The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,77

a low couch, half bent over a beautifully carved lapis lazuli game board, chuckling with a shafit man and woman. A little girl sat in her lap, toying with the gold ornaments in his mother’s braids.

Ali stared in astonishment. It was the shafit girl and her father from the auction, the ones he’d feared he’d doomed. Here they were, with smiles on their faces, dressed in clothing befitting Ayaanle nobles.

Hatset glanced up. Delight, relief, and not a little bit of mischief lit her gold eyes. “Alu! How lovely to finally see you.” She patted the little girl’s cheek and then handed her to the other woman—her mother, judging from the resemblance. “I’ve been teaching your friends how to play senet.” She rose to her feet gracefully, crossing the pavilion. “It seems I had quite a bit of time on my hands, waiting for you.”

Ali was still at a loss for words when his mother reached him. “I …”

She pulled him into a fierce hug. “Oh, baba,” she whispered, holding him tight. Her cheeks were wet. “God be praised for letting me look upon you again.”

Ali was caught off guard by the wave of emotion that swept him upon being in his mother’s arms again for the first time in years. Hatset. The woman who’d birthed him, whose family had betrayed him and then schemed to drag him away from the life he was building in Bir Nabat. He should have been furious—and yet as she pulled back to touch his cheek, he felt some of the anger he’d been carrying evaporate. God, but how many times had he looked at her face as a child and held the edge of her shayla, followed her absentmindedly through the harem, and cried for her in Ntaran during his first lonely, frightening nights at the Citadel?

“Peace be upon you, Amma,” he managed. The curious gazes of the shafit family brought him back to the present, and Ali stepped away, trying to clamp down on his emotions. “How did you—”

“I heard about their misfortune and decided to help.” Hatset glanced back at the shafit family with a smile. “I suggested they join my service here at the palace rather than return to their home. It is safer.”

The shafit woman touched her heart. “We are much indebted to you, my queen.”

Hatset shook her head and then pulled Ali forward firmly. “Nonsense, sister. It is a crime that you were ever even briefly separated.”

The woman blushed, bowing her head. “We’ll give you some time with your son.”

“Thank you.” His mother pushed him into the couch with what seemed like unnecessary force and then glanced at the remaining attendants. “My ladies, would you mind seeing if the kitchens can prepare some proper Ntaran food for my son?” She smiled pleasantly at him. “He looks like an underfed hawk.”

“Yes, my queen.” They vanished, leaving Ali alone with his mother and sister.

In a second, the two women whirled on him, looming over the couch into which he’d been shoved. Neither looked happy.

Ali immediately raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was going to come see you, I swear.”

“Oh? When?” Hatset crossed her arms, her smile gone. “After you’d seen everyone else in Daevabad?”

“It’s only been two days,” he protested. “It was a long journey. I needed time to recover—”

“And yet you had time to visit your brother’s wife.”

Ali’s mouth dropped. How had his mother known that? “Do you have spies among the birds now?”

“I do not share a palace with vengeful Nahids and their apothecary of poisons without knowing what they’re up to at all times.” Her expression darkened. “And that was not a visit you should have made alone. People talk.”

He bit his lip but stayed silent. He couldn’t exactly argue with her on that point.

His mother’s gaze trailed him, lingering on the scar on his temple. “What is that?”

“Just a scar,” Ali said quickly. “I injured myself quarrying rock for Bir Nabat’s canals.”

Hatset continued studying him. “You look like you just robbed a caravan,” she assessed bluntly and then wrinkled her nose. “Smell like it too. Why have you not been to the hammam and changed into something that doesn’t have the blood of God only knows who all over it?”

Ali scowled. He had a very good reason for avoiding the hammam: he didn’t want anyone catching a glimpse of the scars covering his body. “I like this robe,” he said defensively.

Zaynab looked like she was struggling not to laugh. She fell into the seat