With great reverence, the Queen took up the Lamp, and at her touch, from it rose with a glittering cloud of smoke a terrible Jinni. And all who looked upon her quailed and trembled, but the Queen stood tall and trembled not. Yet in her eyes was a look of wonder.
“I am the Jinni of the Lamp,” pronounced the Jinni. “Three wishes shall ye have. Speak them, and they shall be granted, yea, even the deepest desires of thine heart. Wilt thou have treasure? It is thine.”
And the Queen replied, “Silver and gold I have.”
“Wilt thou have kingdoms and men to rule over?” asked the Jinni. “Ask, and it is thine.”
And the Queen replied, “These I have also.”
“Wilt thou have youth everlasting, never to age, never to sicken?” asked the Jinni. “Ask, and it is thine.”
“Does not the poet say that hairs of gray are more precious than silver, and that in youth lies folly?”
The Jinni bowed low before the Queen. “I see you are wise, O Queen, and not easily fooled. So what would you ask of me, for I am thy slave.”
“Give me thy hand,” said the Queen, “and let us be friends. For does not the poet say, one true-hearted friend is worth ten thousand camels laden with gold?”
This the Jinni pondered, before replying, “The poet also says, woe to the man who befriends the jinn, for he shakes hands with death.”
—From the Song of the Fall of Roshana,
Last Queen of Neruby
by Parys zai Moura,
Watchmaiden and Scribe to Queen Roshana
Chapter Two
WE ARE ADRIFT ON A SEA of moonlit sand, the silence as infinite as the space between the stars. The night is calm and deceptively peaceful, the city that stood here just moments ago nothing more than a memory.
Inside, I am roiling with apprehension and dread. Will the jinn know I have escaped? How long until they come running? Their fiery hands could close on me at any moment, their eyes red with fury. I wait for them to drag me down and chain me in the darkness once more, but they do not come.
I lift my head and let out a slow breath.
No jinn are racing through the sky. No alarm bells clang across the desert. And at that moment, it strikes me fully: I have escaped. I have well and truly escaped.
We are surrounded by the sand of the great Mahali Desert, endless sand, sand in hills and heaps and valleys, stained pale blue by the moon. The sheer immensity of empty space staggers me after my long confinement. As the boy catches his breath, I turn a full circle and breathe in the desert night. I had long ago given up hoping that I would ever see the sky again. And such a sky! Stars like dust, stars of every color—blue, white, red—the jewels of the gods displayed across black silk.
I long to stretch myself out, to crawl smokily across that glorious moon-blue sand, spread myself like water, a hand on each horizon. And then up, up, up to the stars, to press my face against the sky and feel the cool kiss of the moon.
I feel the boy’s gaze on me, and I turn to him. He is still lying on the sand, propped on one arm, staring at me like a fisherman who has unexpectedly caught a shark in his nets.
I return his gaze with equal candor, adding him up. His stubbled jaw is strong and just slightly crooked, his copper eyes large and expressive, his lips full. A small, cheap earring hangs from his left earlobe. A handsome boy growing into a man’s body, already powerfully built. Were he a prince or a renowned warrior, he would have entire harems vying for his attention. As it is, his rough beauty is hidden in his poorly cut clothing. I pick out the scars on his hands and his legs. The gods have been negligent with this one.
With a sigh, I say, “You look like you’ve been kicked by a horse. Here, get up.”
I offer my hand, but he scrambles away, his eyes wild and wary.
For a moment, he and I regard one another silently beneath the pulsing stars. His ragged breathing is laced with fatigue, but he is as tense as a cornered cat, ready to flee, waiting to see what I will do. My head is still spinning from the suddenness of what’s happened: the first human I’ve seen in five hundred years, the mad race to escape the collapsing ruins, the vastness of the desert after so many centuries confined to my lamp. I sway a little, taking a moment to sort out earth from sky.
