She scowled but decided to tell him the truth—for now. “My name is Nahri. I have no family. I have no idea where my people are from.”
“Nahri,” he repeated, drawing the word out with a frown. “No family at all . . . you are certain?”
It was the second time he had asked about her family. “As far as I know.”
“Then who taught you Divasti?”
“No one taught me. I think it’s my native tongue. At least, I’ve always known it. Besides . . .” Nahri hesitated. She never spoke of these things, having learned the consequences as a child.
Oh, why not? Maybe he’ll actually have some answers for me. “I’ve been able to learn any language since I was a child,” she added. “Every dialect. I can understand, and respond to, any tongue spoken to me.”
He sat back, inhaling sharply. “I can test that,” he said. But not in Divasti, rather in a new language with oddly rounded, high-pitched syllables.
She absorbed the sounds, letting them wash over her. The response came to her as soon as she opened her lips. “Go ahead.”
He leaned forward, his eyes bright with challenge. “You look like an urchin who’s been dragged through a charnel house.”
This language was even stranger, musical and low, more like murmuring than speech. She glared back. “I wish someone would drag you through a charnel house.”
His eyes dimmed. “It is as you say then,” he murmured in Divasti. “And you have no idea of your origins?”
She threw up her hands. “How many times must I say so?”
“Then what of your life now? How do you live? Are you married?” His expression darkened. “Do you have children?”
Nahri couldn’t take her eyes off the waterskin. “Why do you care? Are you married?” she shot back, annoyed. He glared. “Fine. I’m not married. I live alone. I work in an apothecary . . . as an assistant of sorts.”
“Last night you mentioned lock picking.”
Damn, he was observant. “Sometimes I take . . . alternative . . . assignments to supplement my income.”
The djinn—no, the daeva, she corrected herself—narrowed his eyes. “You’re some kind of thief, then?”
“That’s a very narrow-minded way of looking at it. I prefer to think of myself as a merchant of delicate tasks.”
“That doesn’t make you any less a criminal.”
“Ah, and yet there’s a fine difference between djinn and daeva?”
He glowered, the hem of his robe turning to smoke, and Nahri quickly changed the subject. “I do other things. Make amulets, provide some healing . . .”
He blinked, his eyes growing brighter, more intense. “So you can heal others?” His voice turned hollow. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can usually sense sickness better than I can heal it. Something will smell wrong, or there’ll be a shadow over the body part.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “It’s difficult to explain. I can deliver babies well enough because I can sense their position. And when I lay my hands on people . . . I sort of wish them well . . . think about the parts fixing themselves; sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
His face grew stormier as she spoke. He crossed his arms; the outline of well-muscled limbs pressed against the smoky fabric. “And those you can’t heal . . . I assume you reimburse them?”
She started to laugh and then realized he was serious. “Sure.”
“This is impossible,” he declared. He rose to his feet, pacing away with a grace that belied his true nature. “The Nahids would never . . . not with a human.”
Taking advantage of his distraction, Nahri snatched the waterskin off the ground and ripped out the plug. The water was delicious, crisp and sweet, like nothing she’d ever tasted.
The daeva turned back to her. “So you just live quietly with these powers?” he demanded. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you have them? Suleiman’s eye . . . you could be overthrowing governments, and instead you steal from peasants!”
His words enraged her. She dropped the skin. “I do not steal from peasants,” she snapped. “And you know nothing of my world, so don’t judge me. You try living on the streets when you’re five and speak a language no one understands. When you get thrown out of every orphanage after predicting which child will die next of consumption and telling the mistress that she has a shadow growing in her head.” She seethed, briefly overcome by her memories. “I do what I need to survive.”
“And calling me?” he asked, no apology in his voice. “Did you do that to survive?”
