The City of Brass

Dara tries to teach Nahri how to throw a knife, after which they share a great dinner and Dara reveals that his late mother was a great cook. Nahri then forcefully asks him about what happened with the Qahtani, the tribe that Dara keeps insulting. He explains the history of the city of Daevabad. Before, the daeva shared culture, language, and appearance, but after daevas continuously intervened in human lives, a human king named Suleiman was given enough power to control the daeva. He decided to split the daeva into six tribes and spread them out throughout the land so that they spent more time fighting each other than bothering humans, but he made the mistake of making their bodies human-like, which let them create shafits. Suleiman banned having children with humans, but most tribes continued with the practice. The Nahid family, Nahri’s ancestors, made every effort to bring shafits to Daevabad to contain them. Dara and Nahri are at odds because Dara served the Nahid Council trying to rid the world of shafits, while Nahri is a shafit herself.

Eventually, the Geziri tribe, with the help of the other tribes, began a revolt that overthrew the Nahid Council. Dara says that this happened 1400 years ago, and Nahri recalls that he mentioned that he witnessed the sack of Daevabad.

Dara reveals that he does not plan to return to Daevabad and Nahri feels betrayed. She lashes out and says that she hopes the Geziri got revenge on her discriminatory ancestors. In turn, he reveals that the rebellion killed nearly every daeva, including his entire family. She apologizes, but he flees the campsite in anger.

Ali moves into the Royal Palace and attends the meeting during which Ghassan hears petitions. He rules on trade disputes, pleas for funds after tragedies, and magical tricks. Ali is impressed with his father’s patience, focus, and stoicism with his subjects. There are commoners present but no shafit.

Ali makes a series of mistakes on his first day. First, he wears regular clothes rather than royal ones. He chooses to stand instead of sit on his brother’s chair, which is nearly unbearable by the end of the long court meeting. He does not ask anyone to take notes at the meeting, but he finds a scribe named Rashid afterward who gently informs him of his mistake. He is generally uncomfortable in the fancy palace and his new room to the point that he sleeps on the ground.

After Ali notices two women sent to have sex with him on his bed, Ali’s sister, Zaynab, and Muntadhir enter his suite. They discover that Kaveh, Ghassan’s advisor, sent the women, knowing that Ali is devoutly religious and wanting to provoke Ali. Muntadhir stops Ali from going to shout at Kaveh. Kaveh fears Ali because his religion traditionally does not appreciate the daeva. Ali thinks that Muntadhir was negotiating with the Tukharistani minister, and Ali asks his brother how it went. Muntadhir says that she was very “accommodating,” and Ali does not pick up on the fact that his brother was with a woman, not negotiating for his court. Muntadhir says that Ali is going to get eaten alive in the Royal Palace.

Nahri wakes up to see snow for the first time. Dara is still gone, so she heads to the woods to drink out of a stream. When she returns, Dara is back at their campsite. He tries to apologize, but Nahri is still frustrated. Dara explains his perspective: He was always told that shafit were going to mean the destruction of his people. He admits that he had never spoken to a shafit. Then he promises that he will not leave her at the gates of the city but rather deliver her to the king himself.

While traveling with Dara, Nahri continues to steal clothes and valuable items, trying to ensure that she can support herself in the future. She talks about stealing as a circle—she steals from someone, they steal from someone else, and so on. She has always been in the mindset of staying alive.

They begin riding again but soon notice an enormous bird called a Rukh chasing them. Dara sends Nahri and her horse sprinting toward the forest and begins shooting arrows at the bird to no avail. The bird picks up Dara and his horse and throws them into his mouth. Nahri watches in horror, turning her horse around to run toward them. The bird eventually falls to the earth and dies. Nahri is devastated by the thought that Dara is dead, but then he slices the bird’s neck from the inside and crawls out. He looks ill, and his clothes begin to turn to ash while she helplessly examines him. Finally, she puts her hands on him and uses the little knowledge she has about healing to attempt to help. She sees his memories: one happy memory with his little sister, one when he was enslaved tricking his enslaver using his own poorly worded wish, and one in which two ifrits dragged him to a well and drowned him. Nahri, experiencing this pain, passes out, and upon awakening, she asks if he is alive. He says yes, but it’s complicated. Nahri notices a bundle attached to the bird’s foot that contains her own jewelry that was hidden in Cairo. They deduce that this means that the bird was given their scent to hunt. The only magical creature that can control Rukhs are peris, but Dara thinks it was not Khayzur. Scared and down to one horse, they mount Nahri’s horse together and take off.

