The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,18

he waved her off.

“No. I told you what I think, and you promised to leave me alone. I need to rest. I did a lot of magic last night and I want to be ready should the ifrit come sniffing for you again.”

Nahri shuddered, her hand instinctively going to her throat. “What do you mean to do with me?”

He made an irritated sound and reached into his pocket. Nahri jumped, expecting a weapon, but instead he pulled free a pile of clothing that looked too big to have fit the space and tossed it in her direction without opening his eyes. “There is a pool near the cliff. I suggest you visit it. You smell even viler than the rest of your kind.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Because I don’t know yet.” She could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I’ve called someone for help. We will wait.”

Just what she needed—a second djinn to weigh in on her fate. She picked up the bundle of clothes. “Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?”

He let out a drowsy laugh. “Good luck getting out of the desert.”

The oasis was small, and it wasn’t long before she came upon the pool he had mentioned, a shadowy pond fed by the steady trickle of springs from a rocky ledge and surrounded by scrubby brush. She saw no sign of horses or camels; she couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten here.

With a shrug, Nahri pulled off her ruined abaya, stepped in, and submerged.

The press of the cool water was like the touch of a friend. She closed her eyes, trying to digest the madness of the past day. She’d been kidnapped by a djinn. A daeva. Whatever. A magical creature with too many weapons who didn’t seem particularly enamored of her.

She drifted on her back, tracing shapes in the water and staring at the palm-fringed sky.

He thinks I have daeva blood. The idea that she was in any way related to the creature who’d summoned a sandstorm last night seemed laughable, but he had a point about ignoring the implications of her healing abilities. Nahri had spent her entire life trying to blend in with those around her just to survive. Those instincts were warring even now: her thrill at learning what she was and her urge to flee back to the life she’d worked so hard to establish for herself in Cairo.

But she knew her odds of surviving the desert alone were low, so she tried to relax, enjoying the pool until her fingertips wrinkled. She scoured her skin with a palm husk and massaged her hair in the water, relishing the sensation of being clean. It wasn’t often she got to bathe—back home, the women at the local hammam made it clear she was unwelcome, perhaps fearing she’d put a hex on the bathwater.

There was little that could be done to save her abaya, but she washed what remained, stretching it out on a sunny rock to dry before turning her attention to the clothing the daeva had given her.

It was obviously his; it smelled of burnt citrus and was cut to accommodate a muscular man, not a chronically famished woman. Nahri rubbed the ash-colored fabric between her fingers and marveled at its quality. It was soft as silk, yet sturdy as felt. It was also completely seamless; try as she might, she couldn’t find a single stitch. She could likely sell it for a good sum if she escaped.

It took effort to get the clothes to fit; the tunic hung comically large around her waist and ended past her knees. She rolled the sleeves up as best she could and then turned her attention to the pants. After ripping a strip from her abaya to use as a belt and rolling up the hems, they stayed on reasonably well, but she could only imagine how ridiculous she looked.

With a sharp rock, she cut a longer section of her abaya for a headscarf. Her hair had dried in a wild mess of black curls that she attempted to braid before tying the makeshift scarf around her head. She drank her fill from the waterskin—it seemed to refill on its own—but the water did little to help the hunger gnawing at her stomach.

The palm trees were thick with swollen gold dates, and overripe ones, covered in ants, littered the ground. She tried everything she could think of to get at the ones in the trees: shaking the trunks, throwing rocks, even a particularly ill-fated attempt at climbing, but