The Kingdom of Copper

by S. A. Chakraborty

  His mother was still looking at him expectantly. “Can we discuss this another time?” he asked. “Perhaps on a day we’re not trying to force a meeting with a temperamental scholar?”

  Hatset rolled her eyes. “There’s not going to be any forcing, my dear. I’ve been dealing with Ustadh Issa for years.”

  Ali was glad she was so confident. He’d been shocked to learn the Ayaanle scholar his mother hoped could tell them more about the marid and the batty old man barricaded in a room at the hospital were one and the same. Ali had yet to even set eyes on him; upon learning strangers would be entering the hospital, he’d filled the corridor outside his quarters with all manner of magical traps. Finally, after several workers had been bitten by hexed books, Nahri and Razu—the only people Issa would speak to—had been able to negotiate a compromise: no one would be permitted near his room, and in return, he’d stop cursing the corridor.

  “We should have asked Nahri to come,” Ali said again. “Issa likes her, and she’s very skilled at prying information out of people.”

  His mother gave him a dark look. “You best make sure she’s not prying information out of you. That woman is the kind of ally you keep at knife’s length.” They stopped outside the scholar’s locked door, and Hatset knocked. “Ustadh Is—”

  She hadn’t even finished the word when Ali felt a whisper of magic. He yanked his mother back—just before a saber, made from what looked like disassembled astrolabes, sliced across the door frame.

  Ali swore in Geziriyya, but Hatset merely shook her head. “Ustadh, now really,” she lectured in Ntaran. “We’ve discussed being more sociable.” A crafty note entered her voice. “Besides . . . I have a gift for you.”

  The door abruptly cracked open, but only a handbreadth. Ali jumped as a pair of emerald-bright eyes appeared in the gloomy dark.

  “Queen Hatset?” Even Issa’s voice sounded ancient.

  His mother pulled a tiny ash-colored sack from her robe. “I do believe you were interested in this for your experiments when last we met?”

  Ali inhaled, recognizing the sharp smell. “Gunpowder? You’re going to give him gunpowder? For his experiments?”

  Hatset shushed him. “A brief chat, Issa,” she said smoothly. “A very brief, very confidential chat.”

  The scholar’s luminous eyes darted between them. “There are no humans with you?”

  “We have been over this a hundred times, Ustadh. There are no humans in Daevabad.”

  The door swung open, the sack of gunpowder vanishing from his mother’s hand faster than Ali’s eyes could track.

  “Come, come!” Issa ushered them in, slamming the door closed when they passed the threshold, whispering what sounded like an unreasonable number of locking charms under his breath.

  Ali was regretting their decision to come here with each passing moment, but he followed his mother into the cavernous chamber. Books were stacked to the ceiling and scrolls stuffed into shelves Issa seemed to have magicked together from salvaged bits of the infirmary’s ruins. A long row of dusty stained-glass windows threw gloomy light onto a low table crowded with gleaming metal instruments, pieces of parchment, and burning candles. A cot lay tucked between two towering piles of books and behind a section of the floor studded with broken glass, as though the scholar feared being attacked while he slept. Only one small corner of the room was kept neat, a pair of floor cushions framing a striped ottoman that had been carefully set with a silver tray that held a teapot, glasses, and, judging from the smell, several of the cardamom-spiced sweets Nahri was fond of.

  We really should have brought her, Ali thought again, guilt gnawing at him. God knew he was already keeping enough secrets from Nahri.

  The scholar returned to a well-worn pillow on the floor, folding his skinny limbs beneath him like some sort of gangly bird. As a resurrected formerly enslaved djinn, Issa’s age was impossible to guess. His face was well lined and his fuzzy brows and beard were entirely snow white. And the disapproving expression on his face was . . . oddly familiar.

  “Do I know you?” Ali asked slowly, studying the man.

  Issa’s green eyes flickered over him. “Yes,” he said shortly. “I threw you out of a history lecture once for asking too many questions.” He tilted his head. “You were much smaller.”

