The City of Brass: Escape to a city of adventure, romance, and magic in this thrilling epic fantasy trilogy (The Daevabad Trilogy, Book 1)

“Raise your arm higher.”

Nahri lifted her elbow, tightening her grip on the dagger. “Like this?”

Dara made a face. “No.” He stepped up to her, the scent of his smoky skin tickling her nose, and adjusted her arm. “Loosen up; you need to be relaxed. You’re throwing a knife, not beating someone with a stick.”

His hand lingered a moment longer than necessary on her elbow, his breath warm against her neck. Nahri shivered; relaxing was a thing easier said than done when the handsome daeva was so close. He finally stepped away, and she fixed her eyes on the scrubby tree. She threw the dagger, and it sailed past the tree to land in a patch of bushes.

Dara burst into laughter as she swore. “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to make much of a warrior out of you.” He opened his palm, and the dagger flew back to him.

Nahri gave him an envious look. “Can’t you teach me how to do that?”

He handed the knife back. “No. I’ve told you enough times …”

“… magic is unpredictable,” she finished. She threw the dagger again. She could have sworn it landed slightly closer to the tree, but that might have been her own wishful thinking. “So what if it is? Are you truly afraid of what I might do?”

“Yes,” he said bluntly. “For all I know, you’ll send fifty such knives flying back at us.”

Ah, well, perhaps he had a point. She waved the knife away when he tried to hand it back. “No. I’ve had enough for today. Can’t we just rest? We’ve been traveling as if—”

“As if a pack of ifrit are after us?” His raised his eyebrows.

“We’ll travel faster if we’re not exhausted,” she replied, taking his arm and pulling him in the direction of their small camp. “Come on.”

“We’d travel faster if we weren’t carting around a caravan of stolen goods,” Dara retorted, snapping off a twig from a dying tree and letting it burn to cinders in his hands. “How many clothes do you truly need? And you’re not even eating the oranges … to say nothing of that entirely useless flute.”

“That flute is ivory, Dara. It’s worth a fortune. Besides …” Nahri held out her arms, briefly admiring the embroidered tunic and brown leather boots she’d snatched off a stall they passed in one of the river towns. “I’m just trying to keep our supplies well stocked.”

They reached their camp, though “camp” might have been too kind a word for the little clearing where Nahri had stomped down the grass before dropping her bags. The horses were grazing in a distant field, eating any bit of greenery down to the roots. Dara knelt and rekindled their fire with a snap of his fingers. The flames jumped, illuminating the dark tattoo on his frowning face.

“Your ancestors would be horrified to see how easily you take to stealing.”

“According to you, my ancestors would be horrified to learn of my very existence.” She pulled out a well-wrapped heel of stale bread. “And it’s the way the world works. By now, people have certainly broken into my home in Cairo and stolen my things.”

He tossed a broken branch on the fire, sending up sparks. “How does that make it better?”

“Someone steals from me, I steal from others, and I’m sure the people I stole from will eventually take something that doesn’t belong to them. It’s a circle,” she added wisely, as she gnawed on the chewy bread.

Dara stared at her for a good few heartbeats before speaking. “There is something very wrong with you.”

“Probably comes from my daeva blood.”

He scowled. “It’s your turn to fetch the horses.”

Nahri groaned; she had little desire to leave the fire. “And what are you going to do?”

But Dara was already retrieving a battered pot from one of their bags. She’d stolen it along the way, hoping to find something to cook that wasn’t manna. And after listening to her complain about their food situation for days, Dara had taken it upon himself to try and figure out how to conjure up something different. But Nahri wasn’t hopeful. All he’d managed thus far was a vaguely warm gray soup that tasted like the ghouls smelled.

Night had fallen by the time Nahri returned with the horses. The darkness in this land fell quick and was thick enough to feel, a heavy, impenetrable blackness that would have made her nervous if she didn’t have their campfire to guide her. Even the thick canopy of stars above did little to alleviate it, their light captured by the white mountains surrounding them. They were covered in snow, Dara explained, a concept she could scarcely imagine. This country was completely foreign to her, and though it was novel and in some ways even beautiful, she found herself longing for Cairo’s busy streets, for the crowded bazaars and squabbling merchants. She missed the golden desert that embraced her city and the wide, brown Nile that twisted through it.

