I took these Nahri scenes from an old (and very different!) version of The Kingdom of Copper. I’ve reworked them so they feel like something that could have happened before that book, looking at aspects of Nahri’s marriage to Muntadhir and her role as the Banu Nahida. Spoilers for the first book.
“Banu Nahida, stop!”
Nahri didn’t stop. Instead, she sprinted down the corridor to her infirmary. Her heart racing, she didn’t waste time glancing back to see how many guards from the Treasury were pursuing her, but judging from the pounding of feet, it was at least half a dozen.
You fool, she chided herself as she ran. You never should have let your skills get that rusty.
Two chattering scribes ambled out from the direction of the library, their arms heavy with scrolls. Nahri nearly crashed into the first and then intentionally tripped the second, sending him and his scrolls sprawling across the floor. The documents bounced and rolled down the corridor. She could only hope they tripped up a couple of her pursuers.
“Nahri, damn it, stop!” It was her husband this time. He sounded out of breath, and she wasn’t surprised; Emir Muntadhir wasn’t the type to physically exert himself—at least not in this way. That she’d roused him from his circle of drunk poets to play unintentional partner to her heist had been miracle enough.
The guards sounded closer. Nahri could see the half-open doors to her infirmary just ahead. She put on a burst of extra speed.
“Nisreen!” she shouted. “Help me!”
Nisreen must have been close. In seconds, she was at the doorway, a wickedly sharp scalpel in one hand and her eyes bright with alarm as she noticed the running guards.
“Banu Nahida!” she gasped. “What in the Creator’s name—?”
Nahri grabbed the edge of the door and shoved Nisreen out as she flew over the threshold. “Forgive me,” she rushed before slamming the door in the older woman’s bewildered face. She whirled around, pressed her palms against the intricate metalwork on the closed door, and then dragged them down, hissing in pain as the studs tore into her skin, her blood slippery on the decorative panels.
“Protect me,” she commanded confidently in Divasti—she’d already practiced the enchantment in preparation.
She’d practiced . . . and now nothing happened.
Nahri panicked, holding the door closed against Nisreen’s shoving on the other side. She kicked it hard and cursed loudly in Arabic. “Damn it, I said ‘protect me’!”
The blood smoked—her blood, the blood and magic of the people who’d built this place so many centuries ago. Nahri backed away as the metal grating twisted together, firmly locking the doors just as something heavy smashed into them.
She heard several muffled voices arguing on the other side of the door, including Muntadhir’s distinctly irritated tone. She’d never heard him so angry, and considering the number of fights they’d gotten into during the three years they’d been married, that was saying a lot.
There was more pounding on the door.
“Banu Nahri!” she heard Nisreen yell. Judging from the alarm in her voice, she’d learned what Nahri might have stolen. “Please let me in. We can discuss this!”
“Sorry!” Nahri sang out. “The door . . . you know how unpredictable palace magic can be!”
Behind her, a tray clattered to the floor. Nahri turned around to meet the astonished eyes of her patients and aides. The infirmary was on the quiet side this afternoon—and by quiet, she meant not so full that people were literally pushed into the garden. The hundred beds were all occupied—they always were nowadays—but only a few of her patients had visitors.
Nahri gave them all a severe look and then jerked her head at the door. “Any of you go near that and you’ll have plague sores in some very uncomfortable places, understand?”
No one spoke, but enough people went pale and drew back to convince her that they understood. Nahri dashed across the infirmary to her private workspace and yanked the curtain closed behind her, trying to ignore the battering on her door and the enraged—and unusually detailed—threats from Muntadhir. Only then did she dig out the shard of white stone she’d shoved in her bodice back in the Treasury. It was barely the size of her thumb, and though it shone prettily in the light, the rock otherwise wasn’t much to look at.
There was a nervous shuffling, and then a short Daeva woman with silver hair stood up from where she’d been hiding behind a pile of texts.
“Is that it?” she asked hopefully.