“I cannot hurt you,” I say. My hands clench at my sides, and I force my fingers to open disarmingly. “The same magic that binds us together prevents me from harming you. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Have you never seen a jinni before?”
The boy clears his throat, his eyes fixed on mine. “No, but I’ve heard stories of them.”
Turning my back to him, I look up at the stars. “Of course you have. Tales of ghuls, I’m sure, who devour souls and wear the skins of their prey. Of ifreet, all fire and flame and no brains at all. Or perhaps you mean the maarids, small and sweet, until they drown you in their pools.”
He nods slowly and climbs to his feet, brushing sand from his palms. “And the Shaitan, most powerful of all.”
A chill runs down my spine. “Ah, of course.”
“So are they true? All these stories?”
Turning to face him, I pause before replying. “As the poets say, stories are truth told through lies.”
“So are you going to devour my soul?” he asks, as if it is a challenge. “Or drown me? What sort of jinni are you?”
With a curl of smoke, I shift into a white tiger and crouch before him, my tail flicking back and forth. He watches in amazement, recoiling a bit at the sight of my golden eyes and extended claws.
“What are you?” he whispers.
Should I tell him what—who—I really am? That even now, legions of angry jinn—ghuls, maarids, a dozen other horrors—could be racing toward us? If he has any wits about him, he’ll abandon my lamp and put as many leagues between us as he can . . . which would leave me completely helpless. At least while he holds the lamp, I have a fighting chance.
“How did you find me?” I ask. So many centuries, and this hapless young man is the only one to have found my prison. After that final battle, after you fell, Habiba, my kin threw me into the garden I had created for you. Sit in the dark and rot, traitor, they said. And for so many years, I was certain that would be my fate. But then, surpassing all hope, the boy appeared.
“I’m from Parthenia.” At my blank expression, he adds, “Two weeks by horseback, to the west. On the coast. As for how I found you . . . I was led here. By this.”
He pulls from his finger the ring he’d been twisting earlier. He holds it out on his palm, and after a slight hesitation, I pick it up. A tingle in my fingers tells me the ring was forged in magic. There is something familiar about it, but I am certain I have never seen it before. The band is plain gold but for the symbols carved into the inside, symbols that have been blurred by time and fire.
“And you say it led you to me?” I straighten and stare hard at him.
He takes the ring from my palm. “When I . . . um, found it, it began whispering to me. I know it sounds insane, but I couldn’t get it to stop. Even when I took it off and tried to throw it away, I kept hearing it. So I thought, why not see what it wanted?”
“What did it say?”
“It wasn’t so much words . . .” He closes his hand around the ring, looking haunted. “I just knew it wanted me to follow it, that it would lead me to something important. I didn’t know what. Only that I had to find out, like it’d put a spell on me or something. When I found your lamp, it went silent for the first time in weeks, so I guess . . . it was leading me to you.”
I wonder if he is truly as naïve as he seems. Perhaps he is a simple pauper who stumbled across an ancient and powerful talisman without understanding its true worth. The ring is enchanted, meant to lead the bearer to me. But who created it? It is very old, likely made around the time I was abandoned by my kin in the j
eweled garden five hundred years ago. Why hasn’t it been used until now, and why by such an unlikely individual?
“So you followed a magic ring all the way to Neruby, just out of curiosity?”
“Well,” he says gruffly, glancing aside, “it’s not as simple as that. Let’s just say I’m not the only one interested in the ring. I knew it would lead to something valuable, and finding valuables happens to be my . . .” His voice fades and his eyes grow wide. “Wait a minute. What did you say?”
I frown. “I said it’s strange that mere curiosity—”
“No, not that. You said this city was called Neruby.”
“Of course,” I reply.
He sucks in a breath, taking a half step backward, and he scans me head to toe as if just seeing me for the first time. When he next speaks, his voice is tight, excited, breathless.
“I know who you are,” he says.
Something about his tone causes my heart of smoke to flicker in response, and I throw my guard up. “Oh? And who, O boy of Parthenia, am I?”
