by Liz Braswell
Morgiana frowned, thinking. “That’s tough. But if I were you, I’d give in to her.”
Aladdin looked at the thief, surprised.
“My friend,” she said gently, “Jasmine is the best thing that ever happened to you. You should do anything you can to keep her.”
“I should? What about you?” he asked with a thoughtful smile. “When was the last time you gave in to Duban?”
“We’re not together,” she answered promptly.
Aladdin raised an eyebrow at her.
“Officially,” she added.
He waited.
“Oh, shut up. He gets his way enough,” she said, hitting him in exasperation.
“I’m worried about him,” Aladdin admitted, glancing at their friend, who was refusing Pareesa’s game. “He usually manages to suck things up and deal with them in his own way. He’s never been the broody type.”
“I know,” Morgiana said, frowning. “I’m worried about him, too. He’s acting strangely—almost secretive. Pulled into himself. If I didn’t know better…wait, look!”
She pointed. Arcing high into the sky from the Garden Quarter were four flaming arrows, tracing a giant tiger’s claw across the night sky.
“That’s the signal,” Aladdin said, crawling over to the edge of the roof to get a better look at the city.
Somewhere in the distance a noisy, torch-carrying crowd was assembling to very obviously march on the palace. Uneasy patches of glowing red across the city reacted immediately, heading toward the disturbance. Like ants suddenly realizing that their home was threatened. Overhead, the phalanxes of soldiers and ghouls patrolling the skies stopped their maneuvers and headed in the same direction.
Aladdin found himself counting in his head. Right when he got to twenty, an explosion lit up the Old Market. The aerial guards paused, unsure what to do. One scout broke away and made for the palace. Morgiana and Aladdin watched this one zoom impolitely over the walls and through a large midlevel window. Moments later, the shutters flew open on the Public Balcony and Jafar stormed out to see for himself what was going on in the city.
“Let’s go!” Aladdin ordered.
The four thieves appeared to dive straight over the side of the warehouse.
But of course each of them grabbed a clothesline below. They pulled themselves hand over hand across the street—above the heads of some human soldiers running out into the night. On the other side they dropped onto a terrace. From there they leapt to the ground and made for the shadow of the palace wall. Morgiana, Duban, and Pareesa clenched daggers in their teeth, but Aladdin held nothing as the four of them scurried up the old battlement—which was made for keeping out armies and militias, not thieves. They were terribly exposed: four dark shapes against the expanse of white that fairly glowed even under dim conditions. At any moment a guard pacing the top could look down and easily see them.
Aladdin just worked steadily at finding footholds and pulling himself up. He refused to look up or down to check his progress.
Finally, at the top, he flipped himself up and over and landed in a crouch, looking quickly both ways. The plan seemed to be working: there was no one else up there. The only guard left was running toward the main gate to help release the outer portcullis. Aladdin fixed a rope around a sturdy beam to prepare for shinnying down the other side.
Morgiana’s head popped up beside him, and then her body, light and fleet as a bird. She couldn’t help taking a moment to survey the palace, laid out so perfectly below: the towers, the gardens, the hidden courtyards, the waterworks that supplied the baths. It looked like one of the old sultan’s toy models from up there.
She shook her head and allowed herself a low whistle. Aladdin gave her a rueful, sympathetic grin.
Duban and Pareesa finally made it up. When they were settled, Aladdin pointed to the tallest tower in the palace.
“That’s Jafar’s? The Moon Tower?” Pareesa asked.
Morgiana nodded. “Good luck!”
The girl gave a wicked grin. “I don’t need luck. All I need is flint and tinder.”
Then she silently ran along the top of the wall. Despite her grace and speed, Aladdin still turned away as she made the leap to the tower. There was a vast expanse of night air between her and it, and he didn’t want to see if she missed.
“All right,” he whispered to his remaining team. “Let’s go.”
