The Kingdom of Copper

Nahri took a few steps in and then inhaled sharply, a buzz racing down her skin. She’d swear the heavy shadows had lifted slightly when she moved.

She turned to see Zaynab had followed her. “What is this place?” she asked, her voice echoing against the stone.

Zaynab gave the complex a skeptical glance. “A ruin? I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to moldering buildings in a three-thousand-year-old city.”

The street warmed beneath Nahri’s feet, hot enough to feel through her sandals. “I need to go in there.”

“You need to do what?”

But Nahri was already walking, thoughts of the princess, even fears of Ghassan’s gruesome punishments all falling away. She felt almost compelled, her gaze locked on the mysterious complex.

She stopped outside a pair of large brass doors. Pictograms were carved into their surface—a leaping oryx and a ship’s prow, a Daeva fire altar and a pair of scales—and magic all but simmered off the brass. Though Nahri couldn’t imagine anyone living in such a place, she raised a hand to knock.

Her knuckles hadn’t even grazed the surface when the door swung open with a groan, revealing a yawning black hole.

There was no one on the other side.

Zaynab had caught up. “Oh, absolutely not,” she said. “You’re with the wrong Qahtani if you think I’m about to go wandering into this haunted wreck.”

Nahri swallowed. Had she been back in Egypt, this might have been the start of a tale told to frighten children, one of mysterious ruins and terrifying djinn.

Except she was technically the terrifying djinn, and the icy grip the building had on her heart had only tightened. It was reckless; it was an impulse that made no sense—but she was going inside.

“Then stay out here.” Nahri dodged Zaynab’s hand and ducked inside.

The darkness instantly swallowed her. “Naar,” she whispered. Flames blossomed in her palm, throwing light on what must have once been a grand entrance chamber. Remnants of paint clung to the walls, outlining the forms of winged bulls and prancing phoenixes. Pockmarks were everywhere, places gems had likely been pried from the walls.

She stepped forward, raising her flames. Her eyes widened.

In fragments and shadows, the Nahids’ creation story spread on the wall before her. Suleiman’s ancient temple rising over the heads of its laboring daeva workers. A woman with pointed ears kneeling in a blue-and-gold chador at the feet of a human king. As Nahri stared in wonder at the mural, she’d swear the figures started to move and merge: a scattering of glazed paint becoming a flock of soaring shedus, the bare line drawing of veiled Nahid healers mixing potions filling with color. The faint sound of marching boots and cheering spectators whispered in her ear as a parade of archers trooped by, wearing ceremonial helmets crested with swaying feathers.

Nahri gasped, and as she did, the flame twirled away from her palm, pinpricks of light dancing away to illuminate the rest of the chamber. It was a burst of unconscious magic, the kind she associated with the palace, the royal heart of the Nahids whose power still coursed in her blood.

The murals abruptly stopped moving. Zaynab had entered and was gingerly picking her way over the debris littering the floor.

“I think this place belonged to my family,” Nahri whispered, awed.

Zaynab gave the room a wary look. “To be fair … I believe that could be said of much of Daevabad.” Her expression turned exasperated when Nahri glared. “Excuse me if it’s difficult to be diplomatic when I’m afraid the building is going to come down at any moment. Now can we please leave? My father will have me packed off to Malacca tomorrow if his Nahid gets crushed under a pile of falling bricks.”

“I’m not his Nahid, and I’m not leaving until I figure out what this place was.” The tingle of magic on Nahri’s skin had only increased, the humid heat of the city oppressive in the close chamber. She pulled free her veil, thinking it unlikely they would come upon anyone, and then, ignoring Zaynab’s warning, Nahri climbed over one of the crumbling walls.

She landed lightly on her feet in a long, covered corridor, a succession of sandstone arches separating a row of doors from an overgrown courtyard garden. The walkway was in far better shape than the foyer: the floor appeared freshly swept, the wall plastered and covered in swirls of colorful paint.

With a curse, Zaynab followed. “If I’ve not said it lately, I think I hate you.”

“You know, for a magical being, you have a terrible sense of adventure,” Nahri replied, touching one of the eddies of paint, a blue swell that looked like a wave. An ebony boat was outlined against it. At her touch, the wave rose as if alive, sending the boat careening down the wall.

