A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (17 page)

‘Be quiet, afrit, enough!
We’ve talked on the danger
already and she is prescient.
Lalita
, this is what you asked for.’
He pointed to the table where a
n ivory-hafted
lady’s d
agger appeared. ‘It ha
s
a
silver
blade
and may help against Others
when a plain dagger would not. I can give no guarantees.
Keep it
where you can grab it swiftly. And use it.
Even if it means you must kill, remember it is your life at stake.’

Lalita took the dagger, u
ndeterred by the implications.
She had been sold to a harem, her Aunt and Uncle murdered, her dog slaughtered. She tightened the waist string of her trousers after slipping the dagger through and knew there was no going back because innocence had died the day she was sold to the ser
aglio, maybe even before that.
Maybe the day
she had sensed Kholi’s death.

She knotted the trouser string once more for luck and loo
ked at her two odd companions. ‘I’m ready.’
I think. I am frightened and unsure but as ready as I can ever be.
She reached out a hand and pressed Rajeeb’s own, wishing to
convey a message of gratitude. ‘Afrit?’
But as she bent to kiss the top of the little fellow’s head she fell into nothingness, the sensation as grim as whe
n she leaped from the parapet.
She swallowed a cry, her eyes shut tight, but a hand touched her arm.

‘Excuse me, Lady, can I help?  Are you faint?’

The cobbles and walls of the street
ceased swirling
as she stared at the face of the
man who spoke.
She wanted to keep staring, to mark every plane, every angle
,
so striking was he; a
patrician face not much older than her own and weathered by some deep circumstance.
But she dragged her arm away, discomforted by the
frisson
surging to her armpit, as if she was i
n the presence of fey glamour. ‘No.
I merely slipped
as I came around the corner.’ She pushed past.
‘Excuse me, I am late for my business.’

She hurried across the street, winding in and out of the early morning crowd, her heart racketing.
Who
is
he?
She dared to look back.
He stood a head taller than the Raji crowd and his sea-deep eyes caught hers but she ducked into a doorway as if to avoid a deadly arrow speeding her way.

The alcove into which she had turned was less like the usual souk cupboard filled to the brim with merchandise, mu
ch more like a cavernous shop.
A solid door studded with iron was
pushed back against the wall.
The room was lit by a number of lanterns and a smoky fragrance drifted toward her
from the back of the premises.
The sound of voices followed on the smoke’s meandering tail and moving further she saw two men haggling – the one dressed in a green velvet sm
oking jacket shaking his head.
The other in striped Raji robes, hands working frantically at turquoise worrybeads, offered figure after figure as the other man, surely the antiquarian, waved a cigar in the air.

Whilst they did their business, Lalita walked around the shop, trying to regain her composure, telling herself she could do this, she could find the paperweights.
I am Lalita Khatoun.
Arifa p
rotect me, I am Lalita Khatoun.
The little chant that had seen her through so much adversity tapped its rhythm through her mind.

I wish Ra
jeeb were here, even the afrit.
What would they make of that stranger I confronted?
A shifting, some sort of
frisson
that still fizzed in her arm, whispered that the m
an could be Other.
Another one but so unlike the djinn and the afrit – everything about him spoke of foreboding.

She dragged her attention back to the contents within the Aladdin’s cave before her.
The Fable of Aladdin.
I
t had been in her copy of
A Thousand and One Nights.
She shook her head.
A fable?
She had just met an Other who had been imprisoned in a lamp –
that
was no fable.
She glanced around the emporium, struck by its museum-like quality – a display of the elegance of Eirish life – from Veniche, from the secluded isles of Pymm, from
the wooded vales of Trevallyn.
Lalita pushed at the shadow of that enigmatic man in the street as she picked up striped, flowered and gilded plates, porcelain cups, fine Venichese glassware, even a tiny ship’s clock hanging suspended in its small br
ass and leather carrying case.
The other customer brushed past as crisp bells sounded and she turned to see a cas
ement clock striking the hour.
Its face smiled at her, the Lady Moon slipping across the heavens as the hands of time
tracked around the clock face.
She could hardly ignore the coincidence – her dream of the Lady Moon and now the clock.
Superstitions
?
But no, all her life her
intuition had served her well.
Except
when Kurdeesh had traded her.
How badly she had ignored her intuition in favour of the belief that the Grand Vizier
merely required her expertise.
Such arrogance, such misplaced egoism.

But this time she had to believe she was right.
This
was no coincidence,
this
was the right shop,
this
was Curiosa’s.

***

Finnian watched her move away
and dragged out the parchment.
It was so
like
her, and his heart beat like a drum as
he caught a last sight of her.
H
e wanted to be near her again.
To stare, to be within her space.

