by L-J Baker
“My master must order my return.”
“Oh. So, if I say you can vanish whenever you like, that would keep you safe from turds like that one hurting you?”
“Such permission would allow for that possibility.”
“Then you can vanish whenever you like.”
Honey Petal looked surprised. She bowed. “Yes, master.”
Honey Petal disappeared.
Chapter Six
Adijan lowered herself to the dusty ground to lean against the bricks of the communal well in the middle of a small square. Surrounded by sleeping houses and enough open space to see anyone coming, she allowed herself to concentrate on her most pressing concern.
The brass pendant felt no warmer nor heavier than it had, though it must somehow contain Honey Petal. Adijan turned it in her fingers but found nothing unusual in the unremarkable exterior.
She had no money, nor any prospects of any. What she did have was the only genie in the history of the world who didn’t have the magical power to grant wishes. Worse, she couldn’t get the necklace off to sell it for a couple of copper curls. In fact, the man at the enchanter’s house had told her it was hers for life. Had she taken a little more time to think it through, she should have realized magic that kept a necklace from being removed was too paltry a reason for its reputed worth. But who would pay the phenomenal sum of three hundred obiks for a genie who couldn’t do anything useful?
She narrowed her eyes as her mind’s eye threw up the image of the late Merchant Nabim’s indecent haste to don the necklace. The old man had been feverish in his excitement. Perhaps he would’ve been more wary had he known he’d be dead two days later.
What had Imru the eunuch said of Nabim’s death? That he had burst his heart disporting with the most beautiful woman this side of the Devouring Sands – a woman whom Imru didn’t know. Adijan lightly touched the hard, round lump between her breasts. She now knew exactly who that woman was.
What do you desire, master? Adijan had a shrewd idea what Nabim’s reply had been. There would not be many men who wouldn’t ask for the same.
Adijan fitfully dozed away the rest of the night, woken once by a dog and finally by an urn thudding on the ground near her. The yawning girl come to fetch water barely glanced at her. Adijan waited until she finished before hauling herself up a cool drink, filling her water-skin, and splashing her face.
She relieved herself in a courtyard behind a near-ruinous bathing house which had seen much similar use recently. Reeking filth oozed between the toes of her left foot. She had lost a sandal. She scoured several streets and alleys before finding a piece of rag she tied around her foot. By that time the mouth-watering smells from breakfast fires assailed her from all directions. She visited several houses before successfully cajoling a young man to trade the mugger’s knife for some food.
A team of donkeys clopped past the alley where she squatted down to eat, their panniers bulging with goods for some distant place. She was glad the initial stages of her business empire required only donkeys, because camels cost much more and were more trouble to handle. Besides, Shali liked donkeys.
Adijan sighed. Every thought was inextricably linked to Shali. Not that it was surprising, but she hadn’t been so aware of it before. Could she have fallen into the trap of taking Shali for granted? Aunt Takush had implied that she had somehow been at fault in how she looked after Shali.
“Oh, Eye,” she muttered. “I wish I knew what to do. I wish Shali were here. I wish…”
Honey Petal appeared. Adijan started and swore. Honey Petal bowed to the accompaniment of the tinkling of her little golden nipple bells. Adijan clutched at her wildly beating heart.
“Something ails you, master?” Honey Petal asked.
“I’m going to have to stop doing that.”
Honey Petal looked around. Unlike many mortal ladies of the night, her beauty increased rather than diminished in the full glare of sunlight. Her clothing was titillatingly translucent and her breasts were even more pronounced than Adijan remembered. The only mar on her perfection was her expression of deep distaste.
“You prefer to inhabit these surroundings, master?” Honey Petal asked. “Do you have no home?”
“No.” Adijan sighed and shoved to her feet. “No home. No money. No ideas. No hope.” No wife.
“You’re suffering difficulties?”
“Just one. It’s enough.”
It was going to be another long walk back to Qahtan, especially with only one sandal. Perhaps, as she walked, she’d have some brilliant idea to rescue Shali.
