The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,102

they are favored, guarded by the king’s own soldiers! And this, after they’ve stolen an innocent new bride from the bed of her believing husband . . . a woman whose only crime was leaving her family’s superstitious cult. Is this just?”

The crowd waiting to enter the Daeva Quarter grew, edging out toward the fountain. The two groups were mostly staying apart and giving each other wary glances, but Nahri saw a young Daeva man turn, looking annoyed.

“It is just!” the young Daeva argued back loudly. “This is our city. Why don’t you leave our women alone and crawl back to whatever human hovel your dirt blood came from?”

“Dirt blood?” the man on the fountain repeated. He climbed to a higher block so that he was more visible to the crowd. “Is that what you think I am?” Not waiting for an answer, he produced a long knife from his belt and dragged it down his wrist. Several people in the crowd gasped as the man’s dark blood dripped and sizzled. “Does this look like dirt to you? I passed the veil. I am as djinn as you!”

The Daeva man was not deterred. Instead, he stepped closer to the fountain, anger brewing in his black eyes. “That foul human word has no meaning for me,” he snapped. “This is Daevabad. Those who would call themselves djinn have no place here. Nor do their shafit spawn.”

Nahri pressed closer to Dara. “Sounds like you have a friend,” she muttered darkly. He scowled but said nothing.

“Your people are a disease!” the shafit man yelled. “A degenerate bunch of slavers still worshipping a family of inbred murderers!”

Dara hissed, and his fingers grew hot on her wrist. “Don’t,” Nahri whispered. “Just keep going.”

But the insult clearly angered the Daeva crowd that remained, and more of them turned toward the fountain. A gray-haired old man defiantly raised an iron cudgel. “The Nahids were Suleiman’s chosen! The Qahtanis are nothing but Geziri sand flies, filthy barbarians speaking the language of snakes!”

The shafit man opened his mouth to respond and then stopped, raising a hand to his ear. “Do you hear that?” He grinned, and the crowd went quiet. In the distance, she could hear chanting coming from the direction of the bazaar. The ground started to tremble, echoing with the pounding feet of a growing throng of marchers.

The man laughed as the Daevas started to nervously back away, the threat of a mob apparently enough to convince them to flee. “Run! Go huddle at your fire altars and beg your dead Nahids to save you!” More men poured into the plaza, anger in their faces. Nahri didn’t see many swords, but enough were armed with kitchen knives and broken furniture to alarm her.

“This will be your day of reckoning!” the man shouted. “We will tear through your homes until we find the girl! Until we find and free every believing slave you infidels hold!”

She and Dara were the last through the gate. Dara made sure she was past the brass lions and then turned to argue with the Geziri guard. “Did you not hear them?” He gestured at the growing mob. “Close the gate!”

“I cannot,” the soldier replied. He looked young, his beard little more than black fuzz. “These gates never close. It’s against the law. Besides, reinforcements are coming.” He swallowed nervously, clutching his scythe. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Nahri didn’t buy his false optimism, and as the chanting grew louder, the soldier’s gray eyes widened. Though she couldn’t hear the djinn instigator over the shouts of the crowd, she saw him gesticulate to the mob of men below. He pointed defiantly at the Daeva Gate, and a roar went through them.

Nahri’s heart raced. Daeva men and women, young and old, were rushing down the manicured streets and vanishing into the pretty stone buildings surrounding them. About a dozen men worked to quickly seal doors and windows, their bare hands the bright crimson of a blacksmith’s tools. But they’d only completed about half the buildings, and the mob was close. Farther down the street, a toddler wailed as its mother pounded desperately on a locked door.

Something hardened in Dara’s face. Before Nahri could do anything, he snatched the scythe away from the Geziri soldier and shoved him to the ground.

“Useless dog.” Dara gave the doors a halfhearted tug, and when they didn’t budge, he sighed, sounding more irritated than worried. He turned toward the crowd.

Nahri panicked. “Dara, I don’t think . . .”

He ignored her and