Nahri grinned. Thoroughly intrigued, she kept walking, peeking inside the rooms she passed. Save for the occasional broken shelf and rotting bits of carpet, they were all empty.

Until they weren’t. Nahri abruptly stopped outside the last room. Cedar shelves bursting with scrolls and books covered the walls, stretching to the distant ceiling. More texts were stacked in precarious, towering piles on the floor.

She was inside before she noticed the floor desk wedged between two of the piles. A figure was hunched over its paper-strewn surface: an elderly looking Ayaanle man in a striped robe that nearly swallowed his wizened body.

“No, no, no …,” he muttered in Ntaran, scratching out whatever he’d just written with a charcoal pencil. “That makes no sense.”

Nahri hesitated. She couldn’t imagine what an Ayaanle scholar was doing in a book-stuffed room in a ruined building, but he looked harmless enough. “Peace be upon you,” she greeted him.

The man’s head snapped up.

His eyes were the color of emeralds.

He blinked rapidly and then yelped, pushing back from his cushion. “Razu!” he cried. “Razu!” He snatched up a scroll, raising it like a sword.

Nahri instantly backed away, brandishing her book. “Stay back!” she shouted as Zaynab ran to join her. The princess held a dagger in one hand.

“Oh, Issa, whatever is the problem now?”

Nahri and Zaynab both jumped and whirled around. Two women had emerged from the courtyard so swiftly they might have been conjured. One looked Sahrayn, with reddish black locks that fell to the waist of her paint-streaked galabiyya. The taller woman—the one who’d spoken—was Tukharistani, dressed in a dazzling cape of visibly magic design that fell like a mantle of molten copper across her shoulders. Her gaze locked on Nahri. Green eyes again. The same bright hue Dara’s had been.

The Ayaanle scholar—Issa—peeked past his door, still wielding his scroll. “It looks human, Razu! I swore they would never take me again!”

“That is no human, Issa.” The Tukharistani woman stepped forward. Her brilliant gaze hadn’t left Nahri’s. “It is you,” she whispered. Reverence swept over her face and she dropped to her knees, bringing her fingers together in respect. “Banu Nahida.”

“Banu Nahida?” Issa repeated. Nahri could see him still trembling. “Are you certain?”

“I am.” The Tukharistani woman gestured to an emerald-studded iron cuff on her wrist. “I can feel the tug in my vessel.” She touched her chest. “And in my heart,” she added softly. “Like I did with Baga Rustam.”

“Oh.” Issa dropped the scroll. “Oh, dear …” He attempted to bow. “Apologies, my lady. One can never be too careful these days.”

Zaynab was breathing heavily beside her, her dagger still raised. Nahri reached out and pushed her arm down. Thoroughly mystified, she stared at the strange trio, her gaze darting to each of them in turn. “I’m sorry …,” she started, lost for words. “But who are you all?”

The Tukharistani woman rose to her feet. Her silver-and-gold-streaked black hair was held back in an intricate lace net, and her face well-lined; had she been human, Nahri would have guessed she was in her sixties. “I am Razu Qaraqashi,” she said. “You have already stumbled into Issa, and this is Elashia,” she added, affectionately touching the shoulder of the Sahrayn woman next to her. “We are the last ifrit slaves in Daevabad.”

Elashia instantly scowled, and Razu bowed her head. “Forgive me, my love.” She glanced back at Nahri. “Elashia does not like to be called a slave.”

Nahri fought to keep the shock from her face. Quietly, she let her abilities expand. Small wonder she thought she’d been alone: hers and Zaynab’s were the only hearts pounding in the entire complex. The bodies of the djinn before her were entirely silent. Just as Dara’s had been.

Because they’re not true bodies, Nahri realized, recalling what she knew of the slave curse. The ifrit murdered the djinn they took, and in order to free them, the Nahids conjured new forms, new bodies to house their reclaimed souls. Nahri knew little else about the process; slavery was so feared among the djinn, it was rarely spoken of, as if simply mentioning the word “ifrit” would get one dragged off to a fate considered worse than death.

A fate the three people before her had survived. Nahri opened her mouth, struggling for a response. “What are you doing here?” she finally asked.

“Hiding,” Issa responded mournfully. “No one else in Daevabad will have us after what happened to the Afshin. People fear we’re liable to go mad and start murdering innocents with ifrit magic. We thought the hospital the safest place.”