“No, I did that as part of some foolish ceremony.” She paused. Not so foolish after all; Yaqub had been right about the dangers of interfering with traditions that weren’t her own. “I sang one of the songs in Divasti—I had no idea what would happen.” Saying it aloud did little to alleviate the guilt she felt about Baseema, but she pressed on. “Aside from what I can do, I’ve never seen anything else strange. Nothing magical, certainly nothing like you. I didn’t think such things existed.”
“Well, that was idiotic.” She glared at him, but he only shrugged. “Were your own abilities not evidence enough?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.” He couldn’t. He hadn’t lived her life, the constant rush of business she had to bring in to keep herself afloat, her bribes paid. There wasn’t time for anything else. All that mattered were the coins in her hand, the only true power she had.
And speaking of which . . . Nahri looked around. “The basket I was carrying—where is it?” At his blank look, she panicked. “Don’t tell me you left it behind!” She jumped to her feet to search but saw nothing besides the rug spread out in the shade of a large tree.
“We were fleeing for our lives,” he said sarcastically. “Did you expect me to waste time accounting for your belongings?”
Her hands flew to her temples. She’d lost a small fortune in a night. And she had even more to lose stashed in her stall back home. Nahri’s heart quickened; she needed to return to Cairo. Between whatever rumors would undoubtedly fly around after the zar and her absence, it wouldn’t be long before her landlord sacked the place.
“I need to get back,” she said. “Please. I didn’t mean to call you. And I’m grateful you saved me from the ghouls,” she added, figuring a little appreciation couldn’t hurt. “But I just want to go home.”
A dark look crossed his face. “Oh, you’re going home, I suspect. But it won’t be to Cairo.”
“Excuse me?”
He was already walking away. “You can’t go back to the human world.” He sat heavily on the carpet under the shade of a tree and pulled off his boots. He seemed to have aged during their brief conversation, his face shadowed by exhaustion. “It’s against our law, and the ifrit are likely already tracking you. You wouldn’t last a day.”
“That’s not your problem!”
“It is.” He lay down, crossing his arms behind his head. “As are you, unfortunately.”
A chill went down Nahri’s back. The pointed questions about her family, the barely concealed disappointment when he learned of her abilities. “What do you know about me? Do you know why I can do these things?”
He shrugged. “I have my suspicions.”
“Which are?” she prodded when he fell silent. “Tell me.”
“Will you stop pestering me if I do?”
No. She nodded. “Yes.”
“I think you’re a shafit.”
He had called her that in the cemetery too. But the word remained unfamiliar. “What’s a shafit?”
“It’s what we call someone with mixed blood. It’s what happens when my race gets a bit . . . indulgent around humans.”
“Indulgent?” She gasped, the meaning of his words becoming clear. “You think I have daeva blood? That I’m like you?”
“Believe me when I say I find such a thing equally distressing.” He clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I never would have thought a Nahid capable of such a transgression.
”
Nahri was growing more confused by the minute. “What’s a Nahid? Baseema called me something like that too, didn’t she?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw, and she caught a flicker of emotion in his eyes. It was brief, but it was there. He cleared his throat. “It’s a family name,” he finally answered. “The Nahids are a family of daeva healers.”
Daeva healers? Nahri gaped, but before she could respond, he waved her off.
“No. I told you what I think, and you promised to leave me alone. I need to rest. I did a lot of magic last night and I want to be ready should the ifrit come sniffing for you again.”
Nahri shuddered, her hand instinctively going to her throat. “What do you mean to do with me?”
He made an irritated sound and reached into his pocket. Nahri jumped, expecting a weapon, but instead he pulled free a pile of clothing that looked too big to have fit the space and tossed it in her direction without opening his eyes. “There is a pool near the cliff. I suggest you visit it. You smell even viler than the rest of your kind.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I don’t know yet.” She could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I’ve called someone for help. We will wait.”
Just what she needed—a second djinn to weigh in on her fate. She picked up the bundle of clothes. “Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?”
He let out a drowsy laugh. “Good luck getting out of the desert.”
