“Okay, we’re here,” Ali said, throwing out his arm to prevent Nahri from slipping past. “Now will you tell me why you had to visit Sukariyya Street?”
Nahri was the very image of calmness at his side, her dark eyes studying the bustling shafit neighborhood like a hunter might survey its prey. “The house with the red door,” she remarked softly under her breath.
Perplexed, Ali followed her gaze to a narrow, three-story wooden house that looked like it had been crammed between the two larger stone buildings on either side of it. A small open porch fronted the house, surrounding a red door painted with orange flowers. It was a cloudy afternoon, and shadows swallowed the building, obscuring it in gloom.
His unease instantly grew. The windows were boarded over, but with enough cracks that one could easily spy on the street from the inside, and a man sat on the steps of the neighboring building, reading a pamphlet with a bit too much studied disinterest. At a café across the street, two others sat ostensibly playing backgammon, their gazes occasionally flitting over to the red door.
Ali wasn’t Citadel-trained for nothing. “It’s being watched.”
“Why do you think I brought you?” Nahri asked. A strangled sound of disbelief left his mouth, and she threw him a scornful look. “By the Most High, could you stop acting so jumpy?”
He stared at her. “Someone tried to murder me a week ago.”
Nahri rolled her eyes. “Let’s go.” She was off without another word.
Aghast, Ali watched as she strode purposefully towards the guarded house. Admittedly, there was little to give her away. Dressed in a rough-spun abaya and shawl, Nahri blended into the crowd of gossiping shafit shoppers and arguing laborers with ease.
Certainly a different look from the gold dress she wore to the feast. Ali’s face abruptly filled with heat. No, he was not thinking about that dress. Not again. Instead, he hurried after her, cursing himself for getting dragged into whatever mysterious business Nahri claimed to have in the shafit district. He still wasn’t sure what foolishness had made him agree to this; the days since he’d been poisoned were nothing but a pain-wracked blur of his mother’s hovering, endless questions from the Royal Guard’s investigators, and increasingly foul-tasting potions from the Banu Nahida.
She probably hexed you into agreeing. The Nahids could do that, couldn’t they? Because surely not even Ali was reckless enough to sneak his sister-in-law out of the palace—and to agree to take the blame if they were found out—without being hexed.
By the time he caught up, Nahri was walking with a hand on her lower belly. There was suddenly a bump there, and her bag was gone from her shoulder. When she’d slipped it under her abaya, God only knew, but she was sniffling by the time they neared the house. She wiped her eyes, a feigned limp affecting her walk.
The man next door dropped his pamphlet and rose to his feet, stepping in her path. “Can I help you, sister?”
Nahri nodded. “Peace be upon you,” she greeted him. “I …” She sucked in her breath, clutching her exaggerated belly. “I’m sorry. My cousin said there was someone here … someone who helps women.”
The man’s gaze swept over them. “If indeed your cousin said such a thing, you’d know to bring her so she could vouch for you.” He stared at Ali. “Is this your husband?”
“I didn’t tell her it was I who needed help.” Nahri lowered her voice. “And this isn’t my husband.”
The blood left Ali’s face. “I—”
Nahri’s hand darted out and she grasped his arm in a viselike grip. “Please …” She gasped, curling in on herself. “I’m in a lot of pain.”
The man flushed, glancing helplessly down the street. “Oh, all right …” He crossed the porch, swiftly pulling open the red door. “Come quick.”
Ali’s heart raced, his mind screaming warnings of entrapment—this was, after all, not the first time he’d been tricked into entering a crumbling shafit building—but Nahri was already dragging him up the steps. They creaked underfoot, the wood soft from Daevabad’s misty air. The shafit man shut the door behind them, throwing them into a gloomy darkness.
They were standing in a fairly simple entrance hall, with lacquered wooden walls and two doors. There were no windows, but the ceiling had been left open to the cloudy sky, making it feel as though they’d been dropped into a pit. The only other light came from a small oil lamp that sat burning next to a platter piled with sweets, in front of a garlanded rice-paper painting of a well-armed woman sitting astride a roaring tiger.
His patience with Nahri abruptly vanished. Someone had tried to kill him less than a week ago. He was drawing a line at lurking in some mysterious shafit house while pretending he’d impregnated his brother’s wife.
Ali turned on her, selecting his words carefully. “My dear,” he started. “Would you please explain what we’re doing here?”