And yet she could barely s
tand next to him.
So repulsive did she find his touch that she removed his hand from her arm as if it were tainted and hurried away
.
But the eyes when she turned bac
k, that flicker of a glance…

He let her go, watching her as she went through the doorway opposite and returned to the coffeehouse to finish the
bitter liquid in the tiny cup.
Life had changed with a dramatic tu
rn that left his pulse racing.
As he sat sipping the coffee, the liquid settling in his belly, he felt himself wake up as if a c
ock crowed by his ear.
After Ibn’s massage he had experienced a somnolence, partially the remains of the drugs, partially the soothing touch of the tellak’s hands and of
his solicitous understanding.
Now he hovered on an e
dge that opened his eyes wide.
Wider than they had been in Veniche because there he had not really been sure of what he
was doing apart from escaping.
Now things had changed; now he was bent on achieving something he
wanted.
It was the difference between being pushed and doing the pushing.

Ever a sceptic,
always
a cynic, part of him preferred to believe the Moonlady was a drug- induced vision, even though doubt hovered
at the edge of such a thought.
But real or not, i
t served to drive him forward. And that young woman?
Surely just a coincidental manifestation of his age-old dream – and that dream an illusion fostered by a poem read in a book as a child.
Isn’t that what déjà vu is after all, the memory of a dream?
He frowned.
Or is
it
Fate?
He tosse
d back the last of the coffee.
Dream or not, Fate or otherwise, she fascinated him and stirred his blood and his spirits rose.

Enough spirit to
pay Isolde back for the pain.
If by finding the charms he served the world in the doing, maybe
it was a good enough pay off.
Because other than that, his life had very little meaning and he found the tho
ught did not upset him unduly.
Besides there was alw
ays the woman in Curiosa’s…

Thus he found hims
elf unseen inside the emporium.
He wanted to watch her without unsettling her by his presence and at first in the shadowy confines he could see no
thing except antique largesse.
But then she moved, placing a cup back on a cleverly turned table.
She’s as pure as the fine stuff she plays with.
Her grey garb covered her body with purpose but he had no doubt that underneath she would be wrought with curves and li
nes just where they should be.
Finnian had seen the wondrous in his sordid life at Castello, every conceivable malign be
auty finding a way to his bed.
But this mortal woman had a delicacy he had never seen before – a transparency, as if he cou
ld see straight into her soul.
What h
e imagined there thrilled him.
Courage, faith, and a steadfastness of spirit that shocked him because he had only ever been used to the fickle nature of Others
.
But what truly surprised him was the feeling that something had scarred her forever and it fitted with his own deep blemishes.

He moved to where he could watch her more clearly.

‘Beauti
ful lady, how can I help you?’
Finnian stepped back as Curiosa swished past, his long smoking jacket une
arthing a heady tobacco smell.
The elderly man, tall and with a face that had cunning carved into every crease, stood in front of the wom
an and lifted her hand to lips upon which sat a carefully combed, sand-coloured moustache
.
When he smiled at her, he revealed crooked teeth and as he grasped her hand, his fingers showed tobacco-yellow stains.

The woman removed herself from Curiosa’s touch, slipping her hands underneath her tunic like the religeuse who walks with ha
nds folded beneath a scapular.
‘I am not sure if you can a
s what I seek may not be here.
I have looked around and can see nothing like it.’
The tones of her voice slid round Finnian’s neck as if they were a hourie’s fingers.

‘Ah but my dear,’ Curiosa leaned close to her
and Finnian gritted his teeth.
‘Some of the smaller, more val
uable pieces are out the back.
Would you like to come and have a look?’  His eyes glinted.

‘There seems little point if you don’t have what I seek.’

She is wise to the man, clever woman.

Curiosa smiled and Finni
an had a vision of crocodiles.
‘An
d that would be?
But wait, why don’t you sit here on the chaise-longue and we can conduct business with civility.’
Civil has nothing to do with it, you piece of filth.

But the woman sat. ‘Thank you’, she said.
‘What I s
eek is part of a set, I think.
My uncle purchased one for me not that long ago on his last trip to Fahsi.’  Her voice cracked on the word ‘last’ and a shadow fled across her eyes, the light from the candelabra on the table casting a
golden glow in her direction. ‘It’s a paperweight.
A fine Venichese one of blue, white and yellow flowers.’

Finnian moved as if stung as she u
ttered the word ‘paperweight’. Suddenly Fate danced a jig.
He fizzed with premonition, with warning and with no time to acknowledge either.

‘A p-p-paperweight, you
say.
I think you mean a
m-m-millefiori
paperweight.’
The antiquarian stood, his face pale, eyes darting everywhere
as if someone were listening.
As he pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it from the candelabra, his hand trembled.
This
was Curiosa? This febrile man whom Ibn had warned was a snake?

But the fellow seemed to give himself a mental shove, resuming his seat, placing the cigar on a finely damascened ashtray an
d enunciating with great care.
‘As it happens I do have some paperweights.’

Finnian became more alert with each passing second, his fingers twitching, a mesmer so close to being cast.
Fate…

Curiosa continued, ‘And
in fact I remember your uncle.
Do we talk of the paper merchant, Imran Khatoun?’