The City of Brass

by S. A. Chakraborty

  The man looked terrified, but Ali couldn’t blame him—he had just been visited by the Qaid and two armed members of the Royal Guard for a surprise inspection.

  Ali turned back to Rashid. “We have no evidence,” he whispered back in Geziriyya. “I can’t arrest a man with no evidence.”

  Before Rashid could respond, the door to the office swung open. The fourth man in the room, Abu Nuwas—Ali’s very gruff and very large personal guard—was between the door and the prince in a moment, his zulfiqar drawn.

  But it was only Kaveh, not looking particularly impressed by the enormous Geziri warrior. He peered under one of Abu Nuwas’s large raised arms, his face turning sour when he met Ali’s eyes. “Qaid,” he greeted him flatly. “Do you mind telling your dog to back down?”

  “It’s fine, Abu Nuwas,” Ali said before his guard could do something rash. “Let him in.”

  Kaveh stepped over the threshold. As he glanced between the glittering scales and the frightened muhtasib, a hint of anger crept into his voice. “What are you doing in my quarter?”

  “There’ve been several reports of fraud coming out of here,” Ali explained. “I was just examining the scales—”

  “Examining the scales? Are you a wazir now?” Kaveh raised a hand to cut off Ali before he could reply. “Never mind . . . I’ve wasted enough time this morning looking for you.” He beckoned to the door. “Come in, Mir e-Parvez, and give your report to the Qaid.”

  There was some inaudible muttering from the doorway.

  Kaveh rolled his eyes. “I don’t care what you heard. He doesn’t have crocodile teeth, and he isn’t going to eat you.” Ali flinched, and Kaveh continued. “Forgive him, he’s had a terrible fright at the hands of the djinn.”

  We are all djinn. Ali bit back the retort as the anxious merchant came forward. Mir e-Parvez was thickset and older, beardless like most Daeva. He was dressed in a gray tunic and loose dark trousers, the typical garb of Daeva men.

  The merchant pressed his palms together in greeting but kept his gaze on the floor. His hands were shaking. “Forgive me, my prince. When I learned you were serving as Qaid, I-I did not want to trouble you.”

  “It’s the Qaid’s job to be troubled,” Kaveh cut in, ignoring Ali’s glare. “Just tell him what happened.”

  The other man nodded. “I run a shop outside the quarter selling fancy human goods,” he started. His Djinnistani was broken, colored by a thick Divasti accent.

  Ali raised his eyebrows, already sensing where this was going. The only “fancy human goods” a Daeva merchant would sell outside their quarter were human-made intoxicants. Most djinn had little tolerance for human spirits, and they were banned by the Holy Book anyway, so it was illegal to sell them in the rest of the city. The Daevas had no such qualms and freely traded in the stuff, peddling it to foreign tribesmen at greatly inflated prices.

  The man continued. “I’ve had some trouble in the past with djinn. My windows smashed, they protest and spit when I pass by. I say nothing. I don’t want trouble.” He shook his head. “But last night, these men break into my shop while my son is there and smash my bottles and set fire to everything. When my son tried to stop them, they hit him and cut his face. They accused him of being a ‘fire worshipper’ and said he’s leading djinn to sin!”

  Not exactly false charges. Ali refrained from saying so, knowing Kaveh would go running to his father at the slightest whisper of injustice against his tribe. “Did you report this to the guard in your quarter?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the merchant said, bungling his title, his Djinnistani growing worse as he got upset. “But they do nothing. This happens all the time and always nothing. They laugh or ‘make report,’ but nothing changes.”

  “There are not enough guards in the Daeva neighborhoods,” Kaveh interrupted. “And not enough . . . diversity among them. I’ve been telling Wajed this for years.”

  “So you requested more soldiers from Wajed—just not ones that look like him,” Ali replied, though he knew Kaveh had a point. The soldiers patrolling the markets were often the youngest, many straight from the sands of Am Gezira. They probably feared protecting a man like Mir e-Parvez was as much a sin as drinking his wares.

  But there was no easy solution; the bulk of the military was Geziri, and they were already stretched thin. “Tell me, whose district do I take these soldiers from, Kaveh?” Ali pressed on. “Should the Tukharistanis go without so the Daevas feel safer selling liquor?”