“You’re in debt?” Honey Petal asked.
“Up to my nose.”
Adijan trudged toward the end of the alley. A gentle tinkling followed her.
“This debt is of a nature to put you in danger of retribution or arrest?” Honey Petal asked.
“I wouldn’t put it past Hadim to try to have me locked up for debt.” Adijan shrugged. “Maybe he will when I get back.”
She paused to get her bearings.
“The prospect of imprisonment incites only indifference in you?” Honey Petal asked. “Surely you cannot be accustomed to it?”
“I’ve been locked up once or twice.” Adijan glared at a man who showed considerable interest in Honey Petal. “Maybe you should vanish again. Unless you want to be ogled and groped all the way back to Qahtan.”
“Qahtan?”
“Yeah. I might as well go back. Maybe Fakir will still give me that job.”
Adijan stopped for the umpteenth time to re-fasten the rag around her foot. In none of her rags to riches daydreams had she considered the unhappy possibility of the rags phase lasting for most of her life.
A cloud of dust heralded the approach of a large cavalcade. She kept well off the side of the beaten path as the horsemen rode past. Amongst the long manes and shiny metal armor, she glimpsed vividly-colored silks and jewel-decked turbans. Maybe one of them was the man Hadim was bribing to sanction her divorce from Shali. None of them gave her a glance. In all probability, they didn’t even notice her. Money alone had the magical property of making people more distinct. Without two curls to her name, she counted for very little with anyone. She spat out dust and continued to trudge toward Qahtan.
Adijan recognized the dry stream bed as the place where she’d been robbed on her previous trip back from Ul-Feyakeh. Her feet throbbed and she was weary enough to drop. Why not? It wasn’t as if she had anything left worth taking.
After slowly chewing a small piece of flatbread, she leaned back and closed her eyes. She tried to conjure images of her grand plans. Mistress of a world-spanning business empire, she wore a big diamond in the front of her fez and sat astride a richly caparisoned white horse. She rode to a huge palace. But the palace was empty. Her footsteps echoed from the gold-lined rooms. No birds sang in the gardens. Over the wall, she heard lots of happy children’s voices. In the neighbor’s garden, Shalimar played with laughing children who called her mother. She didn’t hear Adijan calling to her. Then Hadim laughed at Adijan. No matter how hard she pressed her hands to her ears, that laughter rang in her head.
Adijan jolted awake. She lay curled on the ground in the shadow of a boulder cast by starlight.
There was going to be no palace in her future. She was going to spend the rest of her life pushing a broom around Fakir’s warehouse. Then she’d go home to her room at Aunt Takush’s to think about Shali and what might have been if she had been halfway competent at anything.
She sat up and hugged her knees. On an impulse, she reached under her shirt for the pendant.
“Um. Honey Petal? Can you come out?”
Honey Petal appeared on her knees. She bowed low, with accompanying tinkle of bells, and glanced around. “Yes, master? What is your desire?”
“I – urn – I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“Talk?”
“You can do that? Look, I know it’s the middle of the night, but – I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Adijan required a moment to decipher that. “Oh. Um. But just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean you – do you sleep? When you squish up in the locket?”
“What I experience is not what you would call sleep.”
“Oh. What do you call it?”
Honey Petal hesitated, as if recovering from surprise at the question. “A subtly crafted indefinite transitory state between loss of consciousness and obliteration of self-awareness.”
Adijan ran the words through her head several times without finding much meaning in them. “Oh. Well, look, I didn’t mean to drag you from it.”
Honey Petal sat back on her heels with an undecipherable look on her face. “I am compelled to satisfy your desires.”
“My desires are pretty small right now. A handful of obiks might’ve done it.”
“Your overwhelming debt amounts to a few silver coins?”
“Debt? Oh, that. No. I need the money to get my wife back.”
“You’re married?”
The astonishment in Honey Petal’s voice made Adijan stare at her. Perhaps it was Adijan’s imagination, but Honey Petal demonstrated increasingly human-like behavior. “Why is that a surprise?”
