Adijan and Her Genie

by L-J Baker

  “Be that as it may,” Takush said, “I think Adijan would be better spending her time and efforts more productively. Like getting a steady job. And keeping out of trouble.”

  “Well, yes, a job won’t hurt,” Fakir agreed. “You’re right. As always. Just the thing to show she’s a hardworking, responsible tax-payer. Very wise idea.”

  Adijan guessed what was coming before her aunt said, “Fakir has most generously offered you a position in his warehouse.”

  Adijan groaned.

  “No need to thank me,” Fakir said. “Only too happy to do anything I can to help. It’s the sort of thing friends do for each other, eh? And families, too. Not that we are family really. Not yet. But it feels like it. Doesn’t it?”

  “You’re very kind,” Takush said. “And I think Adijan does owe you gratitude. Not only for that, but for your efforts to find and engage an advocate for her. Adijan?”

  “Thank you, Fakir,” Adijan mumbled.

  He smiled even more broadly and winked. “Soon have everything right and tight, eh? Must say, it’s not the same without Mrs. Nipper here. Lovely girl. Tell everyone so. Always a smile for Uncle Fakir. Damned pretty, too. Not right what her brother is doing. Not right.”

  Adijan rose and started for the door. Takush grabbed her wrist to detain her, but spoke to Fakir. “I don’t know how to thank you, my very dear friend. But would you mind?”

  “Don’t mention it, dear lady,” he said. “If anyone tried to take my wife from me, I’d fight tooth and nail. Wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have a sand grain to my name. To be treasured, you know, wives. I’d treasure mine. A lot.”

  “I need a talk with Adijan alone,” Takush said. “Perhaps you’d like to call tomorrow for coffee?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Of course! Yes. Woman’s talk and all that. Right. I’ll leave you to it, then, dear lady.”

  Adijan tried not to watch Fakir squeeze her aunt’s fingers. He patted Adijan and winked at her.

  “Come to the warehouse first thing in the morning, Nipper,” he said.

  Adijan watched the door close behind him, then yielded to her aunt’s tug to sit on the divan beside her.

  “That wasn’t very polite,” Takush said. “Even in your condition. Fakir is putting himself out to help.”

  “Why can they sling me in jail for getting drunk, but won’t lift a finger against Hadim?”

  “That’s the way it is. But Fakir’s contact looks promising. Now, why don’t you get yourself cleaned up and take it easy for the rest of the day? You’ve still got bruises that need to heal. And have a good wash. Use soap. There’s no telling what sorts of lice and fleas you picked up in jail. Then you’ll be fresh and ready to start work for Fakir tomorrow.”

  Adijan sagged. “It won’t make a difference.”

  “Of course it will. Quite apart from earning money, by the time your case gets to the right ear, you’ll have a solid record of stable employment.”

  “She’s my wife! We’ve been married four years. Why do I have to prove anything?”

  “Because Hadim il-Padur can afford to convince a caliph’s official that Shalimar should be married to someone else.”

  “What?”

  “That has got to be where this is headed. You and I both know that Hadim isn’t going to this trouble and expense because he believes it’s in Shalimar’s best interests. He’s going to make a profit out of this somehow. That won’t happen by having Shalimar live with him.”

  Adijan clenched her fists. “I’ll kill the wormy dog first.”

  “Not the wisest course. Though I can understand. Why don’t you –?”

  “You’re wrong. It’s the only thing I can do.”

  “You’re hung over and feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll feel better once your head clears and you see that things are moving toward –”

  “No.” Adijan sighed. A wave of futility quenched her anger. “I can’t afford an advocate. I don’t have any money. Not a curl. Nabim’s widow refused to honor his debt and ripped the cloth up.”

  “Oh. Was there a witness to –?”

  “Eye! I miss her so much. To see her smile. To hold her hands. And listen to her talking. She should be right here. She’s the only person who makes me feel like I’m worth something. If I thought I’d never see her again…”

  Takush put her arm around Adijan. As she had not done in years, Adijan clung to her and buried her face against Takush’s bosom. Her aunt smelled of childhood comfort and safety. Takush stroked Adijan’s hair.