Ali and his scribe, Rashid, pay a surprise visit to the Daeva Quarter to inspect a money exchange operation. Kaveh surprises them there with a man whose shop and son have been terrorized by three men who believe him to be a fire-worshipper leading djinn to sin. The soldiers placed in the Daeva Quarters do not care, because they are not daeva. Kaveh requests more soldiers on their behalf, but Ali says that they are already stretched thin. While Ali’s religion compels him to agree in principle with the three men who harassed the daeva, he offers to cover the cost of the man’s ruined goods.

Throughout the interaction, it is clear that the man is terrified of Ali, and Kaveh also hates him. When a little boy shoots an arrow near Ali’s face pretending to be an ifrit, Rashid suggests that he arrest the boy and take him to be raised in the Royal Guard, but Ali refrains. If he kidnapped the boy, he would be as evil as they believe him to be.

Muntadhir then forces Ali to visit the residence of the city’s most skilled dancer, Khanzada. Ali hates the scene, full of sin and debauchery, and begins questioning Khanzada’s methods of acquiring girls. She becomes angry and calls him a “half-tribe brat” (189), at which point Muntadhir immediately forces her to apologize publicly. Ali leaves, pondering how his brother stood up for him even as Ali questioned his practices.

Outside the house, he runs into Jamshid e-Pramukh, the son of Kaveh and Muntadhir’s bodyguard and closest friend. He apologizes on behalf of the little boy who shot the arrow at Ali, saying that not all of their people are like that. He tells Ali not to let Kaveh get to him.

Nahri and Dara have almost reached the safety of Daevabad when they stop for the night in a cave so as not to approach in bad weather. When they wake up, they kiss for the first time. As they fumble with each other’s clothes, they hear loud thunder, wind, lightning, and the smell of clove and mace, which Nahri recognizes as the same scent of the tea that Khayzur gave her. Dara grabs her to run down the hill toward the river, but as they approach, he gets taken down by a creature and she is sent flying off a cliff.

Once landed, her body begins healing itself as an ifrit approaches. She stabs it, but it continues to pursue her until eventually she remembers that her own blood is poisonous to ifrit. The small amount of her own blood on the dagger is killing him. She promises to heal him if he tells her who sent him there. He says that he struck a deal with her mother, Manizheh. Despite Nahri’s promise, she does not heal him.

Dara finds Nahri and pushes her into the river, urging her to escape even if he cannot. More ifrit arrive, and one named Aeshma calls Nahri, “Banu Nahida” (207). Another ifrit named Qandisha admires Dara’s slave tattoo and reflects that Dara was a ruthless when he was enslaved and was willing to do anything to please her. Aeshma urges Nahri to get out of the river, because she is not safe there. The third ifrit realizes that Nahri has killed one of them and becomes enraged, but Aeshma, again referring to their deal with Manizheh, redirects him to kill Dara rather than Nahri: “Drown him again. Maybe this time it will take” (210). The ifrit flee as the river dries out and it becomes an enormous black snake, a marid. Dara and Nahri run, but Nahri falls and breaks her ankle. When she turns around, she resigns herself to drowning, but Khayzur appears and shoots a breath of air, making the snake transform back into a river. They quickly realize that Khayzur is going to die, and he explains that he has broken the laws of his kind. When Dara offers to stay and send Nahri to Daevabad, Khayzur says that it’s not Nahri they want. Khayzur pleads with Dara to leave, saying that this is bigger than any of them. Dara obeys and continues to Daevabad.

Ali runs into his scribe, Rashid, at the gates, and Rashid strangely but kindly invites him to see the Tukharistani Quarter. As Ali sees a coughing boy and many sleeping orphans, he recognizes the enslaved girl they saved the night that Anas was captured. Quickly, he realizes that this was a trap, and Hanno appears. Fatumai, an older woman, introduces herself as one of Anas’s associates and requests more funds from Ali. She reminds Ali that the shafit are not allowed to access medical care nor get a skilled job. However, having seen the weapons that Anas used his funding to purchase, Ali refuses to give more money. Rashid reminds Ali that he already leans to their side; they need money, but they also need an advocate in the royal palace. Hanno says that they should just kill Ali. They try to guilt Ali, but he feels so guilty for betraying his family once that he cannot do it again. Fatumai defends Ali because he is young and in a difficult position. She says that she will let him go, echoing Anas’s sentiment that Ali knows the stakes and will act accordingly. She says “Allahu alam,” meaning “God knows best,” in an effort to shake Ali’s confidence in his decision to cease funding the Tanzeem.