Nahri gazed at the shard. “If you believe the stories.” For if the stories were to be believed, this tiny white rock was one of the only pieces left of Iram—the legendary city of the pillars. Nahri knew conflicting tales of Iram. Back home in Cairo, she’d heard it mentioned as a city destroyed for its wickedness thousands of years ago. Some of the djinn took issue with that, muttering that the humans really shouldn’t have been there and how were their ancestors to know how destructive celestial fire winds could be.
But Nahri wasn’t interested in the Iram fragment for its stories.
She was interested in it because it was apparently the only cure for one of the trickiest curses in their world: the loss of one’s magic. And by apparently, Nahri had read of this effect only in a single Nahid text, a reference that made clear how tricky and unpredictable the enchantment was to get right. She would also have to destroy the Iram fragment—the rare rock so prized that the few remaining shards were kept in the Treasury—in order to have any chance of success. To get access to the Treasury alone, she’d had to bait Muntadhir into a fight regarding her dowry, a ruse she doubted she could pull off a second time.
The Daeva woman—Delaram—approached, wringing her hands. “Are you sure about this, Banu Nahida? I do not wish to bring you further trouble. I’m not worth that risk.”
“You are my patient and thus worth any risk,” Nahri insisted as she strode over to her desk and plucked free the Nahid notes nestled between two Arabic books—she kept her workspace as messy as possible to discourage would-be snoopers. She ran her fingers along the ancient paper, tracing the inkblots and whirled script her ancestors had long ago laid down. She’d read the notes so often, she had them memorized, but the feel of something tangible her legendary relatives had read and used and touched themselves reassured her.
And Delaram was worth it, having lost her magic after being cursed by a cruel husband. By chance, her affliction was also the reason Nahri might have found the cure in the first place. Without her magic, Delaram had spent the last few decades of her life dusting, sweeping, and reorganizing the library in the Grand Temple after overeager students swirled through it like destructive academic cyclones. She was so diligent in her work—and in taking the reins of this domain of knowledge—that she had uncovered at least a dozen new Nahid texts hidden beneath the floorboards and tucked into cracks.
But that work didn’t make her a noble. It didn’t make her a djinn. Daeva cleaning women weren’t worth the “destruction of such a valuable item,” and so Nahri had been turned down when she requested the Iram fragment, even as she pleaded that the curse was shortening Delaram’s life.
Really, I had no choice but to steal it. Nahri tossed and caught the shard in one hand and then got to work.
In her absence, the fire pit had died down to smoldering ash. “Naar,” she commanded, and the flames answered back, crackling and snapping as they raced to reach her fingers. The heat scorched her face but did not hurt. Nahri knelt, pulling a prepared basket from underneath the nearest couch.
“Earth from your homeland,” she murmured, taking a handful of soil gathered from Daevabad’s hills and tossing it into the fire. “Water purified in the name of the Creator.” She poured in a vial of water taken earlier from her fire altar. There was a hiss of steam as it hit the flames, the drops too few to affect the blaze.
“Nahri, don’t you dare destroy that shard! Open the damned door!”
Oh, go jump in the lake, Muntadhir. She could only imagine how embarrassed he was to have been locked out by his wife, and it gave her an almost distracting amount of pleasure.
But she could exult later—she needed to focus now. Nahri exhaled, adding the air from her lungs to the fire’s smoke. Holding the Iram shard in one hand, she reached for a scalpel with the other and then drew a sharp line across her palm, blood immediately swelling to drown the small white rock. Nahid blood: deadly to the ifrit, capable of undoing all manner of magic, and one of the most powerful substances in the world.
The Iram fragment exploded.
Nahri yelped in pain and swore, but her hand was already healing. She tossed the burning remains of the shard into the fire and then cradled her hand to her chest.
“Are you hurt?” Delaram gasped.
“I’m fine,” Nahri said through gritted teeth. Maybe Nisreen had had a point—a small one—about not messing with magic she didn’t understand. With her good hand, she urged Delaram closer to the blaze. “Breathe in the smoke, as much as you can.”
Something smashed into the doors so hard the entire infirmary shook. Bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling.
“BANU NAHIDA!” Ghassan thundered, and the sound of the king’s rage was enough to send a shiver of fear down her back. A few of her patients let out startled cries. “Stop what you’re doing right now!”