The oasis was small, and it wasn’t long before she came upon the pool he had mentioned, a shadowy pond fed by the steady trickle of springs from a rocky ledge and surrounded by scrubby brush. She saw no sign of horses or camels; she couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten here.
With a shrug, Nahri pulled off her ruined abaya, stepped in, and submerged.
The press of the cool water was like the touch of a friend. She closed her eyes, trying to digest the madness of the past day. She’d been kidnapped by a djinn. A daeva. Whatever. A magical creature with too many weapons who didn’t seem particularly enamored of her.
She drifted on her back, tracing shapes in the water and staring at the palm-fringed sky.
He thinks I have daeva blood. The idea that she was in any way related to the creature who’d summoned a sandstorm last night seemed laughable, but he had a point about ignoring the implications of her healing abilities. Nahri had spent her entire life trying to blend in with those around her just to survive. Those instincts were warring even now: her thrill at learning what she was and her urge to flee back to the life she’d worked so hard to establish for herself in Cairo.
But she knew her odds of surviving the desert alone were low, so she tried to relax, enjoying the pool until her fingertips wrinkled. She scoured her skin with a palm husk and massaged her hair in the water, relishing the sensation of being clean. It wasn’t often she got to bathe—back home, the women at the local hammam made it clear she was unwelcome, perhaps fearing she’d put a hex on the bathwater.
There was little that could be done to save her abaya, but she washed what remained, stretching it out on a sunny rock to dry before turning her attention to the clothing the daeva had given her.
It was obviously his; it smelled of burnt citrus and was cut to accommodate a muscular man, not a chronically famished woman. Nahri rubbed the ash-colored fabric between her fingers and marveled at its quality. It was soft as silk, yet sturdy as felt. It was also completely seamless; try as she might, she couldn’t find a single stitch. She could likely sell it for a good sum if she escaped.
It took effort to get the clothes to fit; the tunic hung comically large around her waist and ended past her knees. She rolled the sleeves up as best she could and then turned her attention to the pants. After ripping a strip from her abaya to use as a belt and rolling up the hems, they stayed on reasonably well, but she could only imagine how ridiculous she looked.
With a sharp rock, she cut a longer section of her abaya for a headscarf. Her hair had dried in a wild mess of black curls that she attempted to braid before tying the makeshift scarf around her head. She drank her fill from the waterskin—it seemed to refill on its own—but the water did little to help the hunger gnawing at her stomach.
The palm trees were thick with swollen gold dates, and overripe ones, covered in ants, littered the ground. She tried everything she could think of to get at the ones in the trees: shaking the trunks, throwing rocks, even a particularly ill-fated attempt at climbing, but nothing worked.
Did daevas eat? If so, he must have some food, probably hidden in that robe of his. Nahri made her way back to the small grove. The sun had risen, hot and searing, and she hissed as she crossed a patch of scorched sand. God only knew what had happened to her sandals.
The daeva was still asleep; his gray cap was tipped over his eyes, his chest slowly rising and falling in the fading light. Nahri crept closer, studying him in a way she’d been too wary to do before. His robe rippled in the breeze, undulating like smoke, and hazy heat drifted from his body as though he was a hot stone oven. Fascinated, she moved even closer. She wondered if daeva bodies were like those of humans: full of blood and humors, a beating heart and swelling lungs. Or perhaps they were smoke through and through, their appearance only an illusion.
Closing her eyes, she stretched her fingers toward him and tried to concentrate. It would have been better to touch him, but she didn’t dare. He struck her as the type to wake in a foul mood.
After a few minutes, she stopped, growing disturbed. There was nothing. No beating heart, no surging blood and bile. She could sense no organs, nothing of the sparks and gurgles of the hundreds of natural processes that kept her and every other person she’d ever met alive. Even his breathing was wrong, the movement of his chest false. It was as though someone had created an image of a person, a man out of clay, but forgotten to give it a final spark of life. He was . . . unfinished.