  “What am I going to do, Auntie?”

  “Keep fighting.”

  “Everything I do turns to dung. Hadim is right. Maybe Shali would be better off with someone else.”

  “Now you’re being stupid. You can’t seriously think Shalimar would agree? The Eye knows she’s in love with you. Anyone who gets within ten paces of her can see it. I can’t imagine her looking at anyone else. Nor anyone making her as happy as you do. And I know you love her.”

  “I should never have gone away for so long. I’ve let her down. I’m supposed to take care of her.”

  “Maybe now is the time to think a little harder about how best to do that. A steady job is a good start.”

  Adijan sniffed and straightened. “I can’t earn enough pushing a broom in Fakir’s warehouse to buy Shalimar back.”

  “You’re not alone. I’m not as rich as Hadim il-Padur, but I can afford to help. I have good credit throughout the city.”

  “I’ll pay you back – every curl.”

  Takush smiled and smoothed Adijan’s hair. “We’ll see. Now, go and wash. I saw something crawling – where did you get that? It’s unlike you to wear jewelry.”

  Adijan looked down at Nabim’s pendant hanging outside the torn neck of her shirt. “This? Nabim’s nasty bitch of a widow gave it to me in place of my three obiks. She claimed it was worth three hundred. Dengan won’t even give me two curls for it.”

  “Then that’s probably why it didn’t get stolen from you in jail.”

  Adijan shrugged. She kissed Takush’s cheek. “Thanks. For everything.”

  Squinting against the painfully bright sunlight, Adijan dragged the wooden tub into the courtyard. She filled it, bucket by bucket, from the well. She braced herself with a deep breath before stepping from the warm early afternoon air into the chilly water. Fully clothed, she sat and let the water lap at her chest. After she stopped shivering, it felt good.

  She couldn’t remember much of last night. Throwing dung at Hadim’s seemed a good idea. Shame she’d got the wrong address. Not that pelting Hadim with dung would’ve got Shalimar back.

  All-Seeing Eye, how can you let him get away with this?

  A wooden pail thudded on the packed earth near the tub. Young Zaree smiled shyly at Adijan. Takush wouldn’t allow the unformed fourteen-year-old work the rooms yet, so Zaree was a maid of all jobs. Having grown up scrubbing pots, peeling vegetables, washing sheets, and mopping vomit from floors, Adijan had a lot of sympathy for her. Despite her lingering headache, she returned Zaree’s smile.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Zaree said in her soft voice. She hauled on the wet rope to raise the water bucket in the well. “You looked real bad when Qahab found you out the back door the other day. All that blood. I prayed for you.”

  “Thanks. Your grandmother doing better?”

  “Yes. Much better. The healer that Missal-Asmai sent cured her straight away. Not like that desert witch-woman from Gate Street. She drank our beer. Her spells didn’t do no good at all. But now Gran is well enough to come and help on laundry days again.”

  Adijan nodded and splashed water on her head. When she sat back to drip, Zaree edged closer.

  “Do you want me to wash your clothes?” Zaree asked.

  “I can do it myself, thanks. You have enough to do.”

  “I don’t mind. If you give them to me I can do it now. I’m not busy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Zaree smiled and nod
ded.

  Adijan peeled her wet clothes off. As the girl labored at a scrubbing board, Adijan worked pungent yellow vermin soap into her scalp. The suds stung her eyes.

  “I was sad to hear about your wife,” Zaree said. “She’s the nicest person I know. Miss al-Asmai is very nice, of course. And the girls who work here. But Mrs. Shalimar is… she always makes me feel happy even when I’m sad or tired.”

  As clear as if Shalimar stood at the foot of the tub, Adijan could see her sunny smile. She quickly slid under the water. Not all the stinging in her eyes was from the soap.

  As Adijan knotted a towel around herself, Fetnab sauntered from the back door carrying a steaming cup. Tousled and heavy-eyed, Fetnab wore only a man’s shirt which reached mid-thigh. She put an arm along Adijan’s shoulders and kissed her.

  “You’ve looked better,” Fetnab said.

  “Are you up early or late?”