Nahri blinked. “This was a hospital?”

Issa’s bright eyes narrowed. “Is it not obvious?” he asked, gesturing inexplicably to the crumbling ruins around them. “Where do you think your ancestors practiced?”

Razu quickly stepped forward. “Why don’t you two come with me for some refreshments?” she suggested kindly. “It is not often I have guests as esteemed as Daevabadi royals.” She smiled when Zaynab shrank back. “Do not fear, my princess, it is otherwise a lovely disguise.”

With the word “hospital” ringing in her ears, Nahri followed at once. The courtyard was in the same sorry state as the rest of the complex, with roots snaking over its shattered blue and lemon-yellow tiles, yet there was something lovely about its ruin. Dark roses grew lush and wild, their thorny vines twining around a long-fallen shedu statue and the air rich with their fragrance. A pair of bulbuls splashed and sang in a cracked fountain set in front of the cascading boughs of a stand of shade trees.

“Do not mind Issa,” Razu said lightly. “His social graces could use some work, but he’s a brilliant scholar who’s lived an extraordinary life. Before the ifrit took him, he spent centuries traveling the lands of the Nile, visiting their libraries and sending copies of their work back to Daevabad.”

“The Nile?” Nahri asked eagerly.

“Indeed.” Razu glanced back. “That is right … you grew up there. In Alexandria, yes?”

“Cairo,” Nahri corrected, her heart giving its familiar lurch.

“Forgive the error. I’m not sure there was a Cairo in my day,” Razu mused. “Though I’d heard of Alexandria. All of them.” She shook her head. “What a vain, upstart youth Alexander was, naming all those cities after himself. His armies terrified the poor humans in Tukharistan.”

Zaynab gasped. “Do you mean to say you lived in the same era as Alexander the Great?”

Razu’s smile was more enigmatic this time. “Indeed. I’ll be twenty-three hundred at this year’s generation celebration. Anahid’s grandchildren were ruling Daevabad when the ifrit took me.”

“But … that’s not possible,” Nahri breathed. “Not for ifrit slaves.”

“Ah, I suspect you’ve been told that we’re all driven mad by the experience within a few centuries?” Razu quirked an eyebrow. “Like most things in life, the truth is a bit more complicated. And my particular circumstances were unusual.”

“How so?”

“I offered myself to an ifrit.” She laughed. “I was a terribly wicked thing with a fondness for tales of lost fortune. We convinced ourselves that we’d find all sorts of legendary treasures if we could recover the powers we’d had before Suleiman.”

“You gave yourself to the ifrit?” Zaynab sounded scandalized, but Nahri was starting to feel a bit of a kinship for this mysterious hustler.

Razu nodded. “A distant cousin of mine. He was a stubborn fool who refused to submit to Suleiman, but I liked him.” She shrugged. “Things were a little … gray between our peoples back then.” She raised her palm. Three black lines marred the skin. “But it was foolish. I set my masters chasing after fantastical prizes my cousin and I planned to retrieve after I was freed. I was digging through some old tombs with my third human when the entire thing collapsed, killing him and burying my ring under the desert.”

She snapped her fingers and a bolt of silk spun out from a basket sitting beneath a neem tree, arching and expanding in the air to form a swing. She motioned for Nahri and Zaynab to sit.

“It took two thousand years for another djinn to stumble upon me. He brought me back to Daevabad, and here I am today.” Razu’s bright eyes dimmed. “I never did see my ifrit cousin again. I suppose a Nahid or Afshin caught up with him, in the end.”

Nahri cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”

Razu nudged her shoulder. “You needn’t apologize. I was certainly more fortunate than Issa and Elashia; the few human masters I had never abused me. But when I returned, my world was gone, any descendants lost to history, and the Tukharistan I knew a legend in the eyes of my own people. It was easier to begin anew in Daevabad. At least until recently.” She shook her head. “But here I am rambling about the past … what brings you two here?”

“Carelessness,” Zaynab muttered under her breath.

“I … I don’t quite know,” Nahri confessed. “We were passing by and I felt …” She trailed off. “I felt the magic emanating from this place, and it reminded me of the palace.” She glanced around wonderingly. “Was this truly a hospital?”

Razu nodded. “It was.” With another snap of her fingers, a smoking glass ewer appeared alongside three chalices. She poured Nahri and Zaynab each a glass of a cloud-colored liquid. “I spent some time here as a patient after failing to dodge one of my creditors.”

