The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,71

The Treasury will cover—”

“The king will have to approve—” Kaveh started to say.

Ali raised a hand. “It will come from my accounts if necessary,” he said firmly, knowing that would end any doubt. The fact that his Ayaanle grandfather gave a lavish yearly endowment to his royal grandson was an open secret. Ali normally found it embarrassing—he didn’t need the money and knew his grandfather only did it to annoy his father. But in this instance, it worked to his advantage.

The Daeva merchant’s eyes popped, and he dropped to the ground and pressed his ash-covered forehead against the carpet. “Oh, thank you, Your Majesty. May the flames burn brightly for you.”

Ali fought a smile, bemused at the traditional Daeva blessing being bestowed upon him of all people. He suspected the merchant was going to present him with a rather hefty bill, but he was nonetheless pleased, sensing he’d handled the situation correctly. Maybe he could manage the role of Qaid after all.

“I trust we are done?” he asked Kaveh as Rashid opened the door. Movement caught his eye up ahead: two small boys armed with makeshift bows were playing along one of the fountains in the plaza. Each had an arrow in hand, and they were bashing them together like swords.

Kaveh followed his gaze. “Would you like to join them, Prince Alizayd? You’re near enough in age, no?”

He remembered Muntadhir’s warning. Don’t let him get under your skin. “I dare not. They look far too fierce,” he said calmly. He grinned to himself, ducking out from under the balustrade and into the bright sunshine, as Kaveh’s smirk turned to a scowl. The sky was a cheerful blue, with only a few lacy white clouds dancing in from the east. It was another beautiful day in a string of beautiful days, warm and bright—a pattern most unlike Daevabad and strange enough to start attracting attention.

And the weather wasn’t all that was odd. Ali heard rumors that the Nahids’ original fire altar, extinguished after Manizheh and Rustam—the siblings who’d been the last of their family—were murdered, had somehow relit itself in a locked room. An abandoned, weed-choked grove in the garden where one of them had liked to paint was suddenly orderly and flourishing, and just last week one of the shedu statues that framed the palace walls had turned up on top of the ziggurat’s roof, its brass gaze focused on the lake as if awaiting a boat.

Then there was that mural of Anahid. Against Muntadhir’s wishes, Ali had it destroyed. Yet he walked past it every few days, nagged by the sense that there was something alive beneath the ruined facade.

He glanced at Kaveh, wondering what the grand wazir made of the whispers coming from his superstitious tribe. Kaveh was an ardent devotee of the fire cult, and the Pramukh family and the Nahids had been close. Many of the plants and herbs used in traditional Nahid healing were grown on the Pramukhs’ vast estates. Kaveh himself had originally come to Daevabad as a trade envoy but had risen quickly in Ghassan’s court, becoming a trusted advisor even as he aggressively pushed for Daeva rights.

Kaveh spoke again. “I apologize if my girls made you nervous the other week. It was meant as a gesture of kindness.”

Ali bit back the first retort that came to mind. And the second. He was unused to this type of verbal sparring. “Such . . . gestures are not to my taste, Grand Wazir,” he finally said. “I would appreciate it if you remember that for the future.”

Kaveh said nothing, but Ali could feel his cold stare upon him as they continued to walk. By the Most High, what had he done to earn this man’s enmity? Could he truly think Ali’s beliefs represented that much of a threat to his people?

It was an otherwise pleasant stroll, the Daeva Quarter a far lovelier sight when he wasn’t dashing through it pursued by archers. The cobbled stones were perfectly even and swept. Cypress trees shadowed the main avenue, broken up by flower-filled fountains and potted barberry bushes. The stone buildings were finely polished, their thatched wooden screens neat and fresh—one would never guess that this neighborhood was among the oldest in the city. Ahead, a few elderly men were playing chatrang and sipping from little glass vials, probably filled with some human intoxicant. Two veiled women glided from the direction of the Grand Temple.

It was an idyllic scene, at odds with the filthy conditions in the