Something occurred to Mazen then. Something he hadn’t thought of before. “How did Omar locate the relic—or, ah, Qadir—in the first place? How did he know where to send his thieves?”
Aisha opened her mouth—and closed it, a quizzical look passing over her features. She doesn’t know, he thought with amazement.
The merchant scoffed. “Yet another question I intend to ask him when we return to Madinne.” She stared hard between the two of them. “I hope you didn’t plan on using me to find the lamp only to throw me into the Sandsea. Because I refuse to die by your hands.”
Mazen balked. “Of course not!”
But the moment he said the words, he realized he had no way of knowing. Clearly, his father had not cared for her safety. He’d hired her for her tracking skills. Her compass.
The merchant looked unconvinced, but she did not linger on the subject. Instead, she turned the conversation back to Imad. “When I cut Imad in the ruins, there was…” She faltered. “Ink under his skin. Or black blood?” She eyed them suspiciously. “Why?”
Mazen sighed. He had not been able to watch Loulie al-Nazari hack the thief to pieces, but he’d seen the black blood. The bangle’s side effects, revealed. When he told the merchant this, she crossed her arms and said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” She paused, glanced at Mazen’s shadow. “But I guess there’s still a lot I don’t understand about jinn magic.”
She asked about his shadow last. It was a gratefully straightforward story. Afterward, the merchant sighed and said, “It was wise of the jinn to make your shadow her relic; it kept her magic out of your brother’s hands.”
Mazen paused. He had not thought of it that way before. But now he remembered that his father and Omar had been looking for something in the diwan. A relic they never found.
Silence hung between them after that, broken only by the crunch of bread and the aggressive clatter of the women’s chai cups every time they set them down on plates. As was his habit, Mazen filled the silence the only way he knew how: with conversation.
“I’d like to start again, on a new scroll.” He put a hand to his chest and flashed what he hoped was a sincere smile. It had been so long since he’d worn his own smile that he half worried it had become permanently crooked, like Omar’s. “I’d like to reintroduce myself. My name is Mazen, and I am—”
“A liar.” Loulie scowled.
Aisha glanced at his shadow. “The Prince of Darkness?”
Mazen paled. “What? Why?”
“You have a magic shadow and often lurk in dark corridors.”
“But Prince of Darkness makes me sound like a villain!”
Aisha smirked, and the merchant—it was only for a few seconds, but she smiled. Not a smirk, not a sneer, but a genuine twitch of her lips.
“I thought you were going by Yousef?” Aisha said.
Mazen’s smile turned sheepish. “I am. I think it’s a good idea in the cities, at least.”
The merchant’s expression softened enough that the dent between her brows relaxed and faded. It seemed ages since he’d introduced himself to her as Yousef.
“Well then, Yousef. Merchant.” Aisha set down her empty cup and stood. “I’m going to see if I can ‘acquire’ some more equipment. The least you can do is gather enough coin to purchase horses.”
It was a task much easier in theory than in practice. Mazen had never done a day of honest work in his life, and Loulie was accustomed to selling merchandise, not skills. It was unsurprising that they didn’t find jobs that suited either of them.
Mazen’s mood only dampened when, while searching for employment, they stumbled upon information from Madinne. Loulie was visibly relieved when they learned Ahmed bin Walid had been declared innocent of his crimes and was staying in the palace as a guest. Mazen could not help but be anxious. Ahmed had noticed him wearing the relic in Dhyme; would he be able to pick apart Omar’s disguise when he saw that same bangle?
He was still brooding over the possibility when day faded to night. They were wandering through the heart of the souk when his rumination gave way to inspiration; he spotted a storyteller—marked as such by his ornate cane, which depicted carvings of various mythical beasts—sitting under the shade of a cloth canopy and telling stories to a fascinated crowd.
Mazen stopped to watch him, to admire the flutter of his hands through the air and the fluidity of his shifting expression. When the story was over, the old storyteller bowed, and his audience leaned forward to drop coins into a tin can.
Loulie nudged him. “Prince?”
He smiled. “I have an idea.”
It was a small, humble idea that, less than an hour later, became a small and humble reality. Mazen charmed a stall owner into letting him borrow a dusty rug while the merchant “borrowed” one of the lanterns hanging from the date trees around the souk.
She set the lantern down in front of him as he seated himself on the rug. “A lantern for ambiance?” He flashed a smile at her. “What a great idea.”
“It was Qadir’s idea. He wants to help you.”
Mazen turned, half expecting the bodyguard to be standing behind him, but the sullen ifrit was nowhere to be seen. He looked quizzically at the merchant, who pointed at the lantern. He followed her gaze to its base.
A small black lizard with gleaming red eyes blinked up at him.
“Qadir can shapeshift,” she said. When Mazen continued staring, she sighed and said, “He rides on my shoulder sometimes. It’s less conspicuous.”
Without warning, the ifrit lizard scrambled up Mazen’s leg and arm until he was sitting on his shoulder. “I’m doing this for Loulie,” he said in a voice so soft it sounded as if it were coming from inside Mazen’s head. But the gruffness—Mazen startled at the memory of it. He remembered this voice. It had spoken to him during his first encounter with the shadow jinn, had pulled him out of his trance.
So Qadir had been with her then.
“I thought I was crazy,” Mazen mumbled.
“Because you are. A sane man wouldn’t have gone on this journey,” Qadir said.
He frowned. “That’s not—”
The merchant hissed between her teeth. “Stop. You look like you’re talking to yourself.” She reached down to wrap the tail end of his ghutra around his shoulders and mouth. The ifrit immediately tucked himself away into the folds. “There. Now you at least look mysterious.” She stepped back, arms crossed. “But mysterious doesn’t sell. How are you going to make coin without a reputation? No one’s heard of Yousef the Storyteller.”
“Yet. But they will.” He grinned at the surprise that flickered across her expression. He may have been a man of few talents, but storytelling was in his blood.
“Can you manipulate the fire?” Mazen whispered to the ifrit.
A flame burst to life inside the lantern, glowing red and blue and green and yellow. Mazen considered it. And then he smiled. “Here’s what I want you to do…”
It began with a clap. With a bright smile he flashed at passersby.
He clapped again, and the fire in the lantern flickered.
A third time, and it flashed white.
A fourth time, and the flame darkened to the murky blue of the deep ocean. Some of the citizens paused to inspect the mysterious fire.
On the fifth clap, the flame dimmed to a green that cast the area in deep shadows. Quite the crowd had gathered by then. A young boy pushed his way through it and pointed at the lantern, mouth hanging open. “How are you making it do that?”
“What, this?” Mazen lifted the lantern, looked at it for a long moment, then blew onto the glass. The audience stared in awe as the fire inside disappeared—and then roared back to life. They cheered, as if he’d performed some magic trick.
He lifted the lantern with a flourish. “Behold! This is no ordinary fire.” The blaze dimmed further, so that his audience was cloaked in darkness. “This is an immortal flame, crafted by none other than the Jinn King of Fire.”
Qadir scoffed in his ear. “Such pretty lies you spin.”
But Mazen did not think it was a lie at all. To him, stories were truths painted over in gold.