The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,198

“What do you think, Grand Wazir? It seems you knew Manizheh very well. Does our Nahri resemble her strongly?”

Kaveh looked like he was having a hard time breathing, let alone answering. His hands were clenched into tight fists, his knuckles pale and bloodless. “Yes,” he whispered.

Ghassan’s eyes flashed in triumph. “Oh, come now, you can lie better than that. Not that it matters. She has something else. Something her mother had, something her uncle had. Not that either of them was aware of it. Bit embarrassing actually.” He tapped the black mark on his temple, Suleiman’s eight-pointed star. “You think you own a thing, and well …”

A frisson of danger tingled across her skin. Hating that she was playing into his game but seeing no way out, she pressed. “Why don’t you try speaking straight for once?”

“Suleiman’s seal, child. You bear a shadow of his mark … right here.” Ghassan reached out to touch the side of her face, and Nahri jerked away. “To me, it is clear as day.” The king turned back to Kaveh, his gray eyes simmering with triumph and something else, something vicious and vindictive. “They all bear it, Grand Wazir. Every single person with Nahid blood. Manizheh. Rustam. Nahri.” He paused, seeming to savor the moment. “Your Jamshid.”

Kaveh shot to his feet.

“Sit back down,” Ghassan snapped. The cruel humor was gone from his voice in an instant, the merciless cold of a despot replacing it. “Or the only place Jamshid—your Baga Nahid—will end up is in a shroud.”

Nahri reeled, her hand going to her mouth. “Jamshid is a Nahid?” Bewildered and shocked, she struggled for words. “But he has no …”

Abilities. The word died on her tongue. Jamshid’s desperate questions about the Rumi fire that had burned him and his abruptly healed wounds. The ancient Tukharistani he’d spoken to Razu … and the raw burst of power Nahri had felt when he clutched her hand and she summoned a sandstorm.

Jamshid was a Nahid. Nahri’s eyes were suddenly wet. Jamshid was family.

And there was no way he knew it; he wasn’t that good of a liar. She whirled on Kaveh. He’d dropped back to the ground at Ghassan’s command but looked no less fierce. “You hid it from him,” she accused. “How could you?”

Kaveh was shaking now, rocking back and forth. “I had to protect him from Ghassan. It was the only way.”

The king scoffed. “Fine job you did of that; I knew that boy was a Nahid the moment you brought him to my court. The rest was rather easy to figure out.” Hostility leached into his voice. “The summer of his birth was when Saffiyeh died. The summer Manizheh ignored my pleas to return to Daevabad early to save her queen.”

“Saffiyeh was never her queen,” Kaveh shot back. “And Manizheh got barely a week with her own child before she was forced to return to you once again.”

“It was clearly enough time for her to do something to conceal Jamshid’s abilities, wasn’t it?” Malice twisted Ghassan’s face. “She always considered herself so clever … and yet her son might have used those abilities when Darayavahoush turned on him. An irony in that: the last Baga Nahid nearly killed by his Afshin, all while trying to save a Qahtani.”

Nahri looked away, heartsick. Dara probably would have thrown himself on his own sword if he’d known that truth. She leaned against the parapet, her legs suddenly weak. Ghassan and Kaveh were still arguing, and Nahri knew she should be paying attention, but suddenly all she wanted to do was escape this awful palace and find her brother.

“You should be grateful,” Ghassan was saying. “I gave the two of you a life here. Wealthy, respected, powerful …”

“As long as we danced to your tune,” Kaveh snapped. “Forget our desires, our ambitions; everything is in thrall to Ghassan al Qahtani’s grand plans.” His voice was cruel. “And you wonder why Manizheh refused you.”

“I suspect the reason she refused me—however disappointing—sits in front of me now.” Ghassan was eying Kaveh dismissively, but there was a resentment in his gray gaze that he couldn’t entirely mask. “Manizheh clearly had a peculiar … taste.”

Nahri’s patience abruptly vanished. “Oh, get over yourselves,” she hissed. “I’m not standing here listening to some old men bicker about a long-lost love. Where is my brother?”

Ghassan’s expression darkened, but he answered. “Somewhere secure. Where he’ll be staying, with people I trust, until the city is calm again.”

“Until you beat us back into obedience, you mean,” Nahri