  “That was you?” The memory came to Ali immediately—not many tutors had dared treat one of Ghassan’s sons with such disrespect. Ali had been young, no older than ten, but the man he remembered tossing him out had been a forbidding, furious scholar in fine robes . . . nothing like the frail old man before him. “I don’t understand. If you had a position at the Royal Library, what are you doing here?”

  Pain filled the scholar’s bright eyes. “I was forced to resign.”

  Hatset took a seat across from Issa, motioning for Ali to do the same. “After the Afshin’s rampage, there was a lot of violence directed at the rest of city’s formerly enslaved djinn. Most fled the city, but Issa is too stubborn.” She shook her head. “I wish you would return home, my friend. You would be more comfortable in Ta Ntry.”

  Issa scowled. “I am too old for journeying. And I hate boats.” He threw an irritated glance in Ali’s direction. “The hospital made for a perfectly fine home until this one’s workers arrived. They hammer constantly.” He sounded wounded. “And they scared away the chimera living in the basement.”

  Ali was incredulous. “It tried to eat someone.”

  “It was a rare specimen!”

  Hatset quickly interjected. “Since you bring up rare specimens . . . we are here to speak to you about another elusive creature. The marid.”

  Issa’s expression changed, alarm sweeping away his cantankerousness. “What could you possibly want to know about the marid?”

  “The old tales,” Hatset replied calmly. “They’ve become little more than a legend for my generation of Ayaanle. However, I’ve heard encounters with the marid were far more common in your time.”

  “Consider it a blessing they’ve all but vanished.” Issa’s expression darkened further. “It is not wise to discuss the marid with our youth, my queen. Particularly overly ambitious ones who ask too many questions.” He gave a disgruntled nod in Ali’s direction.

  His mother persisted. “It’s not mere curiosity, Ustadh. We need your help.”

  Issa shook his head. “I spent my career traveling the length of the Nile and saw more djinn than I care to remember destroyed by their fascination with the marid. I thanked God when I learned it was a madness your generation had forgotten, and it’s not one I’ll rekindle.”

  “We’re not asking you to rekindle anything,” Hatset replied. “And we’re not the ones who reached out first—” She grabbed Ali’s wrist, swiftly undoing the button that held the sleeve of his dishdasha flush and pushed it back, revealing his scars. “It’s the marid who came to us.”

  Issa’s green eyes locked on Ali’s scars. He inhaled, straightening up like a shot.

  Then he slapped Ali across the face. “Fool!” he shouted. “Apostate! How dare you make a pact with them? What ghastly abomination did you commit to convince them to spare you, Alizayd al Qahtani?”

  Ali reeled back, ducking a second blow. “I didn’t make a pact with anyone!”

  “Liar!” Issa wagged an angry finger in his face. “Do you think I don’t know about your previous snooping?”

  “My what?” Ali sputtered. “What in God’s name are you going on about?”

  “I think I’d like to know as well,” Hatset said sharply. “Preferably before you start beating my son again.”

  Issa stormed across the room. With a burst of fiery sparks, a locked chest popped out of the air, landing with a dusty thud. Issa threw it open and plucked out a papyrus scroll, waving it like a sword. “Remember this?”

  Ali scowled. “No. Do you have any idea how many scrolls I’ve seen in my life?”

  Issa unfurled it, spreading it on the table. “And how many of those were guides to summoning a marid?
” he asked knowingly, as if he’d caught Ali out.

  Thoroughly confused, Ali stepped closer. A brilliant blue river had been painted on the scroll. It was a map, he realized. A map of the Nile, from what he could interpret of the roughly drawn borders. That was all he could make out; though there were notations, they were written in a script consisting of bizarre, entirely incomprehensible pictograms.

  And then Ali remembered. “This is the map Nahri and I found in the catacombs of the Royal Library.”

  Issa glared. “So you do admit you were trying contact the marid?”

  “Of course not!” Ali was rapidly losing patience with this hot-tempered old man. “The Banu Nahida and I were looking into the story that the marid supposedly cursed her appearance and left her in Egypt. We heard this scroll was written by the last djinn to see one in the area. I couldn’t read it, so I sent it off for translation.” He narrowed his eyes on Issa. “To you, most likely.”