Zaynab took a cautious sip and then promptly spit it most inelegantly back into the cup. “Oh, that’s definitely forbidden.”

Curious, Nahri tested her own glass, coughing at the intense burn of alcohol as it ran down her throat. “What is this?”

“Soma. The preferred drink of your ancestors.” Razu winked. “Regardless of Suleiman’s curse, the daevas of my day had yet to entirely lose our wildness.”

Whatever soma was, it admittedly left Nahri feeling more relaxed. Zaynab looked ready to bolt, but Nahri was enjoying her time more and more with each allusion to Razu’s felonious past. “What was it like back then—when you were a patient, I mean?”

Razu gazed pensively at the hospital. “It was an astonishing place, even in a city as magical as Daevabad. The Nahids must have treated thousands, and it all hummed along like a well-oiled wheel. I’d been hexed with a rather contagious streak of despair, so I was treated in quarantine over there.” She tilted her head toward a crumbling wing, then took a sip of her drink. “They took excellent care of us. A bed, a roof, and warm meals? It was almost worth being sick.”

Nahri leaned back on her palms, contemplating all that. She knew hospitals fairly well; she’d often snuck into Cairo’s most famous—the majestic, old bimaristan in the Qalawun complex—to steal supplies and wander its depths, fantasizing about joining the ranks of the students and physicians crowding its lofty corridors.

She tried to imagine how that bustle would look here, the hospital whole and filled with Nahids. Dozens of healers consulting notes and examining patients. It must have been an extraordinary community.

A Nahid hospital. “I wish I had something like that,” she said softly.

Razu grinned, raising her chalice in Nahri’s direction. “Consider me your first recruit should you attempt to rebuild.”

Zaynab had been tapping her foot, but now she stood. “Nahri, we should go,” she warned, motioning to the sky. The sun had disappeared behind the hospital walls.

Nahri touched Razu’s hand. “I’m going to try and come back,” she promised. “The three of you … are you safe here? Is there anything you need?” Though Razu and her companions were probably more capable than Nahri at taking care of themselves, she felt suddenly protective of the three souls her family had freed.

Razu squeezed her hand. “We are fine,” she assured her. “Though I do hope you come back. I think the place likes you.”

Ali gazed at the edge of the rocky cliff, squinting in the desert’s bright sunlight. His heart was beating so fast he could hear it in his ears, his breath coming in ragged bursts. Nervous sweat beaded on his brow, soaking into the cotton ghutra he’d wrapped around his head. He raised his arms, shifting back and forth on his bare feet.

“He’s not going to do it,” he heard one of the other djinn goad. There were six of them there atop the cliffs bordering the village of Bir Nabat, and they were all fairly young, for what they were doing required the sort of recklessness youth provided. “Little prince isn’t risking his royal neck.”

“He’ll do it,” another man shot back—Lubayd, Ali’s closest friend in Am Gezira. “He better do it.” His voice rose. “Ali, brother, I’ve got coin riding on you. Don’t let me down!”

“You shouldn’t be gambling,” Ali shot back anxiously. He took another shaky breath, trying to work up his courage. This was so dangerous. So unnecessary and foolish, it was almost selfish.

From beyond the cliff, there was the sound of reptilian snuffling, followed by the sharp, unpleasant tang of burnt feathers. Ali whispered a prayer under his breath.

And then he took off, sprinting toward the cliff edge. He ran as fast as he could and when the cliff gave way to air, he kept going, hurling himself into empty space. For one petrifying moment, he was falling, the distant, rock-strewn ground he was about to be dashed upon rushing up …

He landed hard on the back of the zahhak that had been roosting along the cliff face. Ali gasped, a thrill racing through his blood as he let out a cry that was equal parts terrified and triumphant.

The zahhak clearly didn’t share his enthusiasm. With an offended screech, the flying serpent took to the sky.

Ali lunged for the copper collar that a far more enterprising djinn had slipped over the zahhak’s neck years ago, tightening his legs around the creature’s sleek, silver-scaled body as he’d been instructed. Four massive wings—misty white and billowing like clouds—beat the air around him, snatching the breath from his lungs. Resembling an overgrown lizard—albeit one with the ability to shoot flames from its fanged mouth when harassed by djinn—this particular zahhak was said to be over four hundred years old and had been nesting in the cliffs outside Bir Nabat for generations, perhaps favoring the familiarity of its nesting spot enough to deal with the antics of the Geziri youth.

