“Tried to smuggle a cannon past the Royal Guard.”
“A cannon?” Anas gave him a skeptical look. “What would I do with a cannon, brother? I’m shafit. I know the law. Possessing even an overly large kitchen knife would get me thrown in prison. And the Tanzeem are a charitable organization; we deal in books and food, not weapons. Besides, how would you purebloods know what a cannon looks like anyway?” He scoffed. “When’s the last time someone in the Citadel visited the human world?”
He had a point there, but Ali pressed on. “There’ve been reports for months that the Tanzeem is trying to buy weapons. People say your rallies have grown violent, that some of your supporters are even calling for the Daevas to be killed.”
“Who spreads such lies?” Anas demanded. “That Daeva infidel your father calls the grand wazir?”
“It’s not just Kaveh,” Ali argued. “We arrested a shafit man just last week for stabbing two purebloods in the Grand Bazaar.”
“And I’m responsible?” Anas threw up his hands. “Am I to be called to account for the actions of every shafit man in Daevabad? You know how desperate our lives are here, Alizayd. Your people should be happy more of us haven’t resorted to violence!”
Ali recoiled. “Are you condoning such a thing?”
“Of course not,” Anas replied, sounding annoyed. “Don’t be absurd. But when our girls are snatched off the street to be used as bed slaves, when our men are blinded for looking at a pureblood the wrong way . . . is it not to be expected that some will fight back any way they can?” He gave Ali an even stare. “It’s your father’s fault things have gotten this bad—if the shafit were afforded equal protection, we wouldn’t be forced to take the law into our own hands.”
It was a low, albeit justified, blow, but Anas’s angry denial wasn’t doing much to assuage Ali’s concerns. “I was always clear with you, Sheikh. Money for books, food, medicine, anything like that . . . but if your people are taking up arms against my father’s citizens, I can’t be part of that. I won’t.”
Anas raised a dark eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
“I want to see how you’re spending my money. Surely you’ve kept some type of records.”
“Records?” His sheikh looked incredulous . . . and then offended. “Is my word not enough? I run a school, an orphanage, a medical clinic . . . I have widows to house and students to teach. A thousand responsibilities and now you want me to waste time on what exactly . . . an audit from my teenage patron who fancies himself an accountant?”
Ali’s cheeks burned, but he wasn’t backing down. “Yes.” He pulled the purse from his robe. The coins and jewels inside jingled together when they hit the ground. “Otherwise this will be the last of it.” He rose to his feet.
“Alizayd,” Anas called. “Brother.” His sheikh scrambled to his feet, putting himself between Ali and the door. “You’re acting rashly.”
No, I was acting rashly when I started funding a shafit street preacher without checking into his story, Ali wanted to say, but he held his tongue, avoiding the older man’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Sheikh.”
Anas’s hand shot out. “Just wait. Please.” There was an edge of panic in his normally calm voice. “What if I could show you?”
“Show me?”
Anas nodded. “Yes,” he said, his voice growing firm, as if he had come to a decision. “Can you get away from the Citadel again tonight?”
“I-I suppose.” Ali frowned. “But I don’t see what that has to do with—”
The sheikh cut him off. “Then meet me at Daeva Gate tonight, after isha prayer.” He glanced down Ali’s body. “Dress as a nobleman from your mother’s tribe, with all the finery you have to spare. You’ll easily pass.”
Ali flinched at the comment. “That doesn’t—”
“You will learn tonight what my organization does with your money.”
Ali followed his sheikh’s instructions exactly, slipping out after isha prayer with a bundle tucked under one arm. After taking a circuitous route through the Grand Bazaar, he ducked into a dark, windowless lane. He unrolled the bundle—one of the rich teal robes the Ayaanle, his mother’s kinsmen, were fond of—and pulled it on over his uniform.
A turban of the same color went on next, wrapped loosely around his neck in Ayaanle fashion, and then a deeply ostentatious collar of gold worked with corals and pearls. Ali hated jewelry—truly a more useless waste of resources had never been devised—but he knew that no Ayaanle nobleman worth his salt would dare go out unadorned. Though his vault brimmed with treasure from his mother’s wealthy homeland of Ta Ntry, the collar had already been on hand, some family heirloom his sister Zaynab had insisted he wear to an Ayaanle wedding he’d been forced to attend a few months ago.
Finally, he pulled a tiny glass vial from his pocket. A potion that looked like swirled cream churned inside, a cosmetic enchantment that would turn his eyes the bright gold of an Ayaanle man for a few hours. Ali hesitated; he didn’t want to change the color of his eyes, not for a moment.
There weren’t many people in Daevabad like Ali and his sister, pureblooded djinn nobles of mixed tribal heritage. Separated into six tribes by the human prophet-king Suleiman himself, most djinn preferred the company of their kinsmen; indeed, Suleiman had supposedly divided them with the express purpose of causing as much dissent as possible. The more time djinn spent fighting each other, the less they spent harassing humans.
But Ali’s parents’ marriage had been equally purposeful, a political match meant to strengthen the alliance between the Geziri and the Ayaanle tribes. It was a strange, often strained, alliance. The Ayaanle were a wealthy people who prized scholarship and trade, rarely leaving the fine coral palaces and sophisticated salons of Ta Ntry, their homeland on the East African coast. In contrast, Am Gezira, with its heart in the most desolate deserts of southern Arabia, must have seemed a wasteland, its forbidding sands filled with wandering poets and illiterate warriors.
And yet Am Gezira owned Ali’s heart completely. He’d always preferred the Geziri, an allegiance his appearance thoroughly mocked. Ali resembled his mother’s people so strikingly that it would have provoked gossip had his father not been king. He shared their lanky height and black skin, his stern mouth and sharp cheeks near replicas of his mother’s. All he’d inherited from his father was his dark steel eyes. And tonight, he’d have to give even those up.
Ali opened the vial and tapped a few drops into each eye. He bit back a curse. God, it burned. He’d been warned that it would, but the pain took him aback.