  Hatset cut in. “Would you please tell me what it is about this map that has you so upset, Ustadh?”

  “It’s not just a map,” Issa replied. “It’s an evil thing, meant to serve as a guide to the desperate.” He jabbed a gnarled finger at one set of notations. “These mark places on the river believed to be sacred to the marid, and the notes detail what was done—what was sacrificed—to call upon them at that particular spot.”

  Hatset’s eyes flashed. “When you say ‘sacrifice’ . . . surely you don’t mean—”

  “I mean exactly as I say,” Issa cut in. “Blood must be offered to call upon them.”

  Ali was horrified. “Ustadh Issa, neither Nahri nor I knew anything of this. I’ve never been to the Nile. And I never desired any contact with the marid, let alone sacrificed someone to them!”

  “He fell in the lake, Ustadh,” Hatset explained. “It was an accident. He said the marid tortured him into giving up his name, and then they used him to kill the Afshin.”

  Ali whirled on her. “Amma—”

  She waved him down. “We need to know.”

  Issa was staring at Ali in shock. “A marid used you to kill another djinn? They possessed you? But that makes no sense . . . possession is an acolyte’s last act.”

  Revulsion swept him. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a pact,” Issa replied. “A partnership . . . though not a particularly balanced one. If a marid accepts your sacrifice, you’re brought under its protection. And they’ll give you almost anything you could desire during your mortal life. But in the end? The acolyte owes their lifeblood. And the marid possess them to take it.” His eyes swept over Ali. “You don’t survive such a thing.”

  Ali went entirely cold. “I am no marid’s acolyte.” The word left his lips with a savage denial. “I am a believer in God. I would never commit the blasphemy you’re suggesting. And I certainly never made any sacrifice,” he added, growing heated even as his mother placed a hand on his shoulder. “Those demons tortured me and forced me to hallucinate the deaths of everyone I loved!”

  Issa inclined his head, studying Ali as though he were some sort of equation. “But you did give them your name?”

  Ali’s shoulders slumped. Not for the first time, he cursed the moment he’d broken under the water. “Yes.”

  “Then that might have been all they needed—they’re clever creatures and God knows they’ve had centuries to learn how to twist the rules.” Issa tapped his chin, looking perplexed. “But I don’t understand why. Plotting the murder of a Daeva—a lesser being—would be risky, even if they used a fellow djinn to do it.”

  Hatset frowned. “Do they have a quarrel that you know of with the Daevas?”

  “It’s said the marid cursed the lake after a falling-out with the Nahid Council,” Issa replied. “But that must have been over two thousand years ago. As far as I know, they haven’t been seen in Daevabad since.”

  Ali’s skin tingled. That, he knew, was not at all true. In the aftermath of his possession, Ali had said the same thing to his father and had been quietly told the marid had indeed been seen—at the side of Zaydi al Qahtani’s Ayaanle allies.

  But he held his tongue. He’d sworn to his father, sworn on their tribe and his blood, not to reveal that information. Even the slightest whisper that his ancestors had conspired with the marid to overthrow the Nahids would rock the foundations of their rule. Zaydi al Qahtani had taken a throne even he believed God had originally granted to the Anahid and her descendants; his reasons and his methods for doing so had to remain above reproach. And if Hatset and Issa didn’t already know, Ali wasn’t saying anything.

  “How do I get rid of it?” he asked brusquely.

  Issa stared at him. “Get rid of what?”

  “My connection with the marid. These . . . whispers in my head,” Ali rushed on, feeling his control start to fray. “My abilities. I want it all gone.”

  “Your abilities?” the scholar repeated in astonishment. “What abilities?”

  Ali abruptly let go of the magic he’d been holding back. Water burst from his hands, a fog swirling around his feet. “This,” he exhaled.

  The scholar scurried back. “Oh,” he whispered. “That.” He blinked rapidly. “That is new.”