The three of them lightly rappelled down the inner wall and landed silently on the soft, fragrant grass of the bailey. The palace had grown like a clump of mushrooms over the centuries, each new building like a single stalk. Aladdin counted carefully and picked out one of the shorter structures near the Moon Tower. It contained the library—which, at least before Jafar became sultan, was not a particularly well-guarded part of the compound, according to Jasmine. Aladdin waved Morgiana and Duban forward and pointed at the lowest window that was wider than an arrow loop.
The three of them started to run across the short stretch of open field. Sensing something, Aladdin stopped short. He skidded to a halt just as a strange red light swept in front of his path. He looked up.
Hanging in the air above them, silent as death, was a pair of ghouls. As their dead eyes moved inhumanly across the landscape below, one of them slowly swung a strange black lantern with an intricate hood that directed the red beam.
The three thieves froze. Morgiana whispered an expletive.
Time also froze as the dead things made an agonizingly slow pass across the courtyard and then back. The sky behind them was black as sin. It was the darkest time of the night…which meant that dawn wasn’t far off. Aladdin felt his heart skip furiously within his still body.
Eventually the beam continued past them on its steady path and kept going.
The ghouls moved on, soundlessly patrolling the night with their evil lamp.
Was it Aladdin’s imagination? Or did the grass look drier after the light passed over it? Did it somehow look less than it had looked before?
The three thieves made a dash for the relative safety of the shadow of the tower.
“What terrible new magic is that?” Duban cried.
“There is a special place in hell reserved for Jafar,” Morgiana muttered. “And his servants.”
“I feel sorry for whoever those two once were,” Aladdin said pointedly. Although, privately, he thought it might not have been such a terrible thing if the men had died a little more explosively and left no bodies behind to reanimate.
Morgiana pulled out a tiny-clawed grapple—one of her favorite tools—and, after swinging it on the end of its slim silken cord a few times, let it loose. With a neat kkrrrlkt it landed inside the window. She tugged and it held, digging its claws into the plaster. Duban motioned for the other two to go first while he held the cord steady. Morgiana and Aladdin scurried up it like monkeys and then he hurried up after them.
After he pulled his stocky body through the window, he paused and looked around in wonder. “Wow. Not what I’d want in my own castle…but impressive, nonetheless.”
It was a giant room filled with shelves and cabinets and drawers. Occupying every nook and cranny were tiny statues of everything: people long dead and beasts that never were and buildings that seemed unlikely. The remaining space was taken up with books. There were piles of books on the floor, stacks on the tables, shelves stuffed with books lining all the walls. Dozens of urns held hundreds of rolled-up scrolls. Wax and clay tablets with ledgers in strange languages sat in open drawers. Maps of colorful oceans and strange countries lay unrolled on special slanted tables.
The room was dim, just as Jasmine had predicted; only two small lamps burned at the door, far away from any of the flammable parchments or precious scrolls. It was hard to tell just how big the library was or how much it held. Aladdin began to understand a little more about Jasmine. She had access to all of that knowledge—all the collected information and wisdom of the world, it seemed—and couldn’t go out to see it for herself.
“
Aladdin!” Duban suddenly hissed, interrupting his thoughts. He crept up to the doorway and listened. “Guards are coming! Two, I think.”
“Already?” Morgiana cursed. “This mission is doomed.”
“Quickly!” Aladdin gestured for her to move to the other side of the door.
There was no place for Aladdin to hide; the tables and desks were all tall with narrow, elegant—and very hard-to-hide-behind—legs. This seemed to be the one room in the palace without a divan or couch.
Unable to think of anything else to do, Aladdin picked up a scroll and began to make a big show of studying it.
Two human guards appeared in the doorway to give the room a cursory check—and then saw Aladdin.
They scowled and drew their scimitars.
“Funny,” Aladdin drawled, turning the scroll upside down and frowning. “I always thought the Hyperboreans lived in the north, not the south.…”
The guard on the left recovered from his shock first and opened his mouth to order Aladdin to do something or other.
