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