Nahri tied the horses to a skinny tree. The temperature had dropped dramatically with the sun, and her cold fingers fumbled the knot. She wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders and then took a seat as close to the fire as she dared.

Dara wasn’t even wearing his robe. She stared jealously at his bare arms. Must be nice to be made of fire. Whatever daeva blood she had clearly wasn’t enough to keep the chill away.

The pot steamed at his feet; he pushed it over with a triumphant smile. “Eat.”

She took a suspicious sniff. It smelled good, like buttery lentils and onions. Nahri ripped off a strip of bread from her bag and dipped it into the pot. She took a guarded bite and then another. It tasted as good as it smelled, like cream and lentils and some type of leafy green. She quickly reached for more bread.

“Do you like it?” he asked, his voice rising in hope.

After all the manna, anything edible would have been appetizing, but this was legitimately delicious. “I love it!” She scooped more into her mouth, savoring the warm stew. “How did you finally do it, then?”

Dara looked tremendously pleased with himself. “I tried to concentrate on the dish I knew best. I think the focus helped—a lot of magic has to do with your intentions.” He paused, and his smile faded. “It was something my mother used to make.”

Nahri almost choked; Dara had revealed nothing about his past and even now she could see a guarded look slip across his face. Hoping he wouldn’t change the subject, she quickly replied, “She must be a very good cook.”

“She was.” He drank back the rest of his wine, and the goblet immediately refilled.

“Was?” Nahri ventured.

Dara stared into the fire; his fingers twitched like he longed to touch it. “She’s dead.”

Nahri dropped her bread. “Oh. Dara, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“It is fine,” he interrupted, though the tone of his voice implied it was anything but. “It was a long time ago.”

Nahri hesitated but couldn’t contain her curiosity. “And the rest of your family?”

“Dead as well.” He gave her a sharp look, his emerald eyes bright. “There’s no one but me.”

“I can relate,” she said softly.

“Indeed. I suppose you can.” A goblet suddenly materialized in her hand. “Drink with me, then,” he commanded, raising his goblet in her direction. “You’ll choke if you don’t wash down that food. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eat so quickly.”

He was changing the subject, and they both knew it. Nahri shrugged, taking a sip of the wine. “You’d do the same if you grew up like me. Sometimes I didn’t know when I’d eat next.”

“I could tell.” He snorted. “You didn’t look much thicker than the ghouls when I first found you. Curse the manna all you like, at least it filled you out some.”

Nahri lifted an eyebrow. “‘Filled me out some’?” she repeated.

Dara was immediately flustered. “I-I didn’t mean in a bad way. Just that, you know …” He made a vague sweeping motion toward her body and then blushed, perhaps realizing such a gesture didn’t help. “Never mind,” he muttered, dropping his embarrassed gaze.

Oh, I know, believe me. For all Dara supposedly abhorred the shafit, Nahri had caught him staring at her more than once, and their dagger-throwing lesson hadn’t been the first time his hand had lingered upon her a bit too long.

She kept her gaze on him, studying the broad line of his shoulders and watching as he played nervously with his goblet, still avoiding her eyes. His fingers trembled on the stem, and for a moment Nahri could not help but wonder if they would do the same upon her skin.

Because things are not tumultuous enough between us without adding that to the mix. Before her mind could go any further, Nahri changed the subject again to one she knew would thoroughly ruin the mood. “So tell me about these Qahtanis.”

Dara startled. “What?”

“These djinn you keep insulting, the ones who supposedly fought my ancestors.” She took a sip of her wine. “Tell me about them.”

Dara made a face as if he’d eaten something sour. One objective achieved. “Must we really do this now? It’s late—”

She shook a finger at him. “Don’t make me go looking for another ghoul to threaten you into talking.”

He didn’t smile at the joke, instead looking more troubled. “It’s not a pleasant tale, Nahri.”

“All the more reason to get it over with.”

He took a sip of wine, a long sip, as if he needed a dose of courage. “I told you before that Suleiman was a clever man. Before his curse, all daevas were the same. We looked similar, spoke a single language, practiced identical rites.” Dara beckoned at their fire, and its tendrils of smoke rushed toward his hands like an eager lover. “When Suleiman freed us, he scattered us across the world he knew, changing our tongues and appearances to mirror the humans in our new lands.”

