The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,131

those particular volumes are unavailable right now.”

“When do you think they’ll be available?”

She saw something soften in his face. “I don’t think you’d want to read these, Banu Nahri. I don’t think you’d like what they say.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated. “War isn’t a pleasant topic,” he finally said.

That was a more diplomatic response than Nahri would have expected considering the tenor of their earlier conversation. Hoping to keep him talking, she decided to answer his initial question a different way. “Business.” At Alizayd’s visible confusion, she explained. “You asked what I would read about if I could. I would like to know how people run businesses in Daevabad, how they make money, negotiate with each other, that sort of thing.” The more she thought about it, the better idea it seemed. After all, it was her own brand of business savvy that had kept her alive in Cairo, hustling travelers and knowing the best way to swindle a mark.

He went entirely still. “Like . . . economics?”

“I suppose.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure my father didn’t send you?”

“Quite.”

Something seemed to perk up in his face. “Economics, then . . .” He sounded strangely excited. “Well, I certainly have enough material on that.”

He stepped closer to the shelves, and Nahri moved away. He really was tall, towering over her like one of the ancient statues that still dotted the deserts outside Egypt. He even had the same stern, slightly disapproving face.

He plucked a fat blue-and-gold volume from the top shelf. “A history of Daevabad’s markets.” He handed her the book. “It is written in Arabic, so it might prove more familiar.”

She cracked open the spine and flicked through a few pages. “Very familiar. Still completely incomprehensible.”

“I can teach you to read it.” There was an uncertainty in his voice.

Nahri gave him a sharp look. “What?”

Alizayd spread his hands. “I can teach you . . . I mean, if you want me to. After all, Nisreen doesn’t command my time. And I can convince my father that it would be good for relations between our tribes.” His smile faded. “He is very . . . supportive of such endeavors.”

Nahri crossed her arms. “And what do you get out of it?” She didn’t trust the offer at all. The Qahtanis were too clever to take at face value.

“You are my father’s guest.” Nahri snorted, and Alizayd almost smiled again. “Fine. I must admit an obsession with the human world. You can ask anyone,” he added, perhaps picking up on her doubt. “Particularly your corner of it. I’ve never met anyone from Egypt. I’d love to learn more about it, hear your stories, and perhaps even improve my own Arabic.”

Oh, I have no doubt you’d like to know lots of things. As Nahri considered his offer, she mentally sized up the prince. He was young, younger even than she was, she was fairly certain. Privileged, a bit ill-tempered. His smile was eager, a little too hopeful for the offer to have been a casual aside. Whatever his motivation, Alizayd wanted this.

And Nahri wanted to know what was in his books, especially if the information was damaging to Dara. If making this awkward boy her tutor was the best way to protect herself and her Afshin, then by all means.

Besides . . . she did want to learn how to read.

Nahri dropped onto one of the floor cushions. “Why wait, then?” she asked in her best Cairene Arabic. She tapped her fingers on the book. “Let’s get started.”

19

Ali

“You’re going easy on me.”

Ali glanced across the training-room floor. “What?”

Jamshid e-Pramukh gave him a wry smile. “I’ve seen you spar with a zulfiqar before—you’re going easy on me.”

Ali’s gaze ran down the other man’s attire. Jamshid was dressed in the same sparring uniform as Ali, bleached white to highlight every strike of the fiery sword, but while Ali’s clothes were untouched, the Daeva guard’s uniform was scorched and covered in charcoal smudges. His lip was bleeding and his right cheek swollen from one of the times Ali had sent him crashing to the floor.

Ali raised an eyebrow. “You have an interesting idea of easy.”

“Nah,” Jamshid said in Divasti. Like his father, he retained a slight accent when speaking Djinnistani, a hint of the years they’d spent in outer Daevastana. “I should be in far worse shape. Little burning pieces of Jamshid e-Pramukh all over the floor.”

Ali sighed. “I don’t like fighting a foreigner with a zulfiqar,” he confessed. “Even if we’re just using training blades. It doesn’t feel