The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,129

straightened up, coughing and spitting water.

He wiped his eyes and squinted as if not quite believing who he saw. “Banu Nahri? What are you doing here?”

“I thought you were drowning!”

He drew up, every bit the arrogant royal even when wet and confused. “I was not drowning,” he huffed. “I was swimming.”

“Swimming?” she asked, incredulous. “What kind of djinn swim?”

A flicker of embarrassment crossed his face. “It’s an Ayaanle custom,” he mumbled, snatching a neatly folded shawl from the canal’s tiled edge. “Do you mind?”

Nahri rolled her eyes but turned around. On a sunny patch of grass ahead, a woven rug was laid out, crowded with books, a sheaf of notes, and a charcoal pencil.

She’d no sooner heard him splash out than he marched past her toward the rug. The shawl was wrapped around his upper body with the same fastidiousness Nahri had seen shy new brides cover their hair. Water dripped from his soaked waist-wrap.

Alizayd retrieved a skullcap from the rug and pulled it over his wet head. “What are you doing here?” he demanded over his shoulder. “Did my father send you?”

Why would the king send me to you? But Nahri didn’t ask; she had little desire to continue talking to the obnoxious Qahtani prince. “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving . . .”

She trailed off as her eyes alighted on one of the open books on the rug. An illustration covered half the page, a stylized shedu wing crossed with a scythe-ended arrow.

An Afshin mark.

Nahri immediately went for the book. Alizayd got there first. He snatched it up, but she seized another, twisting away when he tried to grab it.

“Give that back!”

She ducked under his arm and quickly flipped through the book, searching for any more illustrations. She came upon a series of figures drawn on one of the pages. A half-dozen djinn, their arms exposed to show black tattoos spiraling up their wrists, and on some, spreading across their bare shoulders. Tiny lines, like rungs in an unsupported ladder.

Like Dara’s.

Nahri had not given his tattoos much thought, assuming they had to do with his lineage. But as she stared at the illustration, a finger of cold traced her spine. The figures appeared to be from various tribes, and all had expressions of pure anguish drawn on their faces. One woman had her eyes lifted to some invisible sky, her arms outstretched and her mouth open in a wordless scream.

Alizayd grabbed the book back, taking advantage of her distraction.

“Interesting subject you’re studying,” she said, her voice biting. “What is that? Those figures . . . that mark on their arms?”

“You don’t know?” When she shook her head, a dark look crossed his face, but he offered no further explanation. He tucked the books under his arm. “It doesn’t matter. Come on. I’ll take you back to the infirmary.”

Nahri didn’t move. “What are the marks?” she asked again.

Alizayd paused, his gray eyes seemingly sizing her up. “It’s a record,” he finally said. “Part of the ifrit curse.”

“A record of what?”

Dara would have lied. Nisreen would have deflected and changed the subject. But Alizayd just pressed his mouth in a thin line and answered, “Lives.”

“What lives?”

“The human masters they’ve killed.” His face twisted. “It supposedly amuses the ifrit to see them add up.”

The human masters they’ve killed. Nahri’s mind went back to the countless times she’d observed that tattoo wrapped around Dara’s arm, the tiny black lines dull in the light of his constant fires. There had to be hundreds of them.

Aware of the prince watching her, Nahri fought to keep her face composed. After all, she’d seen that vision in Hierapolis; she knew how thoroughly controlled Dara had been by his master. Surely he couldn’t be blamed for their deaths.

Besides, however ghastly the meaning of Dara’s slave mark, Nahri suddenly realized a much nearer threat lurked. She glanced again at the books in Alizayd’s hand, and a surge of protectiveness flooded through her, accompanied by a prickle of fear. “You’re studying him.”

The prince didn’t even bother lying. “It’s an interesting tale the two of you have concocted.”

Her heart dropped. Nahri, the pieces don’t fit . . . Dara’s hurried words came back to her, the mystery about their origins that had led him to lie to the king and race after the ifrit. He’d suggested the Qahtanis might not even realize something wasn’t right.

But it was clear that at least one of them had some suspicions.

Nahri cleared her throat. “I see,” she finally managed, not entirely masking the alarm in