He scowls and caresses the hilt of his sword. “That is too long. You said they’d be ready to surrender last week.”
I pause, the impatience in his voice causing a small knot of dread to grow in my stomach. I do not want to sack this city. Not because I care about the thousands who will die—centuries of slavery have cultivated a deep hatred for humans in my soul—but because I do not wish to see the sack of any city. I do not want to see the violence, to imagine how my beloved Daevabad suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Qahtanis.
“It is taking longer because they are courageous, my lord. Such a thing should be admired.” My master doesn’t seem to hear me, so I continue, “You’ll earn a more lasting peace by negotiating.”
My master takes a deep breath. “Was I not clear?” he snaps, leaning down in his saddle to glare at me. His face is scarred from the pox. “I didn’t buy you for advice, slave. I wish for you to give me victory. I wish for this city. I wish to see my cousin on his knees before me.”
Admonished, I lower my head. His wishes settle heavily on my shoulders, wrapping around my limbs. Energy surges through my fingers.
There is no fighting it; I learned this long ago. “Yes, master.” I raise my hands and focus my attention on the wall.
The ground begins to tremble. His horse shies away, and a few men cry out in alarm. In the distance, the wall groans, the ancient stones protesting my magic. Tiny figures race along the top, fleeing their posts.
I close my hands into fists, and the wall collapses as though made of sand. A roar runs through my master’s army. Humans, their very blood dances at the prospect of brutalizing their own kind . . .
No! Nahri gasped, a tiny voice crying out in her mind. This isn’t me! This isn’t real! But the voice was drowned out by the screams of the next vision.
We are inside the city. I fly alongside my master’s horse through bloody streets thick with corpses. His soldiers torch the shops and narrow homes, cutting through any inhabitants foolish enough to cross them. A burning man crashes to the ground beside me, thrown from a balcony, and a young girl shrieks as two soldiers pull her from an overturned cart.
Bonded by the wish, I can’t leave my master’s side. I wade through gore with a sword in each hand, killing any who approach. As we grow closer to the castle, the attackers are too numerous for my blades. I toss the weapons away, and the slave curse sweeps through me as I burn an entire group with a single glance. Their screams rise through the air, horrendous, animal-like groans.
Before I know it, we are in the castle and then in a bedchamber. The room is opulent and smells strongly of cedarwood, the scent bringing tears to my eyes. It was what my Daeva tribe burned to honor the Creator and His blessed Nahids . . . but I cannot honor anyone in my defiled condition. Instead, I tear through the guards. Their blood spatters the silk wall coverings.
A balding man cowers in one corner; I can smell his released bowels. A fierce-eyed woman throws herself in front of him, a knife in her hand. I break her neck as I toss her aside and then grab the sobbing man, forcing him to his knees before my master.
“Your cousin, my lord.”
My master smiles, and the weight of the wish lifts from my shoulders. Exhausted by magic and nauseated by the smell of so much human blood, I fall to my own knees. My ring blazes, illuminating the black slave record branded into my skin. I fix my gaze on my master, surrounded by the carnage he ordered, watching as he mocks his cousin’s hysterics. Hate surges in my heart.
I will see you dead, human, I swear. I will see your life reduced to a mere mark on my arm . . .
The bedchamber dissolved before Nahri’s eyes as her fingers were pried off the ring, her hand wrenched away so hard that she fell back against the stone floor. Her mind spun as she desperately tried to make sense of what had just happened.
The answer loomed over her, still clutching her wrist.
If anything, Dara looked more shocked to find himself awakened in such a manner. He glanced at his hand, his fingers still gripping her wrist. His ring blazed with light, mirroring the emerald brightness of his eyes. He let out a startled cry.
“No!” His eyes went wide with panic, and he dropped her wrist, backing away. His entire body was shaking. “What did you do?” he shrieked, holding his hand out like he expected the ring to explode.
Dara. The man in her vision had been Dara. And what she had seen . . . were those his memories? They seemed too real to have been his dreams.
Nahri forced herself to meet his gaze. “Dara . . .” She tried to keep her voice gentle. The daeva was pale with fright, his eyes wild. “Please, just calm down.” He’d backed away without any of his weapons. She resisted the urge to look at them, fearing he would notice. “I didn’t—”
The daeva seemed to read her mind, lunging for his weapons at the same time she did. He was faster, but Nahri was closer. She grabbed his sword and jumped back as he lunged at her with the dagger.
“Don’t!” She raised the sword, her hands trembling as she gripped it tight. Dara drew back with a hiss that bared his teeth. Nahri panicked. There was no way she could outrun him, no way she could outfight him. The daeva looked like he’d gone mad; she half-expected him to start frothing at the mouth. The visions flashed through her mind again: bodies ripped apart, men burned to death. And Dara had done it all.
No. There had to be some explanation. And then she remembered. Master, he had called that man his master.
He’s a slave. All the stories Nahri had heard about the djinn raced through her mind, and her mouth fell open in shock. A wish-granting djinn slave.
The realization didn’t improve her situation. “Dara, please . . . I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear!”