“Forgive me, master. All of my masters have been married.”
“So why shouldn’t I have been?”
“You have no fixed abode. Your age and your attire – I drew an incorrect assumption. A thousand, thousand apologies, master.”
Adijan sighed. “You’re going to be correct soon.”
“Master? Might I beg the favor of asking a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where are we?”
“Probably near some village. Qahtan is three or so days that way. Ul-Feyakeh is less than a day’s walk back there.”
“Ul-Feyakeh?” Honey Petal’s eyebrows lifted. “Then this land is the sultanate of Masduk.”
“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”
“My previous periods of existence in this world failed to provide me with any recognizable features from which I might have made that identification.”
Adijan considered that. “So, you aren’t aware of what’s going on when you’re in the necklace?”
“As I explained before, master, when banished, I exist in an indefinite transitory state between loss of consciousness and the obliteration of self-awareness.”
“Yeah. So, you said. That means you aren’t watching the world from in there?”
Something close to contempt flickered across Honey Petal’s face before she quickly assumed a woodenly neutral expression. “I have no awareness of the world until your summons, master. I exist for your will.”
“You know, sometimes, you say words a slave might use, but not at all as a slave would.”
Honey Petal bowed, which concealed her expression.
Adijan tossed a pebble into the dark. It tip-tapped as it hit unseen boulders. Honey Petal seemed preoccupied with her own thoughts. The expression definitely made her look human. Her whole appearance was amazingly good: unblemished skin, lustrous hair, stunning facial features, and a generous bosom. It was the perfection that spoiled the illusion. No real woman could look as beautiful as Honey Petal. Some enchanter had done a phenomenally good job in crafting her as a magical creation. With that sort of skill, it was no wonder enchanters earned so much money. Something like this had to be worth a few obiks to someone. She simply couldn’t understand why Remarzaman didn’t want to buy it back.
“You can’t produce a pile of treasure,” Adijan said. “Nor even conjure me some wine out of the air. And yet, you say you exist for my wish. Am I right in guessing your previous masters desired services of an intimate nature?”
“Yes, master.” Honey Petal’s voice sounded wooden and flat.
“You look the part. Even a eunuch had to admit you’re beautiful.”
Honey Petal’s eyebrows lifted sharply. “You’re a eunuch?”
“Me? No. I meant Imru, Nabim’s servant. And every man who has seen you has gone as stiff as a doorpost. Is that what all your masters have asked you to do?”
“I am bound to satisfy the desires of the master of the necklace.”
“By the Eye,” Adijan said. “Desires. That’s what you mean. You’re a sex genie. How stupid I’ve been. It was obvious. The clothes. The breasts.”
She shook her head. Of all the many things in creation that might’ve helped her, an enchanted whore was not one of them. She couldn’t imagine anything more useless than having a man’s enchanted ideal sex slave around her neck. Truly, the All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye must have a sense of humor drier than the Devouring Sands.
Her breath burst out as a half-sob, half-laugh. She threw her head back and began to laugh, or else she’d weep again.
When Adijan woke, Honey Petal sat cross-legged on a boulder watching her. Adijan stood to stretch. Her back cracked as if it had dried to twigs while she slept.
“Have you been there all night?” Adijan asked.
“You did not command my return, master.”
“You can go back any time you like. I already told you that.”
Honey Petal bowed. “Yes, master. I chose to remain.”
“Did you just sit there?”
“I have not had many occasions to remain self-aware without other occupation.”
Adijan dug a folded pancake from the tiny supply in her pocket. She stopped before she bit. “Do you ever get hungry?”
“Not for food, master. I have no need to eat.”
Guiltily relieved not to have to share, Adijan chewed and wandered off to find the privacy to urinate. Which, when she thought about it, was an odd thing to do. Honey Petal was a genie. Given her reason for existence, there wouldn’t be many bodily functions she wouldn’t be familiar with.