Nahri was gazing about the foyer with open curiosity. “We’re here to meet a shafit doctor named Subhashini Sen. This is where he works.”
The man who’d brought them in abruptly straightened up. “He?” Suspicion blossomed across his face, and he reached for his waist.
Ali was faster. He drew his zulfiqar in a breath, and the shafit man stepped back, his hand frozen on a wooden baton. He opened his mouth.
“Don’t scream,” Nahri said quickly. “Please. We don’t mean anyone here harm. I only want to talk to the doctor.”
The man’s gaze darted nervously to the door on his left. “I … you can’t.”
Nahri looked baffled. “Excuse me?”
The shafit man swallowed. “You don’t understand … she’s very particular.”
Curiosity lit Nahri’s eyes. She must have also noticed the door the shafit man glanced at—because she was reaching for the handle in the next moment.
Ali panicked, not thinking. “Nahri, wait, don’t—”
The shafit man’s mouth fell open. “Nahri?”
God preserve me. Ali charged after her as she slipped into the room. Discretion be damned, they were getting out of here.
A clipped female voice with a thick Daevabadi accent cut him off the moment he passed the threshold.
“I have told all of you … at least a dozen times … if you interrupt me while I’m doing this procedure, I’m going to perform it on you next.”
Ali froze. Not so much at the warning, but at the sight of its source. A shafit woman in a plain cotton sari knelt before them at the side of an elderly man lying on a cushion.
She had a needle inserted in his eye.
Aghast at the grisly sight, Ali opened his mouth to protest, but Nahri clapped a hand over it before he could speak.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She’d drawn back her veil, revealing the open delight dancing across her features.
The shafit guard joined them, wringing his hands. “Forgive me, Doctor Sen. I would never have interrupted you. Only …” He glanced nervously between Ali and Nahri, his eyes seeming to trace Ali’s height and his zulfiqar anew. “You appear to have some guests from the palace.”
The doctor hesitated. But only for a moment, and neither her hands nor attention so much as twitched. “Whether that’s true or some symptom of madness, all of you can take a seat right now. I still have part of this cataract to remove.”
There was no room for disobedience in the woman’s stern voice. Ali backed up as quickly as the guard, dropping into one of the low couches lining the wall. He looked around the room. Full of light from an adjoining courtyard and copious lanterns, it was large enough to fit perhaps a dozen people. Three pallets were set low on the ground, the two not being used loosely covered in crisp linen. Cupboards lined one wall, and beside them a desk faced the courtyard, stacked high with books.
Nahri, of course, had ignored the doctor’s command, and Ali watched helplessly as she drifted toward the desk and began flipping through a book, a grin on her face. He’d seen that look back when they’d been friends: when she’d read her first sentence correctly and when they’d gazed upon the moon through a human telescope, ruminating on the source of its shadows. Her desire to learn had been one of the things that had drawn him to her, a thing they had in common. He had not, however, expected it to lead them to a shafit doctor in one of the city’s more dangerous neighborhoods.
The sound of a crying infant broke the silence. The door creaked open again, the wailing growing louder.
“Subha, love, are you already done, then?” A new voice, a man’s low rumble. “The baby is hungry, but she won’t eat any of the … oh.” The man trailed off as he stepped into the infirmary.
The newcomer was enormous, easily one of the largest men Ali had ever see. A mop of messy black curls fell past his shoulders, and his nose looked like it had been broken multiple times. Ali instantly raised his zulfiqar, but far from being armed, the man held only a wooden spoon and a small baby.
Ali lowered his weapon with some embarrassment. Maybe Nahri had a point about him being jumpy.
“And that’s the last of it,” the doctor announced, setting down her needle and sitting back. She reached for a tin of salve and then quickly bandaged the man’s eyes. “You’ll be keeping this on for a full week, understand? Don’t pester it.”
She rose to her feet. The doctor looked younger than Ali would have expected, but that might have been thanks to her djinn blood, which was quite apparent. Though her dark brown skin didn’t have the telltale shine of a pureblood, her ears were as peaked as his own and there was only a glimmer of brown in her Agnivanshi-tin eyes. Her dark hair was plaited in a thick braid that fell to her waist, a line of vermilion neatly set in the part.
She wiped her hands on a cloth tucked into her waistband and then looked them over, a muscle working in her cheek. It was an appraising gaze, one that flickered from the crying baby to linger on Ali and Nahri before returning to the child.