  “I have to look for a new room to rent. The boss is letting me stay here till I find somewhere. That donkey dung landlord of mine threw me out. I wouldn’t suck him.” Fetnab offered her the cup. “Not rich yet, then?”

  Adijan grunted and cautiously sipped the hot liquid. It was weak coffee laced with fig brandy and a dash of mistweed juice. Reasoning it couldn’t make her hangover worse, she drank several swallows.

  Fetnab perched on the side of the tub to light a dainty but well-used pipe. “So where is this famed donkey?”

  “Um. Still in the sultan’s stables,” Adijan said.

  Zaree looked up with wide-eyes. “Did you meet the sultan?”

  “Not this time,” Adijan said. “He invited me to dinner, but I had another appointment.”

  Zaree put a hand across her mouth and giggled.

  “You shouldn’t tease her like that,” Fetnab said. “She believes everything you tell her. I’ve been thinking about your problem. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to arrange for someone to give your brother-in-law a disease.”

  Adijan had no desire to discuss that subject any further, so she told them about the demise of Merchant Nabim. Zaree giggled. Fetnab laughed until she cried.

  “But it’s bad for business,” Fetnab said, wiping her eyes. “Did you find out who she was?”

  “Imru said she was the most beautiful woman this side of the Devouring Sands,” Adijan said. “Being a eunuch, I’m not sure how he judges these things. But she must’ve been energetic if nothing else.”

  The cook hollered for Zaree. The girl grabbed her pail and trotted away.

  “You want to be careful with her,” Fetnab said. “If you weren’t married, she’d have a crush on you. She might anyway.”

  “No. She’s just a nice kid.”

  “And you’re too sweet on your wife to look twice at anyone else.” Fetnab captured the brass chain around Adijan’s neck and tugged. The pendant slid from under the towel. “A locket. You? I bet it contains some of your wife’s hair.”

  “If only –” Adijan broke off and frowned down at the brass circle in Fetnab’s fingers. “You mean it has something inside?”

  “A friend of mine cut off part of her man’s ear lobe and stuck it in one,” Fetnab said. “It ended up looking like a black scab. She carried the disgusting thing between her breasts for years. At least it wasn’t a piece of foreskin.”

  Adijan had a shrewd idea this didn’t contain an earlobe. She took the pendant back from Fetnab and turned it in her fingers.

  “There should be a little indentation in it where you jam your nail to pry it open,” Fetnab said.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Let me look.” Fetnab ran a painted fingernail around the circumference of the pendant a couple of times. “It’d be easier if you took it off.”

  Adijan grabbed the chain and lifted it over her head. The hands she offered to Fetnab were empty. The chain still lay around her neck. She tried again. Again, she held nothing.

  “What the –? Am I still drunk?”

  Fetnab hooked her fingers under the chain and lifted it up over Adijan’s head. She didn’t hold it when she lowered her hands.

  “By the Eye,” Fetnab muttered. She drew back as she signed the All-Seeing Eye above her bosom. “Magic. It must be. Oh, Eye bless us.”

  “The enchanter.”

  “Enchanter?” Fetnab echoed. “What have you been messing with this time?”

  “I fetched this from an enchanter in Ul-Feyakeh for Nabim.” Adijan frowned as she cast her mind back to Nabim’s bedroom. She remembered his feverish excitement and haste to get it around his neck.

  “What are you going to do?” Fetnab asked. “What does the magic do?”

  “Dunno. Keeps it from being stolen, I suppose.”

  “You didn’t steal it?” Fetnab asked. “But magical things are too valuable for –”

  “Yes! Valuable. You’re absolutely right! Enchanted stuff doesn’t come cheap. That’s why something so cheap-looking was so expensive. It’s the magic. It might just be worth three hundred obiks after all. Eye! I thank you!”

  Adijan flung her arms around Fetnab and kissed her cheek.

  “Three hundred?” Fetnab said. “When camels fart perfume.”

  “That’s what I thought when Widow Nabim told me. But I made a very special delivery as only part payment for this.” Adijan kissed the pendant. “Yes! Do you know what this means? It means I’m going to get Shali back.”

