She stared at the boy. “I’m going to need boiling water and lots of clean rags. And I want one of you to go to the pharmacist’s home. Tell him to bring any tools he has from his grandfather.”
The woman frowned. “You need all that to lay hands upon him?”
“No, I need all that because I’m going to open his skull.”
TYING BACK HER HAIR, NAHRI STUDIED THE INSTRUMENTS that Yaqub had brought, thanking the Creator when she recognized the small circular trephine among his great-grandfather’s old tools.
“This is it,” she said, plucking the drill free. “How fortunate you’re descended from a surgeon.”
Yaqub shook his head fiercely. “You’ve lost your mind. That thing is a hundred years old. You’re going to kill that boy and get us all arrested for murder.”
“No, I’m going to save his life.” She beckoned to Ali and then handed him the drill. “Al Qahtani, you owe me. Go boil this and get me the scalpel already in the water.”
“Nahri, are you—”
She was already turning Ali around, pushing him in the direction of the cauldron. “Less talking, more helping.”
Yaqub stepped in front of her. “Nahri, in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never done anything like this. What you’re talking about is surgery that people train for years to master.”
Nahri hesitated. She actually agreed with him—she’d practiced on some coconuts and melons with Subha, but that was it. Contrary to the pandemonium that characterized the rest of her life, she was typically cautious with healing, and her years in the infirmary had only made her more careful. It was a responsibility and a privilege to be entrusted with a patient’s life, not a thing she took lightly.
But Nahri also knew the disregard with which people like this family were treated. Peasants and migrants, girls with no name and parents with no coin to convince a reluctant doctor.
“They don’t have time to go around Cairo begging for a surgeon to take pity on them, Yaqub. This boy could be dead by dawn. I know enough to try and help.”
“And if you fail?” He moved closer, lowering his voice. “Nahri, you know how things are here. Something happens to that boy in my shop and his neighbors will come for my family. They’ll run us out of this neighborhood.”
That stopped her. Nahri did know how things were—it was the same fear that had haunted her back in Daevabad. When emotions got high, the lines that divided their communities grew deadly.
She met his gaze. “Yaqub, if you refuse, I’ll understand, and I won’t do this. But that child will die.”
Emotion swept his lined face. The boy’s parents had taken up a vigil on either side of their child, his mother clutching one of his hands to her tearstained cheek.
Yaqub stared at them, indecision warring in his expression. “You chose a very inconvenient time to develop a conscience.”
“Is that a yes?”
He grimaced. “Don’t kill him.”
“I’ll try my best.” Still seeing reluctance in his eyes, Nahri added, “Would you mind making some tea for his parents and keeping them back? They don’t want to see this.”
She scrubbed up with soap. Ali had returned and laid her tools out on a clean cloth.
“Go wash your hands,” Nahri ordered.
Ali gave her an alarmed glance. “Why?”
“Because you’re helping me. The drill takes some strong-arming. Go.” As he walked away, muttering under his breath, she called, “And use plenty of soap.”
Straining to recall everything Subha had taught her, Nahri measured a spot about a hand’s breadth behind the boy’s brow and then carefully shaved his hair, scrubbing the skin with more soap before making a precise cut in the scalp. Dabbing away the blood that instantly blossomed from the cut, she pinned back the small flap of skin, revealing the bone underneath.
Back at her side, Ali rocked slightly. “Oh. That’s what that looks like.”
“Hand me another cloth,” Nahri replied, swapping out the blood-soaked one. “Now the drill.”
His hands were shaking when he gave it to her, and as the weight of the drill fell into hers, so did the staggering prospect of what she was about to do. Was Nahri mad? Who was she to take this boy’s life in her hands and drill a hole into his head? She was a thief, a con artist.
No, you’re the Banu Nahida.
When Nahri placed the drill against his skull, her hands had stopped trembling.
Later, she could not say when the eerie hush of calm descended, a feeling like what she’d been told proper prayer was supposed to invoke. There was the steady grinding of the drill and the wet, chalky smell of bone dust and blood. When her hands and wrists began to throb, she carefully coached Ali through a few rounds, sweat beading on her skin. She stopped him as soon as she saw the last bit of bone begin to give way. Nahri took over, her heart nearly stopping as she carefully withdrew the drill, removing a bloody coin of bone.
She stared at her work, too awed to speak. She’d just put a hole in a skull. Excitement buzzed beneath her skin, layering in with fear and anxiety.
Breathe, she reminded herself, Subha’s words coming back to her. There’s a membrane just below the skull. Beneath is where the blood builds. That is what you must puncture.
Nahri picked up her scalpel. The silence of the room was smothering, her heart beating so fast it felt ready to burst. She took a deep breath, offering a prayer to the Creator, Anahid, and anyone else willing to help tip the scales in her favor.
Then she pierced the membrane. Blood sprayed directly into her face. It was thick and dark, purple, with an oily cast.
That caught the other woman’s attention. “What have you done?” the boy’s mother cried, lunging up from where she’d been sitting with Yaqub.
Ali stepped between them, catching her before she could grab Nahri. Nahri had frozen, staring at the bloody
