“The allocation of the guard is not my realm of responsibility, Prince Alizayd. Maybe if you took a break from terrorizing my muhtasib . . .”
Ali straightened up and came around the table, cutting off Kaveh’s sarcastic remark. Mir e-Parvez actually stepped back, giving Ali’s coppery zulfiqar a nervous look.
By the Most High, were the rumors surrounding him really that bad? Judging from the look on the merchant’s face, one would think Ali spent every other Friday slaughtering Daevas.
He sighed. “Your son is okay, I trust?”
The merchant blinked in surprise. “He . . . yes, my prince,” he stammered. “He will recover.”
“God be praised. Then I will speak to my men and see what we can do about improving security in your quarter. Go over the damages to your shop and submit the bill to my aide Rashid. The Treasury will cover—”
“The king will have to approve—” Kaveh started to say.
Ali raised a hand. “It will come from my accounts if necessary,” he said firmly, knowing that would end any doubt. The fact that his Ayaanle grandfather gave a lavish yearly endowment to his royal grandson was an open secret. Ali normally found it embarrassing—he didn’t need the money and knew his grandfather only did it to annoy his father. But in this instance, it worked to his advantage.
The Daeva merchant’s eyes popped, and he dropped to the ground and pressed his ash-covered forehead against the carpet. “Oh, thank you, Your Majesty. May the flames burn brightly for you.”
Ali fought a smile, bemused at the traditional Daeva blessing being bestowed upon him of all people. He suspected the merchant was going to present him with a rather hefty bill, but he was nonetheless pleased, sensing he’d handled the situation correctly. Maybe he could manage the role of Qaid after all.
“I trust we are done?” he asked Kaveh as Rashid opened the door. Movement caught his eye up ahead: two small boys armed with makeshift bows were playing along one of the fountains in the plaza. Each had an arrow in hand, and they were bashing them together like swords.
Kaveh followed his gaze. “Would you like to join them, Prince Alizayd? You’re near enough in age, no?”
He remembered Muntadhir’s warning. Don’t let him get under your skin. “I dare not. They look far too fierce,” he said calmly. He grinned to himself, ducking out from under the balustrade and into the bright sunshine, as Kaveh’s smirk turned to a scowl. The sky was a cheerful blue, with only a few lacy white clouds dancing in from the east. It was another beautiful day in a string of beautiful days, warm and bright—a pattern most unlike Daevabad and strange enough to start attracting attention.
And the weather wasn’t all that was odd. Ali heard rumors that the Nahids’ original fire altar, extinguished after Manizheh and Rustam—the siblings who’d been the last of their family—were murdered, had somehow relit itself in a locked room. An abandoned, weed-choked grove in the garden where one of them had liked to paint was suddenly orderly and flourishing, and just last week one of the shedu statues that framed the palace walls had turned up on top of the ziggurat’s roof, its brass gaze focused on the lake as if awaiting a boat.
Then there was that mural of Anahid. Against Muntadhir’s wishes, Ali had it destroyed. Yet he walked past it every few days, nagged by the sense that there was something alive beneath the ruined facade.
He glanced at Kaveh, wondering what the grand wazir made of the whispers coming from his superstitious tribe. Kaveh was an ardent devotee of the fire cult, and the Pramukh family and the Nahids had been close. Many of the plants and herbs used in traditional Nahid healing were grown on the Pramukhs’ vast estates. Kaveh himself had originally come to Daevabad as a trade envoy but had risen quickly in Ghassan’s court, becoming a trusted advisor even as he aggressively pushed for Daeva rights.
Kaveh spoke again. “I apologize if my girls made you nervous the other week. It was meant as a gesture of kindness.”
Ali bit back the first retort that came to mind. And the second. He was unused to this type of verbal sparring. “Such . . . gestures are not to my taste, Grand Wazir,” he finally said. “I would appreciate it if you remember that for the future.”
Kaveh said nothing, but Ali could feel his cold stare upon him as they continued to walk. By the Most High, what had he done to earn this man’s enmity? Could he truly think Ali’s beliefs represented that much of a threat to his people?
It was an otherwise pleasant stroll, the Daeva Quarter a far lovelier sight when he wasn’t dashing through it pursued by archers. The cobbled stones were perfectly even and swept. Cypress trees shadowed the main avenue, broken up by flower-filled fountains and potted barberry bushes. The stone buildings were finely polished, their thatched wooden screens neat and fresh—one would never guess that this neighborhood was among the oldest in the city. Ahead, a few elderly men were playing chatrang and sipping from little glass vials, probably filled with some human intoxicant. Two veiled women glided from the direction of the Grand Temple.
It was an idyllic scene, at odds with the filthy conditions in the rest of the city. Ali frowned. He’d have to see what was going on with Daevabad’s sanitation. He turned toward Rashid. “Make me an appointment with—”
Something whizzed past Ali’s right ear leaving a sharp sting. He let out a startled cry, instinctively reaching for his zulfiqar as he whirled around.
Standing on the edge of the fountain was one of the little boys he’d seen playing, the toy bow still in his grasp. Ali immediately dropped his hand. The boy looked at Ali with innocent black eyes; Ali saw he had used charcoal to draw a crooked black arrow on his cheek.
An Afshin arrow. Ali scowled. It was just like the fire worshippers to let their children run around pretending to be war criminals. He touched his ear, and came away with a smear of blood on his fingers.
Abu Nuwas pulled free his zulfiqar and stepped forward with a snarl, but Ali held him back. “Don’t. He’s just a boy.”
Seeing that he wasn’t going to be punished, the boy gave them a wicked grin and jumped off the fountain to flee down a twisting alley.
Kaveh’s eyes were bright with mirth. Across the plaza, a veiled woman held a hand across her hidden mouth, though Ali could hear her giggle. The old men playing chatrang had their eyes fixed on their game pieces, but their mouths twitched in amusement. Ali’s cheeks grew warm with embarrassment.
Rashid stepped up to him. “You should have the boy arrested, Qaid,” he said quietly in Geziriyya. “He’s young. Give him to the Citadel to be raised properly as one of us. Your ancestors used to do so all the time.”
Ali paused, nearly taken in by Rashid’s reasonable tone. And then he stopped. How is that any different from purebloods stealing shafit children? And the fact that he could do it, that Ali could snap his fingers and have a boy kidnapped from the only home he’d ever know, wrested from his parents and his people . . . ?
Well, it suddenly explained why someone like Kaveh might look upon him with such hostility.
Ali shook his head, uneasy. “No. Let’s just go back to the Citadel.”
“Oh, my love, my light, how you have stolen my happiness!”
Ali let out a grumpy sigh. It was a beautiful night. A thin moon hung over Daevabad’s dark lake, and stars twinkled in the cloudless sky. The air was fragrant with frankincense and jasmine. Before him played the city’s finest musicians, at hand was a platter of food from the king’s favored chef, and the dark eyes of the singer would have driven a dozen human men to their knees.