Adijan and Her Genie

by L-J Baker

  “It will take him only a few days, perhaps even less than a day, to uncover the method of breaking the enchantment. He –”

  “If he wanted to.”

  Zobeide stopped abruptly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I know you think the sun shines out of his backside, but didn’t it strike you as odd how he behaved?”

  “He was surprised. Who would not have been, in his circumstances? Someone from so deep in his past just appearing. Like seeing a ghost.”

  “He wasn’t just surprised.” Adijan continued down the street, obliging Zobeide to follow. “Why is he afraid of you?”

  “Afraid? How absurd. If he –”

  “He nearly wet himself when you told him who you are.”

  “I can hardly blame him for shock at my appearance.”

  “No. It wasn’t that. He was as nervous as a first-time thief who can’t forget he’s in danger of getting his hand cut off. The only thing that seemed to make him happier was when you told him you couldn’t do any magic.”

  Zobeide followed Adijan down a narrow, stepped side street that plunged them from the affluent hills to a street of noisy stalls and shops.

  “I’m sure your abilities to diagnose the characters and motivations of people of your normal acquaintance is as good as anyone’s,” Zobeide said. “However, Baktar is –”

  “Scared. And a liar.”

  “He may not have been able to immediately gratify our wishes, but that is hardly cause to make wild accusations and judgments. Whatever Baktar’s faults – and I would be the last to claim he had none – he is no dissembler or deceiver. What reason did he give you for supposing him otherwise?”

  Adijan was sorely tempted, but kept quiet. The last thing she needed was to argue with Zobeide about Baktar all the way back to Qahtan. “Let’s go to the inn. I want a good feed before – camel crap! The inn bill. How can I possibly pay it?”

  “You could still accept Baktar’s hospitality. And I’m sure there will be no trouble over having him discharge your bill.”

  Adijan shook her head. “An enraged genie couldn’t make me sleep under Baktar’s roof. And I’m not staying in the city tonight. If –”

  “Adijan, listen to me.” Zobeide stopped in front of her, forcing her to halt. “I know your reason for haste. I do. And you have my solemn vow I’ll do everything in my power to expedite your return – when I am free. You –”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Please! Just a day or two. I’m sure that is all it will take.”

  “No.”

  Adijan stepped around Zobeide and strode down the busy street. She threaded her way through a shifting stream of shoppers, stall owners, hawkers, and beggars.

  Zobeide soon caught her. “Adijan! A day or two. That’s all I ask.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But to have come so far!” Zobeide grabbed Adijan’s sleeve and forced her to stop. “You can’t just walk away now. Please! We’re so close.”

  “I’ll come back. I promise. Now, I’m going to need your help. I’ve got to get in and out of the inn, to grab my stuff, without anyone trying to stop me and ask about payment. We have to make them think I’ll be coming back again rather than doing a runner.”

  Adijan, turning her thoughts to the practical possibilities of scaling the garden wall at the inn if necessary, continued to push her way down the street. In the distance, over the untidy jumble of roofs, the sea beckoned.

  “You can’t leave here now,” Zobeide said.

  “I have to get back. I can’t let that camel spit brother of hers sell her off. I can’t –”

  “And just what do you think you could do to prevent this marriage?”

  “I’ll stop it and ask her to marry me instead.”

  “What possible grounds would you have for questioning the validity of the marriage? You’re divorced, so you have no legal claim over her, or your ex-brother-in-law’s decisions on her behalf.”

  “Shali is marrying against her will. The dog turd keeps her drugged. The priest won’t marry them if she’s only doing it because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “And if that is the case, how are you to prove it? Especially against two men who, by your own account, believe your ex-wife is no more capable of making decisions for herself than a child? Two men, moreover, who are wealthy and highly respected. Against them, what do you hope to achieve with your wild accusations? You, whom everyone will be aware, the bride received a sympathetic order of divorce from on the grounds of cruelty and neglect.”

  Adijan swore.

