Thief of Baghdad (18 page)

It was short and to the point: “Return my boy, or yours dies, and now.” You see, I remembered the Lady Jinni saying that the Hairy Jinns really feared us, though they pretended not to.

Then, in case the Hairy Jinni zoomed an eye to Baghdad to see if Prince Osman was really in trouble, I dematerialized myself and materialized a sharp and long dagger which I held poised over Prince Osman’s back.

Of course, we’re forbidden to murder humans, but the punishment is only a hundred years in Syria; not permanent exile or enhumaning.

The Hairy Jinni might well believe I was capable of killing Osman.

Staggering from the exhaustion of all the conjuring I’d done, I pulled myself together enough to see what was going on.

The captain of the bodyguard—the rich captain of the bodyguard—had persuaded Prince Osman that the Princess Amina should be gotten out of the way before the battle started.

The soldiers of the bodyguard were carrying her litter up the harem stairs, the eunuchs fussing and squealing around them, telling them it was forbidden to set foot in the harem.

Out on the courtyard ground, the army of Mossul was lined up, fifty
zars
from the palace entrance. Their drawn lances and scimitars and sabers caught the sun and made a brave flashing and sparkling; their horses snorted and pawed the ground.

Ghamal was sneaking out a side door of the great court before the Sultan could order him to lead the palace guards against the Mossul army.

I asked a man in the crowd: “Where are the janizaries? Where are the Bedouins?”

“Gone to Samarra to collect taxes for Ghamal,” he said sourly. “We’ll be Mossul’s vassals for the next two centuries.”

So low was the spirit of Baghdad in the reign of Abdir the Foolish.

I waited. The captain was doing what he could, getting in the way of his men when he pretended to help, issuing contradictory orders. Prince Osman was tapping his boot with the flat of his scimitar, ominously. Pretty soon he’d decide to have his battle, Princess Amina or no. After all, she didn’t look very valuable with a future of unconsciousness looming ahead of her.

And then something appeared in the sky. I watched hopefully.

Oh, Allah and all the prophets, the Angel Gabriel, his horn and his cohorts! That message I had zoomed at the Hairy Jinni must have carried authority. Here came Karim, riding a winged stallion and waving a sword as long as my hunger.

The stallion came to earth, light as a feather, between the palace and the Mossul army. Karim leaped to the ground, threw the reins up on the horse’s neck.

The horse whickered, reared once, and went charging at the Mossul cavalry. In a moment, they were in flight, each doughty warrior fighting to control his crazed horse.

What would you do if a winged man came running at you?

Prince Osman let out a roar and boomed: “Bodyguard, to me!” and came charging at Karim, crying: “This is your end, O Thief!”

I had one good conjure left in me before I ate and slept and refreshed myself. I was just about worn out, zooming a brain-wave at twice the speed of light is not easy.

Calling on all my forces, I cast an illusion on Karim; he appeared not as one Thief, but as a thousand, all identical, all holding long swords; not an iota of difference among them.

The Mossul cavalry was coming back now, minus their horses; there were more of them than I had the strength to make Karims; I was counting on the awesome look of a regiment of identical twins to turn the day.

It did. The cavalry decided the time had come to go catch their horses which were, after all, the property of the state and people of Mossul.

And Prince Osman decided he didn’t like Baghdad after all; a little too much magic around for the Sturdy. He followed Ghamal out the side door.

It would be a long time before he was seen in my jinnisdiction again.

Left in sole possession of the field, Karim looked down at his long sword. Then he threw it away. It was not exactly an asset to a cutpurse; more of a hindrance.

He strode into the palace, raised his hand, and said: “O Sultan, I have come to claim my reward. The hand of the Princess Amina is mine!”

Abdir the Foolish sat there on the
leewan,
blinking. Life had been coming a little too fast for him lately. “You bring the—the—whatever it was?” He looked around for Ghamal to prompt him, but the post of Grand Vizier was vacant just then.

“The blue rose,” Karim said. “I bring the blue rose.”

“That’s what it was,” Abdir said. “There was another chap here with one, but it wasn’t in very good condition. Or something.”

Karim reached in his bosom, his face triumphant. Then the triumph faded, and he moved his hand around under his blouse as though afflicted with all the fleas of Syria.

“I’ve dropped it,” he said. “I’ve lost the blue rose.”

