The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,67

feet. No. Those people had been innocent. They weren’t Tanzeem fighters, they were no threat to anyone. But as he reached for his zulfiqar, his father’s warning came back to him. Ghassan had done this to teach him a lesson. He’d destroyed the lives of two shafit because Ali had dared to interfere.

What would he do if Ali fought?

Ali closed his eyes, nausea rising in his chest as the little girl’s tear-streaked face sprang to his mind. God forgive me. But it wasn’t just her. Sheikh Anas and Rashid, Fatumai and her orphans. The auction block erected from the ruined mosque.

Every person I try to help, he breaks. He breaks us all.

He jerked his hand away from the zulfiqar. His skin was crawling. Ali couldn’t stay here. Not in this carefully preserved room. Not in this deadly city where every wrong move of his got someone else hurt.

Abruptly, he thought of Zaynab. Ali dared not get further entangled with his mother, but surely his sister could help him. She could get him out of this.

Muntadhir’s warning echoed in his ears, and the flicker of hope that had sparked in his chest at the thought of his sister sputtered out. No, Ali could not risk her. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting despair. Water was pooling in his hands, a thing that hadn’t happened in years.

Breathe. Pull yourself together. He opened his eyes.

His gaze fell on the box.

Ali was across the room in the next breath. He threw open the box, grabbed the dagger, and slipped it into his belt.

To hell with his father’s commands.

HE WAS HALFWAY TO THE INFIRMARY BEFORE HE started to wonder if he wasn’t being a bit rash.

Ali slowed on the path, one of the many that meandered through the heart of the harem garden. It wasn’t as though he was actually planning to visit Nahri, he reasoned. Ali would wait for a servant outside the infirmary and then ask to speak to her assistant, Nisreen. He could give Nisreen the dagger and a message, and if Nahri didn’t want to see him, that was fine. Completely fine. Hell, maybe Muntadhir would find out and murder him for trying to speak to his wife, and then Ali would no longer have to worry about staying in Daevabad through Navasatem.

He took a deep breath of the humid air, rich with the smell of rain-soaked earth and dew-damp flowers, and his chest unknotted slightly. The mingled sounds of the rushing canal and the water dripping off leaves were as soothing as a lullaby. He sighed, taking a short moment to watch a pair of small, sapphire-colored birds dart through the dark trees. If only the rest of Daevabad could be so peaceful.

A surge of cool moisture wove through his fingers. Startled, Ali glanced down to find a ribbon of fog swirling around his waist. As he watched, it curved over his shoulder like the embrace of a long-missed friend. His eyes went wide. This had certainly never happened in Am Gezira. And yet he grinned, enchanted by the sight of the water dancing upon his skin.

His smile vanished as quickly as it had come. He glanced quickly at the greenery around him, but thankfully the path was deserted. The whispers on the boat came back to him, the strange tug of the lake and the speed with which water had beaded from his skin in his room. Ali had not given thought to how much harder it might be to hide his new abilities in misty, water-rich Daevabad.

Then you’d better figure it out. He couldn’t get caught. Not here. The villagers of Bir Nabat might be willing to overlook his occasional strangeness—Ali had saved them, after all—but he couldn’t take the risk with Daevabad’s far more mecurial population. The marid were feared in his world. They were the monsters djinn parents evoked in frightening bedtime stories, the unknowable terror djinn travelers wore amulets to ward against. Growing up, he’d heard a dark tale of a distant Ayaanle relative who’d been thrown in the lake after being unjustly accused of sacrificing a Daeva child to his supposed marid lord.

Suppressing a shudder, Ali continued toward the infirmary. But when he reached the grounds, he stopped short again, amazed at the transformation. The formal gardens for which the Daevas were famous made a beautiful sight, with raised beds of bright herbs bordering trellises heavy with flowers, and fruit trees shading glass birdhouses and gently burbling fountains. At its very center, between two