“Faiyum?” Arslan interrupted. “My God, girl, even you must know there’s a war on. Do you imagine Napoleon eager to let any of us leave Cairo for some useless desert trek?”
“Be quiet!” The basha banged on the table before turning back to Nahri. “But such a thing will be difficult.”
Nahri spread her hands. “God provides.”
“Yes, of course. So it is to be Faiyum,” he decided, looking determined. “And then my heart will be cured?”
She paused; it was the heart he was worried about? “God willing, sir. Have your new wife put the powdered lime and oil into your evening tea for the next month.” It wouldn’t do anything for his nonexistent heart problem, but perhaps his bride would better enjoy his breath. Nahri let go of his hand.
The basha blinked as if released from a spell. “Oh, thank you, dear one, thank you.” He pushed back the small sack of coins and then slipped a heavy gold ring from his pinkie and handed that over as well. “God bless you.”
“May your marriage be fruitful.”
He rose heavily to his feet. “I must ask, child, where are your people from? You’ve a Cairene accent, but there’s something about your eyes . . .” He trailed off.
Nahri pressed her lips together; she hated when people asked after her heritage. Though she wasn’t what many would call beautiful—years of living on the streets had left her much thinner and far dirtier than men typically preferred—her bright eyes and sharp face usually spurred a second glance. And it was that second glance, the one that revealed a line of midnight hair and uncommonly black eyes—unnaturally black eyes, she’d heard it said—that provoked questions.
“I’m as Egyptian as the Nile,” she assured him.
“Of course.” He touched his brow. “In peace.” He ducked under the doorway to leave.
Arslan stayed behind; Nahri could feel his eyes on her as she gathered her payment. “You do realize you just committed a crime, yes?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“I’m sorry?”
He stepped closer. “A crime, you fool. Witchcraft is a crime under Ottoman law.”
Nahri couldn’t help herself; Arslan was only the latest in a long line of puffed-up Turkish officials she’d had to deal with growing up in Cairo under Ottoman rule. “Well, then I suppose I’m lucky the Franks are in charge now.”
It was a mistake. His face instantly reddened. He raised his hand, and Nahri flinched, her fingers reflexively tightening over the basha’s ring. One sharp edge cut into her palm.
But he didn’t hit her. Instead, he spat at her feet. “By God as my witness, you thieving witch . . . when we clear the French out of Egypt, filth like you will be the next to go.” He shot her another hate-filled glare and then left.
She took a shaky breath as she watched the arguing brothers disappear into the early morning gloom toward Yaqub’s apothecary. But it wasn’t the threat that unsettled her: It was the rattle she’d heard when he shouted, the smell of iron-rich blood in the air. A diseased lung, consumption, maybe even a cancerous mass. There was no outward sign of it yet, but soon.
Arslan had been right to suspect her: there was nothing wrong with his brother. But he wouldn’t live to see his people reconquer her country.
She unclenched her fist. The gash in her palm was already healing, a line of new brown skin knitting together beneath the blood. She stared at it for a long moment and then sighed before ducking back inside her stall.
She pulled off her knotted headdress and crumpled it into a ball. You fool. You know better than to lose your temper with men like that. Nahri didn’t need any more enemies, especially not ones now likely to post guards around the basha’s house while he was in Faiyum. What he’d paid today was a pittance compared to what she could steal from his empty villa. She wouldn’t have stolen much—she’d been doing her tricks long enough to avoid the temptations of excess. But some jewelry that could have been blamed on a forgetful wife, a quick-fingered servant? Baubles that would have meant nothing to the basha and a month’s rent to Nahri? Those she would take.
Muttering another curse, she rolled back her sleeping mat and dislodged a few bricks from the floor. She dropped the basha’s coins and ring in the shallow hole, frowning at her meager savings.
It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. She replaced the bricks, calculating how much she still needed to pay for this month’s rent and bribes, the inflated costs of her increasingly unsavory profession. The number always grew, pushing away her dreams of Istanbul and tutors, of a respectable trade and actual healing instead of this “magical” nonsense.
But there was nothing to be done about it now, and Nahri wasn’t about to take time from earning money to bemoan her fate. She stood, winding a rumpled headscarf around her messy curls and gathering up the amulets she’d made for the Barzani women and the poultice for the butcher. She’d need to come back later to prepare for the zar, but for now, she had someone far more important to see.
Yaqub’s apothecary was located at the end of the alley, crammed between a moldering fruit stand and a bread bakery. No one knew what had led the elderly Jewish pharmacist to open an apothecary in such a grim slum. Most of the people living in her alley were desperate: prostitutes, addicts, and garbage-pickers. Yaqub had moved in quietly several years ago, settling his family into the upper floors of the cleanest building. The neighbors wagged their tongues, spreading rumors of gambling debts and drunkenness, or darker charges that his son had killed a Muslim, that Yaqub himself took blood and humors from the alley’s half-dead addicts. Nahri thought it all nonsense, but she didn’t dare ask. She didn’t question his background, and he didn’t ask why a former pickpocket could diagnose illnesses better than the sultan’s personal physician. Their strange partnership rested on avoiding those two subjects.
She entered the apothecary, quickly sidestepping the battered bell meant to announce customers. Crowded with supplies and impossibly chaotic, Yaqub’s shop was her favorite place in the world. Mismatched wooden shelves crammed with dusty glass vials, tiny reed baskets, and crumbling ceramic jars covered the walls. Lengths of dried herbs, animal parts, and objects she couldn’t identify hung from the ceiling while clay amphorae competed for the small amount of floor space. Yaqub knew his inventory like the lines of his palms, and listening to his stories of ancient Magi or the hot spice lands of the Hind transported her to worlds she could hardly imagine.
The pharmacist was bent over his workbench, mixing something that gave off a sharp, unpleasant scent. She smiled at the sight of the old man with his even older instruments. His mortar alone looked like something from the reign of Salah ad-Din. “Sabah el-hayr,” she greeted him.
Yaqub made a startled noise and glanced up, knocking his forehead into a hanging garlic braid. Swatting it away, he grumbled, “Sabah el-noor. Can’t you make some noise when you enter? Scared me half to death.”
Nahri grinned. “I like to surprise you.”
He snorted. “Sneak up on me, you mean. You get more like the devil each day.”
“That’s a very unkind thing to say to someone who brought you a small fortune this morning.” She pushed up on her hands to perch on his workbench.