The Empire of Gold - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,46

grown up listening to stories of at his mother’s knee.

Ta Ntry.

Amma.

Hatset would be home by now, right? It seemed so impossibly far, but … Ali brushed his thumb over the painted lands, his mind spinning with possibility. He was still struggling with his grief, but he hadn’t stopped quietly contemplating ways to return to Daevabad, turning their circumstances over like a puzzle in his mind.

And here was a new piece.

Ali rose to his feet, still holding the maps. A glance revealed Nahri several stalls down, immersed in her own perusing. He opened his mouth to call her name, then stopped.

No, let her be, he told himself, a rush of tenderness stealing through him at the sight of his friend. He wouldn’t get her hopes up, not yet. On the surface, Nahri seemed to be doing better than he was, but Ali wasn’t sure he believed it. Ali’s pain was bonedeep, but simply rooted: his loved ones had been murdered and his home conquered. Nahri had had her entire world turned upside down for the second time in six years, betrayed by seemingly everyone close to her, including the mother and Afshin she’d believed dead.

Besides, surely Ali could do this part on his own. He approached the bookseller.

“Peace be upon you … Peace be upon—excuse me!” Ali shouted, snapping his fingers in front of the human’s face.

The man blinked, a dazed look slipping across his features as he tilted his head. “Hello?” he said, sounding uncertain of the word.

“I would like to buy these,” Ali announced. He fumbled in his bag for the coins Yaqub had given him this morning. The apothecarist had wept, admiring his newly polished workbench. “You are a blessing. You … whatever your name is again,” he’d added, beause every night he seemed to forget anew Ali’s name and, on occasion—his very existence.

Ali held out the coins. “Is this enough?”

The bookseller glanced down at the coins and abruptly blinked again. “Yes,” he said, sweeping them from Ali’s hands. “The exact amount, yes.”

“Oh,” Ali replied, not missing the glee with which the merchant shut his money away in a small chest. He knew it was frowned upon to assume the worst of others, but he was pretty sure he’d just been cheated.

“What are you doing?”

Ali jumped at Nahri’s voice. “Nothing!” he said swiftly, turning around and hoping she wouldn’t figure out how easily he’d just been swindled. “So where to next?”

“Lunch. It’s time I repaid you for the feteer you brought me back in Daevabad with a proper Egyptian meal.”

10

NAHRI

Nahri lay back on the roof beside Ali, the remains of their feast surrounding them. “I concede defeat,” he admitted. “Human food is better.”

“Told you,” she replied, finishing the last slice of watermelon and tossing the rind aside. “Conjured spices have nothing on fried street dough.”

“And yet the place you’ve chosen to enjoy our meal is very djinn of you,” he teased, gesturing to the crumbling building they’d climbed. It looked like it had been a khanqah, a Sufi lodge, abandoned as the city’s heart shifted away. “Humans believe we haunt ruins, don’t they?”

“Exactly. It was a great place to hide when I was younger, and it has an excellent view,” she said, gazing at the spread of brown domes and minarets set against the glint of the Nile.

Ali pushed himself into a sitting position. “It does.” But then sorrow swept his face, obliterating the brief levity he had seemed to be enjoying. “There was a view of Daevabad like this from the Citadel tower,” he said softly, running his fingers over the broken bricks. “It’s still hard to believe it’s gone. The Citadel was my home for so long, the other soldiers like my family.”

His words struck close. “That’s how I felt about the infirmary and Nisreen. Jamshid too,” she added, guilt clawing through her. Jamshid was family, and Nahri couldn’t help but recall that one of the last things she’d done in Daevabad was refuse Ghassan’s attempt to use her brother’s life to blackmail her. Had Ghassan lived a few hours more, he might have taken it—killed Jamshid before Nahri’s very eyes.

And she’d been ready to let it happen: all to save the life of the man sitting next to her now in the hopes he’d take down his father. Not that she dared tell Ali any of this yet. Nahri didn’t think they were ready for that conversation.

“Kaveh might be a traitorous snake, but I’m sure he had a plan to keep his son safe.” Ali’s