A Master of Djinn

by P. Djèlí Clark

  “Doesn’t sound like you believed in your father’s mission,” Hadia assessed.

  “I’m not a man of superstition. I understand that sorcery and cavorting with unnatural creatures is germane to the Oriental cultures. But rationality is the only means to true progress. In the West, we look forward. My father, on the other hand, was seduced by these backward-looking notions of the East.” He held up a placating hand. “No offense to you and yours, of course.”

  “None taken,” Fatma replied evenly. “But you were a member, of his ‘little order.’”

  Alexander’s face went taut as he played with a band of silver on his pinkie finger. Fatma recognized it right away—the signet ring bearing the Worthington seal, last worn by his father.

  “I was a boy of ten when my mother died. I watched my father slowly descend into his madness. All along, I played the part of a dutiful son. Went off to school. Served for crown and country, became learned in the ways of business, and everything necessary to take control of the Worthington name. But for my father that wasn’t enough. He insisted I join in his delusions, making me promise to dedicate myself to finding the secrets of the heavens and the like.”

  He took a stilling breath, as if trying to hold back his anger.

  “So I submitted to his request. Then I got as far away from him and his madness as I could. I ended up in India, because in England I was tired of hearing whispers of the crazed Alistair Worthington. The men he kept about him called him ‘the old man.’ My father found it endearing; I think they believed he’d gone senile. Now I return to find him murdered. I buried him yesterday, and I couldn’t even look into his face, because there was nothing but charred remains. So yes, I was a member of his brotherhood. But I never did more beyond stating so for his benefit. Because I knew it would one day be his ruin.”

  Beside him, Abigail Worthington wept silently, clutching her book and using the bur’a to wipe her tears. Her brother looked to her, his voice not rising but cold. “Now you cry. Did you shed tears when he was making a mockery of our family name back home? Or spending our money on his meaningless ventures and building this ridiculous place”—he gestured about the room—“that would only serve as his tomb?” His sister cried harder, and he sighed lengthily.

  “My sister is given to tears, but I can’t spare them. Do you see this?” He placed a hand atop the book on the desk. “A ledger of my father’s businesses in the past sixteen months. I’ve been trying to make sense of bizarre transactions he or his hangers-on were making with the company—selling off some industries, investing recklessly in others, large sums of money simply gone. An entire shipment of Worthington steel—enough to construct a building—vanished! I came up here, hoping that in his treasured sanctum I might find some enlightenment. You see, I’m left to get my family’s affairs in order—while my sister spends time playing dress-up with that lot of sycophants downstairs.”

  “They are my friends.” She tried to sound firm, but it only came out as a petulant sob.

  “They’re your friends as long as you fly them to Egypt and put them up in fancy villas about the city.” He shook his head. “Fitzroys, Montgomerys, Edgintons. All recent money. They latch onto my sister and the Worthington name. More hangers-on at the trough. I swear, you’re as bad as Father.”

  Fatma coughed. She wasn’t here for a family squabble. “Is there anything else you can tell us about your father’s brotherhood?”

  Alexander gave her a flat look. “That they’re all dead.”

  “What about enemies? Someone who might want to do it harm?”

  “A Mohammedan who took my father too seriously, it seems. Are we finished here?”

  “Almost.” Fatma met his irritated glare. “We’re trying to clear up some discrepancy on your arrival into Cairo. You say you got here the day after your father’s murder.”

  “That’s seems apparent.”

  “We’ve heard claims you were here that night.”

  “Whoever told you so is obviously wrong.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t here that night? You weren’t the one who asked the newspapers to quiet news of your father’s murder?”

  This made him frown. “What? Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “I’m sorry,” Fatma told him. “I can’t speak on an ongoing case.”

  They stared at each other for a moment before he threw up his hands. “I can assure you I arrived in the city when I said I did. Check my travel documents if you’d like.”

  “And why did you come back?” Fatma pressed. “Right now? All the way from India?”

  He frowned. “If you must pry into my personal business, I received a letter from my father requesting my presence. He didn’t write often. So I obliged his request.”