He nods to himself, his eyes alight. “You’re her. You’re that jinni. Oh, gods. Oh, great bleeding gods! You’re the one who started the war!”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the jinni who betrayed that famous queen—what was her name? Roshana? She was trying to bring peace between the jinn and the humans, but you turned on her and started the Five Hundred Wars.”
I turn cold. I want him to stop, but he doesn’t.
“I’ve heard the stories,” he says. “I’ve heard the songs. They call you the Fair Betrayer, who enchanted humans with your . . .” He pauses to swallow. “Your beauty. You promised them everything, and then you ruined them.”
A thousand and one replies vie for my tongue, but I swallow them all, bury them deep, deep in my smoky heart. Was it too much to hope, Habiba, that five hundred years would be enough to bury the past? They sing songs of us, old friend. This boy, in his rags and poverty, knows who I am, knows who you were, knows what I did to you. And how can I deny it? Beneath our feet, the ruins of your city lie. He saw them with his own eyes. And why should I hide who I truly am? The Fair Betrayer. The name fits. I add it to the long list of other names I have collected over the years like flotsam in my wake, many of them far less flattering.
Letting out a long breath, I shrug one shoulder. “So what now? Will you toss me away? Bury me again?”
He laughs, a cold, sharp laugh. “Throw you away? When you can grant me three wishes? Would I throw away a bag of gold just because I found it in a pile of dung?” He winces. “I didn’t mean . . . It’s just all so . . . I need to think.”
I watch as he paces in a tight circle, his hands raking his hair over and over, until it nearly stands on end. When he finally stops, I feel dizzy just from watching him. I’d nearly forgotten how frenzied you humans are, always bouncing here and there, like bees drunk on nectar. And this boy is wilder than most, his energy radiating outward, warming the air around him.
He seems to arrive at some conclusion at last, because he stops his mad pacing and faces me squarely, his jaw hardening in resolution. I have to bend my head back a little to meet his gaze.
“So. Three wishes. Anything I want?”
“Anything in this world, if you’re willing to pay the price.”
His eyes narrow. “Tell me about this price.”
With a sigh, I conjure a small flame in my hand and let it dance across my fingers, like a charlatan’s coin. “Every wish has a price, O Master. Seldom do you—or I—know what that price is, until it has already been paid. Perhaps you’ll wish for great wealth, only to find it stolen away by thieves. Perhaps you’ll wish for a mighty dragon to carry you through the sky, only to be devoured by it when you land. Wishes have a way of twisting themselves, and there is nothing more dangerous than getting your heart’s desire. The question is, are you willing to gamble? How much are you willing to lose? What are you willing to risk everything for?”
At that, his eyes harden, and I see that he knows exactly what he wants. He turns and begins walking, his steps sliding in the sand. I follow behind, my eyes on his tattered cloak as it snaps in the wind that whips across the dunes. As I wait for him to reply, I pass my little flame from hand to hand.
“You destroyed a monarchy once,” he says after a moment, his voice low and dangerous, a dark current beneath a still sea. “I want you to help me do it again.”
I close my fingers, my flame disappearing in a puff of smoke. “So. You’re some kind of revolutionary, then?”
Again with that short, bitter laugh. He keeps walking, his words carried over his shoulder by the wind. “A revolution of one, that’s me.”
“Very well.” I run ahead of him, turning and walking backward so that I can look him in the eye. “What is your first wish, Master?”
“Well, to begin with, stop calling me Master, as if I were some kind of godless slaver. I have a name.”
Names are dangerous. They’re personal. And the last time I got personal with a human, it ended badly. The evidence is buried just a few spans beneath my feet.
“I don’t care to know it.” Better that way.
“If I tell you my name,” he says, “you must tell me yours.”
I stop walking. “I don’t have a name.”
He stops beside me, watching me with his head cocked a bit, like a chess player waiting for me to make a move. “I don’t believe you.”