Not an ill-formed piece of clay, though . . . Nahri’s gaze lingered on his body, and then she stilled, catching sight of a green flash on the daeva’s left hand.
“God be praised,” she whispered. An enormous emerald ring—large enough for a sultan—rested on the daeva’s middle finger. The base looked to be badly battered iron, but she could tell from a single glance that the jewel was priceless. Dusty but perfectly cut, with not a single blemish. Something like that had to be worth a fortune.
As Nahri contemplated the ring, a shadow passed overhead. Idly, she glanced up. Then, with a yelp, she dove into the thick brush to hide.
Nahri peeked through a screen of leaves as the creature flew across the oasis, enormous against the spindly trees, and then landed next to the sleeping daeva. It was something only a deviant mind could dream up, an unholy cross between an old man, a green parrot, and a mosquito. All bird from the chest down, it bobbed like a chicken as it moved forward on a pair of thick, feathered legs ending in sharp talons. The rest of its skin—if it could be called skin—was covered in silvery gray scales that flashed as it moved, reflecting the light of the setting sun.
It paused to stretch a pair of feathered arms. Its wings were extraordinary, the brilliant, lime-colored feathers nearly as long as she was tall. Nahri started to rise, wondering whether to warn the daeva. The creature was focused on him and seemingly oblivious to her, a situation she preferred. Yet if it killed him, there’d be no one to get her out of the desert.
The birdman let out a chirp that made every hair on her body rise, and the sound roused the daeva, solving her problem. He blinked his emerald eyes slowly, shading his face to see who stood before him. “Khayzur . . .” He exhaled. “By the Creator, am I glad to see you.”
The creature extended a delicate hand and pulled the daeva into a brotherly embrace. Nahri’s eyes widened. Was this the person the daeva had been waiting for?
They settled themselves back on the rug. “I came as soon as I got your signal,” the creature squawked. Whatever language they were speaking it wasn’t Divasti; it was full of
staccato bursts and low whoops like birdsong. “What’s wrong, Dara?”
The daeva’s expression soured. “It’s better seen than explained.” He glanced about the oasis, and his eyes locked on Nahri’s hiding spot. “Come on out, girl.”
Nahri bristled, annoyed to be found so easily and then ordered about like a dog. But she emerged anyway, shoving the leaves aside and coming forward to join them.
She stifled a gasp when the birdman turned to her—the gray tone of his skin reminded her far too much of the ghouls. It was at odds with his small, almost pretty pink mouth and the neat green brows that met in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were colorless, and he had just the barest wisps of a gray beard.
He gaped, looking equally surprised at the sight of her. “You . . . you’ve a companion,” he said to the daeva. “Not that I’m displeased, but I must say, Dara . . . I did not take humans as your type.”
“She’s not my companion.” The daeva scowled. “And she’s not entirely human. She’s shafit. She . . .” He cleared his throat, his voice suddenly strained. “She would appear to have some Nahid blood.”
The creature whirled around. “Why do you think that?”
The daeva’s mouth twisted in distaste. “She healed before my eyes. Twice. And she has their gift with languages.”
“The Maker be praised.” Khayzur lurched closer, and Nahri skittered back. His colorless eyes swept her face. “I thought the Nahids were wiped out years ago.”
“As did I,” the daeva said. He sounded unnerved. “And to heal the way she did . . . she can’t merely be a distant descendant. But she looks entirely human—I plucked her from some human city even farther west than we are now.” The daeva shook his head. “Something’s wrong, Khayzur. She claims she knew nothing of our world until last night, but she somehow dragged me halfway across the—”
“She can speak for herself,” Nahri said acidly. “And I didn’t mean to drag you anywhere! I’d have been happier never to have met you.”
He snorted. “You’d have been murdered by that ifrit if I hadn’t shown up.”
The City of Brass Page 5