.”

  She sighed. “Let me examine you first.” She helped him out of the shawl wrapping his shoulders. “Lie back.” They had done this so many times, the steps came automatically to them both. She took a blunt brass rod from the tray Nisreen had laid out, running it down his left leg. “Same numb burning?”

  Jamshid nodded. “But it’s not weak like the right leg. That’s what’s causing me the most trouble.”

  Nahri eased him onto his belly. She flinched at
the sight of his bare back; she always did. Six scars, the ridged lines marking the spots where Dara’s arrows had plunged into him. One had lodged in his spine, another had punctured his right lung.

  You should be dead. It was the uneasy conclusion Nahri came to every time she looked at the evidence of his wounds. At a cruel order from Ghassan meant to goad Kaveh into finding Dara’s so-called accomplices, Jamshid had been left untreated for a week, the arrows still in his body. He should have died. That he hadn’t was a mystery on a par with the fact that he reacted so poorly to her magic.

  Her gaze drifted past the small black tattoo on the inside of his shoulder. She had seen it many times, three swirling glyphs. It was a faded ghost of the striking, elaborate tattoos that had decorated Dara’s skin—family sigils and clan marks, records of heroic deeds and protective charms. Jamshid had rolled his eyes when she asked about it. Apparently, the custom of the tattoos had mostly died out in the generations of Daevas born after the war, particularly in Daevabad. It was an old-fashioned superstition, he’d jokingly complained, one that gave away his rural roots.

  Nahri touched his back, and Jamshid tensed. “Would you like some wine?” she asked. “It might dull the pain.”

  “I downed three cups just to work up the courage to come here.”

  Lovely. She took up a length of cloth. “I’d like to bind your hands this time.” She gestured for him to grip the posts of the pallet. “Hold on to this. It will give you something to squeeze.”

  He was trembling now. “You have something I can bite?”

  She silently handed him a skinny block of opium-infused cedarwood and then laid her hands on his bare back, glancing over to make sure the curtain was fully closed. “Ready?”

  He nodded jerkily.

  Nahri closed her eyes.

  In seconds, she was there, his body open to her. The beat of his racing heart, pumping simmering ebony blood through a delicate map of veins. The gurgling of stomach acid and other humors. His lungs steadily expanding and contracting like bellows.