The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,138

them more about the marid and the batty old man barricaded in a room at the hospital were one and the same. Ali had yet to even set eyes on him; upon learning strangers would be entering the hospital, he’d filled the corridor outside his quarters with all manner of magical traps. Finally, after several workers had been bitten by hexed books, Nahri and Razu—the only people Issa would speak to—had been able to negotiate a compromise: no one would be permitted near his room, and in return, he’d stop cursing the corridor.

“We should have asked Nahri to come,” Ali said again. “Issa likes her, and she’s very skilled at prying information out of people.”

His mother gave him a dark look. “You best make sure she’s not prying information out of you. That woman is the kind of ally you keep at knife’s length.” They stopped outside the scholar’s locked door, and Hatset knocked. “Ustadh Is—”

She hadn’t even finished the word when Ali felt a whisper of magic. He yanked his mother back—just before a saber, made from what looked like disassembled astrolabes, sliced across the door frame.

Ali swore in Geziriyya, but Hatset merely shook her head. “Ustadh, now really,” she lectured in Ntaran. “We’ve discussed being more sociable.” A crafty note entered her voice. “Besides … I have a gift for you.”

The door abruptly cracked open, but only a handbreadth. Ali jumped as a pair of emerald-bright eyes appeared in the gloomy dark.

“Queen Hatset?” Even Issa’s voice sounded ancient.

His mother pulled a tiny ash-colored sack from her robe. “I do believe you were interested in this for your experiments when last we met?”

Ali inhaled, recognizing the sharp smell. “Gunpowder? You’re going to give him gunpowder? For his experiments?”

Hatset shushed him. “A brief chat, Issa,” she said smoothly. “A very brief, very confidential chat.”

The scholar’s luminous eyes darted between them. “There are no humans with you?”

“We have been over this a hundred times, Ustadh. There are no humans in Daevabad.”

The door swung open, the sack of gunpowder vanishing from his mother’s hand faster than Ali’s eyes could track.

“Come, come!” Issa ushered them in, slamming the door closed when they passed the threshold, whispering what sounded like an unreasonable number of locking charms under his breath.

Ali was regretting their decision to come here with each passing moment, but he followed his mother into the cavernous chamber. Books were stacked to the ceiling and scrolls stuffed into shelves Issa seemed to have magicked together from salvaged bits of the infirmary’s ruins. A long row of dusty stained-glass windows threw gloomy light onto a low table crowded with gleaming metal instruments, pieces of parchment, and burning candles. A cot lay tucked between two towering piles of books and behind a section of the floor studded with broken glass, as though the scholar feared being attacked while he slept. Only one small corner of the room was kept neat, a pair of floor cushions framing a striped ottoman that had been carefully set with a silver tray that held a teapot, glasses, and, judging from the smell, several of the cardamom-spiced sweets Nahri was fond of.

We really should have brought her, Ali thought again, guilt gnawing at him. God knew he was already keeping enough secrets from Nahri.

The scholar returned to a well-worn pillow on the floor, folding his skinny limbs beneath him like some sort of gangly bird. As a resurrected formerly enslaved djinn, Issa’s age was impossible to guess. His face was well lined and his fuzzy brows and beard were entirely snow white. And the disapproving expression on his face was … oddly familiar.

“Do I know you?” Ali asked slowly, studying the man.

Issa’s green eyes flickered over him. “Yes,” he said shortly. “I threw you out of a history lecture once for asking too many questions.” He tilted his head. “You were much smaller.”

“That was you?” The memory came to Ali immediately—not many tutors had dared treat one of Ghassan’s sons with such disrespect. Ali had been young, no older than ten, but the man he remembered tossing him out had been a forbidding, furious scholar in fine robes … nothing like the frail old man before him. “I don’t understand. If you had a position at the Royal Library, what are you doing here?”

Pain filled the scholar’s bright eyes. “I was forced to resign.”

Hatset took a seat across from Issa, motioning for Ali to do the same. “After the Afshin’s rampage, there was a lot of violence directed at the