“Then why not punish him?”
Queen Yasmina floated down from the candle sconce. “Because Bijam is more human than jinni, whereas you are one of us, and were once destined for greatness. The blood of my brother Samiran is in your veins, and that makes you my responsibility. My beloved nephew. Mine to teach and mold into the man your mother failed to raise.”
“What?” He reeled back from her, stunned by the revelation.
“You are my blood. Of her many admirers, your mother would settle for no less than a grand ifrit.”
The words rushed out of him before he could bite them back. “How grand could he be, leaving her to raise me alone? Abandoning—”
“You know nothing,” Yasmina snapped. “Nothing of my brother. He loved you and your mother more than anything, but now is not the time to discuss him. Now is the time to discuss your Zarina and what may be done to save her.”
Suppressing his fury, he quieted and listened as the ifrit queen circled around him. “Forgive me, Your Majesty.”
“There is a sickness here, the royal family a canker infecting all who dwell within Naruk. They must be excised to save the city, Joaidane, and this task is one I give to you.”
“But how can I do anything when I’m confined to this form and you’ve withheld half of my power?”
“Consider it part of the challenge. If you truly love this girl as you claim, and she loves you in return, then your curse will be lifted, and you’ll have the power to do as I bid.”
“How? How can love unravel a curse when she has no way of ever discovering my name? No way to even know what needs to be done?”
Yasmina’s flames flared bright. “For one born of our blood, you can certainly be lacking in wit at times. I said you may not share the name I’ve given you. Not that you couldn’t share the way to your redemption.”
“What?”
“You may tell your Zarina what must be done to gain your freedom. It is up to her to care enough and to find the perseverance to do what must be done.”
“All this time…”
“Yes, you could have tried to lift your curse a hundred times over, but you never cared enough to truly try.”
“Until now.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Until now. Which tells me perhaps you do care. Perhaps in this tiny, insignificant window of time in your long life, you’ve developed fondness for another being.”
“I told you. I love her.”
“Yes, I believe you do… and this means there is one more thing you should know.”
“I’m listening.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t have leniency for one who was as cold and heartless as you once were, Joaidane, but I see your Zarina and feel sympathy for her plight. Bijam cannot be allowed to own her or the child she carries.”
“Child? What child?”
Yasmina’s whisper slid over him, an audible caress against his magical senses. “Your child.”
Her flames puffed out, and a single curl of wispy smoke drifted up to the vaulted ceiling. Joaidane called out for her but received no answer.
Yasmina was gone.
Zarina. I must get to Zarina.
Joaidane sped through the corridors in search of her, blazing past quiet and subdued servants with bruised faces. The royal family’s abuse had no limits, and their lack of loyalty to the people in their service twisted his stomach.
He wondered if he would have turned out the same way, cruel and unconcerned with the rest of the world around him. Was this the lesson Yasmina wanted to teach him?
No matter what, he had to do everything within his power to guarantee Zarina wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the rest. She would not be their pet.
And once the curse was broken, he’d burn the Ruby Palace to the ground and claw it apart stone by stone.
Chapter
At first, Zarina beat on the door and tried to loosen the lock until she realized she had nowhere to go even if she did gain freedom. She wouldn’t make it ten yards down any of the corridors before some palace guard ruined her escape and dragged her back to the makeshift prison.
Resigned to attempt the impossible, she sat at the spindle and twisted together a few dry hay strands to run through the bobbin. She’d made her own yarn and thread countless times before, but she’d never done anything as fantastical as transmuting straw into gold.
What had the beggar done? What had he done? If she could mimic his actions, perhaps she could even emulate his results.
She managed to make a lumpy thread with irregular twists, but it was the dull and flaxen color of dried grass. No gold shone against the bobbin, and the ugly, scratchy mess fell apart within seconds.
Frustrated, she threw aside the handful of straw and wept into her hands.
“Don’t cry.”
The rough voice startled her, and she jumped up. The beggar stood nearby, appearing as silently as he had the last time.
Astonished, she stared at him. “You came again.”
“I did. Though I expected you to be home.”
“They lied!” she cried. “They won’t set me free unless I spin this room into gold as well.”
The beggar walked over in slow, limping steps. He gestured her away from the spinning wheel, then took her place on the stool.
“I can spin this straw for you, but there is a price. What will you offer as payment?”
“I have few of my possessions,” Zarina said. She sighed and raked her fingers through her hair. The ring caught against the dark strands and tugged at her scalp. “Will you take my mother’s ring?”
The old man’s eyes gleamed. “You will give that to me? Is it not worth more to you than all of the gold in this world?”
“It is,” she whispered. “But I value my life too, and my mother wouldn’t want me to die to protect it.” She twisted the band off her finger and offered it to the beggar, hoping he bartered it for a good meal to fill his belly.
He tucked the ring into his rags and went to work. Zarina supplied him with the straw, though she wondered how they would ever finish. No matter how much the beggar spun into gold, the piles never seemed to decrease. In some corners of the dusty room, the hay rose as high as her waist.