  “The dutiful son. Are you the new Lord Worthington now?”

  He gave a wry expression. “My father was the third son of a duke, hence a lord. The title he takes with him to the grave. All I’m left with is the Worthington name, which I must now rehabilitate.”

  “You could be the English Bey—the son of a basha,” Hadia put in, her tone sarcastic.

  “I think I’ve had enough of Oriental decadence,” he replied flatly.

  Fatma thought she’d had enough of him. “Are you going to stay in Cairo?”

  “Only as long as it takes to put my father’s business in order and sell this monstrosity of an estate. He loved this country so much he insisted on being buried in it—like the great conqueror Alexander of old, his will claimed. Well, not this Alexander. I plan on returning to England. My sister will be coming with me. Where she can find better uses of her time than frivolities with her so-called friends.” Abigail looked as if she wanted to protest but swallowed the words.

  “And your father’s collection of relics?”

  “Worthless heirlooms,” he answered sourly. “Before I sell the estate, I’m going to have this room demolished. They can go with it. When I return to England, I want all memory of this brotherhood business put behind us. Anything more, agent? Perhaps you could spare some time to find out which local has pilfered an entire steel shipment? Maybe one of your Forty Leopard hooligans. I hear they’ve fallen in with this crazed Mohammedan.”

  “I’ll pass it on to the police,” Fatma replied. She tapped the tip of her bowler. “Thank you for your help. We’ll get back to you should we have more questions.”

  He gave a weary wave of acknowledgment, bowing his head and reopening the ledger—not even watching them go. Abigail led them out and downstairs in silence back to the parlor. When they’d arrived, she turned to them apologetically.

  “I know my brother probably wasn’t very helpful. But I so do want to help you find my father’s murderer.” She opened up her book and, to their surprise, pulled out another book. Thin and bound in black leather, it was small enough to fit in one’s palm. Fatma accepted it, opening to the first page. Handwritten words in English read: The Vizier’s Account.

  “It’s a notation book of some sort,” Abigail explained. “I found it here in the house. It belonged to a man who worked close with my father—Archibald Portendorf. If you want to know more about the Brotherhood of Al-Jahiz, perhaps it might be useful?”

  * * *

  “April 14, 1904. Procured for TOM, one scrap of tunic claimed to have belonged to al-Jahiz, £2,900,” Hadia read aloud as they rode the automated carriage back to Cairo. Her fingers flipped to another part of the journal. “December 1906. Procured for TOM, pages reputed to have come from a Koran touched by al-Jahiz, £5,600.” She turned the small book about, displaying its contents. “I don’t think Alexander Worthington was exaggerating about his father’s spending. There’s years of information in here.”

  Sitting opposite, Fatma scanned the page. Handwritten English script wasn’t her forte. Some things she could make out, but it was slow going. Luckily Hadia seemed at ease with it. She remembered the name Archibald Portendorf listed among the murdered members of the Brotherhood of Al-Jahiz. He’d bee
n one of those at the table with Worthington. She distinctly recalled his charred hand clutching a kerchief marked with the letter G. His wife, it turned out—Georgiana. She wondered what his last thoughts of her had been as he died.

  “This is more than a ledger,” Hadia said, flipping through the small book. “He jotted down notes alongside his expenses. Here’s one: ‘September 13, 1911. Wired to that young idiot WD £200 emergency funding for latest venture. Claims to have encountered sand trap. Pity it didn’t swallow him.’ Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.”

  Fatma looked down a small list naming members of the Brotherhood. They’d been using it to decipher the journal’s coding. TOM had stumped them until they remembered Lord Worthington’s nickname and reasoned it out in English: The Old Man. “Wesley Dalton,” she said. “He’s the only WD.”

  “Nearly every mention of him comes with a biting comment,” Hadia noted. “Doesn’t seem Archibald liked him very much.”

  “Wesley Dalton was the corpse whose head was on … backward,” Fatma remarked.