Far from ruffled, she appeared unimpressed and rather irritated. “Manka …,” she started, and the doorman’s head snapped up. “I want you to help Hunayn to the recovery room. Parimal, bring the baby here.”
Both men instantly obeyed, one helping the groggy patient out while the other handed the baby over. The doctor took her child, her gaze not once leaving Ali and Nahri’s faces as she rearranged her sari over her chest and the baby’s sobs turned to happy suckling.
Ali swallowed, fixing his gaze upon the opposite wall. Nahri didn’t seem bothered by any of this; she was still standing at the desk with a book in her hand.
The doctor narrowed her eyes, glaring at the Banu Nahida. “If you wouldn’t mind …”
“But of course.” Nahri set down the book and then took a seat next to Ali. “Was that cataract surgery you were doing?”
“Yes.” The woman’s voice stayed clipped. She took a seat on a wooden stool across from them. “And it’s a complicated, delicate procedure … one I don’t like interrupted.”
“We’re sorry,” Ali rushed to say. “We didn’t mean to barge in.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. He tried not to squirm; it felt like being confronted by Hatset crossed with the most terrifying of his old tutors.
The doctor pursed her lips, nodding at the zulfiqar. “Mind putting that away?”
He flushed. “Of course.” He quickly sheathed the sword and then pulled down his face covering. It didn’t seem right to intrude upon these people and remain anonymous. He cleared his throat. “Peace be upon you,” he offered weakly.
Parimal’s eyes went wide. “Prince Alizayd?” His gaze darted to Nahri. “Does that mean you’re—”
“Daevabad’s newest Nahid?” the doctor cut in, her voice filled with scorn. “Seems likely. So are the two of you here to shut us down, then? Planning to haul me off to the bronze boat for trying to help my people?”
The mention of the bronze boat sent ice into his veins; Ali had once been forced to do just that to a number of shafit caught in a riot his father had engineered to provoke the Tanzeem. “No,” he said quickly. “Absolutely not.”
“He’s right,” Nahri said. “I only wanted to meet you. I came across one of your patients recently. A man with a hole in his skull, like someone had cut—”
“Drilled.” Nahri blinked and the doctor pressed on, her voice cold. “It is called a trepanation. If you believe yourself a healer, you should use the correct terms.”
Ali felt Nahri tense slightly at his side, but her voice stayed calm. “Drilled, then. He claimed you were a physician, and I wanted to see if that was true.”
“Did you?” The doctor’s brows knit together in incredulity. “Is the little girl who makes potions for good luck and tickles away bad humors with a simurgh feather here to assess my training?”
Ali’s mouth went dry.
Nahri bristled. “I’d daresay what I do is a bit more advanced than that.”
The doctor lifted her chin. “Go on, then, make your examination. You’ve already intruded, and I don’t suppose we can protest.” She jerked her head at Ali. “That’s why you brought your prince, no?”
“I’m not her prince,” Ali corrected swiftly, glaring when Nahri threw him an annoyed look. “I said I’d take you to Sukariyya Street,” he said, defending himself. “Not sneak you into some doctor’s house by pretending that we … that you …” Very unhelpfully, the memory of Nahri’s gold dress appeared again in his mind, and mortified heat stole over his face. “Never mind,” he stammered.
“Traitor,” Nahri said, her tone withering as she added something even less kind in Arabic. But it was clear neither Ali’s desertion nor the doctor’s hostility would stop her. She rose to her feet, crossing to the bookshelf.
“This is an impressive collection …,” she remarked, longing in her voice. She pulled two volumes loose. “Ibn Sina, al Razi … where did you get all this?”
“My father was a physician in the human world.” The doctor gestured to her pointed ears. “Unlike me, he could pass, and so he did. He traveled and studied wherever he liked. Delhi, Istanbul, Cairo, Marrakesh. He was two hundred and fifty when some loathsome Sahrayn bounty hunter found him in Mauritania and dragged him to Daevabad.” Her eyes lingered on the books. “He brought everything he could.”
Nahri looked even more awed. “Your father spent two hundred years studying medicine in the human world?” When the doctor nodded, she pressed on. “Where is he now?”
The doctor swallowed hard before responding. “He died last year. A stroke.”
The eagerness faded from Nahri’s face. She carefully put the book back. “I’m sorry.”
“As am I. It was a loss for my community.” There was no self-pity in the doctor’s voice. “He trained a few of us. My husband and I are the best.”
Parimal shook his head. “I’m a glorified bonesetter. Subha is the best.” There was affectionate pride in his voice. “Even her father said so, and that man did not compliment easily.”