“Some music might speed my work along,” the beggar suggested.
“But I have no instrument.”
His familiar brown eyes glittered with amusement. If they weren’t foggy with cataracts, they would have been golden-amber. “Perhaps not, but you have a voice.”
“It’s nothing special,” she murmured.
“I’ve heard you sing before,” he said. “Please, will you do me the honor?”
It seemed such a harmless thing for him to ask, yet she hadn’t sung for anyone aside from her mother and her dear Joaidane. Thinking of her handsome friend brought a pang to her heart. It had been so long since she had seen him last, and now she would never see him again.
Singing a sweet tune about two lovers who met in secret, she entertained the beggar with her voice until his magical hands depleted the mountains of straw. One moment, they seemed to be against an impossible amount of work, and in the next, night had fallen and nothing remained but a few strands of broken grass in the distant corners of the room.
“You truly are magical,” she whispered. Undeterred by his blemished face, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for helping me. I wish I had more to give you in return.”
“You have given me enough,” he said in a gentle voice. When he snapped his fingers, the dozens of skeins rolled together to create a makeshift bed. A second snap mended her torn clothes.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Sleep and tomorrow you will be free. Tomorrow, I’ll find you at your father’s home and we’ll speak. I have much to tell you.”
She surrendered to her heavy eyelids and dreamed of Joaidane.
* * *
Zarina stirred awake when the bar raised on the door. Piles of golden skeins filled the room, glittering beneath the sunlig
ht streaming through the high windows.
“Up, girl!” Vizier Bijam barked as he stepped inside.
He shut the door behind him, closing them both in the room alone. His eyes raked over her body and the hanging fabric of her nightgown. Even though the beggar had repaired it, his hungry eyes seared through the garments, and an ominous weight settled in her gut.
This was when she’d die. He’d come to do more than demand riches, and she’d sooner let the sultan’s executioner behead her than lay beneath his nephew.
“Once again, you’ve managed to exceed my expectations.”
“I only did as you and the sultan commanded. Now please, let me go free. This gold exceeds the debt owed by my father.”
“Set you free?” He laughed. “You have been weighed and your true value determined over these past two nights. I could no more let you return home than I could set the sultan’s horses free to roam the dunes. You are worth more than a room of golden thread.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You, a simple merchant’s daughter, have an undefinable worth. I’ve decided we shall be married tomorrow eve.”
“Marry you?” Her voice rose and squeaked. “Your Excellency, I’m only a poor commoner of no special talent.”
Vizier Bijam stroked his beard. “That is true. You are nothing special, but you are a girl in possession of a jinni.”
“I… what?”
“Don’t play foolish with me.”
“My life hangs in the balance, Your Excellency. I assure you, I play no games.”
“Another being appears in this room each night to spin your golden thread. A jinni. An elemental creature bound to your familial line. I suspected as much the first night, but now I am certain. One of the palace servants claims to have seen a jinni flame traveling down the corridor.”
“That doesn’t mean he was here to see me.”
Bijam glanced around the room and inhaled, expanding his chest with a large breath. “The distinct taste of jinni magic hangs in the air.” He swung his gaze back to her. “Do you think me to be a fool, girl? Your father’s little piss pot of a shop suddenly acquired its weight in precious spices and peppers. Wonders appeared for you both out of nowhere.”
“An admirer—”
“A jinni,” the sorcerer hissed. “Once we are married, this creature would belong to the sultanate.”
“Please, you promised me—”
“The terms have changed,” he snapped, “and I suggest you comply. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to your family, now would we?”
Ice filled her veins and raised goose pimples down her bare arms. The argument on her lips died, banished by the real threat of placing her sweet brother beneath the executioner’s scimitar. Or worse, a quartering. The sultan had a fondness for lashing his enemies to his dunestriders and whipping the horses into a frenzy.
“No,” Zarina whispered.
Bijam dragged her from the chamber and down the palace corridor into the largest room of them all. Heaps of straw stretched across the floor in dry piles and tightly rolled bales. A spinning wheel sat in the center of the room, waiting for her.
“You will have the jinni create another room of gold, and then you’ll have provided a proper dowry. No one will question my reason for marrying you with such a bride gift. Do it as if your brother’s and father’s lives depend on it. Because they do.”
The door shut behind him, the finality of its echo shattering what little hope she had of seeing Joaidane again. Had her lover returned yet from his journey across the Ivory Sea, elated to share the news of lifting his curse but unable to find her?
Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and made a silent course down her cheeks before the trembling began in her shoulders.
As much as she loathed her father, Bijam and the royal family were the true monsters. A frustrated kick of her bare foot against the nearest bale did nothing to alleviate her anguish, nor did the sobs shaking her body, even when they escalated to choking wails of despair.
And without the beggar to perform another miraculous feat, she wasn’t guaranteed to see life beyond the next day. The grim reality taunted her as she drifted to the low table at the corner of the room. A hard end crust from a bread loaf and a glass jug of warm water awaited her. Too hungry to turn her nose up at any form of sustenance, she gobbled down the dry rind even as it crumbled apart in her hands. The unfiltered water tasted earthy, and sediment floated at the bottom.
