Balancing her supplies and the tea, Nahri tucked a copper ewer of water under one arm and headed back to her room. She edged the door open. Ali was in the same position he’d been in when she left. Jamshid paced the bedchamber, looking like he sorely regretted whatever chain of events had led him to this moment.
He glanced up when she approached and quickly crossed to take the tray of supplies. She nodded at a low table in front of the fireplace.
He set it down. “I’m going to go get his brother,” he whispered in Divasti.
She glanced at Ali. The blood-covered prince looked to be in shock, his shaking hands wandering over the ruined sheets. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Better than two Daevas getting caught trying to cover up an attempt on his life.”
Excellent point. “Be fast.”
Jamshid left, and Nahri returned to the bed. “Ali? Ali,” she repeated when he didn’t respond. He startled, and she reached for him. “Come closer to the fire. I need the light.”
He nodded but didn’t move. “Come on,” she said gently, pulling him to his feet. He let out a low hiss of pain, one arm clutched against his stomach.
She helped him onto the couch and pressed the steaming cup into his hands. “Drink.” She pulled over the table and laid out her thread and needles, then went to her hammam to retrieve a stack of towels. When she returned, Ali had abandoned the cup of tea and was draining the entire ewer of water. He let it fall back to the table with an empty thud.
She raised an eyebrow. “Thirsty?”
He nodded. “Sorry. I saw it, and I . . .” He looked dazed, whether from the opium or the injury she didn’t know. “I couldn’t stop.”
“There’s probably barely any liquid left in your body,” she replied. She sat and threaded her needle. Ali was still holding his side. “Move your hand,” she said, reaching for it when he didn’t comply. “I need to . . .” She trailed off. The blood covering Ali’s right hand wasn’t black.
It was the dark crimson of a shafit—and there was a lot of it.
Her breath caught. “I guess your assassin didn’t get away.”
Ali stared at his hand. “No,” he said softly. “He didn’t.” He glanced up. “I had Jamshid throw him in the lake . . .” His voice was oddly distant, as if marveling over a curiosity not connected to him, but grief clouded his gray eyes. “I . . . I’m not even sure he was dead.”
Nahri’s fingers trembled on the needle. When a Qahtani gives an order in Daevabad, you obey. “You should finish your tea, Ali. You’ll feel better, and it’ll make this easier.”
He had no reaction when she started stitching. She made sure her movements were precise; there was no room for error here.
She worked in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the opium to take full effect, before finally asking, “Why?”
Ali set his cup down—or tried to. It fell from his hands. “Why what?”
“Why are you trying to hide the fact that someone wanted to kill you?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t expect me to fix the results without knowing what happened. The curiosity will kill me. I’ll have to invent some salacious story to amuse myself.” Nahri kept her tone light, occasionally glancing up from her work to gauge his reaction. He looked exhausted. “Please tell me it was because of a woman. I would hold that over you for—”
“It wasn’t a woman.”
“Then what?”
Ali swallowed. “Jamshid went to get Muntadhir, didn’t he?” When Nahri nodded, he started to shake. “He’s going to kill me. He’s . . .” He suddenly pressed a hand to his head, looking like he was fighting a swoon. “Sorry . . . do you have some more water?” he asked. “I-I feel terribly strange.”
Nahri refilled the ewer from a narrow cistern set in the wall. She started to pour him a cup, but he shook his head.
“The whole thing,” he said, taking it and draining it as quickly as he had the first. He sighed with pleasure. She looked at him askance before returning to her stitches.
“Be careful,” she advised him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone drink so much water so quickly.”
He didn’t respond, but his increasingly glazed eyes took in her bedchamber again. “The infirmary is much smaller than I remember,” he said, sounding confused. Nahri hid a smile. “How can you fit patients in here?”
“I’ve heard your father wants me treating more.”
Ali waved dismissively. “He just wants their money. But we don’t need it. We have so much. Too much. The Treasury is sure to collapse from its weight one day.” He stared at his hands as he waved again. “I can’t feel my fingers,” he said, sounding surprisingly untroubled by this revelation.
“They’re still there.” The king’s earning money off my patients? It shouldn’t have surprised her, but she felt her anger quicken anyway. Collapsing Treasury, indeed.
Before she could question him further, a surge of wetness under her fingers caught her attention, and she glanced down in alarm, expecting blood. But the liquid was clear and as she rubbed it between her fingers, she realized what it was.
Water. It trickled through the fissures of Ali’s half-healed wounds, washing free the blood and seeping past her stitches, smoothing out his skin as it passed. Healing him.
What in God’s name . . . Nahri gave the ewer a puzzled glance, wondering if there’d been something in it she wasn’t aware of.
Strange. But she kept at her work, listening to Ali’s increasingly nonsensical ramblings and occasionally assuring him that it was okay that the room looked blue and the air tasted of vinegar. The opium had improved his mood, and oddly enough she started to relax as she noticed improvement with each stitch.
If only I could find such success with magical illnesses. She thought of the way the old man’s frightened eyes locked on hers as he breathed his last. It was not something she would ever forget.
“I killed my first patient today,” she confessed softly. She wasn’t sure why, but it felt better to say it out loud, and God knew Ali was in no state to remember. “An old man from your tribe. I made a mistake, and it killed him.”
The prince dropped his head to stare at her but said nothing, his eyes bright. Nahri continued. “I always wanted this . . . well, something like this. I used to dream of becoming a physician in the human world. I saved every coin I could, hoping one day to have enough to bribe some academy to take me.” Her face fell. “And now I’m terrible at it. Every time I feel like I master something, a dozen new things are thrown upon me with no warning.”
Ali squinted and looked down his long nose to study her. “You’re not terrible,” he declared. “You’re my friend.”
The sincerity in his voice only worsened her guilt. He’s not my friend, she’d told Dara. He’s a mark. Right . . . a mark who’d become the closest thing she had to an ally after Dara.
The realization unsettled her. I don’t want you caught up in any political feuds if Alizayd al Qahtani ends up with a silk cord around his neck, Dara had warned. Nahri shuddered; she could only imagine what her Afshin would think of this midnight liaison.