“Do the other doctors he trained practice here as well?” Nahri asked.
“No. It’s not worth the risk. Purebloods would rather we die from coughs than live to procreate.” Subha’s grip on her baby tightened. “The Royal Guard comes in here and any number of my instruments could land me in prison under the weapons ban.” She scowled. “Nor are the shafit entirely innocent. These are desperate times, and there are people who believe we’re rich. I had a talented surgeon from Mombasa working here until a band of thieves kidnapped his daughter. He sold everything he owned to ransom her back and then fled. They were going to try and smuggle themselves out of the city.” Her face fell. “I’ve heard nothing since. Many of the boats don’t make it.”
The boats? Ali stilled. Daevabad wasn’t an easy place to escape. The courage—the desperation—it must take to load one’s family onto a rickety smuggler’s boat and pray it made it across the murderous waters …
We have failed them. We have utterly failed them. He took in the little family before him, remembering the shafit his mother had saved. There were thousands more like them in Daevabad, men and women and children whose potential and prospects had been coldly curtailed to suit the political needs of the city in which they had no choice but to live.
Lost in his thoughts, Ali only noticed Nahri reaching for a cabinet door when Parimal lunged forward.
“Wait, Banu Nahida, don’t—”
But she’d already opened it. Ali heard her breath catch. “I take it this is for protection from those kidnappers, then?” she asked, pulling out a hefty metallic object.
It took Ali a moment to recognize it, and when he did, his blood ran cold.
It was a pistol.
“Nahri, put that down,” he said. “Right now.”
She threw him an irritated look. “Oh, give me some credit. I’m not going to shoot myself.”
“It is a tool of iron and gunpowder and you are the Banu Nahida of Daevabad.” When she frowned, looking confused, his voice broke in alarm. “It explodes, Nahri! We are literally creatures of fire; we don’t go near gunpowder!”
“Ah.” She swallowed and then set it back down, carefully easing the door shut. “Probably best to be careful, then.”
“It’s mine alone,” Parimal said quickly, an obvious lie. “Subha knew nothing.”
“You shouldn’t have that here,” Ali warned. “It’s incredibly dangerous. And if you got caught?” He looked between the two. “Shafit possession of even a small amount of gunpowder is punished with execution.” Granted, Ali suspected that was a punishment driven by fear of the shafit as much as it was of gunpowder—no pureblooded djinn wanted a weapon around that the shafit could handle with more finesse. “Add a pistol? This entire block would be leveled.”
Subha gave him a wary look. “Is that a warning or a charge?”
“A warning,” he replied, meeting her eyes. “One I’d beg you heed.”
Nahri returned to his side, her swagger gone. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Truly. I wasn’t sure what to think when I saw that man. I’ve heard rumors of how desperate the shafit are, and I know how easily people can prey upon that type of fear.”
Subha stiffened. “That you would think such a thing of me says far more about you.”
Nahri winced. “You’re probably right.” She dropped her gaze, looking uncharacteristically chastened, and then reached for her bag. “I … I brought you something. Healing herbs and willow bark from my garden. I thought you could use them.” She offered the bag.
The doctor made no move to take it. “You must know nothing of your family’s history if you think I’d ever give ‘medicine’ prepared by a Nahid to a shafit.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that why you’re here? To spread some new disease among us?”
Nahri recoiled. “Of course not!” Genuine shock filled her voice, tugging at Ali’s heart. “I … I wanted to help.”
“Help?” The doctor glared. “You broke into my practice because you wanted to help?”
“Because I wanted to see if we could work together,” Nahri rushed. “On a project I’d like to propose to the king.”
Subha was staring at the Banu Nahida as if she’d sprouted another head. “You want to work with me? On a project you intend to propose to the king of Daevabad?”
“Yes.”
The doctor’s gaze somehow grew even more incredulous. “Which is …?”
Nahri pressed her hands together. “I want to build a hospital.”
Ali gaped at her. She might as well have said she wished to throw herself before a karkadann.
“You want to build a hospital?” the doctor repeated blankly.
“Well, not so much build one as rebuild one,” Nahri explained quickly. “My ancestors ran a hospital before the war, but it’s in ruins now. I’d like to restore and reopen it.”
The Nahid hospital? Certainly she couldn’t mean … Ali shuddered, searching for a response. “You want to recover the Nahid hospital? The one near the Citadel?”
