The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,95

for his young recruits and was deeply loyal to Manizheh—but Suleiman’s eye, sometimes he just wanted to gaze upon the mountains and exchange a few words about horses with an old man who was equally weary of war.

Dara passed over a cloak. “Take this. It has been cold.” He shook his head. “I wish you would let me conjure you a proper tent. Your companion is an idiot.”

Abu Sayf pulled over the stew, ripping off a piece of the bread. “I prefer to stay with my tribesman. He is not handling this well.” A weary sadness fell over his face. “He misses his family. He learned just before we were posted that his wife was pregnant with their firstborn.” He glanced at Dara. “She is in Daevabad. He fears for her.”

Dara pushed away a stab of guilt. Warriors left wives behind all the time; it was part of their duty. “If she were back in Am Gezira, where you all belong, she would be plenty safe,” he offered, forcing a conviction he didn’t entirely feel into his voice.

Abu Sayf didn’t take the bait. He never did. Dara suspected he was a soldier through and through and didn’t care to defend politics in which he had little voice. “Your Banu Nahida came to take blood again,” he said instead. “And she hasn’t returned my friend’s relic.”

At that Dara reached for his goblet, watching it fill with date wine at his silent command. “I am certain it is nothing.” In truth, he didn’t know what Manizheh was doing with the relics, and her secrecy was starting to grate on him.

“Your men say she intends to experiment on us. To boil us alive and grind our bones for her potions.” Fear crept into the other man’s voice. “They say she can capture a soul like the ifrit and bind it away so it never sees Paradise.”

Dara kept his face blank, but annoyance with his soldiers—and with himself for not checking their behavior sooner—sparked in his chest. Animosity toward the djinn and shafit ran high in their camp: many of Manizheh’s followers had suffered at their hands, after all. Admittedly, Dara hadn’t thought much of it when he was first brought back. During his own rebellion fourteen centuries ago, he and his fellow survivors had expressed similar hatred—and carried out darker acts of vengeance. But they’d been raw with grief over the sack of Daevabad and desperate to save what was left of their tribe. That was not the situation his people were in today.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear they’ve been harassing you. Believe me when I say I’ll speak to them.” He sighed, looking to change the subject. “May I ask what has kept you in this part of Daevastana for so long? You said you’ve lived here a half-century now, yes? This does not seem an ideal posting for a man from the desert.”

Abu Sayf smiled slightly. “I have come to find the snow lovely even if the cold remains brutal. And my wife’s parents are here.”

“You could have taken a posting in Daevabad and brought them with you.”

The other man chuckled. “You have never had in-laws if you say something so easily.”

The comment threw him. “No,” Dara said. “I was never married.”

“No one ever caught your eye?”

“Someone did,” he said softly. “But I could not offer the future that she deserved.”

Abu Sayf shrugged. “Then you will have to take my opinion on the matter of in-laws. And regardless, I did not wish to take a posting in Daevabad. It would have led to orders I do not care for.”

Dara met his gaze. “You speak from experience.”

The other man nodded. “I fought in King Khader’s war when I was young.”

“Khader was Ghassan’s father, no?”

“Correct. The western half of Qart Sahar tried to secede during his reign, about two hundred years ago.”

Dara rolled his eyes. “The Sahrayn have a habit of that. They tried to do the same just before I was born.”

Abu Sayf’s mouth quirked. “To be fair … I do believe secession was somewhat in fashion in your time.”

He grunted. Had another djinn said that to him, Dara would have been irked, but considering Abu Sayf was his prisoner, he held his tongue. “Fair point. You fought the Sahrayn, then?”

“I’m not sure ‘fought’ is the best description,” Abu Sayf replied. “We were sent to crush them, to terrorize a set of tiny villages on the coast.” He shook his head. “Amazing places. They built directly from the sand