The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,144

snapping up as if he’d heard a suspicious noise. He glanced at the door, appearing to listen for another second. Anger swept the confusion off his face. He abruptly rose to his feet, marching to the door and all but ripping it off its hinges.

Alizayd al Qahtani stood on the other side.

The prince didn’t look even the slightest bit ashamed to have been caught. Indeed, as Nahri watched, he tapped his foot against the floor and crossed his arms, his steely eyes focused on Dara alone. “I thought you might need help finding your way out.”

Smoke curled around Dara’s collar. He cracked his knuckles, and Nahri tensed. But he went no further. Instead—still glaring at Ali—Dara directed his words to her, continuing to speak in the Divasti that Nahri was immediately relieved the prince couldn’t understand. “I can’t talk to you with this half-tribe brat lurking around.” He all but spat the words in Ali’s face. “Stay safe.” He poked Ali hard in the chest to move him out of the doorway and left.

Nahri’s heart sank at the sight of his retreating back. She threw Ali an annoyed look. “Are we spying on each other so openly now?”

For a moment, she expected the mask of friendship to drop. To see Ghassan reflected in Ali’s face, to get a hint of whatever was really driving him to meet with her every day.

Instead she saw what looked like a war of loyalties play across his face before he dropped his gaze. He opened his mouth, then paused as if considering his words. “Please be careful,” he said softly. “He . . . Nahri, you don’t . . .” He abruptly shut his mouth, and stepped back. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Have a good night.”

21

Ali

Ali crept along the dusty shelf, crawling on his belly as he made his way toward the scroll. He stretched out his arm, straining to reach it, but his fingers didn’t even graze the papyrus.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t point out—again—that you have people who could do this for you.” Nahri’s voice drifted from outside the cryptlike shelves Ali was currently lodged between. “At least three library assistants offered to retrieve that scroll.”

Ali grunted. He and Nahri were in the deepest part of the Royal Library’s ancient archives, in a cavelike room hacked out of the city’s bedrock. Only the oldest and most obscure texts were stored here, packed away in narrow stone shelves that Ali was swiftly learning were not intended for people to crawl through. The scroll they were after had rolled to the very back of its shelf, the bone-colored papyrus glowing in the light of their torch.

“I don’t like having people do things of which I’m perfectly capable,” Ali replied as he tried to inch a bit farther back. The rocky ceiling scraped his head and shoulders.

“They said there were scorpions down here, Ali. Big ones.”

“There are far worse things than scorpions in this palace,” he muttered. Ali would know—he suspected one of them was watching him right now. The scroll he was after was cuddled close to another twice its size, made from what looked like the hide of some sort of massive lizard. It had been shivering violently since he entered the shelf.

He’d yet to mention it to Nahri, but as Ali saw a flash of something that might have been teeth, his heart started to race. “Nahri, would . . . would you mind raising the torch a bit?”

The shelf immediately brightened, the dancing flames shadowing his profile. “What’s wrong?” she asked, clearly picking up on the anxiety in his voice.

“Nothing,” Ali lied as the lizard-hide scroll wiggled and flashed its scales. Heedless of scraping his head, Ali shoved himself deeper and snatched for the papyrus.

His fingers had just closed around it when the lizard-hide scroll gave a great bellow. Ali scrambled back, though not in time to avoid the sudden gust of wind that shot him out of the shelf like a cannonball, with enough force to throw him across the room. He landed hard on his back, the wind knocked from his lungs.

Nahri’s worried face hovered over his. “Are you all right?”

Ali touched the back of his head and winced. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “I meant to do that.”

“Sure you did.” She glanced nervously at the shelf. “Should we . . .”

From the direction of the shelf, there came the sound of a distinctly papery snore. “We’re fine.” He raised the papyrus scroll. “I don’t think this one’s