Dara spread his hands. The smoke flattened and condensed to form a thick map in the sky before her, Suleiman’s temple at the center. As she watched, blazing pinpricks of light spun out from the temple across the world, falling to the ground like meteorites and bouncing back as fully formed people.

“He divided us into six tribes.” Dara pointed at a pale woman weighing jade coins at the eastern edge of the map, China perhaps. “The Tukharistanis.” He gestured south at a bejeweled dancer twirling in the Indian subcontinent. “The Agnivanshi.” A tiny rider burst out of the smoke, galloping across southern Arabia and brandishing a fiery sword. Dara pursed his lips and with a snap of his fingers lopped off its head. “The Geziri.” To the south of Egypt, a golden-eyed scholar tossed a brilliant teal scarf over his shoulder as he scanned a scroll. Dara nodded at him. “The Ayaanle,” he said and then pointed to a fire-haired man mending a boat on the Moroccan coast. “The Sahrayn.”

“What about your people?”

“Our people,” he corrected and gestured toward the flat plains of what looked like Persia to her, or perhaps Afghanistan. “Daevastana,” he said warmly. “The land of the Daevas.”

She frowned. “Your tribe took the original name of the entire daeva race as your own?”

Dara shrugged. “We were in charge.”

He studied the map. The smoky figures silently shouted and gesticulated at each other. “It was said to be a violent, terrifying time. Most people embraced their new tribes, clinging together for survival and forming within the tribes caste groups determined by their new abilities. Some were shapeshifters, others could manipulate metals, some could conjure up rare goods, and so forth. None could do it all, and the tribes were too busy fighting each other to even consider revenge against Suleiman.”

Nahri smiled, impressed. “Surely even you must admit that was rather a brilliant move on Suleiman’s part.”

“Perhaps,” Dara replied. “But brilliant as he might have been, Suleiman failed to consider the consequences of giving my people solid, mortal bodies.”

The tiny figures continued to multiply, building small villages and crisscrossing the vast world in spindly caravans. Occasionally a miniature flying carpet dashed across the smoky clouds.

“What consequences?” Nahri asked, confused.

He gave her a playful smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That we could mate with humans.”

“And make shafit,” she realized. “People like me.”

Dara nodded. “Completely forbidden, mind you.” He sighed. “You may have realized by now that we’re not particularly good at following rules.”

“I’m guessing those shafit multiplied pretty quickly?”

“Very.” He gestured to the smoky map. “Like I say, magic is unpredictable.” A tiny city in the Maghreb burst into flames. “Made even more so in the hands of mix-blooded, untrained practitioners.” Enormous ships, in a variety of bizarre shapes crossed the Red Sea, and winged cats with human faces soared over the Hind. “Although most shafit don’t have any abilities, the few that do have the capacity to inflict terrible damage on their human societies.”

Damage like leading a pack of ghouls through Cairo and tricking bashas out of their wealth? Nahri had little argument there. “But why did the daevas—or djinn, or whatever you were calling yourselves at the time—even care?” she asked. “I thought your race didn’t think much of humans anyway.”

“They wouldn’t have,” Dara admitted. “But Suleiman made it quite clear that another would follow in his place to punish us again should we ignore his law. The Nahid Council struggled for years to contain the shafit problem, ordering that any humans suspected of having magical blood be brought to Daevabad to live out their lives.”

Nahri went still. “The Nahid Council? But I thought the Qahtanis were the ones—”

“I’ll get to that part,” Dara cut in, his voice a little colder—and slightly more slurred—than usual. He took another long sip of wine. The goblet never seemed to empty, so Nahri could only imagine how much he’d consumed by now. Far more than her, and her head was starting to swim.

A city rose from the smoky map in Daevastana, in the center of a dark lake. Its walls gleamed like brass, beautiful against the dark sky. “Is that Daevabad?” she asked.

“Daevabad,” Dara confirmed. His eyes dimmed as he stared at the tiny city, longing in his face. “Our grandest city. Where Anahid built her palace and from where her descendants ruled the realm until they were overthrown.”

“Let me guess … by all the kidnapped shafit they kept locked up?”

Dara shook his head. “No. No shafit could have ever done such a thing; they’re too weak.”

“Then who did?”