Before a single peep came out, Morgiana and Duban grabbed a couple of large bronze urns and and brought them down on the guards’ heads.
The guards slumped forward immediately and the two thieves caught them—less for their safety than to keep the noise down.
Duban swore. “They’ll be missed if they don’t return to their watch!”
“We should kill them,” Morgiana said promptly.
“And have them reanimate into undead soldiers who can’t feel pain? Not a good idea,” Aladdin whispered. “Come on. I think I have a plan.”
BACK AT THE WAREHOUSE, Jasmine was watching the skies and sending out orders to the various divisions of the Street Rat army with Sohrab by her side.
Even Khosrow, the old religious leader, had been surprisingly adept in helping organize their army. “I’ve had fifty years of teaching acolytes,” he had told her with his gentle smile. “It’s not war. But it has its similarities.”
A runner came in, exhausted and breathless.
“Jasmine. The angry crowd with torches is working…they’ve shut down the Street of the Doves and the way by the old synagogue. Akin reports—and I’ve seen with my own eyes—that they took down about fifteen armed guards and three ghouls.”
“Excellent news!” Jasmine said, clapping her hands. Though she wished there had been a few more guards and ghouls subdued.
“Also: they think twenty more guards, primarily ghouls, have been dispatched to deal with the fires now burning in the Old Market. Yahya witnessed several troops, some twenty men strong, fanning out through the Leather District toward them.”
“Thank you for your report. Please refresh yourself with water and food and then come to me again for your next detail. Iza, Deni!” She called for two more runners. The two who presented themselves couldn’t have been more than eight. “Go tell the archers to fire the second signal. It’s time to send out Rajah.”
The two little kids nodded and ran downstairs.
Jasmine clicked her tongue and the tiger bounded up to her. Sensing the excitement, he didn’t lay at her feet like he usually did, but stood nearby, tense and watching. Now his tiger sinews and muscles expanded and contracted in delight. On the hunt, finally.
Jasmine threw her arms around his neck. Their cause needed all the soldiers it could muster, of course. But what real free will did a pet tiger have? Or two eight-year-olds desperate to please, for that matter? And here she was, sending them off into danger and, in Rajah’s case, battle.
“Good luck, old friend,” she whispered in his soft ear. Then she took out the things obtained for this dark purpose: a turban, a sash, a boot…all belonging to guard captains. She commanded an army of thieves; stealing things was the easy part. Jasmine held them up for Rajah to smell. His giant nostrils expanded and contracted. He frowned as if taking the matter incredibly seriously.
“Go,” she ordered when he was done. “Attack.”
Rajah growled and leapt down the stairs, ten at a time, tail swishing.
Jasmine told herself she didn’t have time to worry or mourn. People were sacrificing far more than she was in this. The poor boy Jalil. His parents. Rasoul.
Besides, Rajah could take care of himself. He was a tiger.
She shook her shoulders and turned back to the map on the table, updating it with the latest developments. An explosion rocked the hideout. She grabbed at the wall as bits of dried clay and wood and pebbles rained down.
“What was that?” she demanded. “Someone! That signal was too early!”
Sohrab came striding in, a grim look on his face. “That wasn’t one of ours. Whatever it was hit near Duban and Morgiana’s old lair. We need Hazan to come back and tell us what happened.”
“Jafar.” Jasmine swore, looking toward the palace.
In the dim halls of the palace complex, Aladdin and Duban walked silently down the middle of the cool marble floors.
“Jasmine said the baths are this way,” Aladdin whispered. “And the throne room is upstairs past them, on the way to the—”
Two guards turned the corner and moved toward them, blocking the end of the hall. They raised their scimitars.
The two thieves raised their stolen scimitars back—and gave the clacking salute that Aladdin had observed the last time he had broken into the palace.
“Sloppy, there,” one of the guards remarked with an eye to Duban’s technique. But the two real guards marched on.
Aladdin practically crumpled with relief when they were gone. Duban smoothed down the front of his shirt with injured pride; they were dressed in the uniforms of the guards they had tied up and stuffed in a closet.
