The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,223

on four billowing wings, crimson fire flashing beneath glimmering scales. It had a fanged mouth large enough to swallow a horse and six limbs ending in sharp claws. As Nahri watched, it shrieked, sounding lost as it dived for a fleeing scholar. It caught him in its claws and then flung him hard into the opposite wall as a surge of flames burst from its mouth.

Nahri felt the blood drain from her face. “Is that a dragon?”

At her side, Ali gulped. “It … it looks like a zahhak actually.” His panicked eyes met hers. “They are not usually that big.”

“Oh,” Nahri choked out. The zahhak shrieked again and set the lecture alcove next to them ablaze, and they both jumped.

Ali raised a shaking finger at a row of doors on the other side of the massive library. “There’s a book lift just beyond there. It goes to the pavilion we want.”

Nahri eyed the distance. They were several stories up and the floor of the library was in complete chaos, a maze of broken, burning furniture and fleeing djinn, the zahhak diving at everything that moved.

“That thing will kill us—no,” she said, seizing Ali’s wrist when he went to lunge in the direction of a young scribe the zahhak had just snatched up. “You run out there now and you’re no good to anyone.”

A crack drew her attention. The serpent was still bashing the barricaded door and the metal was starting to strain.

“Did anything in your Citadel training prepare you for fighting giant monsters of smoke and flame?”

Ali was staring intently at the eastern wall. “Not at the Citadel …” He looked pensive. “What you did to the ceiling back there … do you think you can do it to that wall?”

“You want me to bring down the library wall?” Nahri repeated.

“The canal runs behind it. I’m hoping I can use the water to extinguish that thing,” he explained as the zahhak veered a little too close.

“Water? How do you expect to control …” She trailed off, remembering the way he’d summoned his zulfiqar while fighting Dara and registering the guilt in his expression now. “The marid did nothing to you, right? Isn’t that what you told me?”

He groaned. “Can we fight about this later?”

Nahri gave the shelves on the eastern wall a forlorn last look. “If we live, you’re taking the blame for destroying all those books.” She took a deep breath, trying to focus and pull upon the palace’s magic like she had in the corridor. It had been a surge of rage and grief over Muntadhir that had finally pushed her abilities.

Across the room, a knot of scholars hiding behind an overturned table on the second floor caught her eye. Entirely innocent men and women, many of whom had fetched her books and patiently instructed her in Daevabad’s history. This was her home—this palace now filled with the dead she hadn’t been able to protect—and she’d be damned if she was going to let that zahhak take another life under her roof.

Her skin prickled, magic simmering through her blood, tickling at her mind. She inhaled sharply, almost tasting the old stone. She could feel the canal, the cold water pressing hard against the thick wall.

Ali shivered as though she’d touched him. “Is that you?” A glance revealed his eyes had once again been swept by the oily dark film.

She nodded, examining the wall in her mind. The process felt suddenly familiar, much like the way she’d examine an arthritic spine for weak spots, and there were plenty here; the library had been built over two millennia ago. Roots snaked through crumbling bits of brick, rivulets of canal water stretching like grasping tentacles.

She pulled, encouraging the weak spots to crumble. She felt the wall shiver, the water churning on the other side. “Help me,” she demanded, grabbing Ali’s hand. The touch of his skin, cold and unusually clammy, sent an icy jolt down her spine that made the entire wall shake. She could see the water fighting its way in and worked to loosen the stone further.

A small leak sprang first. And then, in the time it took for her heart to skip, an entire section of the wall came down in a burst of broken bricks and surging water.

Nahri’s eyes shot open. Had she not been concerned for both her life and the priceless manuscripts being swiftly destroyed, the sudden appearance of a stories-high waterfall in the middle of the library would have been an extraordinary sight. It