Without waiting for her response, whatever hit the door did so again. The metalwork keeping it closed began to groan and snap.
But it held, and that meant there was still a chance.
“Keep breathing in the smoke, Delaram. Keep breathing . . .”
Delaram cast a nervous glance back at her, but kept sucking in the pungent smoke until, overwhelmed, Nahri’s patient started to choke.
“Delaram!”
Delaram fell to her knees and Nahri dropped to her side.
“I’m fine,” the other woman wheezed through the smoke whirling around her face. Delicate white fragments sparkled in the air. She massaged her throat. “I just . . .” She trailed off and then lifted her hand.
Flames danced between her patient’s fingers. “Is this . . . is this me?” Delaram whispered.
“It’s you.” Nahri smiled—and then the doors finally smashed open.
Ah, but alas, the infirmary was so crowded. And Ghassan was so intimidating that her patients fled hastily to avoid him and his soldiers, causing more of a delay and commotion than they might have if they had simply stayed put.
Which meant by the time he had wrenched back the curtain with a very undignified curse, Delaram was gone and Nahri was sitting at her desk, going over notes about her patients with a professional healer’s diligence.
“Where is it?” Ghassan demanded. “I swear to God, girl, if you’ve damaged that shard . . .”
She gave the king the most innocent face she could. “What shard?”
Nahri fell to her knees before the ancient altar and pressed her fingertips together, closing her eyes. She bowed her head and then carefully plucked a long stick of cedar incense from the silver tray of consecrated tools at her side. She stood up on her toes, holding the incense to the flames burning merrily in the altar’s cupola until it started to smolder. Once it was burning, she began relighting the glass oil lamps floating in the giant silver fountain below.
She paused as she lit the last, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of the fire altar before her. Central to the Daeva faith, the striking design of the altars had persisted through the centuries. A basin—usually silver—of purified water with a brazier-like structure rising in its middle in which burned a fire of cedarwood, a fire extinguished only upon a devotee’s death. The brazier was to be carefully swept of ash at dawn each day, marking the sun’s return. The flaming glass oil lamps in the basin below kept the water at a constant simmer.
Nahri stayed silent a few moments longer. Although not often one for prayer, she was conscious of her weighty role in the Daeva faith and had learned to play her part accordingly. When she turned around, the lower part of her face was veiled in Nahid white silk, but her eyes were free to take in the people massed below her. She raised her right hand, her palm outward in blessing.
Four thousand men, women, and children—worshippers packed to the walls—pressed their hands together and bowed their heads in respect.
A few years of leading ceremonies at the Grand Temple had yet to reduce the awe Nahri felt upon such a demonstration. The Temple itself still routinely took her breath away. Constructed nearly three millennia ago, the massive stone ziggurat was a work on par with the Great Pyramids outside Cairo. The main prayer hall mimicked the design of the palace’s throne room, though styled in a far more austere fashion. Two rows of columns, studded with sandstone discs in a variety of colors, held up the distant ceiling, and shrines lined the walls, dedicated to the most lionized figures in their tribe’s long history.
Nahri stepped away from the altar. On the platform below, a line of scarlet-robed priests kept her separated from the rest of the worshippers. They’d already given at least a half-dozen sermons praising her and her extended family and calling upon the Creator to favor her work. Thankfully Nahri had never been asked to give a sermon; she would have had no idea what to say. Moreover, traditionally Nahids weren’t expected to interact with worshippers in the Grand Temple or even deign to notice them. They were supposed to float above all, lofty and cool, figures worthy of distant veneration.
But Nahri had never been one for lofty veneration. She stepped onto the lower platform, heading for the crowd.
The priests parted to let her through. A young acolyte, his shaven head covered in ash, dashed out from the shadows, wooden stool in hand, while a few of his fellows urged the crowd into the semblance of a queue. None resisted, the worshippers eager to comply in hopes of addressing her.
She studied the crowd. It was entirely Daeva save a scattering of Tukharistanis—Nahri had been surprised to learn there were a number of families among the trading cities of Tukharistan who’d quietly kept their original faith despite the djinn war. Beyond that, it was a diverse group. Ascetics in fraying robes shared space next to bejeweled nobles while wide-eyed northern pilgrims jostled weary Daevabadi sophisticates. Near the front, Nahri spotted a little girl fidgeting beside her father. She wore a plain dress of yellow felt, her black hair styled in four braids intertwined with sweet basil.
