Muntadhir sighed. “Of course it is.” He pulled away to meet her gaze. “Have dinner with me tonight?” he asked. “I will order your strange flower tea and you can insult my shamelessness to your heart’s content.”
Nahri had little desire to dine with him but admittedly wouldn’t mind continuing what they’d just started. She had been under a great deal of stress lately, and she often got more sleep the nights she spent in Muntadhir’s room; people usually had to be actively dying for a servant to muster up the courage to interrupt the emir and his wife there.
Besides which, the flicker of hope in his eyes was pulling on the one shred of tenderness left in her heart; for all his flaws—and there were a great number—her husband did not lack in charm. “I’ll try,” she said, biting back a smile.
He grinned back, looking genuinely pleased. “Excellent.” He untangled his limbs from hers.
Nahri hastily straightened her tunic; she was not going back to the infirmary looking like … well, like she had just been doing what she had been doing. “Good luck with whatever your father wants.”
Muntadhir rolled his eyes. “I am sure it is nothing.” He touched his heart. “In peace.”
She watched him go, taking a minute to enjoy the fresh air and the trill of birdsong. It was a beautiful day, and her gaze drifted lazily over to the herb garden.
It landed on a shafit man scurrying through the bushes.
Nahri frowned, watching as the fellow hurried past a patch of sage to stop in front of a willow tree. He wiped his brow, looking nervously over his shoulders.
Odd. While there were some shafit among the gardeners, none were allowed to touch the Nahid plants, nor was this particular man familiar. He took a pair of shears from his belt and opened them, as though he meant to cut away one of the branches.
Nahri was on her feet in an instant, her silk slippers and a lifetime of cat burglary disguising the sound of her steps. The man didn’t even look up until she was nearly on top of him.
“What do you think you’re doing to my tree?” she demanded.
The shafit man jumped up, whirling around so fast that his cap tumbled off. His human-hued hazel eyes went wide with horror.
“Banu Nahida!” he gasped. “I … forgive me,” he begged, bringing his hands together. “I was just—”
“Hacking at my willow? Yes, I see that.” She touched the maimed branch, and a sprinkling of new bark spread beneath her fingers. Nahri had a bit of a talent for botany herself, though she hadn’t yet attempted to develop it further, much to Nisreen’s chagrin. “Do you know what would happen if someone else had caught …” She trailed off, the sight of the man’s bare scalp stealing her attention. It was disfigured, his hair long around his temples, but prickly and patched at the top as if recovering from a rushed shave. The flesh there was mottled purple and slightly swollen, surrounding an oddly flat patch in the size and shape of a coin. A half-moon of scar tissue edged the patch—it had been stitched, and skillfully so.
Overwhelmed by curiosity, Nahri reached out and lightly touched the swollen flesh. It was soft—too soft. She let her Nahid senses expand, confirming what seemed impossible.
A small section of the man’s skull had been removed beneath the skin.
She gasped. It was healing; she could sense the spark of new bone growth, but even so … She dropped her hand. “Did someone do this to you?”
The man looked petrified. “I had an accident.”
“An accident that neatly bored a hole through your skull and then stitched it shut?” Nahri knelt beside him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she assured him. “I just want to know what happened—and make certain someone isn’t going around Daevabad cutting coins out of people’s skulls.”
“It was nothing like that.” He bit his lip, glancing around. “I fell off a roof and cracked my head,” he whispered. “The doctors told my wife that blood was swelling under the bone and that removing part of the skull might relieve the pressure and save my life.”
Nahri blinked. “The doctors?” She looked at the tree he’d been taking the cuttings from. Willow. Of course. Both the leaves and bark were valuable, easily distilled into medicine for aches and pains … for human aches and pains. “Did they ask you for this as well?”
He shook his head, still trembling. “I offered. I saw a picture in one of their books and thought I remembered seeing a tree like it when I worked on the roof here last year.” He gave her an imploring look. “They’re good people, and they saved my life. I wanted to help.”
Nahri was having trouble containing her excitement. Shafit doctors who could do surgery and had medical books? “Who?” she asked eagerly. “Who are these doctors?”
He dropped his gaze. “We’re not supposed to talk about them.”
“I don’t mean them any harm.” She touched her heart. “I swear on my ancestors’ ashes. I’ll bring them some willow myself, and more. I have plenty of medicines that are safe for shafit in my apothecary.”
The man looked torn. Nahri studied him again, noting his bare feet and ragged galabiyya. His heavily calloused hands.
Hating herself a little, Nahri pulled a gold ring from her pocket. She’d forgotten to remove it before starting work in the infirmary and had settled for slipping it in there. Small rubies, set in a floral pattern, were embedded in its surface.
She placed it in his hand. “A name and a location.” His eyes went wide, locking on the ring. “I’m not going to hurt them, I promise. I want to help.”
Longing filled his face; Nahri imagined the money a ring like that could fetch would go a long way for a shafit laborer.
“Subhashini Sen,” he whispered. “The house with the red door on Sukariyya Street.”
Nahri smiled. “Thank you.”
A SMALL ARMY OF SERVANTS WAS WAITING FOR NAHRI when she finished her work, and she’d no sooner set foot in the steamy hammam than they descended, taking her blood- and potion-splattered clothes away to be washed and then giving her a thorough scrub, rinsing her skin with rosewater, massaging her limbs with precious oils, and attempting to coax her wild curls into an elegant crown of braids.
Never one content to give up control, Nahri had, however, insisted on picking out her own clothes. Tonight she’d selected a gown cut from the finest linen she’d ever touched. It was sleeveless, falling to her ankles in a pale buttery sheath and held together by an ornate collar of hundreds of beads: lapis lazuli, gold, carnelian, and topaz. It reminded Nahri of home, the pattern looking like one that might have been copied from an ancient temple back in Egypt.
A servant had just finished clasping the delicate collar when another approached, bearing a discreet ivory cosmetics pot. “Would you like me to powder your skin, my lady?” she asked.
Nahri stared at the vessel. An innocent question, but one that always caused her stomach to tighten. Instinctively, she glanced up, catching sight of her reflection in the polished silver mirror perched on her dressing table.
Though the line between the shafit and the purebloods in Daevabad was a hard one, carved by centuries of violence and enshrined in law, the differences in their appearances were not as great as their divide in power suggested. The purebloods had their pointed ears and metal-toned eyes, of course, the color varying by tribe. And their skin had a gleam to it, a shimmer and a haze that reflected the hot, jet-colored blood that simmered in their veins. Depending on ancestry and luck, shafit had a mix of human and djinn features: human hazel eyes paired with perfectly pointed ears, or perhaps the tin-toned gaze of the Agnivanshi without the glimmer to their skin.
And then there was Nahri.
At first