One of those youths squeezed his eyes shut now; the rush of the wind and the sight of the ground whizzing beneath him sending another rush of fear into Ali’s heart. He clutched the collar, huddling against the zahhak’s neck.

Look, you fool. Considering there was a chance this ended with him in pieces on the sand below, Ali might as well appreciate the view.

He opened his eyes. The desert spread before him, great sweeps of red-gold sand stretching to meet the bright blue horizon, broken by proudly jutting stands of rocks, antique formations sculpted by the wind over countless millennia. Jagged paths marked the line of long-vanished wadis, a distant stand of darkly lush palms forming a tiny oasis to the north.

“God be praised,” he whispered, awed by the beauty and magnificence of the world below him. He understood now why Lubayd and Aqisa had been goading him into taking part in this most deadly of Bir Nabat’s traditions. Ali might have grown up in Daevabad, but he’d never experienced anything as extraordinary as flying like this.

He squinted at the oasis, growing curious as he noticed black tents and movement between the distant trees. A group of nomads perhaps—the oasis belonged to humans according to custom long set, the djinn of Bir Nabat not daring to take even a cup of water from its wells.

He leaned forward against the creature’s neck for a better look, and the zahhak let out a smoky grumble of protest. Ali coughed, his stomach turning at the stench of the creature’s breath. The gristle of roasted prey crusted its stained fangs, and though Ali had been warned about the smell, it still left him light-headed.

The zahhak obviously didn’t think much of him either. Without warning, it banked, sending Ali scrambling to keep his grip, and then the creature hurtled back the way they’d come, cutting through the air like a scythe.

Ahead, Ali could see the entrance to Bir Nabat: a forbiddingly dark, empty doorway built directly into the cliffs. Stark sandstone carvings surrounded it: crumbling eagles perched upon decorative columns and a sharp pattern of steps that rose to meet the sky. The carvings had been done eons ago by Bir Nabat’s original human settlers, an ancient group lost to time whose ruined settlement the djinn now called home.

His companions were just below, waving their arms and beating a metal drum to draw the ire of the zahhak. It dived for them, letting out a screech. Steeling himself, Ali waited until the zahhak drew close to his friends, opening its jaws to breathe an angry plume of scarlet fire that they narrowly ducked. Then he jumped.

He tumbled hard to the ground, Aqisa yanking him back just before the zahhak scorched the place he’d landed. With another offended shriek, it soared off, clearly having had enough of djinn for one day.

Lubayd hauled Ali to his feet, clapping his back and letting out a whoop. “I told you he would do it!” He grinned at Ali. “Worth the risk?”

Every part of his body ached, but Ali was too exhilarated to care. “It was amazing,” he gushed, trying to catch his breath. He pulled away the ghutra the wind had plastered to his mouth. “And guess what? There’s a new group of humans at the—”

Groans interrupted him before he’d even finished the sentence.

“No,” Aqisa cut in. “I am not going to spy on humans with you again. You are obsessed.”

Ali persisted. “But we could learn something new! You remember the village we explored in the south, the sundial they used to regulate their canals? That was very helpful.”

Lubayd handed Ali his weapons back. “I remember the humans chasing us away when they realized they had ‘demonic’ visitors. They were firing quite a lot of those explosive stick … things. And I don’t intend to learn if there’s iron in those projectiles.”

“Those ‘explosive stick things’ are called rifles,” Ali corrected. “And you are all sadly lacking a spirit of enterprise.”

They made their way down the rocky ledge that led to the village. Etchings covered the sandstone: letters in an alphabet Ali couldn’t read, and carefully hewn drawings of long-vanished animals. In one high corner, an enormous bald man loomed over simple line drawings of figures, stylized flames twisting around his fingers. An original daeva, the village djinn believed, from before Suleiman blessed them. Judging from the figure’s wild eyes and sharp teeth, they must have terrorized the human settlers.

Ali and his friends crossed beneath the entrance facade. A pair of djinn were drinking coffee in its shade, ostensibly guarding it. On the rare occasion a curious human got too close, they had charms capable of conjuring rushing winds and blinding sandstorms to frighten them off.