  “Listen to me. If –”

  “I can’t do nothing! I’ll think of something. I can’t just sit here while she’s sold off so Hadim has a few extra gold wheels in his strong box. I won’t! If that scab –”

  “Use your head!” Zobeide grabbed Adijan’s shoulders. “Now that you’ve stopped pickling your brain in wine, it’s a passably good one with highly creative tendencies. Put it to use. You and I both know, as matters stand now, there’s very little you could do to interfere with the course of your ex-wife’s marriage.”

  Adijan glowered. “I won’t let her go without a fight! If you think –”

  “Of course you won’t. But everything you planned depended on gaining a reward for my freedom, didn’t it? Without that, there’s nothing you can do.”

  Adijan ground her teeth together. “I’ll think of something.”

  “The only way you’re going to succeed is to free me. You need the reward. But gold alone won’t do it. You need –” Zobeide’s head snapped up as if she had heard an unexpected sound. “Magic.”

  Adijan’s gaze cut past Zobeide’s shoulder and down the street to the inn. Everything she owned, including the blanket Shali had made her, was in there. “Dung. Come on.” She turned back down the street.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not to the inn. Of course he knew where we were staying.”

  “What –?”

  Adijan pulled Zobeide through a narrow gap between a pair of stalls and into a rubbish-choked alleyway. A cat hissed and fled from them.

  “He’ll be able to find us wherever we go, won’t he?” Adijan asked.

  “Baktar will have means to detect you, if he –”

  “Camel crap. I’ve been chased by some lice in my time, but never an enchanter.” Adijan hit the wall. “I’m not going to see Shali again, am I?”

  “Why would Baktar –?”

  “I wish you hadn’t told him about me needing to be dead before the necklace will come off.”

  “You can’t seriously think that he –”

  “He wants the necklace. You heard him say he’d been looking for it. It, not you.”

  “The two are the same.”

  “No. The necklace means you’re like this and can’t do whatever it is he’s afraid you will. And if he got it, you’d have to suck him and not make any noises about wanting your freedom or half of his precious legacy.”

  Zobeide didn’t immediately respond.

  “Is there anything I can do, or anywhere I can go, to be safe from him?” Adijan asked.

  “Keep moving,” Zobeide said. “That makes it much harder to locate you.”

  “But not impossible.”

  Zobeide didn’t deny this.

  Adijan picked her way over the moldering garbage and broken furniture to emerge in another busy street. She followed the curving road toward the eastern end of the bay. Her strongest impulse was to run, but no matter how much she imagined Baktar’s magical eye boring between her shoulder blades, she couldn’t keep that pace all the way back to Qahtan. Where, she cursed herself yet again, he knew she lived and would be returning to as soon as she found passage on a ship.

  “Baktar is not a murderer,” Zobeide said.

  “This morning, you wouldn’t have said he’d been married and had a son.”

  “That was a surprise,” Zobeide conceded.

  Adijan turned into a winding street
, which ran down toward the harbor, though she had no intentions of combing the docks for a ship. If Baktar had half a brain, he’d have sent men there to wait for her.

  “I can understand he might have married,” Zobeide said. “That doesn’t represent any deviation from his basic character. Had I not been defeated by Ardashir, Baktar would’ve married me.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Why are you so determined to place the very worst construction possible on his actions and motivations?”

  “Why didn’t he free you?”

  “He doesn’t know how.”

  “So talented, skilled, and marvelous an enchanter?”

  Zobeide’s lips pressed together and she looked away. Adijan noticed two ugly men striding down the street. She grabbed Zobeide’s wrist and towed her into a warehouse.

  “Just browsing,” Adijan called to the man who leaped to his feet at their entrance.

  “What are we doing here?” Zobeide asked.

  Adijan edged around a tall pile of mats until she could peer out the opening of the warehouse without being seen. The two men stomped past.

  “Unless I’m much mistaken,” Adijan said, “Baktar is looking for us with more than magical means.”

  “I find this so very difficult to believe.”

  “You led a sheltered life, didn’t you? Well, before you became an enchanted sex-slave. Surely that gave you some idea how nasty people can be?”

