A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (13 page)

‘In Ahmahdabad?’

‘Unfortunately,’ Rajeeb stood and brushed down his black trousers.

‘What he is not telling,’ said the afrit, ‘is that if he leaves this palace, every bit of good he has ever done will be reversed.’

‘Is this true? Lalita grasped Rajeeb’s arm.

He cas
t a furious look at the afrit. ‘Not now. Come.’
He gave her his hand and she felt the cool fingers close over.

Vertigo disoriented her, spinning and swirling until hands stilled her and
she could
open her eyes and look around. She gasped.
‘
The Library.
Aine, you play with my life.’
She scanned the pillared and tiled interior, thinking that any minute the Sultan would emerge through an archway, his face with its dissimilar halves rendered even more frightening by
the odd light in the chamber.

The divans around
the walls were piled with silk
cushions, long tables had stools pushed neatly beneath and shelf upon shelf of book, scroll and c
odex ascended beyond sight.
The thickest volumes lay next to each other on the bottom shelves, others were open on inlaid timber bookstands, the smell of parchment
and vellum cloyingly familiar.
There were no windows along the walls, light fell from a cleverly domed roof but as the hours chased the day, so the illumination darkened.

Rajeeb wafted his hand and from a far corner, amber flame flickered and glowed
and the three moved toward it. ‘Not at all.
The Sultan is away, the officials with him and how fortuitous that he has the library locked in his absence and the keys
placed in his travel coffers.
In addition your fateful friends in the harem are in their quarters on the other side of the palace, so you need have no concern.’

The afrit threw himself on a
pile of cushions on the floor.
‘Tell her
the rest of the tale, Rajeeb. We have all night.
And then she must make decisions.’

‘Shall I find out more about Isabella?’

Rajeeb nodded.
‘To hear of Isabella, you must hea
r of Adelina, the two are one.
If you can accept this then make yourself com
fortable and I will continue.’
He sat himself on a divan and stretched his legs onto an ottoman cov
ered in burnished red leather.
‘Can you accept that Adelina is the mother of your niece, Lalita?’

Can I?
Can I have a care for the woman when I know if my brother hadn’t tied him
self to her, he would be alive?
She thought of her brother, could see him as he laughed, telling the woman how thrilled he was she carried his child.
Y
ou never knew the child, Kholi.
‘
It seems I must accept it.’

Rajeeb’s eyebrows raised but he acknowledged
her acceptance and continued.
‘Severine had captured and imprisoned Adelina to embroider th
at most fateful gown of souls.
But Adelina secretly plotted, planning revenge for Kholi’s death.’

‘It’s the least she could do if she loved him,’ Lalita muttered.

The afrit spoke up. ‘Huh, it seems to me Kholi deserved nothing less than to be avenged.’

‘May I continue?’

The afrit motioned regally to Rajeeb with his hand.

‘
I
now appear in our tale.’
The djinn looked down at his loosely
clasped hands. My father had imprisoned me in a lamp the size of the ornament on a woman’s wristlet.
’

‘But why?’

‘It is of no matter.’

Lalita leaned
forward.
She had barely examined the impossible fact that she had been rescued by Others, that her life hung in the balance between the fi
ngers of a djinn and an afrit.
Now she must choose to think of them as her friends – not merely Others but friends, because more than anything she needed such amity and one of these Others knew of her brother and
most unbelievably, her niece.
‘Whatever caused you to be a part of this is important and I would like to know.’

Melancholy sha
dows touched the djinn’s eyes.
‘This takes us away from your brother and your niece for a moment, Lalita, but it also has a bearing on why I stand here before
you now so I shall tell you.’
He barely paused, as if the particular tel
ling should be relayed quickly.
‘I was in love with a
mortal girl.
I wou
ld have given my life for her. She was lively and beautiful.
I chose to leave the world of the djinn and she and I ran to Fahsi where we thought, fatefully on bitter
reflection, to lose ourselves.
But my father found us and ordered me to leave Mika and return to the world of t
urmoil that is a djinn’s life. I refused him outright.
In a second he turned her into a pillar of salt and contrived a kizmet to blow her away, scattering my love to the dusty corners that make up Fahsi. Then he placed
me
in a minikin lamp. Truly I cared little.
M
ika had been murdered and worse;
turned to particl
es and blown across the world.
What wa
s life worth to me after that? My naïvety caused her death.
I believed I could love her and protect her against
the most powerful djinn ever.’
He paused
and took an anguished breath.
‘I was co
ntent to suffer my punishment.
But I vowed that should I be released I would take my revenge on my father, even on my race, by being the very antithesis of my father’s son.’

‘Did you indeed?’ muttered the afrit.

A noise at the far end of the library caus
ed heads to turn, breath held.
Rajeeb moved from pillar to pillar
as if he were a wafting shade.
Eventually he returned with a coffee and cream cat in his arms, the obscure eyes bright blue and staring, the tail flicking from side to side.

‘A cat.’
Lalita breathed out, her fingers loosening.

