The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,191

help him . . . by God, I’ll bind his wounds myself! Jamshid saved my life. He shouldn’t have to suffer because—”

“Kaveh’s son will be seen when mine opens his eyes.” Rough fingers tightened on Ali’s wrist. “He will be healed when I have the name of the Daeva who left those supplies on the beach.” Ghassan’s voice turned colder. “Tell him that. And pull yourself together, Muntadhir. Stop weeping over another man. You shame yourself.”

Ali heard the sound of a chair kicked away and a door slammed shut. Their words were meaningless to Ali, but their voices . . . oh, God, their voices.

Abba. He tried again. “Abba . . . ,” he finally choked out, trying to open his eyes.

A woman’s face swam into view before his father could respond. Nisreen, Ali remembered, recognizing Nahri’s assistant. “Open your eyes, Prince Alizayd. As wide as you can.”

He obeyed. She leaned in to examine his gaze. “I see no trace of the blackness remaining, my king.” She stepped back.

“I-I don’t understand . . . ,” Ali started. He was flat on his back, exhausted. His body burned; his skin stung, and his mind felt . . . raw. He looked up, recognizing the tempered glass ceiling of the infirmary. The sky was gray, and rain swirled on the transparent plates. “The palace was destroyed. You were all dead . . .”

“I’m not dead, Alizayd,” Ghassan assured him. “Try to relax; you’ve been injured.”

But Ali couldn’t relax. “What about Zaynab?” he asked, his ears ringing with his sister’s screams. “Is she . . . did those monsters . . .” He tried to sit up, suddenly realizing his wrists were bound to the bed. He panicked. “What is this? Why am I restrained?”

“You were fighting us; do you not remember?” Ali shook his head, and his father nodded to Nisreen. “Cut him loose.”

“My king, I’m not certain . . .”

“I was not asking.”

Nisreen obeyed, and his father helped him sit up, swatting his hands away when Ali tried to pull off the white sheet that had been tucked around him like swaddling cloth. “Leave that be. And your sister is fine. We are all fine.”

Ali glanced again at the rain beating against the glass ceiling; the sight of the water was oddly alluring. He blinked, forcing himself to look away. “But I don’t understand. I saw you—all of you—dead. I saw Daevabad destroyed,” Ali insisted, and yet even as he said the words, the details were already starting to escape him, the memories pulled away like the tide while newer, firmer ones replaced them.

His fight with the Afshin.

He shot me. He shot me, and I fell in the lake. Ali touched his throat but felt no injury. He started to shake. I shouldn’t be alive. No one survived the lake, not since the marids cursed it thousands of years ago.

“The Afshin . . . ,” Ali stammered. “He-he was trying to flee with Nahri. Did you catch him?”

He saw his father hesitate. “In a manner of speaking.” He glanced at Nisreen. “Take that away to be burned, and tell the emir to come back in here.”

Nisreen rose, her black eyes unreadable. In her arms was a wooden bowl filled with what looked like bloody lake debris: shells and rocks, mangled hooks, a tiny decayed fish, and a few teeth. The sight stirred him, and he watched as she left, passing by two larger reed baskets on the floor. A dead gray tentacle the size of a viper shared one with roughly torn waterweeds. The toothy jaw of a crocodile skull peeked out from the second.

Ali drew up straight. Teeth sinking into my shoulder, weeds and tentacles seizing my limbs. He glanced down, suddenly realizing just how carefully the sheet had been tucked around his body. He grabbed for one end.

His father tried to stop him. “Don’t, Alizayd.”

He tore it away and gasped.

He’d been scourged.

No, not scourged, he realized as his horrified gaze ran over his bloody limbs. The marks were too varied to have been made by a whip. There were gashes that cut down to muscle and scratches that barely drew blood. A pattern of scales was etched into his left wrist, and spiky ridges marred his right thigh. Strips and whirls of flesh had been carved from his arms like one might have wound bandages. There were bite marks on his stomach.

“What happened to me?” He started to tremble, and when no one responded, his voice broke in fright.