  Hadia’s eyebrows rose. “I guess he had a way with people. Look here.” She pointed at the journal. “Beside a lot of these entries is written the word ‘archivist’ followed by ‘Siwa,’ in parentheses. Maybe he had to visit there? With an archivist?”

  Siwa was an oasis town in the far west of Egypt. Fairly remote—some nine hours’ travel by the faster airships, and only if they weren’t stopping to fuel. “That’s a long way. How many times is it mentioned?”

  “Often. Especially the more expensive purchases. Why go to some archivist in Siwa, though, for”—Hadia stopped to read—“a sebhah rumored used by al-Jahiz to perform dhikr? I don’t recall al-Jahiz being in Siwa.”

  Neither did Fatma. This wasn’t making sense.

  “You have that look on your face,” Hadia observed. “The frustrated one.”

  “I was hoping we’d come away with some leads. Instead we get puzzles. Not to mention we still can’t nail down basic facts—like when precisely Alexander Worthington arrived in Cairo.”

  The clear contradiction between his and Madame Nabila’s account had taken up much of their discussion since leaving the estate. One of the two was clearly wrong or lying. The documentation was in Alexander’s favor. But it seemed an odd mistake on Madame Nabila’s part. And why would she lie?

  “This is interesting,” Hadia murmured. “The last entry. It’s dated November 6.”

  “The day of the murders. What does it say?”

  “November 6, 1912. After two weeks of haggling, procured for TOM from the list, the reputed sword of al-Jahiz, for agreed upon price, £50,000. Archivist (Siwa).” Hadia gasped. “That’s a lot of money! Do you think it’s the same one the imposter has?”

  Fatma shifted uneasily, reliving that singing sword skewering Siti. “What else?”

  “There’s a long notation: ‘Encountered difficulty gaining the item in Red Street. Inquired on discovery of second wire transfer to archivist (Siwa) for £50,000 from AW.’” Hadia raised her head quizzically. “Alistair Worthington?”

  “No. He’s TOM. AW is someone else.”

  “You’re not thinking…?”

  “Alexander Worthington! Keep reading!”

  “‘Informed Siwa that I was the only one authorized to speak for TOM. Became erratic and unhinged. Has left me shaken. Will suggest to TOM no further transfers to archivist (Siwa) until matter sorted. Will not support his habit, even if he holds the list over us.’ Exclamation point.”

  Hadia stopped. “It seems there were two transfers to the same archivist in Siwa for £50,000. One was on the night of Alistair Worthington’s death—for a sword. The other transfer was two weeks earlier, from AW. Perhaps Alexander. But for what? And what’s this business about a list or Red Street? I thought the money was wired to Siwa?”

  Fatma shook her head slowly as understanding set in. “Red Street. He means Red Road. The artisan district. Siwa isn’t a place. It’s the name of the archivist. A djinn.” Not wasting another moment, she shouted a new set of directions for the carriage, holding to the inside railings as it banked hard to the left and set out for Al Darb al-Ahmar.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Red Road was dotted with buildings, monuments, and masjid dating to the Fatimids and as recent as the Ottomans. The famed artisan district was a labyrinth of winding alleys lined with endless shops, where craftspeople preserved techniques passed down through the ages.

  Fatma and Hadia hurried past thread-dyeing houses where women huddled over large stone baths, drawing out bundles of cotton from the black ink. Elsewhere, apprentices painstakingly stitched together tasfir under the watchful eye of a master bookbinder. Al Darb al-Ahmar was one of the few places in modern Cairo where steam or gas-powered machines were rare, its artisans preferring tradition to mechanized production. It meant slower going, but there were people who paid handsomely for such handcrafted creations.

  They turned a corner to the Street of the Tentmakers, facing the old Bab Zuweila, with its impressive twin minarets. They’d had the carriage drop them at the newly reestablished Al-Azhar University, where they queried two students who sat drinking coffee. The women weren’t familiar with a djinn named Siwa, but suggested a carpet-maker they claimed knew every part of the district. It turned out he was indeed the person to ask. As he and his eldest daughter sat at an old-fashioned vertical loom weaving silk into prayer rugs, he related precisely where to find Siwa—down to the façade on the building.