  “No,” Hatset said. “It’s not.” She gave Ali an apologetic look as he whirled around. “A slight—a very slight—affinity with water magic runs in our family. It shows up occasionally in our children and usually vanishes by the time they’re in their teens. And it’s nothing like what you’ve told me you can do,” she added when Ali’s eyes went wide. “A toddler having a tantrum might upset a water pitcher from across the room. Zaynab used to spin little water spouts in drinking cups when she didn’t think I was watching her.”

  Ali gasped. “Zaynab? Zaynab has these abilities?”

  “Not anymore,” Hatset said firmly. “She was very young at the time. She probably doesn’t even remember them. I would punish her terribly when I caught her.” His mother shook her head, looking grim. “I was so frightened someone would see her.” She glanced back at him. “But I never considered it of you. You were so Geziri, even as child. And once you joined the Citadel, you were so loyal to their code . . .”

  “You feared I would tell,” Ali finished when his mother trailed off. He felt sick. He couldn’t even say she was wrong. There were times when he was a child that he was so determined to prove himself true to his father and brother’s tribe, so rigid in his conception of faith, that yes, he would have let slip an Ayaanle secret, and it shamed him. He abruptly sat down, running his wet hands over his face. “But why didn’t you say anything when I first told you about the marid possession?”

  Her words were gentle. “Alu, you were panicking. You’d been in Daevabad less than a week. It wasn’t the time.”

  Issa was looking between them as though he were suddenly very sorry he’d let them in. “Stop that,” he warned, waving a hand at the ribbon of fog curling around Ali’s waist. “Do you have any idea what would happen if someone saw you doing that? I had a mob chase me from the palace just for these emerald eyes!”

  “Then help me,” Ali begged, struggling to rein back the water. “Please. It’s getting harder to control.”

  “I don’t know how to help you,” Issa replied, sounding flabbergasted. He glanced at Hatset, for the first time looking slightly chastened. “Forgive me, my queen. I don’t know what you were expecting, but I have never come across anything like this. You should take him back to Ta Ntry. He’d be safer and your family might have answers.”

  “I cannot take him back to Ta Ntry,” his mother said plainly. “Things are too tense in the palace. His father and brother will think I’m preparing him for a coup, and if either of them got wind of this?” She nodded at the still lingering fog. “I do not trust them. Ghassan puts the stability of this city before everything else.”

  Issa shook his head. “Queen Hatset . . .”

  “Please.” The word cut through the air. “He is my only son, Ustadh,” she pressed. �
�I will get you everything that’s ever been written about the marid. I will get you copies of my family records. All I ask is that you look for a way to help us.” Her voice turned a little crafty. “And come now, it must be decades since you’ve had a good mystery on your hands.”

  “You might not like the answers,” Issa pointed out.

  Ill with dread, Ali’s gaze had fallen to the floor. Still, he could sense the weight of their stares, the worry radiating from his mother.

  Hatset spoke again. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  Though his mother had ended their meeting with a firm order for Ali to stay calm and let her and Issa handle things, their conversation at the hospital haunted him. In response, Ali threw himself deeper into his work, trying desperately to ignore the whispers that ran through his mind when he bathed and the fact that the rain—which had not abated in days—came down more heavily each time he lost his temper. He hadn’t been sleeping much, and now when he did close his eyes, his dreams were plagued with images of a burning lake and ruined ships, of scaled limbs dragging him beneath muddy waters and cold green eyes narrowing over an arrow’s shaft. Ali would wake shivering and drenched in sweat, feeling as though someone had just been whispering a warning in his ear.

  The effect it was having on his behavior did not go unnoticed.

  “Alizayd.” His father snapped his fingers in front of Ali’s face as they exited the throne room after court. “Alizayd?”

  Ali blinked, pulled from his daze. “Yes?”

  Ghassan eyed him. “Are you all right?” he asked, a little concern in his voice. “I thought for certain you’d have sharp words for the moneychanger from Garama.”

  Ali could remember neither a moneychanger nor Garama. “Sorry. I’m just tired.”