  “Not Baktar.”

  “Would this be the same Baktar who didn’t lift a finger to save you or find you, despite that pile of donkey-dung Ardashir being dead over ten years?”

  Zobeide glared at Adijan and shoved past her.

  Adijan grabbed her wrist. “Not so fast. We need to be more cautious about showing our faces. At least disguising you is easy. Look like –”

  “Wait!”

  Adijan gasped. She stared at Shalimar.

  “Changes to the enchantment will create an echo in the legacy,” Zobeide said. “If Baktar were actually – Adijan? Are you listening to me?”

  Adijan knew this wasn’t Shalimar, but she looked absolutely, utterly perfect – right down to that little smile-shaped scar near Shali’s left ear.

  “What did you do? Adijan? We –” Zobeide’s head jerked up. “Magic.”

  The words coming out of that mouth didn’t belong to Shali, but the mouth did.

  “We have been scried. The change in the enchantment –”

  “Perhaps you have found something of interest?” The shop owner bowed to them.

  “Thank you, no.” Zobeide grabbed Adijan’s arm and dragged her outside. “What is wrong with you?”

  Adijan struggled against the strongest urge to wrap her arms around Shalimar and kiss her.

  Zobeide stopped outside a store selling metal ware. She stared at her reflection in the bottom of a large, shiny copper pan. “Who do I look like?”

  “Shalimar.”

  “By the Eye! I feared this would happen. I am not your wife! This is not the way to solve your problem.”

  “That’s – you’re perfect.”

  “No, I’m Zobeide. And I’m getting rather angry. Between you and Baktar, I don’t who I’d like to shake the hardest. Come on. Keep moving while I think.”

  Adijan walked beside Zobeide, but bumped into several people as she was unable to take her gaze from Shalimar’s appearance.

  “I thought you told me that the outside of people doesn’t matter,” Zobeide said.

  “It doesn’t. But – But it’s been so long since I saw her. Eye. This is worse than making me sit in a wine shop without drinking. I’ll change you –”

  “No! Don’t. Much as I’d like you to remove this disturbing illusion, that would not be wise since we’re being scried.”

  “You know, we can’t just wander around this city forever. I need to start thinking about finding a passage back to Pikrut.”

  “If Baktar has people looking for us, he will have a watch put on the docks.”

  “I know,” Adijan said. “But I don’t have much choice.”

  “Perhaps we should make ourselves known to his people. I need to talk to Baktar again.”

  “Only if you promise to wring his neck.”

  Zobeide clenched her fists. “I know he can free me.”

  “Look. I know you want him to. But he doesn’t want to.”

  “That just doesn’t make sense. Not the Baktar I knew.”

  “Twenty-two years is a long time for –” Adijan stopped. Through the bustle, she saw a trio of men in earnest discussion with a city guard.

  “What?” Zobeide asked.

  One of the men looked at Adijan. He pointed. “There!”

  “Turd.” Adijan pushed Zobeide back up the street. Over her shoulder, she glimpsed pursuit shoving its way in their wake. “If you have any bright ideas, now would be a great time to mention them. And before you say they can’t be Baktar’s men, no one else in the city knows we exist.”

  “Except the innkeeper.”

  “He doesn’t know I’ve robbed him yet. There!”

  Adijan cut across the street to a blue door. Just before she burst into the brothel, she glimpsed the trio of men gaining on her.

  “What the –?” The hulking doorkeeper grabbed Adijan in one meaty fist and Zobeide with the other. “Where do you think –?”

  “Fellow in trade,” Adijan said. “Takush of Qahtan.”

  The doorkeeper scowled. “Where?”

  “Over the sea,” Adijan said. “I’ll happily give you a geography lesson, but you’ve got the city guard and three very ugly creditors of mine about to come through that door.” The doorkeeper frowned.

  “Look,” Adijan said. “We’re both women. We can’t possibly mean any harm. Just show us the back way out.”