They’d given her a dishonorable meal unfit for even the lowest servant in the palace.
After she sank to the ground and despaired over her misfortune, the door opened and shut. Like the jinni Bijam claimed him to be, the beggar strode inside after evading countless palace guards, hounds, and a variety of magical pitfalls designed to protect the royal family. Again. She stared at him with unconcealed amazement. “How have you made it inside the palace so many times?”
“Magic,” he replied. “Shall we handle another room, mistress?”
She rushed over and threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”
His frail arms closed around her, familiar and comforting for reasons she couldn’t describe, as if they’d embraced a dozen times before. “What are you sorry for?”
Zarina stepped back and nibbled her lower lip. “Because I need this room turned to gold, but it’s so much work, and your fingers must be sore.”
He turned in a full circle, slowly looking over the room. It was three times the size of the last. “Is this all?”
“It’s more than the last two rooms combined!”
He chuckled. “It can be done, but as before, I require a trade.”
Her heart sank. She’d given him her mother’s ring and necklace, the only things she kept on her at all times. “I have nothing left to give. What more could you want from me?”
“Then…” The beggar’s thin lips pressed together, and his brows wrinkled with consternation as he gazed at her through misty eyes. “Promise me your firstborn child.”
Her eyes widened, and her thoughts drifted back to her single night with Joaidane in the oasis, a starlit night filled with beauty as well as magic when he’d introduced her to pleasures she’d never known. Had never expected to experience with anyone during her lifetime.
“How can I promise you something that will never be? Even if I must submit to that—that cretin, I will never bear him a child. I would sooner die.”
“No,” the beggar said quickly, with desperation in his voice she’d never heard before. “You must not die, sweet Zarina. Ever. You already bear the seed of love in your womb.”
The words struck her like a thunderbolt, taking the air from her lungs and stunning her. Could it be? She curved her palm against her soft stomach and closed her eyes, a fresh wave of tears clinging to her long lashes and threatening to fall. She’d never considered the consequences of lying with Joaidane, but if she were pregnant, it would be his child.
“That’s impossible…,” she whispered. “It was only once.”
“Once is all it takes, Zarina. I speak only the truth.”
“You ask for something more precious to me than anything in the world.”
“Yes. In exchange for your life. Will you agree to the bargain?”
She hesitated and dropped her chin to her chest. “What would you do with my baby?”
“I would raise it with all my love, far from these evil men. Your child would want for nothing, and raising it would require no further payment.”
Zarina opened her eyes and stared at him, torn between the decision of dying with her family and her unborn child, or surrendering her little one to the care of a jinni.
“Will you promise to let my baby meet its father?”
“I will.”
“Then I will give you my child, so he may be free.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “And safe from all of this. They would never allow him to live, and if they did, he would be raised like them in a life of opulence, greed, and cruelty. I w
ant a life of happiness for him.”
“As you wish.”
Unlike the previous two nights, they didn’t speak. She brought him straw in the same manner as before, but her thoughts were on Joaidane and their child. Where was he? Had he broken his curse? Would he return as he promised?
Not that it mattered. She would either be dead or wed to the vizier. Held within the palace, Joaidane would never find her, and she would never see him again.
Her belly grumbled noisily, protesting its empty state. A casual gesture of the beggar’s hand conjured a silver platter laden with savory delights and fluffy bread. His hands never broke their rhythm on the spindle.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
While he worked, proving he had no need of her to fetch hay when a wave of his hand brought the tight bales rolling toward them, she settled on the floor to examine the meal’s presentation. Skewers of sweet, peanut chicken joined a bowl of creamy rice with savory sauce. She inhaled the aroma and could have wept in appreciation.
If he could perform such feats of sorcery, it seemed cruel for him to live a life of forced poverty. Even the dishes stirred her appreciation for art, the platter and its matching goblet decorated with roses.
Roses? Zarina turned the goblet in her hands and stared at the silver metal etched with familiar flowers around the rim.
“Does magic conjure the same thing for everyone?” she asked.
“No. Magic is unique to the user.”
So how was she holding the same cup? She set it aside and turned her attention to the beggar while he worked.
“How so?”
“It can be beautiful or dark. Vizier Bijam’s creations are cold and lifeless. If you had magic, I imagine it would be delicate and ethereal as a desert rose and as beautiful as you, but flexible and able to persevere through any endeavor.”
Only one other person had ever said such lovely things about her. Zarina shifted onto her knees and rose unsteadily.
Could it be?
“I know who you are.” Trembling, she raised a hand to the beggar’s weathered cheek and saw through the hideous face to the warm and caring soul beneath the sun-dried skin and bulbous, overgrown nose. In those moments, she saw her one and only lover. “Joaidane. Do away with this silly disguise and face me like a man.”
Zarina and the Djinn Page 15
