The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,58

knife dragged through oil, leaving not a single wave in its wake. They had yet to pass the veil, and with the morning’s thick fog, nothing was visible behind them. It felt as though they were suspended in time, the lake endless.

Tell me your name. Ali shivered at the memory, the marid’s soft whisper like a finger of ice stroking his spine. The soft buzzing of insects rose in his ears. The water really was so close. It would be nothing to climb over the ship’s railing. To trail his hands in its cool depths. To submerge.

Aqisa’s hand came down on his wrist. “A little close to the edge, don’t you think?”

Ali started, pulled from his daze. He was holding the railing, one foot slightly raised though he had no memory of doing so. And the buzzing sound was gone.

“I … did you hear that?” he asked.

“All I hear is Lubayd emptying the contents of his stomach,” Aqisa replied, jerking a thumb at their friend as he did just that, violently retching over the boat’s railing.

Ali shivered again, rubbing his arms. It felt as though something damp and heavy had been clinging to his skin. “Odd,” he muttered.

Lubayd made his staggering way over to them, his face pale. “I hate this blasted thing,” he declared. “What kind of djinn sail boats? We’re fire creatures, for the love of God.”

Ali gave him a sympathetic look. “We’re almost there, my friend. The veil should be falling before us at any moment.”

“And have you a plan yet for when we arrive?” Aqisa asked.

“No?” Ali had sent missives to the palace several times during the journey to Daevabad, suggesting that Ayaanle traders be sent out from the capital to intercept them. He’d even offered to simply leave the cargo on the beach outside the city. Each letter received the same reply, written in the hand of a different scribe. Your return pleases us. “I suppose the only thing we can do is wait and see how we’re received.”

Another hush descended, and this time all three of them went still. The scent of smoke washed over him, along with the familiar tingling as they crossed the veil.

And then Daevabad was towering before them.

The city dwarfed their ship, a lion to a gnat. The thick fog was a mere skirt around its massive, glinting brass walls, and its looming bulk blotted out the sky. Peeking over the wall were the tops of sandblasted glass minarets and delicate floating stupas, ancient mud-brick ziggurats and brightly tiled temples. And guarding all of them was the stark crenellated tower of the Citadel, standing tall and proud as a symbol of Am Gezira.

Lubayd exhaled. “That’s Daevabad? That’s where you’re from?”

“That’s where I’m from,” Ali echoed softly. The sight of his old home made him feel as though someone had reached into his chest and turned over his heart. He looked up at the facades of the long-dead Nahids carved into the city’s brass walls as the boat drew near. Their distant metal gazes seemed ethereal, bored, the arrival of some exiled sand-fly prince a mere footnote in the long history they’d witnessed. Though the Nahid Council had been overthrown centuries earlier, no one had torn down their statues. The common refrain was that the Qahtanis didn’t care: they were so confident and secure in their reign that they weren’t bothered by ruined remembrances of the defeated Nahids.

But as with many things in Daevabad, the truth was more complicated. The facades couldn’t be torn down. Not by anyone. Zaydi’s workers had no sooner taken a chisel to their surface than boils broke out across their skin, brass erupting through the fetid wounds until all that was left was ashy bone and puddles of cooling metal.

No one had tried since.

The docks were silent and deserted, save for a pair of cargo dhows and a Sahrayn sandship, the port in even worse repair than it had been when Ali left. Even so, the decay only added to the majesty. It was like stepping into some long-abandoned paradise, a massive world built by beings they could scarcely understand.

“Praise God …,” Lubayd whispered as they slid past a statue of a warrior holding a bow twice Ali’s height and familiar enough to make his stomach turn. “I did not expect to ever see such a sight in my life.”

“I did,” Aqisa muttered darkly. “I just assumed we’d have an army behind us when it happened.”

A dull ache pounded in Ali’s head. “You can’t talk like