Nahri caught her eye and winked, beckoning her forward.
Clearly too young to worry about protocol, the little girl gave Nahri a gap-toothed grin and darted from her father’s grip to rush forward. She threw her small arms around Nahri’s knees in a tight embrace.
Nahri noticed a few of the priests wince. When her ancestors ruled, anyone who dared lay a hand on a Nahid outside of the act of being healed would have had such a limb lopped off, a tradition—one of many—that Nahri had decided needed revisiting.
“Banu Nahida!” The little girl beamed as she stepped back, her eyes crinkling in awe.
Her father hurried to join them, bowing in respect. He nudged his daughter’s shoulder. “May the fires . . .”
“Oh!” The girl pressed her hands together. “May the fires burn brightly for you!”
“And for you, child,” Nahri replied with a smile as she blessed them, marking the girl’s forehead with ash. Their accent was unfamiliar. Pilgrims, Nahri assumed. A lot of her tribesmen came from outer Daevastana to pray at the Grand Temple. “Where are you from?”
“Panchekanth, my lady,” the girl’s father answered. At Nahri’s visible confusion, he explained, “A ruined human city on the edge of Daevastana. I would not expect you to know it.”
Nahri touched her heart. “I’m honored you made the journey. I pray the Creator rewards your devotion.”
He bowed deeply, looking close to tears. “Thank you, my lady.” The little girl gave Nahri another hug, waving as they wove their way through the crowd.
Nahri smiled beneath her veil. She’d come to live for moments like this, encounters that gave her the confidence to stand before the Daevas and the courage to ignore Ghassan’s ominous insinuations about her “holding court.” She told herself it was pragmatism. And if these moments also left a warm glow in her heart?
Well, Nahri was not going to deny herself even the rare bit of happiness she could steal in Daevabad.
The little girl and her father finally disappeared, swallowed by the crowd, and Nahri beckoned to another. About half the people who came to her did so with various ailments. She healed the easiest cases immediately, sending the more complicated ones on to the infirmary. She tried to see as many petitioners as she could, but as the sun climbed high behind the marble screens looking out at the landscaped courtyard, she began itching to return to the infirmary. Things had a tendency to go catastrophically wrong when she wasn’t there.
Nahri blessed the pilgrims in front of her and then stood, motioning for the priests. The crowds had grown far too large for her to personally bless them all. Nahri knew many would return tomorrow. Some came day after day. She kept an eye out for familiar faces, never failing to be warmed by their obvious delight when they finally came before her.
Kartir appeared at her shoulder. Though the Grand Priest was nearly in his third century, he often proved surprisingly spry—especially when he was going to embark on a lecture. Which judging from his crossed arms and weary expression, Nahri was about to receive.
“Banu Nahida, are you actively looking for new ways to provoke the Qahtanis?”
“Why, whatever do you mean, Grand Priest?”
Ghassan could stare the skin off someone who displeased him, but the piercing gaze Kartir gave Nahri right now actually took her aback for a second.
Then she flashed him a conspiratorial smile. “No one actually caught me with anything.”
Kartir gave her another severe look as they started walking down the steps. “You and I both know that doesn’t matter. The more powerful and popular you become here, the more danger you’re in.” The priest softened his voice. “I know you want to be a good Banu Nahida, but I would rather see you alive and treating nothing but bruises than being executed because you reached too far.”
“I’m careful, Kartir,” she said, trying to assure him. And Creator knew Nahri was; she rather enjoyed not being murdered by the king. “But I’ve given Ghassan what he wanted,” she added, a note of bitterness slipping into her voice. “I won’t let him stop me from taking care of my patients.”
It was a poor moment for them to pass by Dara’s shrine. The curtain was drawn back to reveal the brass statue inside, that of a Daeva warrior on horseback, standing proudly upright in his stirrups to aim an arrow at his pursuers. Fat wax candles and oil lamps threw jagged light on the dozens of offerings scattered about the base of the statue. No blades were allowed in the temple, so small ceramic tokens depicting a variety of ceremonial weapons—mostly arrows—had been brought instead.