How can one so mortal be so positively infuriating? “Don’t your songs mention my name?”
His lips slide into a half grin, and he resumes walking, the wind blowing his hair across his face. “Not any you’d like to hear, I think.”
He leads and I follow, a boy and a jinni striding across the moon-blue dunes. Beneath our feet, the sand shifts treacherously. Halfway up a particularly steep hill, it suddenly gives way, and I cry out involuntarily as I slide backward.
But suddenly a hand grasps mine, holding me in place, though I have already half shifted to smoke to catch myself.
“Careful, Smoky,” the boy says, pulling me to the top of the dune. “You haven’t granted me any wishes yet. I can’t have you disappearing on me already.”
“My name’s not Smoky.” I yank my hand away. His touch still burns, leaving me shaken, the echo of his heartbeat resounding through me. Looking away, I shake sand from my robes. I’ve transformed my clothes from rich silks to sturdy white cotton, so that I blend into the desert.
“It is until you give me something better.”
“Where are we going?”
“Why? Bored already? I’d think you’d want to stretch your legs after lying around in that cave for—how long were you in there, anyway?”
“Since the war ended. Five hundred years ago.”
With a whistle, he slides down the other side of the dune, and I transform into a small silver cat and spring after him, shifting back into a girl at the bottom.
He stands still for a moment, watching me. He has tied the lamp to his belt, and his hand strokes it absently. It’s an affectation common to Lampholders, and he’s picked it up already.
“How old are you?” he asks.
A cool wind flows between the dunes, pulling my hair across my face and ruffling his patched cloak.
“Three thousand and one thousand more.”
“Great gods,” he says softly. “But you look no older than me.”
“Looks are deceiving.” I don’t tell him that the face I wear is stolen, its possessor five hundred years dead. Of course, I have a face of my own, one slightly younger than yours. I was seventeen the day I was first put into the lamp, when I ceased aging and became the timeless slave I am now. I have little desire to wear that face anymore. It is the one that betrayed you to your death, Habiba. The face of a monster.
At times I feel as old as the stars, but mostly I
feel just the same as I did that day—lost, small, and afraid. But I keep that to myself. I square my chin and meet his gaze challengingly.
“Strange,” he murmurs.
“What’s strange?”
“It’s just . . .” He pushes his hair back. “You’re not like the jinni in the stories and songs. That jinni was a monster. You seem . . . different.”
Then he turns and begins trudging up the next dune, wrapping his cloak around him to keep the wind from tearing at it.
I stand still a moment longer, watching him. “Zahra.”
He pauses and looks over his shoulder. “What?”
“My name,” I stammer. “I mean . . . one of them. You can call me Zahra.”
He turns around fully, his grin as wide and as bright as the moon. “I’m Aladdin.”
Chapter Three
WE WALK FOR TWO MORE HOURS before Aladdin finally says, “We’re here.”
He drops to his hands and knees and crawls slowly up the side of a dune, and when we reach the top, Aladdin goes flat and motions for me to do the same. Slowly, cautiously, he peers over the crest of windswept sand, and his expression turns grim.
“There,” he murmurs.
I look over and see a small camp tucked in a sandy depression, out of the wind. Several soldiers sit around a small fire of burning horse dung, their mounts hobbled nearby. One finely dressed young man stands alone between two tents, his shoulders hunched as he studies a map by the firelight.
“That’s him. Darian rai Aruxa, prince of Parthenia.”
“Friend of yours?”
Aladdin snorts and slides down a bit, until the sandy ridge blocks the camp from view. “He’s been tracking me for two weeks, ever since I left Parthenia. Not that I can blame him, really. He’s after this.” Aladdin tosses the ring and catches it with one hand.
I raise a brow. “You stole it from him.”
His eyes are hard as diamonds, glittering in the starlight. A change passes over his face, and he suddenly seems older, harder, angrier. Like a cloud crossing the sun, so fleeting I nearly miss it, but it turns me cold.