The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,128

bulge vanished, and the woman started coughing. Her son pounded her back.

Nisreen held up the bottle. “Liquefied charcoal,” she said calmly. “Shrinks most internal parasites.” She nodded at the old woman. “I’ll get her some water. Let her catch her breath, and we’ll try again.” She lowered her voice so only Nahri could hear. “Your intention needs to be more . . . positive.”

“What?” Nahri was confused for a moment, and then Nisreen’s warning became clear. The salamander hadn’t started strangling the woman when the needle touched it.

It had done so when Nahri commanded her to be quiet.

I nearly killed her. Nahri took a step back and knocked one of the trays off the table. It clattered to the floor, and the glass vials smashed against the marble.

“I-I need some air.” She turned toward the doors leading to the gardens.

Nisreen stepped in front of her. “Banu Nahida . . .” Her voice was calm, but didn’t mask the alarm in her eyes. “You can’t just leave. The lady is under your care.”

Nahri pushed past Nisreen. “Not anymore. Send her away.”

She took the stone steps leading down to the garden two at a time. She hurried through the manicured plots of healing plants, startling two gardeners, and then beyond, following a narrow path into the royal garden’s wild interior.

She gave little thought to where she was going, her mind spinning. I had no business touching that woman. Who was she kidding? Nahri was no healer. She was a thief, a con artist who occasionally got lucky. She’d taken her healing abilities for granted in Cairo where they were as effortless as breathing.

She stopped at the edge of the canal and leaned against the crumbling remains of a stone bridge. A pair of dragonflies glistened above the rushing water. She watched them dart and dip under a fallen tree trunk whose dark branches pushed out of the water like a man trying not to drown. She envied their freedom.

I was free in Cairo. A wave of homesickness swept over her. She longed for Cairo’s bustling streets and familiar aromas, her clients with their love problems, and her afternoons of pounding poultices with Yaqub. She’d often felt like a foreigner there, but now knew it wasn’t true. It took leaving Egypt to realize it was home.

And I’ll never see it again. Nahri wasn’t naive; behind Ghassan’s polite words, she suspected that she was more prisoner than guest in Daevabad. With Dara gone, there was no one she could turn to for help. And it was clear she was expected to start producing results as a healer.

She chewed the inside of her cheek as she studied the water. That a patient had appeared in her infirmary barely two weeks after her arrival in Daevabad was not an encouraging sign, and she couldn’t help but wonder how Ghassan might punish her incompetence should it continue. Would her privileges—the private apartment, the fine clothes and jewels, the servants and the fancy foods—start disappearing with each failure?

The king might be pleased to see me fail. Nahri hadn’t forgotten the way the Qahtanis had received her: Alizayd’s open hostility, Zaynab’s attempt to humiliate her . . . not to mention that flicker of fear in Ghassan’s face.

Movement caught her eye, and she glanced up, welcoming any distraction from her grim thoughts. Through a screen of purple dappled leaves, she could see a clearing up ahead where the canal widened. A pair of dark arms splashed through the water’s surface.

Nahri frowned. Was someone . . . swimming? She assumed all djinn were as wary of water as Dara.

A little concerned, Nahri picked her way over the bridge. Her eyes went wide when she entered the clearing.

The canal rose up straight in the air.

It was like a waterfall in reverse, the canal rushing from the jungle to pool against the palace wall before cascading up and over the palace. It was a beautiful, if not entirely bizarre sight that utterly captivated her before another splash from the misty pool drew her eye. She raced over, spotting someone struggling in the water.

“Hold on!” After the tumultuous Gozan, this little pool was nothing. She charged right in and grabbed the closest flailing arm, pulling hard to bring whoever it was to the surface.

“You?” Nahri made a disgusted sound as she recognized a very bewildered Alizayd al Qahtani. She immediately let go of his arm, and the prince fell back with a splash, the water briefly closing over his head again before he