Though Dara’s shrine was one of the most popular, there were no devotees there now. Nahri stopped before she could think better of it and gazed at the enormous silver bow suspended behind the statue. She wondered if it was a replica or if it had been his during his mortal life. If his fingers had clutched the grip and drawn back the bowstring.
Yes, maybe he used it to shoot down shafit like you at Qui-zi. Nahri closed her eyes. It had been nearly four years and Nahri had yet to come to terms with the man who had entered her life on a sandstorm and ripped out of it just as violently. The man she was fairly certain had loved her, who she might have one day loved in return, and then who had betrayed her trust in a way Nahri didn’t think she’d ever completely recover from.
Kartir cleared his throat. “I can make sure no one will bother you if you’d like to pray.”
“No.” Nahri had tried to pray here, and it usually wasn’t long before she was either crying and throwing accusations at a statue or—in a humiliating moment of weakness the morning before her wedding—begging Dara a final time to return and save her. She’d learned the hard way that bottling up her emotions and moving on was the only path to survival, whether in Cairo or in Daevabad.
She turned away from the shrine. “I should get back to the palace.”
Nahri floated in the Nile, the cool water a balm against the hot sun. The river was still, too still, but she paid it little mind. With the wind rustling through the reeds and insects buzzing in the trees, it was far too peaceful to be bothered over something like motionless water.
That smell, though. That was bothersome, like seared metal and burnt hair. She wrinkled her nose, but the stench had been getting worse as the water grew warmer. Disgusted, she finally straightened up, meaning to wade back to land.
Her feet didn’t so much as touch the muddy bottom—Nahri must have drifted farther out. She floundered and briefly went under, getting a mouthful of water. She spat it out, recoiling. It wasn’t water.
It was blood.
“Gulbahar!”
She turned toward the voice—only to see a dark reptilian form slip into the river.
A crocodile.
“Mama!” Nahri tried to escape, splashing and kicking in desperation as the creature swam toward her. The bloodred water rippled over its scales, implying a massive body. It was as if she had been pinned in place, the riverbank growing only more distant. “MAMA!”
Teeth clamped around Nahri’s ankles, and then before she could scream, she was dragged under the water.
“Nahri? Nahri, wake up!”
Nahri woke with a start. She gasped, a cold sweat breaking across her skin.
Muntadhir was hovering over her. “Are you okay?” he asked, his hand on her shoulder. “You were crying in your sleep and screaming that human language of yours.”
I was? Nahri blinked, the details of the nightmare already receding. Sharp teeth and a river of blood. Terror. Raw and wrenching and unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
And a name. There had been a name, hadn’t there?
She was suddenly conscious of Muntadhir staring at her. “I’m fine,” she insisted. Nahri shook off his hand, peeling away the sheets to slip from her bed. She crossed the room, the marble floor past the rug a cold shock on her bare feet, and poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher resting on a small table. A breeze played with the linen curtains, smelling of wet earth and jasmine. Beyond the door leading to the balcony, the gardens were entirely black. She doubted it was even close to dawn.
Muntadhir spoke again, his voice soft. “I get them too. Nightmares, I mean. Of that night on the boat. I often think that if I had just moved faster—”
“Why are you here?” It came out ruder than she meant, but Nahri was not discussing that night with him.
Muntadhir visibly started at her tone and then raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s just insulting.”
Nahri cleared her throat, a little heat creeping into her cheeks. “I mean, why are you still here?”
“I fell asleep.” Muntadhir shrugged. He lay back on her rumpled sheets, the picture of royal indolence as he crossed his wrists behind his head. “I didn’t know I was to hurry from my wife’s bed like a wide-eyed concubine.”
“An image you must have a degree of familiarity with.”
He gave her an even look, nodding at her messy hair and disheveled shift. “I speak Divasti, Nahri. You were definitely not objecting to my presence earlier.”
There was no fighting the blush now, but Nahri held her ground. “Do you want some sort of praise? You’ve slept with half of Daevabad. I’d hope you’d have some skill.”