  “The allocation of the guard is not my realm of responsibility, Prince Alizayd. Maybe if you took a break from terrorizing my muhtasib . . .”

  Ali straightened up and came around the table, cutting off Kaveh’s sarcastic remark. Mir e-Parvez actually stepped back, giving Ali’s coppery zulfiqar a nervous look.

  By the Most High, were the rumors surrounding him really that bad? Judging from the look on the merchant’s face, one would think Ali spent every other Friday slaughtering Daevas.

  He sighed. “Your son is okay, I trust?”

  The merchant blinked in surprise. “He . . . yes, my prince,” he stammered. “He will recover.”

  “God be praised. Then I will speak to my men and see what we can do about improving security in your quarter. Go over the damages to your shop and submit the bill to my aide Rashid. The Treasury will cover—”

  “The king will have to approve—” Kaveh started to say.

  Ali raised a hand. “It will come from my accounts if necessary,” he said firmly, knowing that would end any doubt. The fact that his Ayaanle grandfather gave a lavish yearly endowment to his royal grandson was an open secret. Ali normally found it embarrassing—he didn’t need the money and knew his grandfather only did it to annoy his father. But in this instance, it worked to his advantage.

  The Daeva merchant’s eyes popped, and he dropped to the ground and pressed his ash-covered forehead against the carpet. “Oh, thank you, Your Majesty. May the flames burn brightly for you.”

  Ali fought a smile, bemused at the traditional Daeva blessing being bestowed upon him of all people. He suspected the merchant was going to present him with a rather hefty bill, but he was nonetheless pleased, sensing he’d handled the situation correctly. Maybe he could manage the role of Qaid after all.

  “I trust we are done?” he asked Kaveh as Rashid opened the door. Movement caught his eye up ahead: two small boys armed with makeshift bows were playing along one of the fountains in the plaza. Each had an arrow in hand, and they were bashing them together like swords.

  Kaveh followed his gaze. “Would you like to join them, Prince Alizayd? You’re near enough in age, no?”

  He remembered Muntadhir’s warning. Don’t let him get under your skin. “I dare not. They look far too fierce,” he said calmly. He grinned to himself, ducking out from under the balustrade and into the bright sunshine, as Kaveh’s smirk turned to a scowl. The sky was a cheerful blue, with only a few lacy white clouds dancing in from the east. It was another beautiful day in a string of beautiful days, warm and bright—a pattern most unlike Daevabad and strange enough to start attracting attention.

  And the weather wasn’t all that was odd. Ali heard rumors that the Nahids’ original fire altar, extinguished after Manizheh and Rustam—the siblings who’d been the last of their family—were murdered, had somehow relit itself in a locked room. An abandoned, weed-choked grove in the garden where one of them had liked to paint was suddenly orderly and flourishing, and just last week one of the shedu statues that framed the palace walls had turned up on top of the ziggurat’s roof, its brass gaze focused on the lake as if awaiting a boat.

  Then there was that mural of Anahid. Against Muntadhir’s wishes, Ali had it destroyed. Yet he walked past it every few days, nagged by the sense that there was something alive beneath the ruined facade.

  He glanced at Kaveh, wondering what the grand wazir made of the whispers coming from his superstitious tribe. Kaveh was an ardent devotee of the fire cult, and the Pramukh family and th
e Nahids had been close. Many of the plants and herbs used in traditional Nahid healing were grown on the Pramukhs’ vast estates. Kaveh himself had originally come to Daevabad as a trade envoy but had risen quickly in Ghassan’s court, becoming a trusted advisor even as he aggressively pushed for Daeva rights.

  Kaveh spoke again. “I apologize if my girls made you nervous the other week. It was meant as a gesture of kindness.”

  Ali bit back the first retort that came to mind. And the second. He was unused to this type of verbal sparring. “Such . . . gestures are not to my taste, Grand Wazir,” he finally said. “I would appreciate it if you remember that for the future.”

  Kaveh said nothing, but Ali could feel his cold stare upon him as they continued to walk. By the Most High, what had he done to earn this man’s enmity? Could he truly think Ali’s beliefs represented that much of a threat to his people?

