Dozens of girls had gone missing from Naruk only that year to sate their sultan’s appetite for debauchery. As the women of the harem aged and grew less appealing, he discarded them like refuse, gave them to members of the royal family, or sent them home where they struggled to adapt to freedom.
Tears misted over Zarina’s eyes, and she wondered if that would be her fate, abused until her spirit broke and she knew nothing but servitude.
No. She’d fight. She’d fight to her last breath until they had no choice but to give her an honorable death.
The soldier dragged her off the saddle and escorted her inside a portrait-lined corridor. Chandeliers hung from above, each one dripping with teardrop shaped crystals. Gold glittered from every corner. Even the candleholders and sconces were encrusted with jewels. The enormity of the sultan’s wealth took her breath away as they traveled a red carpet trimmed in golden thread.
Bijam marched ahead of them into the throne room with his guard retinue trailing a few steps behind her.
The sultan wasn’t what she’d expected. In all her years, she’d only seen him once or twice in person, and that had been years ago during a celebration in the city. During the festival, he’d stood on the stage alongside the priests and priestesses of the local temples.
Looking at their once-esteemed ruler now, anyone could see a few years had passed since the last time he stood unaided. His immense girth claimed the entire velvet litter. His stubby legs seemed thin as quills compared to his broad trunk, and he’d need a shelf to hold his tremendous belly.
How many men and women would it take to lift that thing? she wondered. At least four strong men, or eight harem girls.
Two young, familiar women watched her arrival through apathetic eyes, their sad faces lacking warmth or interest. The girl in pink to his left fanned him, and the one on the right fed the overweight ruler fat sausages with her fingers.
“Uncle, I’ve brought you a gift.”
The vizier pushed her forward into the room.
Prodded by a sword between her shoulder blades, Zarina dropped to her knees and threw herself on the floor before the sultan, adopting the pose she’d seen in the past whenever servants addressed a member of the royal family in the markets.
“What is this? Why have you brought this peasant to me?”
“She is a girl said to spin gold from straw. Her father is the spice merchant, Darrius.”
“Ah, the one with poor judgment. He must owe you quite a bit of money.”
“A hundred rubles.”
Zarina’s vision blurred with bitter tears. Had her father truly thrown away enough money for the family to have lived in comfort for weeks?
“A pittance,” the sultan said as he rubbed his greasy, whiskered double chins. “Hardly worth the effort of collecting.”
Vizier Bijam chuckled. “He would have never paid it all, so I had Rujar break his knees and bring the girl as sufficient payment rendered.”
The knowledge of her father’s fate doused her anger with ice-cold dread. Her muscles trembled despite her attempt to remain motionless on the marble floor. Had Kazim found her father yet?
“Your Majesty, please. Please allow me to tend to my father. I swear I will work every day to earn back the gold owed to His Excellency.”
Both men ignored her.
“Straw into gold, you say.” The sultan scratched his belly. Rubies and diamonds winked against his fat, stubby fingers.
“So the man boasted. Whether it is only that, I’m certain we can find a use for her.”
“Display her.” The sultan snapped his fingers, and two guards lifted Zarina from the floor. They marched her up the gilded steps, ripped the clothes from her body, and stood her before the sultan in scant, semi-translucent silk undergarments. At first, she trembled with terror and indignation, only to become mute as fury rushed through her veins.
“Hmm. Not much to look at, is she?” the sultan mused. He leaned forward as far as his bulk would allow and pinched her thigh. “Flawless skin at least.”
Vizier Bijam nodded.
“But I have no need of another harem girl, especially one without tits.” Like a farmer sizing up a cow for sale at the markets, the sultan squeezed her left breast in his damp palm. Hot tears beaded at the corner of her eyes.
Her father had done this, and she could never forgive him. And as much as she hated him at that moment, he was still her father, and the conflicting emotions warring within her heart wanted him to be all right. Wanted her brother to have found him and carried him home.