  “We’re lucky he’s the only djinn archivist in Al Darb al-Ahmar that goes by the name Siwa,” Fatma said, eyeing the print on a set of tents. The Street of the Tentmakers was aptly named, where artisans stitched by hand colorful geometric styles from local architecture across massive cloth canvases. Every shop belonged to a tentmaker, and they advertised with banners promising even more tantalizing craftsmanship inside their stores.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” Hadia said, stepping aside as a flatbread seller pedaled past on a three-wheeled velocipede, a basket of rounded aish baladi stacked on his head. “How do djinn even tell one another apart?”

  Fatma shook her head. Given that djinn called themselves mostly by geographical spaces, it was inevitable many ended up sharing the same name. She’d come across a dozen Qenas and scores of Helwans. How they distinguished one another by name was a mystery. They just … did.

  “Here it is.” She motioned to a sign that read The Gamal Brothers, just above a drawing of three men stitching. The four-story building was made of brown stone broken by red swaths and windows framed in green. Like most of the block, an awning stretched from its roof to across the street—a tan canvas with mahogany stripes—shading all beneath.

  Inside, they found Gamal—a man with curling gray whiskers—and his equally graying brothers. The three worked on a majestic tent of red, blue, and yellow designs with green calligraphy. A gramophone belted out music—surprisingly one of the songs made popular from the Jasmine. Never stopping their needlework, the three directed the two women upstairs when they inquired after a Siwa. As narrow as the passage was, Fatma thought it a wonder a djinn could fit the tight space.

  “You’d think with all the money this Siwa’s been paid,” Hadia mused, “he could afford a bigger place.”

  “Maybe he’s the frugal type,” Fatma muttered.

  They stopped at a door on the third floor, which looked recently painted over a bright yellow. Before they could even knock, it opened. Djinn had a habit of that.

  “Ahlan wa Sahlan!” he greeted.

  “Ahlan biik,” Fatma replied.

  She was taken aback at the warm welcome, as well as the djinn. He wasn’t small after all—just slightly less massive than Zagros, in fact—though his voice was higher than his size might predict. Beneath a black velvet kaftan embroidered in gold, his skin was dark red with thin curving lines of ivory. They formed swirling patterns that moved continually. The effect was hypnotizing, and she had to look away�
��though his yellow-and-green eyes did much the same. “I’m Agent Fatma, and this is Agent Hadia, with the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. We’re looking for Siwa?”

  The djinn inspected their badges, then touched the tips of his looping blue horns in some gesture she didn’t quite understand. “I am Siwa.” He smiled. “As I’ve already welcomed you to my home, please enter at your leisure.”

  He guided them inside, and Fatma stopped in her tracks. Beside her, Hadia released a stunned breath. Like most djinn dwellings she’d visited, this one mimicked a museum: with antique furniture, statues, paintings that had the appearance of another time—and books. Endless books. Everywhere. In shelves. Stacked onto tables. In towering piles that looked like orderly mounds of art. But it was the size of the room that stood out. The apartment was immense, with archways and columns, and a wide stone floor. She looked back through the still-open doorway that showed the narrow stairs and then to the scene before her.

  “It’s bigger on the inside than the outside?” Hadia whispered, incredulous.

  Apparently so. Djinn magic was sometimes perplexing.

  “I beg your pardon for the great mess,” Siwa said.

  “You certainly like to read,” Hadia remarked.

  “I’m something of an archivist. Of rare texts—both ancient and medieval, by mortal reckoning. Most of these are works of literature, from my personal collection.”

  Hadia examined a thin volume written in Greek. “Have you read them all?”

  The djinn beamed. “Several times! Will you take tea with me in the sitting room?”

  He led them across the apartment—and Fatma tried not to gawk when they entered another room with a towering water fountain, made up of white marble camels balancing a bowl upon their humps. Paintings in gilded frames lined the walls—most depicting camels galloping across sweeping desert vistas.