  It was an otherwise pleasant stroll, the Daeva Quarter a far lovelier sight when he wasn’t dashing through it pursued by archers. The cobbled stones were perfectly even and swept. Cypress trees shadowed the main avenue, broken up by flower-filled fountains and potted barberry bushes. The stone buildings were finely polished, their thatched wooden screens neat and fresh—one would never guess that this neighborhood was among the oldest in the city. Ahead, a few elderly men were playing chatrang and sipping from little glass vials, probably filled with some human intoxicant. Two veiled women glided from the direction of the Grand Temple.

  It was an idyllic scene, at odds with the filthy conditions in the rest of the city. Ali frowned. He’d have to see what was going on with Daevabad’s sanitation. He turned toward Rashid. “Make me an appointment with—”

  Something whizzed past Ali’s right ear leaving a sharp sting. He let out a startled cry, instinctively reaching for his zulfiqar as he whirled around.

  Standing on the edge of the fountain was one of the little boys he’d seen playing, the toy bow still in his grasp. Ali immediately dropped his hand. The boy looked at Ali with innocent black eyes; Ali saw he had used charcoal to draw a crooked black arrow on his cheek.

  An Afshin arrow. Ali scowled. It was just like the fire worshippers to let their children run around pretending to be war criminals. He touched his ear, and came away with a smear of blood on his fingers.

  Abu Nuwas pulled free his zulfiqar and stepped forward with a snarl, but Ali held him back. “Don’t. He’s just a boy.”

  Seeing that he wasn’t going to be punished, the boy gave them a wicked grin and jumped off the fountain to flee down a twisting alley.

  Kaveh’s eyes were bright with mirth. Across the plaza, a veiled woman held a hand across her hidden mouth, though Ali could hear her giggle. The old men playing chatrang had their eyes fixed on their game pieces, but their mouths twitched in amusement. Ali’s cheeks grew warm with embarrassment.

  Rashid stepped up to him. “You should have the boy arrested, Qaid,” he said quietly in Geziriyya. “He’s young. Give him to the Citadel to be raised properly as one of us. Your ancestors used to do so all the time.”

  Ali paused, nearly taken in by Rashid’s reasonable tone. And then he stopped. How is that any different from purebloods stealing shafit children? And the fact that he could do it, that Ali could snap his fingers and have a boy kidnapped from the only home he’d ever know, wrested from his parents and his people . . . ?

  Well, it suddenly explained why someone like Kaveh might look upon him with such hostility.

  Ali shook his head, uneasy. “No. Let’s just go back to the Citadel.”

  “Oh, my love, my light, how you have stolen my happiness!”

  Ali let out a grumpy sigh. It was a beautiful night. A thin moon hung over Daevabad’s dark lake, and stars twinkled in the cloudless sky. The air was fragrant with frankincense and jasmine. Before him played the city’s finest musicians, at hand was a platter of food from the king’s favored chef, and the dark eyes of the singer would have driven a dozen human men to their knees.

  Ali was miserable. He fidgeted in his seat, keeping his gaze on the floor and trying to ignore the jingle of ankle bells and the girl’s smooth voice singing of things that made his blood rise. He tugged at the stiff collar of the new silver dishdasha Muntadhir had forced him to wear. Embroidered with a dozen rows of seed pearls, it was tight on his throat.

  His behavior didn’t go unnoticed. “Your little brother doesn’t appear to be having a good time, my emir.” An even silkier female voice interrupted the singer, and Ali glanced up to meet Khanzada’s coy smile. “Are my girls not to your liking, Prince Alizayd?”

  “Don’t take it personally, my light,” Muntadhir interrupted, kissing the hennaed hand of the courtesan curled at his side. “He got shot in the face this morning by a child.”

  Ali threw his brother an annoyed look. “Do you have to keep bringing it up?”

  “It’s very funny.”

  Ali scowled, and Muntadhir lightly smacked his shoulder. “Ya, akhi, can you at least try to look less murderous? I invited you here so we could celebrate your promotion, not so you could terrify my friends.” He gestured at the dozen or so men arrayed around them, a handpicked group of the wealthiest and most influential nobles in the city.

  “You didn’t invite me.” Ali sulked. “You ordered me.”