  The doorkeeper’s grip on Adijan’s didn’t relax. “I don’t know –”

  “Open up! In the name of the Enchanter Baktar, you must admit us.” The door handle lifted. A bearded man barged in. The doorkeeper released Adijan and Zobeide and whirled around to grapple with the more threatening intruder.

  “There!” a man shouted from beyond the tussle. “Stop!”

  Adijan took off down the narrow corridor, towing Zobeide behind her. She ran past several doors, which breathed out strong memories of perfume and wine. A startled drudge dodged out of the way as Adijan bolted past her and out into a courtyard. Two women laboring over tubs full of laundry near the well turned in surprise. Adijan ran around them, slipped on the wet ground, and pitched onto her face. A crack of pain lanced through her right ankle.

  “Adijan!” Zobeide skidded to a halt.

  Adijan struggled to rise. “Oh, Eye!”

  Zobeide grabbed Adijan and hauled her to her feet. The angry shouts from the fracas in the house grew louder.

  Hobbling and hopping with her arm around Zobeide’s shoulders, Adijan made it to the gate. One of the washerwomen had the sense to open it for them. Adijan bit her lip to bleeding before they were many pace lengths down the street. Zobeide paused to glance behind.

  “That alley,” Adijan said.

  Zobeide staggered, bent deep under Adijan’s weight, and let her collapse onto a mound of fly-blown refuse. She piled the stinking garbage on Adijan. The stench made Adijan gag. She heard footsteps.

  “This way!” a man shouted. “I saw them. Hurry!”

  The shouts approached then moved away. No hand tore aside the garbage to expose her. When she could stand the stink no more, she called for Zobeide.

  Zobeide quickly uncovered Adijan and helped her sit up. “I can see no one searching for us. How bad is your leg?”

  Adijan tentatively felt her ankle. Swelling already. Badly sprained. A run to the docks was out of the question.

  “Let me look.” Zobeide crouched and eased Adijan’s pantaloon leg up. Her expression was eloquent. “We’ll have to find you a stick or something for support.”

  “Not the innkeeper’s men.”

  �
��No. Undoubtedly, they are pursuing us and not with any intention of extending a courteous invitation to return to Baktar. But it doesn’t make any kind of sense. I can see no earthly reason why Baktar would want to –”

  “Why is he scared of you?”

  Zobeide spread her hands. “I? I can do nothing save what you and the enchantment allow me to do. And certainly no magic. There is no reason why any should fear me, least of all an enchanter such as Baktar.”

  “But what if you were free? What might you do to him, in his wildest nightmare, if you were your old self and you didn’t like him?”

  “Challenge him for the legacy.”

  Adijan nodded. “So that’s it. You could beat him, couldn’t you? You were the one who originally challenged that dung-head Ardashir, because you were better than Baktar. So now, Baktar is wetting himself that you’re back to do him over.”

  “But I wouldn’t. And Baktar is no killer, nor –”

  “I can believe that. If he’d been halfway ruthless – or less shocked – we’d not have walked out of his house. But I should imagine his belated search is going to find us anyway. Especially now.”

  Zobeide picked her way back to the alley entrance and peered up and down the street. She returned to Adijan, seemingly oblivious to the vile muck oozing over her toes.

  “It is a great pity you cannot disappear into the necklace so I could carry you,” Zobeide said.

  “It’s only fifteen days until she gets married. I don’t have any gold. We’re being hunted by an enchanter and the Eye knows how many of his thugs. And I can’t walk. Oh, yeah, and I’ve lost Shali’s blanket again, so I don’t even have the consolation of that. There isn’t anything left to go wrong, is there?”

  Zobeide directed a heavy frown at the opposite wall as if she were considering whether to blast it to smithereens with a thought. Nothing could’ve looked less like Shalimar.

  “You know what we need?” Adijan said. “For you to take that legacy.”

  Slowly, Zobeide nodded.

  Chapter Twenty

  “The heart of the problem,” Zobeide said, “is I need to be free to challenge for the legacy, but I don’t know how I can be freed until I search the legacy.”

  “There has to be another way.”