“Only you could make that sound like an insult.” But Muntadhir finally rolled out of her bed, reaching for his clothes. “You’re right, though—maybe it would be better not to fall asleep beside you. I’m sure your mother’s notes are full of suggestions for Qahtani blood.”
“So stop coming,” she snapped. “Surely you have beds aplenty to occupy you.”
He looked taken aback. “God, Nahri, it was a joke. Why must you always be so prickly about everything?” He lazily tied the bindings on his waist-wrap. “And I do believe you were there when my father pointed out that if I wasn’t using certain parts to give him a grandchild, I must not need them at all.” He shuddered. “So I think I’ll keep visiting.”
Nahri said nothing. The nightmare was still on her mind, a memory, a meaning trying to connect. There had been a name. A voice. An inexplicably vast absence yawning through her chest.
Muntadhir pulled on his robe and then hesitated. “Actually, on that note . . . there was something else.” He picked up the black bag he’d brought with him, one that Nahri had ignored, assuming it to be wine or God only knew what intended for the evening amusements he had planned after visiting her. “I brought you something.” He motioned toward the cold embers in her fireplace; Daevabad’s nights were warm enough for Nahri, and the soft light of her flickering fire altar was all she needed to sleep. “Do you mind?”
Nahri shrugged. “I’ll let you stay if a gift is involved.”
Muntadhir squatted at the hearth and relit the fire with a snap of his fingers. “You know if you were a courtier, you’d be investigated for corruption talking like that.”
“How fortunate that my position is hereditary.”
He sat in one of the cushioned chairs in front of the fire. Nahri took the opposite one, propping her feet on a plump ottoman and watching as he pulled what appeared to be a large book from the bag.
She frowned. “I didn’t think you could read.”
“Yes, I’m aware how I measure up against your royal pen pal.”
Nahri instantly stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Muntadhir gave her a measured gaze. “I’m the Emir of Daevabad. Do you really think I wouldn’t find out another man has been writing to my wife?”
Everything about his response made Nahri’s temper rise. “What a lovely way to remind me that you keep spies in my quarters. Surely they are talented enough to have informed you that those letters get immediately burned in my fire altar?”
“Not immediately they don’t,” Muntadhir countered.
Nahri dropped her gaze. Ali and his stupid letters. He’d taken to writing her after he was dispatched to his garrison in Am Gezira. Not often, and perhaps suspecting they’d be intercepted, he didn’t dare touch on that night on the boat. Instead his notes had been almost impersonal ramblings that, just like their reluctant friendship, had drawn her in with equal amounts endearing naivete and wit. Sketches of ancient ruins, descriptions of local healing plants, any bits of news he’d learned of neighboring Egypt, stories about the nearby humans.
They were mundane, and yet they always ended the same way. Written in a rough transcription of the Egyptian dialect she’d taught him: “I’m so sorry. I pray God grants you some happiness.”
Even if she hadn’t been worried about getting caught, Nahri wouldn’t have written back. She didn’t trust the tug on her heart that Ali—her enemy in every way—still had. If it had not been for that affection, she might have noticed the quiet way he was waiting for soldiers that horrible night instead of begging him to escape alongside Dara and her.
Nahri crossed her arms over her chest. “You mentioned a gift, not an interrogation. Can we move on to that part?”
Muntadhir rolled his eyes, but held out the cloth-covered book. Nahri carefully unwrapped it. A stylized painting of a winged lion—the shedu that was the emblem of her family—roaring at a rising sun was centered on the book’s cover. The next page was a garden scene rendered in painstakingly miniature details, and the following one a handsome soldier on horseback.
“They’re your uncle’s,” Muntadhir explained. “He used to paint and sketch on the side. Not many have an appreciation for Daeva art in the palace, but I always thought Rustam was talented.”
He was. Nahri was among those with little understanding of art, but even she could see the spark her uncle had managed to catch in his subjects: the gleam of ornaments in a dancer’s vibrant costume, the wearied slump of an old scholar surrounded by simmering glass vials. “Where did you find these?”
“Various collectors.”