  “How? You can’t sell it if you can’t get it off. Although, I suppose Dengan would buy your head.”

  “The enchanter. I’ll take it back to him. He’ll be able to do something about the magic. And he’ll give me a few obiks to have it back. Yes! I might even come out this ahead. Finally, something’s going my way.”

  Adijan sucked juice off her fingers as she peered critically at the orange. Did it show where she’d sliced the peel, squeezed out some of the juice, and stuffed inside one of the small patches from her pantaloons? On the scrap of cloth, nimble-fingered Zaree had sewn in tiny stitches the message: “Adijan loves Shalimar Promise.” The fruit looked a little oddly shaped. Still, if it were one of three, the chances of anyone noticing would be reduced. She smoothed the lines of the incision again and kissed the orange.

  “May the All-Seeing Eye see you safely to Shali.”

  Near Hadim’s house there weren’t many snot-nosed, half-bare children running around, but she found one boy willing to earn a curl.

  “Take these to that house,” she said. “Say that someone called… Nipper wanted the pretty lady to have these.”

  Adijan watched from behind a large gatepost of a house down the street. That sour brute Koda answered the door. After a short exchange, he took the oranges from the boy. The boy came running back. Adijan paid him with the last of the coins she’d borrowed from Fetnab.

  Long after the boy left, Adijan stood watching Hadim’s house. She had no idea if her message would get to Shalimar. Any one of a hundred mishaps could prevent it. Still, she couldn’t think of any better stratagem. If Shalimar sniffed an orange, no one would keep her from them. They were her one great weakness. Shalimar would give beggars her last coin and the food from her plate, but she wouldn’t share an orange – not even with Adijan.

  It just didn’t seem possible that Shali could be in that house, but Adijan couldn’t walk in to her. If the walls of Hadim’s house dissolved, they could see each other.

  She looked down at her pendant. “You and me are going to fix that limp donkey poker and get her back. This time, I’m not going to mess it up. For once in my life, I have no choice but to get it right.”

  She blew a kiss at the house before turning to trudge back to her aunt’s place. She had an early start in the morning.

  She decided not to worry her aunt with beforehand knowledge of her trip to Ul-Feyakeh. Returning with a pocket bulging with silver obiks would more than dispel any doubts Takush might raise against Adijan’s speculative adventure.

  Chapter Five

  The guard who stomped behind th
e gates at the enchanter’s house wasn’t the one who had been here last time. “What do you want?”

  Adijan offered a polite bow. “Oh, glorious and noble sir, I have urgent business with your illustrious master, the enchanter of great renown, Remarzaman the magnificent.”

  “No beggars.”

  “Wise and diligent sir, I should hope such wretches never soil your master’s doorstep. My concerns with your master are of a magical nature.”

  “Like what?”

  “No doubt you are a man of boundless wisdom and learning,” Adijan said, “but the article I carry is one crafted by your magnificent master’s peerless arts. I would hesitate to presume to know his business better than the great Remarzaman.”

  The guard scowled. Adijan wished she had a few copper curls with which to ease her passage past him.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “you might wish to consult his secretary. It was that handsome and learned young man who gave me the article I now return.”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Master Yunus? Who do you claim to be?”

  “I am the special courier from the Merchant Nabim of Qahtan. Recently deceased. He bequeathed me the item which he sent me here to purchase nine days ago. I have come to return it.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Adijan tugged the pendant from beneath her shirt. “This enchanted locket is precious beyond imagining. I tremble, sir, at any delay in returning it safely to your master’s hands.”

  “Looks like a cheap trinket.”

  “That is part of the peerless cunning in its crafting. It is so valuable it is only prudent it not look its true worth or it would attract envy and invite villains.”

  He frowned and spat on the ground.

  “Sir, when your master rewards me for its return,” Adijan said, “I shall most generously remember those who aided my mission.”

  The guard’s expression sharpened. “Give it to me, then, and I’ll show it to the secretary.”

  “Most wise and generous benefactor, would I willingly accept your aid. However, part of the wondrous incantations and spells woven about this amazing locket is I cannot remove it. Your master alone can reclaim it. This spell, you see, is to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. That is how valuable it is.”