The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,139

of Daevabad’s original people?”

The prince winced. “When you put it that way . . .”

“What about your father?”

“He’s fluent.” Ali replied. “My father is very . . . taken with Daeva culture. Muntadhir, as well.”

Interesting. Nahri filed that information away. “Well, that settles it. You’ll join me when I start. There’s no reason for you not to learn.”

“I look forward to being outmatched,” Ali said. Just then, a servant approached bearing a large covered platter, and the prince’s face lit up. “Salaams, brother, thank you.” He smiled at Nahri. “I have a surprise for you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “More human artifacts to identify?”

“Not exactly.”

The servant pulled away the top of the platter, and the rich smell of sizzling sugar and buttery dough wafted past her. Several triangles of flaky sweet bread sprinkled with raisins, coconut, and sugar were stacked on a plate, the aroma and sight immediately familiar.

“Is that . . . feteer?” she asked, her stomach immediately grumbling at the delicious scent. “How did you get this?”

Ali looked delighted. “I heard there was a shafit man from Cairo working in the kitchen and requested that he prepare a treat from your home. He made this as well.” He nodded at a chilled carafe of bloodred liquid.

Karkade. The servant poured her a cup of the cold hibiscus tea, and she took a long sip, savoring its sweetened tang before tearing off a strip of the buttery pastry and popping it in her mouth. It tasted exactly like she remembered. Like home.

This is my home now, she reminded herself. Nahri took another bite of feteer. “Try some,” she urged. “It’s delicious.”

He helped himself while she sipped her karkade. Though she was enjoying the snack, there was something about the combination that was troubling her . . . and then it hit her. This was the same meal she’d eaten in the coffeehouse before she entered the cemetery in Cairo. Before her life was abruptly upended.

Before she met Dara.

Her appetite vanished, and her heart gave its usual lurch, whether from worry or longing she didn’t know and had given up trying to sort out. Dara had been gone for two months—longer than their original journey together—and yet she woke every morning still half-expecting to see him. She missed him: his sly grin, his unexpected sweetness, even his constant grumbling—not to mention the occasional, accidental press of his body against hers.

Nahri pushed away the food, but the call to sunset prayer sounded out before Alizayd noticed. “Is it maghrib already?” she asked as she wiped the sugar off her fingers; the time always seemed to fly when she was with the prince. “Nisreen is going to kill me. I told her I’d be back hours ago.” Her assistant—although she occasionally felt more like a disapproving schoolmistress or scolding aunt to Nahri—had made her distaste for both Prince Alizayd and these tutoring sessions quite clear.

Ali waited until the call to prayer was complete to respond. “Do you have a patient?”

“No one new, but Nisreen wanted—” She paused as Ali reached for one of his books, the sleeve of his pale robe falling back to reveal a badly swollen wrist. “What happened to you?”

“It’s nothing.” He pulled his sleeve down. “Just a training accident from the other day.”

Nahri frowned. The djinn recovered quickly from nonmagical injuries; it must have been a hard blow to still look like that. “Would you like me to heal you? It looks painful.”

He shook his head as he stood, although she noticed now that he was carrying his supplies with his left arm. “It’s not that bad,” he said, averting his eyes as she readjusted her chador. “And it was well earned. I made a stupid mistake.” He scowled. “Several, actually.”

She shrugged, accustomed by now to the prince’s stubbornness. “If you insist.”

Ali placed the lock in a velvet box and handed it back to the attendant. “A lock,” he mused again. “Daevabad’s most esteemed scholars have themselves convinced this thing can calculate the number of stars in the sky.”

“Couldn’t they simply have asked another shafit from the human world?”

He hesitated. “That is not quite how things are done here.”

“It should be,” she replied as they left the library. “It seems a waste of time otherwise.”

“I could not agree more.”

There was an oddly fierce edge to his voice, and Nahri wondered whether or not to press him further. He’d answer, she knew; he answered all her questions. By God, sometimes he talked so much it could be difficult to get him