Nahri turned the page to a painting of the infirmary’s garden and a shafit servant with a slightly mischievous smile gathering what she was surprised to recognize as molokhia plants. She traced the bumpy edge of a brushstroke. Nahri had nothing so personal, so precious of the uncle she’d never met. Beyond the pavilion outside, there was a small grove where Rustam had tended oranges and rare herbs, and she was tempted to take the book there now. To sit and linger with it in a place he had spent so much time. To feel some connection with her vanished family.
Instead, she closed the book, unwilling to let her husband see such a weakness. Muntadhir was not a thoughtful man: it wasn’t that he was unkind; instead she suspected that a lifetime in the palace, wined and dined as the heir to the powerful Qahtani throne, had simply shaped him to be a man who didn’t think of others. She couldn’t imagine him coming up with such a gift, let alone taking the time to track down a bunch of scattered artwork.
She could, however, think of someone else who would have done such a thing . . . someone who would have been all too happy to let Muntadhir take the credit. “I’ll be sure to thank Jamshid the next time I see him.”
Muntadhir sighed. He glanced at the low table between them, and his fingers twitched, as if wishing for a cup of wine to ease his discomfort. “You don’t always have to make this so hard, Nahri.”
“What?”
“This.” He beckoned between them. “Us. The stunt at the Treasury. You completely humiliated me. And for what? I might have helped you of my own accord.”
“Please. As though you don’t snap to your father’s commands as quickly as the rest of us. You certainly had no qualms about ordering the guards to chase me down.”
Muntadhir flinched, taking a controlled breath. “I’m just trying to say our marriage doesn’t have to be as miserable as you seem determined to make it. We’re not getting out of this and you know it.”
“So you’ve brought me what? A peace offering?”
“Does that seem so unreasonable?” When Nahri gave him a skeptical look, Muntadhir pressed on. “I don’t expect some great love story, but we could attempt not to hate each other. We could attempt . . . to fulfill the actual reason we were married in the first place.”
She shifted, the meaning of his deliberate words clearer, and gestured to the crumpled sheets on her bed. “We just did.”
“Our people don’t conceive as easily as your humans,” Muntadhir said gently. “Once every few months is not going to produce the heir everyone is expecting.”
The heir everyone is expecting. Even for Nahri—who prided herself on being pragmatic, who knew this was all transactional—the blunt reminder of her worth was too much. “I’m the Banu Nahida of Daevabad, not some broodmare,” she snapped. “Believe it or not, I occasionally have other duties to attend to.”
“I know, Nahri. Believe it or not, I feel similarly.” Muntadhir scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Can I speak frankly?”
“I cannot imagine there’s a way to get more candid.”
That brought a half-smile to his face. “Fair. All right . . . I cannot help but feel like every time we . . . fulfill the actual reason we were married, you pull away more. And I don’t understand. When we were first married, we used to talk. We used to try. Now I can’t get a word out of you that isn’t barbed.”
His comment took her aback, as did the fact that he was right. When they were first married, Muntadhir had determinedly courted her. They might not have slept together, but he insisted they share a bed more nights than not, as well as conversation, even if it was just him passing on court gossip over a cup of wine. And oddly enough, Nahri had started to somewhat enjoy the bizarre ending to her day. Their nights together got her out of the infirmary, and his gossip was often useful, filling in the gaps of her political knowledge. Muntadhir was nothing if not a storyteller, and Nahri could not help but laugh at the ridiculous scandals he shared of poets who hexed their competitors and merchant nobles who were tricked into buying invisibility cloaks that inevitably failed when they got caught in bed with djinn who weren’t their spouses.
It was a courtship with an obvious goal, and Muntadhir never hid his intentions. He proceeded slowly: massaging her hands after a long surgery and then eventually her neck and her calves. Meanwhile, the whispers and not-so-veiled comments had gotten unbearable; the king replacing the domestic staff in both their apartments with servants who obviously reported every intimate detail—or lack thereof—directly to him. And so a year into their marriage, after her own generous cup of wine, a mix of curiosity, weariness, and pressure had finally gotten the better of her. Nahri had doused the lights, closed her eyes, and gruffly told Muntadhir to get on with it.