Morgiana ran up from behind them, where she had been hiding out of view.
“Told you I should have been the other guard,” she hissed.
“The turban didn’t fit you,” Aladdin hissed back. “We talked about that.”
A tremor ran through the floor under their feet like a giant had stomped his foot or there was an earthquake in the desert. Not enough to make things fall but enough to make them dizzy.
“Was that inside the palace walls?” Duban asked, uneasy.
“No, I think it was farther away,” Aladdin said. None of the explosives they had planned to use were that big. What was going on out there?
He shook his head. He just had to trust that Jasmine and the Street Rat army would distract Jafar and his legions until they could steal the lamp and the book and rescue Duban’s family. His job was to concentrate on the task at hand.
It was a strange feeling, to have to rely on somebody else.
“This is ridiculous,” Morgiana said, rolling her eyes.
“If you have a better plan, speak up,” Aladdin suggested.
“I got nothing, kiddo,” she said pleasantly.
“All right. Then let’s stick to the current one. The fate of Agrabah—and Duban’s family—rests on us.”
So they pressed on.
“It’s some sort of fiery cannonball or something,” Hazan reported, out of breath. His eyebrows were singed. “It hit right where the old hideout is…was. It’s all on fire. Purple and red.”
“Purple?” Sohrab asked. “That sounds like magic…or the work of the Alchemaics.”
“And we know they’re not working with him,” Jasmine said.
“But why hit the hideout?” the military man wondered with a frown. He pointed at the chalky map of Agrabah. “He already cleared that place out. Only an idiot would have gone back there after he grabbed his hostages. Why not hit here, here, or here—where he could do some real damage that would be visible to all?”
“Because he’s just lashing out in anger,” Jasmine said with grim triumph. “Like we said, he’s not a brilliant tactician. He’s a sorcerer and grand vizier. And he’s never been in battle before. This is exactly what we wanted! He’s distracted, and angry, and not able to see what’s going on right under his nose. It may all be easier than we thought.”
“Jasmine!”
A bloody young man came into the room, limping and straining under the weight of his burden. In his arms he carried an injured younger man. An ugly blue-and-black gash disfigured his forehead and his face was deathly pale. His eyes were rolled back, unseeing.
“Lay him down over here!” Jasmine said immediately, indicating a place on the floor with a few pillows and cloths on it. “We never thought to set up an infirmary.…Hazan, before you go to refresh yourself, please speak to some of the older women and see if we can organize something.”
“Absolutely, Jasmine,” the boy said, bowing and trotting out.
Sohrab took one look at the wounds, and his face turned stony. He obviously had few doubts about the boy’s chances.
“Some water,” Jasmine ordered. “Bandages!”
He opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. “I’ll send one of my men up. But Jasmine. If he dies…”
“We will lock him up. With the other ghouls.”
Sohrab shook his head disapprovingly. “This is not some child, Jasmine. This is a nearly grown man who would be hard to defeat as a ghoul. It would be kinder to end it for him.”
Jasmine closed her eyes, feeling the truth of the matter.
“I know.”
And the hideout rocked with another blast.
Aladdin and Duban crept forward, ready to spring back into military stances if they were caught. Morgiana followed silently behind. There was a not-quite-secret stairway in the back of the library building that led up to a balcony bordered by delicately arched windows. These looked out over a small courtyard lined with sour-orange trees. Across from this were the royal baths—which connected directly to the audience chamber, banquet hall, and eventually the throne room itself. That had sounded strange until Jasmine explained to Aladdin that sultans often entertained foreign guests and consulted with top advisers while enjoying a pleasant mint-scented sweat in the steam rooms.
“Nice work if you can get it,” he muttered.
A pair of guards passed through the courtyard. One took a lazy swipe at an orange branch as he passed; the razor-sharp blade of his scimitar neatly and silently cut an orange from its stem and it fell, with a quiet thunk, to the ground like a head after an execution.