His left hand was pressed to his chest, the ring next to his heart—if daevas had hearts. He held the dagger out with his right, circling her like a cat. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, some of the wildness had dissipated. “No . . . I—” He swallowed, looking close to tears. “I’m still here.” He took a shaky breath, relief flooding into his face. “I’m still free.” He leaned heavily against one of the marble columns. “But that city . . . ,” he choked out. “Those people . . .” He slid to the floor, dropping his head into his hands.
Nahri didn’t lower the sword. She had no idea what to say, torn between guilt and fear. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I just wanted the ring. I had no idea . . .”
“You wanted the ring?” He glanced up sharply, a hint of suspicion stealing back into his voice. “Why?”
Telling the truth seemed safer than his assuming some type of magical malice on her part. “I was trying to steal it,” she confessed. “I am—I was,” she corrected, realizing there was no way she was getting free now, “trying to escape.”
“Escape?” He narrowed his eyes. “And you needed my ring for that?”
“Have you seen the size of it?” She let out a nervous laugh. “That emerald could get me back to Cairo with money to spare.”
He gave her an incredulous look and then shook his head. “And the glory of the Nahids continues.” He climbed to his feet, seemingly unaware of how quickly she backed away. “Why would you even want to escape? Your human life sounds dreadful.”
“What?” she asked, offended enough to momentarily forget her fear. “Why would you say that?”
“Why?” He picked up his robe and whirled it around his shoulders. “Where do I even start? If simply being human isn’t wretched enough, you had to lie and steal constantly to survive. You lived alone, with no family and no friends, in unceasing fear you’d be arrested and executed for sorcery.” He blanched. “And you’d return to that? Over Daevabad?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she insisted, taken aback by his answer. All those questions he’d asked about her life in Cairo—he really had been listening to her answers. “My abilities gave me a lot of independence. And I had a friend,” she added, though she wasn’t certain Yaqub w
ould agree with that definition of their relationship. “Besides, you act as if I’m facing something better. Aren’t you turning me over to some djinn king who murdered my family?”
“No,” Dara said, adding somewhat more hesitantly, “it was not . . . technically him. Your ancestors were enemies, but Khayzur spoke correctly.” He sighed. “It was a long time ago,” he added lamely, as if that explained everything.
Nahri stared. “So being delivered to my ancestral enemy is supposed to make me feel better?”
Dara looked even more annoyed. “No. It’s not like that.” He made an impatient noise. “You’re a healer, Nahri. The last of them. Daevabad needs you as much as you need it, maybe even more.” He scowled. “And when the djinn learn I was the one who found you? The Scourge of Qui-zi forced to play nursemaid to a mixed-blood?” He shook his head. “The Qahtanis are going to love it. They’ll probably set you up in your own wing of the palace.”
My own wing of the what? “The Scourge of Qui-zi?” she asked instead.
“An endearment I’ve earned from them.” His green gaze settled on the sword still clasped in her hands. “You don’t need that. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No?” Nahri arched an eyebrow. “Because I just saw you hurt a whole lot of people.”
“You saw that?” When she nodded, his face crumpled. “I wish you hadn’t.” He crossed the floor to retrieve her bag, dusting it off before handing it back. “What you saw . . . I didn’t do those things by choice.” His voice was low as he turned back and picked up his turban cloth.
Nahri hesitated. “In my country, we have stories of djinn . . . djinn who are trapped as slaves and forced to grant wishes to humans.”
Dara flinched, his fingers fumbling as he rewound his turban. “I’m not a djinn.”
“But are you a slave?”
He said nothing, and her temper flashed. “Forget it,” she snapped. “I don’t know why I bothered to ask. You never answer my questions. You let me panic over this Qahtani king for an entire week just because you couldn’t bother to—”
“Not anymore.” His reply was a whisper, a fragile thing that hung in the air—the first real truth he’d offered her. He turned around; old grief was etched in his face. “I’m not a slave anymore.”
Before Nahri could respond, the ground trembled beneath her feet.
A nearby pillar cracked as a second rumble—far stronger—rocked the temple. Dara swore, snatched up his weapons, and grabbed her hand. “Come on!”
They raced through the temple and out onto the open stage, narrowly avoiding a falling column. The ground shook harder, and Nahri gave the theater a nervous glance, looking for signs of the recently risen dead. “Maybe this one’s an earthquake?”
“So soon after you used your powers on me?” He searched the stage. “Where’s the carpet?”
She hesitated. “I may have burned it.”
Dara whirled on her. “You burned it?”
“I didn’t want you to follow me!”
“Where did you burn it?” he asked, not even waiting for an answer before sniffing the air and racing toward the edge of the stage.
By the time she caught him, he was crouching in the glowing embers, his hands pressed against the carpet’s ashy remains. “Burned it . . . ,” he muttered. “By the Creator, you really don’t know anything about us.”
Little worms of white-bright flame crawled out from under his fingers, reigniting the ash and twisting together into long ropes that grew and stretched under his feet. As she watched, they quickly multiplied, forming a fiery mat roughly the same size and shape as the carpet.
The fire flashed and died, revealing the tired colors of their old rug. “How did you do that?” she whispered.