“Then what are we to do with her, Uncle?”
“As she came to you at no cost, put her to the test. Give her a spindle and we will see if she can create golden thread. Do so, and we will free you once your father’s debt has been paid, girl. Fail, and you will die at dawn.”
They returned her nightclothes and allowed her to dress, though it hardly seemed to matter. The ripped fabric had been split to her navel. At Sultan Kaspar’s command, Bijam led her through the palace grounds to the storerooms adjacent the stables. He pulled open a heavy door and gave her a mocking bow as he gestured her ahead of him inside.
Bales of fresh hay and drying straw covered the ground. He traced an arcane gesture in the air with his fingertips, creating lines of purple and blue. They swirled together and spiraled toward the ground in a black fog, and when the mist dissipated, a spinning wheel remained.
“Work the magic your father claimed you to have,” Bijam told her.
“Your Excellency, please. You’ve already beaten my father in punishment, and a sorcerer as esteemed as you must know I’m no enchantress.”
Bijam leaned into her personal space, forcing her back until her hip struck the wall. “There are methods to conceal magical ability, and any sorceress with the gift of blending straw to gold would know those methods.”
“But I—”
“Shall I kill you now? Or perhaps I should take the payment I’m owed in other ways.” He lifted her hair to his face and breathed in her scent.
The taste of bile filled her mouth. “I’ll spin the straw,” she whispered.
“A wise choice.” He released her and left the room. The door slammed shut behind him, and the sound echoed through her heart, bringing with it a sense of doom and failure. How was she to spin straw into gold? How could her father do this to her?
She sat at the wheel with tears blurring her vision and tried to do as she had been bidden, but the straw was only that. Straw.
“Good evening, mistress. Why do you cry so?”
She looked up and gasped at the hunched, cloaked figure who had appeared across the room. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, and the doors had been bolted fast against anyone entering—or her leaving. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I’m a friend. A friend able to help you from this foul predicament.”
She scrubbed her eyes and blinked, trying to see him better in the dim light. His face came into focus, revealing the scarred cheeks and toothless mouth of the city’s most prominent beggar.
“You’re alive!”
A toothless smile contorted his thin lips. “Indeed, I am. Did you think me to be dead?”
“No one saw you. Kokura said you no longer appeared for your morning rolls.”
“Important business took me away from the city of Naruk, but I am here again. Here to help you,” the old man said. He still wore the clean linens and trousers gifted by Kazim, a robe with a frayed hem, and her brother’s worn sandals. Wherever he had gone, life had treated him well.
“I don’t understand. How did you get in the palace?” Better yet, how had he entered a locked room? Had he already been inside when they threw her into the chamber? And if he had been in the room, how had he escaped Bijam’s notice?
The beggar hobbled forward and bowed to her, but his creaking joints popped and made painful noises. She quickly gestured for him to rise again. “Magic,” he replied. “The same magic I can use to help you. For a price.”
&nbs
p; Zarina sniffled and scrubbed her cheeks again. “I have no money to pay you.”
“I don’t need money, but I do require payment. Such is the way of jinni magic. Nothing comes for free.”
“Your magic can spin all this straw into gold?”
“It can.”
His words imparted a small sliver of hope, like a golden glimmer of sunlight on the horizon at dawn. What harm could there be in trying? In the worst-case scenario, he achieved nothing and her situation didn’t change since she’d be dead by morning. But if he succeeded, she’d leave the palace with her life and dignity intact.
“Here, you can have my necklace.” She removed the delicate golden chain and held it out to him. “I know it is not worth much, but it’s one of the only gifts I have that belonged to my mother.” The rest had been hidden by friends and guarded from her father or lost forever.
“That will suffice.” He took the offered gift and cupped it between both of his hands. Little by little it disintegrated into golden flakes of stardust. It shimmered around his long fingers, reduced to nothing more than a handful of spell component. Zarina blinked her eyes a few times, willing away the tears. “Bring me the straw, and I shall begin.”
