The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,98

“Propaganda. Any scholar could—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Muntadhir said evenly. “Ali, look at this place.” He pointed to the scrolls. “They kept records, they verified the bodies. We might have won the war, but at least some of our ancestors were so frightened of the Nahids, they literally kept their bodies to reassure themselves that they were truly dead.”

Ali didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure how to. The whole room made his skin crawl; Suleiman’s chosen, reduced to rotting in their burial shrouds. The cavern—no, the tomb—was silent save for the sound of spitting torches.

Muntadhir spoke again. “It gets worse.” He jiggled free a small drawer in the side of the rack and plucked out a copper box about the size of his hand. “Another blood seal, though what you have on your hand should be enough to open it.” He offered it to Ali. “Trust me, our ancestors never wanted anyone to find this. I’m not even sure why they kept it.”

The box grew warm in Ali’s bloody hand, and a tiny spring was released. Nestled inside was a dusty brass amulet.

A relic, he recognized. All djinn wore something similar, a bit of blood and hair, sometimes a baby tooth or flayed piece of skin—all bound up with holy verses in molten metal. It was the only means by which they could be returned to a body if they were enslaved by an ifrit. Ali wore one, as did Muntadhir, copper bolts through their right ears in the manner of all Geziri.

He frowned. “Whose relic is this?”

Muntadhir gave him a bleak smile. “Darayavahoush e-Afshin’s.”

Ali dropped the amulet as if it had bitten him. “The Scourge of Qui-zi?”

“May God strike him down.”

“We shouldn’t have this,” Ali insisted. A shiver of fear ran down his spine. “That—that’s not what the books say happened to him.”

Muntadhir gave him a knowing look. “And what do the books say happened, Alizayd? That the Scourge mysteriously disappeared when his rebellion was at its height, as he prepared to retake Daevabad?” His brother knelt to retrieve the amulet. “Strange timing, that.”

Ali shook his head. “It’s not possible. No djinn would turn over another to the ifrit. Not even their worst enemy.”

“Grow up, little brother,” Muntadhir chided and replaced the box. “It was the worst war our people have ever seen. And Darayavahoush was a monster. Even I know that much of our history. If Zaydi al Qahtani cared for his people, he would have done anything to end it. Even this.”

Ali reeled. A fate worse than death: That’s what everyone said about enslavement. Eternal servitude, forced to grant the most savage and intimate desires of an endless slew of human masters. Of the slaves that were found and freed, very few survived with their sanity intact.

Zaydi al Qahtani couldn’t have arranged such a thing, he tried to tell himself. His family’s long reign could not be the product of such an awful betrayal of their race.

His heart skipped a beat. “Wait, you don’t think the man the scout saw . . .”

“No,” Muntadhir said, a little too quickly. “I mean, he can’t be. His relic is right here. So he couldn’t have been returned to a body.”

Ali nodded. “No, of course not. You’re right.” He tried to put the nightmarish thought of the Scourge of Qui-zi, freed after centuries of slavery and seeking bloody vengeance for his slain Nahids, out of mind. “Then why did you bring me here, Dhiru?”

“To set your priorities straight. To remind you of our real enemy.” Muntadhir gestured at the Nahid remains scattered around them. “You’ve never met a Nahid, Ali. You never watched Manizheh snap her fingers and break the bones of a man across the room.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’re dead anyway.”

“But the Daevas are not,” Muntadhir replied. “Those kids you were fretting about upstairs? What’s the worst that will happen to them—they’ll grow up thinking they’re purebloods?” Muntadhir shook his head. “The Nahid Council would have had them burned alive. Hell, probably half the Daevas still think that’s a good idea. Abba walks the line between them. We are neutral. It’s the only thing that’s kept peace in the city.” He lowered his voice. “You . . . you are not neutral. People who think and talk the way you do are dangerous. And Abba does not suffer threats to his city lightly.”

Ali leaned against the stone sarcophagus, and then remembering what it contained, quickly straightened back up. “What are you saying?”

His brother met his gaze. “Something’s going to happen today,