The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,169

coming back. Those were the only words he remembered and the warning echoed in his head, dread he didn’t understand wrapping tight around his heart. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “Something is going to happen.”

“Yes, you’re going to get thrown in the lake if you don’t shut your mouth.” Aqisa shoved aside the wet curtain she was using to mop the floor and then tossed her turban cloth to Lubayd. “Wipe that blood off your face.” She looked between the men. “No one can see this, understand? Nothing happened. We’re not in Bir Nabat and this isn’t some new spring we can all pretend you were lucky enough to discover.”

The words pierced Ali’s daze, upending the delicate dance he and his friends usually did around this subject. “What?” he whispered.

Lubayd was stuffing ruined papers into a dripping cloth sack. “Ali, brother, come on. There was a damn oasis bubbling beneath your body when we found you in the desert. There are times you don’t emerge from the water in the cistern back home for hours.”

“I—I didn’t think you noticed,” Ali stammered as fear sent his heart racing. “Neither of you ever spoke—”

“Because these are not things to be discussed,” Aqisa said bluntly. “Those … creatures. You cannot speak of them, Ali. You certainly can’t run around shouting that they’re in your head.”

Lubayd spoke up again, looking almost apologetic. “Ali, I don’t spin my wild stories just to annoy you. I do it so people don’t spread other stories about you, understand? Tales that might not have a happy ending.”

Ali stared at them. He didn’t know what to say. Explanations, apologies, they ran through his mind, leaving him at a loss.

The adhan came then, calling the faithful to maghrib prayer. Across the city, Ali knew court would be ending, his father announcing the official beginning to Navasatem as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Aqisa straightened up, coming around the bed cushion with a garment bag. “These are the clothes your sister sent you for tonight’s ceremony.” She dropped it in his lap. “Get dressed. Forget what we discussed here. You’re about to have your family and every gossiping, back-stabbing noble in this city crawling through these corridors. You can’t be trembling like a leaf and rambling about the marid.” She eyed him. “It was a nightmare, brother. Say it.”

“It was a nightmare,” he repeated, his voice hollow. He’d been having them for months, hadn’t he? He was overworked, he was exhausted. Was it any surprise that a dream might have been more visceral today? More gut-wrenching? That his water abilities might have reacted accordingly?

It was a nightmare. Only a nightmare. It had to be.

The festivities were in full swing by the time Nahri arrived at the hospital, the complex vibrant with the magical frenzy the djinn excelled at. Bewitched glass dragonflies with wings of colorful conjured fire flitted through the air, and the fountains flowed with date wine. A trio of musicians played instruments that looked as if they’d been fished from an aquatic kingdom: the drums were made from the bellies of impossibly large shells, the sitar carved from pale driftwood and strung with sea silk. A life-size brass automaton in the shape of a sly-eyed dancer crushed sugarcane into juice, the liquid pouring from one glittering, outstretched hand. A banquet had been set up in one of the chambers, the aroma of spices carrying on the warm air.

The crowd of merrymakers was no less impressive. Nobles from the city’s oldest families and merchants from the richest mingled and argued with political elites in the garden courtyard, while Daevabad’s most popular poets and artists gossiped and challenged each other to impromptu competitions from satin cushions. Everyone was dressed in their enchanted finest: fragrant capes of living flowers, sparkling scarves of harnessed lightning, and glittering robes of mirrored beads.

Muntadhir and Nahri were immediately swept into the packed courtyard. Her husband, of course, was in his element, surrounded by obsequious nobles and loyal friends. At the fringe of the circle, Nahri stood up on her toes in a vain effort to see the completed hospital over the heads of laughing partygoers and dashing servants. She thought she might have caught a glimpse of Razu dealing twinkling playing cards before a group of enthralled onlookers, but deciding to respect whatever scheme the other woman had devised, Nahri stayed put.

That was not the case, however, when Nahri finally saw Subha, scowling at the crowd from beneath a shadowed archway.

“Emir, if you’ll excuse me a moment