He had complied . . . and she had enjoyed it. It would be pointless to pretend otherwise; it was, as she admitted, one of his only skills. But finally consummating their marriage had—in a way she still didn’t understand—poisoned any budding affection she had for him. For it had been an intimacy whose depth Nahri didn’t realize until it was too late, one she didn’t want to share with him.
“See?” he prodded, pulling Nahri from her thoughts. “You’re doing it right now. Retreating into your head instead of talking to me.”
Nahri scowled. She didn’t like being read so easily.
Muntadhir reached for her hand. “What I said back there about my father and refusing to visit your bed: I was joking. If you need a break . . .”
“We can’t take a break,” Nahri murmured. “People would talk.”
And Ghassan would find out. The king was a determined man and there was little more he desired than a grandchild with Nahid blood. He probably had a servant keep a book with the dates and lengths of time Muntadhir spent in her bedroom, a maid to check her sheets. They were invasions of her privacy that Nahri could not even dwell upon without wanting to burn the palace down. Knowing that something so personal was reported to the man she hated most in the world, the man who held her life and the lives of everyone she cared about in his hand . . .
That was why Nahri could not warm to Muntadhir.
Because despite everything she told herself—that she had consented to this marriage and taken the Qahtanis for every coin she could, that to be married off for political gain was the fate of every woman of noble blood, that her husband at least was decent and handsome and cared for her satisfaction—it all faded before one undeniable truth: neither she nor Muntadhir wanted this. Nahri was a prize to the Qahtanis; she had given herself, her very body, in marriage to save her life and stop Ghassan’s bloodletting of her people. Were she to deny him now, there would be a cost.
“Then what do you want?” Muntadhir implored, sounding frustrated. “Talk to me. What will make this easier for you?”
Nothing will make this easier for me. Nahri pulled her hand out of his to trace her fingers over the shedu her uncle had painted. Had art been an escape for Rustam, a way to make his life as Ghassan’s prisoner easier?
Art that Ghassan’s son now gave to Rustam’s only surviving relative in the hopes of visiting her bed more often.
“What number would satisfy you?” Nahri finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
She met Muntadhir’s gaze, her voice toneless. “You said you weren’t satisfied with how often I let you try for an heir. So how many nights a month would you prefer?”
“Nahri, for God’s sake, you know that’s not what I—”
“Isn’t it?” She tapped her fingers on the painting again. “Don’t be shy, Emir. You’ve already paid.”
Muntadhir recoiled. But before Nahri could feel a moment’s regret—for the words had been cruel—anger washed across his face. Good. Nahri preferred anger to vulnerability.
He glared at her. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want this. Who lost a chance at happiness with someone else.”
“Our situations are not remotely the same,” Nahri snapped, unable to keep the feigned detachment in her voice at such an insinuation. She had no idea who he was referring to and didn’t care. Muntadhir was not the one expected to carry an enemy’s child. “And I’m finished with this conversation.”
He pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line, but he didn’t argue. Instead he dressed in silence and then picked up his bag.
“You can take back the book if you like,” Nahri said stiffly, though it killed her to do so. “I know it didn’t buy you what you wanted.”
Muntadhir gave her a weary look. “The book is yours. I told you the night I burned our marriage mask, Nahri: I’m not that kind of man.” He sighed. “You know, there are times that I think you and I could actually be good at ruling together. Even if we never loved each other. But you clearly need a bit of a break from me.”
“We can’t—”
“I’ll handle the whispers, all right? Believe it or not, I know how to handle some things around here, and I promise I won’t put you at risk. Just let me know when you’re ready for me to visit again.”
Nahri’s eyes pricked with tears at his unexpected kindness and the weight of their conversation. At the weight of the entire day. A day that had started with her believing she might have outmaneuvered the Qahtanis for once. A day in which she’d stood proudly in the Temple before her people.
A day that had ended with a rude reminder of just how powerless she truly was.
“Thank you, Emir Muntadhir,” she said uncomfortably, with as much politeness as possible. It would not do to entirely reject her reluctant yet powerful ally. “Good night.”
“Good night, Banu Nahida.”