  Muntadhir rolled his eyes. “You’re part of Abba’s court now, Zaydi.” He switched to Geziriyya and lowered his voice. “Socializing with these people is part of it . . . hell, it’s supposed to be a perk.”

  “You know how I feel about these”—Ali waved his hand at a nobleman giggling like a little girl, and the man abruptly shut up—“debaucheries.”

  Muntadhir sighed. “You need to stop talking like that, akhi.” He nodded at the platter. “Why don’t you eat something? Maybe the weight of some food in your stomach will drag you off your high horse.”

  Ali grumbled but obeyed, leaning forward to take a small glass of sour tamarind sherbet. He knew Muntadhir was just trying to be kind, to ease his awkward, Citadel-raised little brother into court life, but Khanzada’s salon made Ali terribly uncomfortable. A place like this was the epitome of the wickedness Anas had wanted to eradicate in Daevabad.

  Ali stole a glance at the courtesan as she leaned in to whisper in Muntadhir’s ear. Khanzada was said to be the most skilled dancer in the city, hailing from a family of acclaimed Agnivanshi illusionists. She was stunning, Ali would admit that. Even Muntadhir, his handsome older brother famous for leaving a string of broken hearts in his wake, had fallen for her.

  I suppose her charms are enough to pay for all this. Khanzada’s salon was located in one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods, a leafy enclave nestled in the heart of the Agnivanshi Quarter’s entertainment district. Her home was large and beautiful, three floors of white marble and cedar-screened windows that surrounded an airy courtyard with fruit trees and an intricately tiled fountain.

  Ali would have seen the entire place razed to the ground. He despised these pleasure houses. It wasn’t enough that they were dens of every vice and sin imaginable, put on brazen public display, but he knew from Anas that most of these girls were shafit slaves stolen from their families and sold to the highest bidder.

  “My lords.”

  Ali looked up. The girl who had been dancing stopped before them and bowed low to the ground, pressing her hands on the tiled floor. Though her hair had the same night-black sheen as Khanzada’s and her skin shimmered like a pureblood, Ali could see round ears beneath her sheer veil. Shafit.

  “Rise, my dear,” Muntadhir said. “Such a pretty face does not belong on the floor.”

  The girl stood and pressed her palms together, blinking long-lashed hazel eyes at his brother. Muntadhir smiled, and Ali wondered if Khanzada would have some competition tonight. His brother beckoned her closer and hooked a finger into her bangles. She giggled, and he removed one of the strands of pearls that looped his neck, playing at placing it over her veil. He whispered something in her ear, and she la
ughed again. Ali sighed.

  “Perhaps Prince Alizayd would like some of your attention, Rupa,” Khanzada teased. “Do you like your men tall, dark, and hostile?”

  Ali shot her a glare, but Muntadhir only laughed. “It might help your attitude, akhi,” he said as he nuzzled the girl’s neck. “You’re too young to have sworn off them completely.”

  Khanzada pressed closer to Muntadhir. She trailed her fingers down his waist-wrap. “And Geziri men make it so easy,” she said, tracing the pattern embroidered on the hem. “Even their garments are practical.” She grinned and removed her hand from his brother’s lap to run it down Rupa’s smooth face.

  She looks like she’s evaluating a piece of fruit at the market. Ali cracked his knuckles. He was a young man—he’d be lying if he said the pretty girl didn’t stir him—but that only made him more uneasy.

  Khanzada took his disdain the wrong way. “I have other girls if this one doesn’t suit your interest. Boys, as well,” she added with a wicked grin. “Perhaps such an adventurous taste runs in the—”

  “Enough, Khanzada,” Muntadhir cut in, a note of warning in his voice.

  The courtesan laughed and slid into Muntadhir’s lap. She pressed a wineglass to his lips. “Forgive me, my love.”

  The humor returned to Muntadhir’s face, and Ali looked away, his temper rising. He didn’t like to see this side of his brother; such profligacy would be a weakness when he was king. The shafit girl looked between them.

  As if awaiting orders. Something in Ali snapped. He dropped his spoon, folding his arms across his chest. “How old are you, sister?”

  “I . . .” Rupa looked again to Khanzada. “I am sorry, my lord, but I do not know.”

  “She’s old enough,” Khanzada interrupted.