‘One of the palace cats, miss
ed when they locked the doors.
We s
hall mind her until we leave.’
The djinn ran a hand down the animal’s spine as he sat and the cat rumbled and sank against his side, eery eyes half closed.

‘Adelina was well advanced with the robe and in her terrible loneliness had secured the friends
hip of a secret Other – a Hob.
She needed a tiny lamp to sew into the hand of an embroidered Aladdin and the contessa, gratuitously generous, gave her the brace
let ornament that was my prison.’
He stopped for a moment and drank from a pewter goblet, dabbing at his
lips with his knuckles after. ‘The H
ob had Adelina polish the l
ittle lamp because…
do
you know the story of Aladdin? Yes?
Well, that action released
me
just as the djinn was re
leased in the aforesaid story.
Similarly, I was obliged to gr
ant the stitcher three wishes.
And here, my dear Lalita, I will cut a long story short by sayin
g I magicked Adelina far away.
Eventually she met Phelim who proved to be a b
lessing with his care for her.
She had some terrible experiences, too awful to relate, and it is a wonder she didn’t lose the child she was carrying.’

‘And
that is it?’ The afrit was indignant.
‘I swear you jumped over whole c
hapters of the telling, djinn.
What have you missed?’

‘Indeed, Rajeeb.’
Lalita wondered at
the djinn’s swift abridgement.
‘You told me I would hear of Isabella and you have said almost nothing.’

Rajeeb sighed.
‘Adelina had such
a terrible time of it, Lalita.
Her last hurt was to come from my very own hands and I wi
ll not talk of it, not at all.
Except to say that Adelina was finally free and I was
able to help a little in that. The Contessa received…’ he stopped.
His voice had dropped and his hand moved over the feline’s back as if the rhythmic sweep could mesmer the awfulness of what
ever he was thinking far away.
Lalita said nothing, allowing him to find his own equilibri
um.
Even the afrit was silent, gazing at the dj
inn with eyes closed to slits.
Finally Ra
jeeb gave another mighty sigh.
‘She received just punishment.’

‘How?’
The afrit sat up.

Rajeeb stopped stroking the cat.

‘It’s of no matter, afrit.
I do not wish t
o talk of it.
It is difficult enoug
h that I was involved at all.’
He walked away into the shadows and Lal
ita and the afrit sat waiting.
When he returned
, his face was expressionless.
He sat again and the cat moved in under his hands, arching its back as the smoothing continued.

‘You will say no more?’ Lalita asked.

He shook his head.
‘It is of no account.’

‘Then tell me this.
In what you are
not
saying, can I assume that Adelina did indeed avenge my brother’s death, that the just punishment you mentioned was as
just
as one could hope for?’

Rajeeb nodded.

‘Good.’

‘You sound hard, Lalita.’

‘Perhaps.
But I am still of the opinion that my brother might be alive if he hadn’t met up with Adelina.’

‘One can’t look backward.
And dislike for Adelina will only cause a rift between you and your brother’s daughter.’

Lalita st
ood and walked back and forth. She had a niece. Family.
Her brother had been going to
marry the mother of this babe. He had loved her.
She imagined him bringing Adelina to Ahmadabad, introducing her, wanting his family to accept her.
He’d want me to love her.
He’d want me to be her sister.
She went back and
sat amongst the silk cushions.
‘I need time to adjust to the events that led to my brother’s death, Rajeeb, so let us say you are
right for the moment.
But ultimately, if I am a little circumspect with h
is lover then I can’t help it.
Try and understand.’

‘I do, I do.’ said Rajeeb.
‘The concept of family and loyalty
raises all kinds of emotions. I know this to my cost.’
He turned to th
e Other reclining on the floor.
‘Afrit, you know of my father.
P
owerful beyond our imaginings.
I have been forced to fac
e many truths over the years.’
He continued; a forced lightness i
njected into the conversation.
‘But let me tell you about y
our little niece.
Is
abella is superb I have heard.
Her hair is as black as her father’s and she
has her mother’s unusual eyes.
She might even
grow to look like you, Lalita.
Adelina’s husband, Phelim, and his step
mother, Ebba, dote on the babe.
Importantly
for the moment, she is safe.’
He smiled then and Lalita’s own lips lifted.

‘But Rajeeb, you need to tell her of your ow
n punishment, it affects her.’
The afrit spoke up, his voice unsettling the images of the sturdy babe that was Kholi’s child.

Raje
eb nodded. ‘Indeed.’
Another sigh, so many sighs, as if the whole telling could be called
The Night
of A Thousand Sighs
.
‘Lalita, because I
am
the antithesis of my fa
ther’s hopes, he has cursed me.
I am unable t
o leave the palace boundaries.
This is my eterna
l prison just as the lamp was.
If I do, then everything I have ever done that is good will turn bad as quick as a goat carcass in the sun, flyblown in an instant.’

‘But yo
u scooped me up when I jumped.
You were outside the Palace walls.’

‘The river is the boundary of the palace, not the walls.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ Lalita began to track back and forth again.