The Lady Jinni had gone to some trouble to conjure him up a blue rose; the Hairy Jinni had quite outdone himself with that winged stallion; and as for me, no jinni had ever done more for a friend.

And then he loses the blue rose.

Sometimes I think I’d like to go back to the Lower Tigris, where the biggest problem was conjuring up a school of fish or a stretch of high water. I was too exhausted to conjure up a blue rose just then, or even a rosebud.

Karim seemed remarkably cheerful for a young man who had just botched the work of three senior jinns, one of them hairy. He strode toward the harem stairs, where Princess Amina’s litter had stalled halfway back to the harem.

He leaped up the steps with that agility that I so admired in him, bent over the sleeping Princess, and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss that I wished the Lady Jinni could see.

When he came up for air, he cried: “Awake, O loveliest of princesses, and know that I love you!”

Of course, she didn’t.

He tried a second kiss, as long as the first, and a third one, a little shorter; after all, he’d had a few trying experiences himself lately.

His jubilant air was beginning to fade. The Lady Amina lay still as ever.

I put my hand in the pocket of my robe and started to turn away. And then I found, deep in my pocket, a cube of
rahat lakhoum
that I had forgotten.

I munched it thoroughly.

Oh, that Baghdad
rahat lakhoum!
There is nothing like it in all the world. It wasn’t a big piece, but it had nourishment in it. I began to glow, just a little.

Not enough to conjure up something, but enough to unconjure. I willed that the potion I had given the Princess Amina should become powerless.

Slowly her eyes opened. Slowly and gracefully her arm went around Karim’s neck. Only one arm. The other sent a hand up to check her hair, and see it was in order. Slowly her lips started returning his kisses.

He looked out at the court: “I never did believe in magic,” he said. “Love conquers all.”

If there had been anything in my stomach but that one piece of sweet, I would have lost it.

As I turned away, the Sultan was taking the Great Ring off his finger with an air of great relief. I had found a new ruler for Baghdad; I wasn’t at all sure that it would be any great improvement.

15

A
fter I’d eaten
shish kebab, torchis, magedra,
coffee, and some
rahat lakhoum
to finish up with, I dematerialized and floated at a leisurely pace for the Rocky Sands.

The Lady Jinni had given her permission; I floated over the twin-headed dogs and the other devices that guarded her Hidden Grottoes, and into her court.

Without wasting any words, I gave her my report.

She nodded. “Glad to have helped,” she said. “And now you will no longer be known as the jinni with a foolish sultan.”

“That is right,” I said. “I hope it makes me a little more desirable in your lovely eyes.”

“Sweet,” she said, absent-mindedly. “Abu, do you mean you did all this just for me?”

I laid my hand on my heart. “For you and Baghdad,” I said. I sounded as nauseating as Karim, but when wooing a lady—

“What a shame,” she said. “Now that your business is done here in the Rocky Sands, you’ve really no excuse to be absent from Baghdad. If you had— Ah, Abu, what a night and a day and a night we could have!”

My hopes crashed. She was right. To loiter now would bring all kinds of penalties down on my neck. The wealth of the Great Jinni is not lightly invoked.

Then she was laughing. “Do you remember what I told the Hairy Jinni? About my crystal hawk? I needed the hawk to send to the Great Jinni. We have permission, Abu. Three days’ leave for you. The Great Jinni is sending an assistant to watch over Baghdad.”

My heart rose in me as an eagle soars off the peaks in the dawn. Then a horrid thought crossed my mind. “The Great Jinni isn’t sending my father to Baghdad?”

“No,” the Lady Jinni said. “Your son.”

“But I have no son.”

“Oh, Abu,” she said, “you do. We do. Don’t you remember, just a hundred years ago, at Mount Kaf? The year the Great Jinni talked on souring camels’ milk to frighten peasants?”

I thought. I remembered. “But,” I said, “that lady jinni was tall and thin and she had brown hair, with a tinge of red in it.”

“Then you do remember,” the Lady Jinni said. “That’s exactly the body I was wearing then. The next year all the girls were copying it. And now let’s forget everything except you and me . . . Though it’s going to be pretty hard to forget some of the things I saw Prince Osman—” She broke off, blushing.

But I was praying to Suleyman that my son—our son—would be like me and not like his grandfather. And I was thinking, it’s the very Shaitan of a thing, when you finally get a three-day holiday, to spend it with the mother of your own son.