The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,101

countryside tend not to realize how dangerous Daevabad can be.”

“Ah, and I bet you get a handsome cut from this cousin of yours with such fair prices,” Nahri said knowingly.

The man’s smile vanished. “Are you working with Gushnap?” He planted himself in front of them again and squared his shoulders. “I told him,” he said, wagging a finger in her face. “This is my territory and . . . ah!” He shrieked as Dara seized him by his collar and yanked him away from Nahri.

“Let him go,” she hissed.

But the Daeva man had already caught sight of the muddied mark on Dara’s cheek. The color left his face, and he let out a muffled squeal as Dara lifted him off the ground.

“Dara.” Nahri felt a sudden prick behind her ears, the sensation of being watched. She abruptly straightened up and looked over her shoulder.

Her eyes met the curious gray gaze of a djinn across the street. He appeared to be Geziri and was dressed casually in a simple gray robe and turban, but there was a certain erectness to his posture that she didn’t like. As she stared at him, he turned to a nearby stall as if browsing its wares.

It was then that Nahri saw the bazaar crowd was thinning. A few nervous faces disappeared down adjoining alleys, and a copper merchant across the way slammed his metal screen shut.

Nahri frowned. She’d lived through enough violence—the power struggles of various Ottomans, the French invasion—to recognize the quiet tension that overtook a city before it erupted. Windows were being latched and doors pulled closed. A woman shouted for a pair of dawdling children, and an elderly man limped down an alley.

Behind her, Dara was threatening to rip the con artist’s lungs from his chest if he ever saw him again. She touched his shoulder. “We need to—”

Her warning was interrupted by a sudden clang. Down the avenue, a soldier used his scythe to strike a large set of brass cymbals strung from two opposing rooftops. “Curfew!” he cried.

Dara let go of the hustler, and the man fled. “Curfew?”

Nahri could feel the tension of the remaining crowd with every hurried heartbeat. Something’s going on here, something we know nothing about. A quick glance showed her that the Geziri man she’d caught spying was gone.

She grabbed Dara’s hand. “Let’s go.”

She caught snatches of whispers as they hurried through the emptying bazaar.

“That’s what people are saying . . . kidnapped in the dead of night from their marriage bed . . .”

“. . . gathering in the midan . . . the Most High only knows what they think they’re going to accomplish . . .”

“The Daevas don’t care,” she heard. “The fire worshippers get whatever they want. They always do.”

Dara tightened his grip on her hand, pulling her through the crush of people. They crossed through a tall ornamental gate to enter a large plaza enclosed by copper walls gone green with age. It was less crowded than the bazaar, but there were at least a few hundred djinn milling about the simple fountain of black and white marble blocks at the plaza’s center.

The massive archway they had passed under was unadorned, but six other, smaller gates fronted the plaza, each decorated in a widely different style. Djinn, looking far better dressed and wealthier than the shafit in the bazaar, were vanishing through them. As she watched, a pair of flame-haired children chased each other through a gate of fluted columns with grapevines winding its length. A tall Ayaanle man pushed past her, headed for a gate marked by two narrow, studded pyramids.

Six gates for six tribes, she realized, as well as a gate for the bazaar. Dara pushed her toward the one directly across the plaza. The Daeva Gate was painted pale blue and held open by two brass statues of winged lions. A single Geziri guard stood there, clutching his coppery scythe as he tried to shepherd the nervous crowd through.

An angry voice caught her attention as they approached the fountain. “And what do you get for standing up for the faithful? For helping the needy and oppressed? Death! A gruesome death while our king hides behind the trousers of his fire-worshipping grand wazir!”

A djinn man dressed in a dirty brown robe and sweat-stained white turban had climbed on top of the fountain and was shouting to a growing group of men gathered below. He gestured angrily at the Daeva Gate. “Look, my brothers!” the man shouted again. “Even now,