She looked at him with surprise. “You know about that place?”
Ali fought very hard to keep his face composed. There was nothing in Nahri’s voice that suggested she’d asked the question in anything other than innocence. He dared a glance at Subha, but she looked lost.
He cleared his throat. “I … er … might have heard a thing or two about it.”
“A thing or two?” Nahri pressed, eyeing him closely.
More. But what Ali knew about that hospital—about what had been done there before the war, and the brutal, bloody way the Nahids had been punished for it—those facts were not widely known and certainly not ones he was about to share. Especially with an already arguing Nahid and shafit.
He shifted uncomfortably. “Why don’t you tell us more about your plan?”
Her eyes stayed on his, heavy with scrutiny for another moment, but then she sighed, turning back to Subha. “A single cramped infirmary is no place to treat the entirety of Daevabad’s population. I want to start seeing people who didn’t have to pay a bribe to gain access to me. And when I reopen the hospital, I want it open to all.”
Subha narrowed her eyes. “To all?”
“To all,” Nahri repeated. “Regardless of blood.”
“Then you’re delusional. Or you’re lying. Such a thing would never be permitted. The king would forbid it, your priests would die of shock and horror …”
“It will take some convincing,” Nahri cut in lightly. “I know. But I think we can make it work.” She pointed at the bookshelf. “There are more books like that in the Royal Library; I’ve read them. I healed people in the human world for years, and I know the value in those methods. There are still plenty of times I prefer ginger and sage to zahhak blood and incantations.” She gave Subha an imploring look. “That’s why I came to find you. I thought we could work together.”
Ali sat back, stunned. Across from him, Parimal appeared equally astonished.
Subha’s expression turned colder. “And should I bring to this hospital a shafit man dying of a stroke …” Her voice trembled slightly, but her words were precise. “An ailment I suspect you could heal with a single touch … are you going to lay hands on him, Banu Nahida? In the presence of witnesses, of your pureblood fellows, would you use Nahid magic on a mixed-blood?”
Nahri hesitated, a wash of color sweeping over her face. “I think … initially … it might be better if we treated our own.”
The shafit doctor laughed. It was bitter and utterly without humor. “You don’t even see it, do you?”
“Subha …,” Parimal cut in, his voice thick with warning.
“Let her speak,” Nahri interrupted. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
“Then you will. You say you mean us no harm?” Subha’s eyes flashed. “You are the very essence of harm, Nahid. You’re the leader of the tribe—the faith—that calls us soulless, and the last descendant of a family that culled shafit for centuries as though we were rats. You were the companion of the Scourge of Qui-zi, a butcher who could have filled the lake with the shafit blood he spilt. You have the arrogance to burst into my infirmary—my home—uninvited, to inspect me as though you are my superior. And now you sit there offering pretty dreams of hospitals while I am wondering how to get my child out of this room alive. Why would I ever work with you?”
Thunderous silence followed Subha’s fiery words. Ali felt the urge to speak up for Nahri, knowing her intentions had been good. But he also knew the doctor was right. He had seen firsthand the destruction that pureblood blunderings could cause the shafit.
A muscle worked in Nahri’s cheek. “I apologize for the manner of my arrival,” she said stiffly. “But my intent is sincere. I might be a Nahid and a Daeva, but I want to help the shafit.”
“Then go to your Temple, renounce your ancestors’ beliefs in front of the rest of your people, and declare us equals,” Subha challenged. “If you want to help the shafit, deal with your Daevas first.”
Nahri rubbed her head, looking resigned. “I can’t do that. Not yet. I’d lose their support and be of use to no one.” Subha snorted and Nahri glared at her, appearing angry now. “The shafit are hardly innocent in all of this,” she retorted, heat creeping into her voice. “Do you know what happened to the Daevas caught in the Grand Bazaar after Dara’s death? The shafit fell upon them like beasts, hurling Rumi fire and—”
“Beasts?” Subha snapped. “Ah, yes, because that’s what we are to you. Ravaging animals who need to be controlled!”
“It isn’t a terrible idea.” The words slipped from Ali’s mouth before he could think, and when both women whirled on him, he fought to stay composed. He was nearly as surprised as they were that he was speaking … but it wasn’t a terrible idea. It was … actually sort of brilliant. “I mean, if my father approved this, and you proceeded carefully, I think the Daevas and the shafit working together would be extraordinary. And to build a hospital, something Daevabad could truly use? It would be an incredible achievement.”