Honey Petal stood looking at the sunrise when Adijan rounded the boulder. She didn’t immediately acknowledge Adijan. There was something in her profile that made Adijan pause. Honey Petal may not hunger for food, but the longing in her expression suggested there was something she dearly wanted. Which, Adijan realized, was peculiar. What could an enchanted creation possibly desire?
Honey Petal started. When she turned, she wore that woodenly neutral expression she often adopted.
“I’m going to walk now,” Adijan said. “You might want to ride it out in the necklace. The road is a bit rough, especially with those flimsy sandals of yours. Although, there won’t be many people to notice you. The odd caravan or merchant. Farmers. Shepherds. Still, even I probably look good to someone who sees nothing but a goat’s backside all day long. Your choice.”
Adijan picked her way across the rocky ground to the accompaniment of tinkling little bells.
Had Honey Petal been human, she would’ve been red-faced and sweaty well before the heat of the day blasted down from the mid-morning sky. She doggedly continued to walk and look around.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen much outside bedrooms,” Adijan said.
“This is not a part of the world I am familiar with.”
Adijan considered that as she adjusted the rag tied around her left foot. Against prediction, and common sense, Honey Petal’s little golden sandals looked no worse for their time on the dusty road. Maybe they were magical sandals.
Honey Petal watched Adijan with an air of disdain. She couldn’t have had too many masters who wore rags around their feet.
“I must be something of a come-down for you,” Adijan said. “You keep looking at me like you can’t believe you got stuck with me.”
“I am bound to satisfy your desires, master.”
“But not answer my questions. You have a habit of saying something that isn’t actually a reply to what I said.”
Honey Petal offered neither an answer nor evasion.
“I suppose they were all rich,” Adijan said. “The ones before me.”
“Without exception, my previous maste
rs appeared to enjoy a modicum of comfort in their living arrangements.”
“They’d have to, to be able to afford the necklace. Nabim paid three hundred obiks.” Adijan shook her head. “And I can’t even get two copper curls for you.”
Honey Petal looked sharply at Adijan. “You attempted to sell the necklace? You can remove it?”
“No. That’s where it all falls down. Just my luck to own something worth so much and not be able to sell it.”
They sheltered during the fiercest heat of the day, then continued on their way mid-afternoon. The road wound around the side of a hill. Farmers worked terraced fields.
Adijan knelt to drink from an irrigation ditch. “I take it you don’t drink, either?”
“No, master. Might I be permitted to ask a question?”
“Sure.” Adijan stood and dried her hands on the back of her pantaloons. “Look. You don’t have to keep asking if you can ask a question. Just ask.”
“By your will, master.” Honey Petal bowed.
“You know, all that ‘master’ stuff just doesn’t seem right. Not for me. I certainly don’t feel like I’m master of anything right now. My name is Adijan. What did you want to know?”
Honey Petal’s eyes widened. “Adijan?”
“Yeah. But I’m usually called lots of other things. I answer to most of them.”
Honey Petal recoiled with a look of horror. “By the Eye, I didn’t think it could get worse. But… but you have a wife.”
“Shali, yes. For now. What’s the problem?”
“You’re a woman.”
“Yeah. You haven’t only just worked that out?”
Honey Petal vanished.
Adijan frowned. “What was that all about?”
She shrugged and continued to walk alone.
Adijan watched the last of the day drain away over the hills and wondered what Shalimar was doing. Probably eating a big dinner with meat and a dessert of honey and figs. Did she miss Adijan? Did Hadim make a woman sleep with her as if she were a child who needed a night nurse? Did Shali ever mistake that presence in her bed for Adijan?
It had been twenty-two days since they slept together. Yes, she had left Shalimar alone for days on end before, but never this long. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember the goodbye kiss she must’ve given Shali. Had Shali asked her about the rent and said she’d been worried about the landlord’s increasingly strident demands? Could Adijan really have taken Shali’s concerns so lightly she couldn’t remember them a few weeks later? If only she’d known, the morning she’d parted from Shali, that all of this was going to happen. If only.