Still doubtful, but willing to try anything, she brought him a handful of straw and stood clear of his working space. He moistened the ends of two strands with his mouth and, with agile fingers, twisted them together by hand. Confidence brimmed from every movement he made as if he’d spun on an ordinary spindle a thousand times before.
At first, she saw nothing special or unusual about the rough thread. Pressure compressed her ribs, and she closed her eyes as a dozen self-ridiculing thoughts danced through her mind.
She’d been a fool. It’s impossible. No one can spin straw into gold.
Tears burned behind her eyelids and spilled over when she opened her eyes. Through the watery haze, the thread seemed to sparkle. She wiped her cheeks and looked again, then gasped.
“How are you doing this?” She stared at the glittering strands coming off the wheel and twisting around the bobbin.
“As I said, magic.”
“But if you have the magic to turn straw into gold, why do you live on the streets? You could live in wealth.”
The beggar shrugged. “That isn’t how it works, mistress. My particular magic cannot be used for personal gain unless to help someone in need for equal trade.” He flashed her a toothless smile. “As we have done. Now leave me to spin.”
And then the hunchbacked man returned to his work, all the more dedicated to the task. He ignored her.
But she wouldn’t be tuned out. She had to know more and desired answers because in all the time she’d known the beggar, she’d never heard him mention any talent for sorcery or the trades sought after in their village.
She scooted closer and offered the next handful of straw. Despite his wrinkled face and ugly appearance, his articulate hands moved with grace she’d never noticed during their previous interactions. He had long fingers, and they were almost perfect, not knotted or misshapen as she would expect of a beggar.
Strange. Hadn’t they been crooked and bent with arthritis before?
“I never knew you could do magic.”
“You never asked.” He paused after his terse words and added in a gentler voice, “But I have always enjoyed our brief talks. A pity now that your father’s gotten you into this position.”
“Father’s always had difficulty with drink and his own boastful mouth. Unfortunately, I never thought he would involve me in his follies.”
“And if you had?”
“I would…” Run away? Where would she have gone if she’d suspected her father would throw her to the sultan. “I don’t know.”
“As I said, a pity.”
Hours passed in silence while he worked, and he only paused when it came time to empty the completed thread to make room for more. Zarina ran her fingers over the first skein in wonder. She had never held so much wealth.
“This could buy the shop a dozen times over. I could feed hundreds with this.”
“Yet the sultan will hoard it.”
“Yes,” she agreed sadly. “He will.”
By the time the sky outside the high window began to lighten, Zarina’s eyes had grown heavy. Her chin dipped forward toward her chest.
The fortified wooden door burst open with a bang, startling Zarina awake. She raised her head from piles of golden thread protecting her face from the stone floor and blinked at her captor.
What in the name of the gods? At least three dozen skeins of flawless, golden thread gleamed beneath the early sun.
The moment the sultan entered, carried by half a dozen men on his gilded litter, Zarina leaped to her feet and dipped into the lowest bow her aching back could muster. The hard floor, even pillowed by golden thread, hadn’t been kind to her.
“Your Majesty.” She held the pose until tears sprang to her eyes.
“Astounding. Simply astounding,” the sultan said. Her skin crawled when he turned his greedy gaze toward her. “Since you managed the task and also seemed to have the time to sleep, then certainly you can spin more.”
A casual gesture of the sultan’s chubby hand prompted the adjacent guard to grab Zarina by her arm. He dragged her from the room at first, her uncooperative feet scraping over the stones.
“I—but, Your Royal Highness, you promised my freedom if I spun the straw into gold.”
“Did I?” He chuckled as they traveled through the palace, past grand fountains and lush gardens. Colorful silk banners fluttered in the open windows, and every step introduced her to more extravagance than the last.
“Here we are,” the sultan announced. His servants carried him inside a room twice as large as the last. Piles of hay covered the floor and towered high in the corners.