He caught Nahri’s gaze then. Her eyes swam with an emotion he couldn’t decipher … but she didn’t look entirely pleased by his sudden support.
Nor did Subha. “So, you’re also a part of this plan?” she asked him.
“No,” Nahri said flatly. “He isn’t.”
“Then you’re not good at convincing people to work with you, Nahid,” Subha replied, putting her daughter against her shoulder to burp her. “With him at your side, I might actually believe some of this newfound concern you seem to have for the shafit.”
“You’d work with him?” Nahri repeated in outraged disbelief. “You do realize it’s his father currently persecuting your people?”
“I’m quite aware,” Subha retorted. “There’s also not a shafit in Daevabad who doesn’t know how the prince feels about it.” She turned her attention back to Ali. “I heard about the father and daughter you saved from the traffickers. People say they’re living like nobles in the palace now.”
Ali stared at her, his heart dropping. For the first time he thought he might have seen a flicker of interest in Subha’s eyes, but he couldn’t bear the thought of lying to her.
“They were very nearly returned to that trafficker because I wasn’t careful enough. I think the Banu Nahida’s plan is admirable, I do. But when things go wrong in Daevabad …” He gestured between Nahri and himself. “People like us rarely pay the same price as the shafit.”
Subha paused. “It seems neither of you are good at convincing others to work with you,” she said calmly.
Nahri swore under her breath, but Ali held his ground. “A partnership founded in deceit is no partnership at all. I would not wish to lie and bring you into danger unwarned.”
Parimal reached out to touch a lock of the baby’s curly hair. “It might be a good idea,” he said softly to Subha. “Your father used to dream about building a hospital here.”
Ali glanced at Nahri. “Well?”
She looked murderous. “What do you know about building hospitals?”
“What do you know about building anything?” he asked. “Have you given thought to how to collect and administer the funds needed to restore a ruined, ancient complex? It’s going to be incredibly expensive. Time-consuming. Will you be assessing contracts and hiring hundreds of workers in between patients at the infirmary?”
Nahri’s glare only intensified. “Those were some very pretty words about founding relationships in deceit.”
Ali flinched, their fight in the garden coming back to him. “You said I owe you,” he replied carefully. “Let me pay my debt. Please.”
Whether or not that resonated, Ali couldn’t tell. Nahri drew up, the emotion vanishing from her face as she turned back to Subha. “Fine, he’s with me. Is that enough for you?”
“No,” the doctor said bluntly. “Get the king’s permission. Get money and draw up actual plans.” She nodded at the door. “And don’t come back until you do. I won’t have my family caught up in this mess otherwise.”
Ali stood. “Forgive us for our intrusion,” he apologized in a rasp; his still-healing throat didn’t seem to appreciate all the arguing he’d just done. “We’ll be in touch soon, God willing.” He snapped his fingers, trying to get Nahri’s attention. She’d turned back to the desk and its treasures, not seeming particularly eager to leave. “Nahri.”
She dropped her hand from the book she’d been reaching for. “Oh, fine.” She touched her heart, offering an exaggerated bow. “I look forward to speaking again, Doctor, and hearing what new invective you have to hurl upon my ancestors and tribe.”
“An endless supply, I assure you,” Subha responded.
Ali ushered Nahri out before she could reply. His hands were shaking as he secured the tail of his turban across his face and then pulled the outer door closed behind them. Then he leaned hard against it, the full meaning of what he’d just agreed to hitting him.
Nahri didn’t seem as bothered. She was gazing upon the busy shafit neighborhood below. And though she’d pulled her niqab back over her face, as a man swept past carrying a board of steaming bread, she inhaled, and the cloth pulled close against her lips in a way Ali cursed himself for noticing.
She glanced back. “This doesn’t make us friends again,” she said, her voice sharp.
“What?” he stammered, thrown by the bald statement.
“Us working together … it doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
He was more stung than he wanted to admit. “Fine,” he replied, unable to check the snippiness in his tone. “I have other friends.”
“Sure you do.” She crossed her arms over her abaya. “What did Subha mean when she mentioned that shafit family and traffickers? Surely things haven’t gotten that bad here?”
“It’s a long story.” Ali rubbed his aching throat. “But don’t worry. I suspect Doctor Sen will be more than happy to tell it to you, among other things.”
Nahri made a face. “If we can even do this. How do you propose we start?” she asked. “Since you seemed so convinced of your skills inside.”
Ali sighed. “We need to talk to my family.”