Dara grimaced as he ran his hand over the surface. “It won’t last long, but it should get us across the river.”
The ground rumbled again, and a groan came from inside the temple, the sound all too familiar. Dara reached for her hand. She backed away.
His eyes flashed with alarm. “Are you mad?”
Probably. Nahri knew what she was about to do was risky, but she also knew the best time to negotiate was when your mark was desperate. “No. I’m not getting on that rug unless you give me some answers.”
There was another loud, vaguely human shriek from inside the temple. The ground shook harder, and a crack raced across the high ceiling.
“You want answers now? Why? So you’ll be better informed when the ghouls devour you?” Dara snatched for her ankle, but she danced back. “Nahri, please! You can ask me whatever you want once we’re gone, I swear!”
But she wasn’t convinced. What was to stop him from changing his mind as soon as they were safe?
Then it came to her.
“Tell me your name, and I’ll go with you,” she offered. “Your real name.” He had told her there was power in names. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“My name doesn’t—” Nahri took a deliberate step toward the temple, and panic lit his face. “No, stop!”
“Then tell me your name!” Nahri shouted, her own fear getting the better of her. She was used to bluffing, but not with the threat of being eaten by the risen dead looming. “And be quick about it!”
“Darayavahoush!” The daeva pulled himself onto the stage. “Darayavahoush e-Afshin is my name. Now get over here!”
Nahri was certain she couldn’t have repeated that correctly even if she’d been paid, but as the ghouls screamed again, and the smell of rot swept past her face, she decided it didn’t matter.
He was ready for her, grabbing her elbow and pulling her down on the rug as he landed lightly beside her. Without another word, the carpet rose in the air, sweeping over the temple’s roof as three ghouls stumbled out onto the stage.
Dara was thoroughly riled by the time they’d risen above the clouds. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” He threw up his hands. “Not only did you try to destroy our only method of escaping the ifrit, you were ready to risk your life just to—”
“Oh, get over it,” she said, dismissing him. “You’re the one who drove me to such straits, Afshin Daryevu—”
“‘Dara’ will continue to do just fine,” he interrupted. “You needn’t mangle my proper name.” A goblet appeared in his hand, filled with the familiar dark of date wine. He took a long sip. “You can call me a damn djinn again if you promise not to go running after ghouls.”
“Such affection for the shafit thief?” She raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t so fond of me a week ago.”
He grumbled. “I can change my mind, can’t I?” A blush stole into his cheeks. “Your company is not . . . entirely displeasing.” He sounded deeply disappointed in himself.
Nahri rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s time your company became a lot more informative. You promised to answer my questions.”
He glanced around, gesturing to the clouds. “Right now?”
“Are you busy with something else?”
Dara exhaled. “Fine. Go on, then.”
“What’s a daeva?”
He sighed. “I already told you this: we’re djinn. We just have the decency to call ourselves by our true name.”
“That explains nothing.”
He scowled. “We’re souled beings like humans, but we were created from fire, not earth.” A delicate tendril of orange flame snaked around his right hand and twisted through his fingers. “All the elements—earth, fire, water, air—have their own creatures.”
Nahri thought of Khayzur. “The peris are creatures of air?”
“An astonishing deduction.”
She shot him a dirty look. “He had a better attitude than you.”
“Yes, he’s extraordinarily gentle for a being who could rearrange the landscape below us and kill every life-form for miles with a single sweep of his wings.”
Nahri felt the blood drain from her face. “Truly?” When Dara nodded, she continued. “Are—are there a lot of creatures like that?”
She gaped at him. The flame playing around his finger stretched into an elongated lizard that belched a fiery plume. “Imagine a fire-breathing serpent with limbs. They’re rare, thank the Creator, but don’t give much warning when they attack.”
“And humans don’t notice any of this?” Nahri’s eyes widened as the smoky beast left Dara’s arm and flew around his head.
He shook his head. “No. Those created from dirt, like humans, usually can’t see the rest of us. Besides, most magical beings prefer wild places, places already empty of your kind. If a human had the misfortune to come across one, they might sense something, see a blur on the horizon or a shadow out of the corner of their eye. But they’d likely be dead before they gave it a second thought.”
“And if they came across a daeva?”
He opened his palm, and his fiery pet flew into it, dissolving into smoke. “Oh, we’d eat them.” At the alarm in her face, he laughed and took another sip of wine. “A jest, little thief.”
But Nahri wasn’t in the mood for his jokes. “What about the ifrit?” she persisted. “What are they?”
The amusement vanished from his face. “Daevas. At least . . . they were once.”
“Daevas?” she repeated in surprise. “Like you?”
“No.” He looked offended. “Not like me. Not at all.”
“Then like what?” She prodded his knee when he stayed silent. “You promised to—”
“I know, I know.” He removed his cap to rub his brow, running his fingers through his black hair.
It was an entirely distracting motion. Nahri’s eyes followed his hand, but she shut her wayward thoughts down, ignoring the flutter in her stomach.
“You do know that if you have Nahid blood, you’re likely going to live a few centuries.” Dara lay back on the carpet to recline on a propped wrist. “You should work on your patience.”
The City of Brass Page 10