Dara’s face darkened. “Who didn’t?” When she frowned in confusion, he continued. “The other tribes never paid much heed to Suleiman’s decree. Oh, they claimed to agree that humans and daevas should be segregated, but they were the source of the shafit.”

He nodded at the map. “The Geziri were the worst. They were fascinated by the humans in their land, praising their prophets and adopting their culture—with some inevitably getting too close. They’re the poorest tribe, a pack of religious fanatics who believe what Suleiman did to us was a blessing not a curse. They often refused to surrender shafit kin, and when the Nahid Council grew more severe in their enforcement of the law, the Geziri didn’t react well.”

A black swarm rose in the Rub al Khali, the forbidding desert north of the Yemen. “They started calling themselves ‘djinn,’” Dara said. “The word the humans in their land used for our race. And when their leader, a man named Zaydi al Qahtani, called for an invasion, the other tribes joined him.” The black cloud grew enormous as it descended upon Daevabad and stained the lake. “He overthrew the Nahid Council and stole Suleiman’s seal.” Dara’s next words came out in a hiss. “His descendants rule Daevabad to this day.”

Nahri watched as the city slowly turned black. “How long ago was all this?”

“About fourteen hundred years ago.” Dara’s mouth was a thin line. Within the smoky map, the tiny version of Daevabad, now black as coal, collapsed.

“Fourteen hundred years ago?” She studied the daeva, noticing the tense way he held his body and the scowl on his handsome face. Something stirred in her memory. “This … this is the war you were discussing with Khayzur, isn’t it?” Her mouth fell open. “Didn’t you say you witnessed it?”

He drank back the rest of his wine. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

Nahri’s head spun from the admission. “But how? You said the djinn only lived for a few centuries!”

“It doesn’t matter.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, but the movement wasn’t as graceful as usual. “My history is just that: mine.”

She was incredulous. “And you don’t think this king is going to want an explanation when we show up in Daevabad?”

“I’m not going to Daevabad.”

“What? But I thought … where are we going then?”

Dara looked away. “I’ll take you as far as the city gates. You can make your way to the palace from there. You’ll be received better alone, trust me.”

Nahri drew back, shocked and far more hurt than she should have been. “You’re just going to abandon me?”

“I’m not abandoning you.” Dara exhaled and threw up his hands, gesturing rudely to the pile of weapons behind him. “Nahri, what kind of history do you think I have with these people? I can’t go back.”

Her temper flashed, and she rose to her feet. “You coward,” she accused him. “You misled me back at the river and you know it. I never would have agreed to go to Daevabad with you if I’d known you were so afraid of the djinn that you were planning to—”

“I am not afraid of the djinn.” Dara also rose to his feet, his eyes flaring. “I sold my soul for the Nahids! I’m not going to spend eternity languishing in a dungeon while I listen to the djinn mock them for being hypocrites.”

“But they were hypocrites—look at me! I’m living proof!”

His face darkened. “I am all too aware of that.”

That stung, she couldn’t deny it. “Is that what this is about then? You’re ashamed of me?”

“I …” Dara shook his head. Something like regret seemed to briefly flicker in his face before he turned away. “Nahri, you didn’t grow up in my world. You can’t understand.”

“Thank God I didn’t! I probably would have been killed before my first birthday!”

Dara said nothing, his silence more revealing than any denial. Her stomach twisted. She’d been imagining her ancestors as noble healers, but what Dara suggested painted a far darker picture. “Then I’m glad the djinn invaded,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I hope they got vengeance for all the shafit my ancestors murdered!”

“Vengeance?” Dara’s eyes flashed, smoke curling out from under his collar. “Zaydi al Qahtani slaughtered every last Daeva man, woman, and child when he took the city. My family was in that city. My sister wasn’t even half your age!”

Nahri immediately backed down, seeing the grief in his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t …”

But he’d already turned away. He crossed toward their supplies, moving so fast the grass scorched beneath his feet. “I don’t need to listen to this.” He snatched his bag from the ground, slinging his bow and quiver over his shoulder before shooting her a hostile look. “You think your ancestors—my leaders—such monsters, the Qahtanis so righteous …” He jerked his head toward the encompassing darkness. “Why don’t you try singing for a djinn to save you next?”

And then before Nahri could say anything, before she could really comprehend what was happening, he stalked off, vanishing into the night.