Another guard carried the spindle and spinning wheel into the room. He placed it in the only corner with bare ground.
Grass grew so infrequently around southern Samahara that she’d once heard the mighty sultan shipped special hay from the neighboring kingdom of Liang where it grew plentiful and taller than the men tasked with harvesting it. “Don’t your prize stallions need this hay?”
“With the gold you make, I can buy more. You have until dawn, or I will part your pretty head from your body.” The sultan’s gaze lingered on her breasts. “Such a pity. They’re not as small as I initially believed.”
Once again, the door slammed shut and she was left alone.
* * *
With the strict conditions set by Yasmina, greater limitations bound Joaidane’s use of his magic and robbed him of the freedom he needed to sweep into the palace and steal Zarina away. Now he would be like a jinni, the weaker cousins of the ifrit, able to use his magic at all times but restricted in the way he used it.
He didn’t know what was worse.
Joaidane drifted through the castle, formless as wisps of smoke until he paused to linger. And when he did, he burned bright as a flame, resembling a floating orb of fire. If any of the palace residents noticed him, they said nothing, as his kind were venerated and held in high regard. Coveted.
He’d once heard a mortal tell his child that a home visited by a jinni was a home twice blessed, though few of them knew the differences between a common elemental jinn and a superior ifrit.
As if Sultan Kaspar’s palace needed to be blessed at all. Every square inch shone with gilded or silken luster. Velvet cushions covered seats, gold gleamed against edges of doorways, and gemstones encrusted the windows.
He passed a single servant who stared at his smokeless, floating flame in wonder. The woman bowed to him with reverence and respect shining in her cloudy eyes.
“Blessings to you,” he murmured, voice a disembodied rumble in the air.
“Thank you, my lord,” she whispered in return before she scurried away.
Joaidane’s path continued down the lavish hallways, passing by resplendent idols carved in gold. Despite their wealth,
the royal family’s greed needlessly held Zarina captive for more.
No matter. As long as they released her once they saw her task complete.
“Worthless cur, can’t you do anything right?” a man shouted.
Joaidane drifted toward the raised voices and flitted to the edge of a gleaming sconce attached to the wall. The flames behind him licked like a loving caress, and down the hall, he saw the source of the commotion. Vizier Bijam loomed over a terrified house servant and kicked the man in the side. Fruits and pastries littered the floor around them.
“I said honey rolls, you imbecile.” Bijam delivered another kick that sent the man rolling across the rug. “Now clean this mess and fetch the sultan’s godsdamned honey rolls as you were ordered.”
“Y-yes, Your Excellency. My apologies.”
“Bring them in on one of the girls. You know he likes that. Strip her and place one on each breast.”
If only he had his power. If only he had a fraction of his gift. With a little freedom to incinerate both Bijam and Kaspar, he’d reduce the pair of grotesque pigs into oily stains on the marble floor. His mother wouldn’t have stood for it.
Another flame ignited beside Joaidane, purple and brilliant with a deep golden core. “Do you now see the evil festering in this place?” A feminine, gentle whisper reached him, too soft for either mortal to overhear.
Startled, Joaidane nearly leaped from atop the sconce. “Queen Yasmina?”
“I wanted to see your Zarina with my own eyes to understand why she meant so much to you.”
“And?”
“Bijam reneged on his part of the deal, and Kaspar took her to another room mere minutes ago. As we speak, the girl struggles to spin gold from straw as you did.”
Rage swept over him and spun his world into a haze of red. “Then I must go to her at once and free her. Please, grant me the power to rescue her from imprisonment. Restore my gifts in their entirety.”
“No.”
“Bijam isn’t a man of his word,” he spat. “If he’ll lie to her once, he’ll do it again.”
“Of course he will. The man is a snake and unworthy of the gifts his blood carries.”
Zarina and the Djinn Page 14
