That sort of thinking didn’t serve one’s future. Or the present. Still, the old one could have been clearer about the danger they’d faced at the time. Even now he wasn’t as helpful as he could be. He’d seen something in the cave. A vision. She’d wanted to know what it was that made him puff out the pipe smoke the way he had, one ring linked to another linked to another, as they drifted up through the illusion of comfort he’d created above their heads. But it did not do to know too much about one’s unlived days. For events to unfold in the manner intended, it was usually best to face life’s twists and turns bereft of the knowledge of prophecy.
But facing Jamra without at least some foreshadowing of the outcome was a fool’s errand. He was sly, beastly, eager to do harm to her and many others. Was that what the old one was hiding? She suspected the vision had been about Jamra, but there was no pushing Rajul Hakim when he was being stubborn. Trust the will of the All Seeing, he would say.
Regardless, the confrontation with Jamra was imminent. She and Yvette were going to need something more powerful to protect themselves than a wisp of scent and smoke. Sidra reached in her robe for the brass talisman she’d had the girl steal for her.
“What’s it for?” Yvette asked as she fluffed up her pillow. The cashmere blanket had already been laid out for the girl to sleep under. She’d complained that the night air was cold. Fairies and witches were too much like mortals with their physical needs. Wanting things of comfort—food, drink, a soft blanket—was fine and good when one was in the mood, but it was weakness for a body to need them.
“It’s a talisman,” she said. “For luck or prosperity.” Sidra rubbed her finger over the familiar engraving—a grid with nine squares inside a circle, each with a different symbol inscribed. The star in the upper right named her as one of the jinn whom the wearer asked for help. The old one was on the left in the shape of an eye. And Hariq on the bottom right corner with the wingtip of a bird. There was a fourth symbol, a moon, but the owner, an old jinni woman from across the sea, had long ago been sent to the afterlife. Struck down by a marid she’d once been married to.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re expecting more trouble than you let on?”
“We’re fine.”
The wind rattled a loose tile on the roof. The girl looked at the ceiling as if expecting to hear the footfall of an invasion. When it didn’t happen, she snuggled deeper under her blanket. Oh, but the bees kept buzzing around in her thoughts as she tapped her fingers atop the covers.
“What happened?” Yvette had been staring at her husband’s clothes. “What went wrong? Did he beat you? Steal from you? Fall in love with another woman?”
“No.”
“Then what could make you crazy enough to, you know, kill him?”
Sidra had already begun to dissipate into mist, to hide away and not face the shadows in the apartment for the night, but the girl’s adamant nature drew her out. So curious about emotions, the Fée. As if that, too, were part of the sustenance their bodies craved.
Very well.
She animated again and sat on the other end of the sofa with her legs tucked under the hem of her caftan. The light from the brass lamp glowed softly above her head. “We’d made a death pact,” she said.
Yvette sat up in alarm. “You were going to kill yourselves? But why?”
Sidra dimmed the lamp’s flame with a wave of her hand. “Our families didn’t approve of our union. It’s why we fled here. Why we used the scent magic to hide ourselves. But Jamra . . . he cannot let things go. He kept looking for us. Hariq said we would never find peace if we didn’t confound that jackal brother of his. We wanted to start a family.”
“Couldn’t you have fought Jamra? Stood up to him? It would have been two against one.”
Such naivete. Such optimism. Fool of a girl.
“Jamra has aligned himself with those who would see the world and the people in it burned to an ash pile. And he will do exactly that if he gets the opportunity. For us, it was two against a thousand.”
“Jiminy. So, you thought it’d be better to be dead than be chased all over the desert by that creep?”
Sidra slipped off her headscarf and freed her hair of its braid, shaking it loose so long waves fell over her shoulders. She fanned out her tresses, letting the scent of the bakhoor infuse her hair. “We thought if Jamra believed we were dead he would give up and we could live in peace. At least that was the plan.”
The girl’s mouth fell open. “Believed? You mean you were going to fake your deaths?”
They’d wanted Jamra to believe more had been lost than just their lives, but that part of the story was not for the telling. Not yet.
“There is an elder of our kind who had come here with the people many generations ago, one whom we pay tribute to,” she explained. “One who has remained neutral in the fight between our families. We confided in him what we wished to do. For the sake of peace. He said there was a way to do such a thing but that the magic must be strong to convince one as consumed with hate as Jamra and his cohorts.”
Yvette’s radiance dimmed so that she faded to mere shadow in the low light. “What kind of magic?”
Sidra, whether lulled by the girl’s genuine curiosity or a need to confess the thing that had been eating her from the inside out, bowed her head and explained.
Since they were in the land of a thousand flowers, the old jinni had learned of a bloom with a unique property. The mimic flower they called it, because of the way the bloom could impersonate breathless, pale death in one under the spell of an infusion of its nectar. After a drop was placed in each eye, physical life was suspended for hours while the innate-self floated in the safe proximity of the liminal space. It sounded like the answer to their deepest desire.
“Did you actually go through with it? Weren’t you petrified?”
“It’s a state I am used to. We come and go between the ether and the physical body as we please. But to sever the connection between the two, even for a few hours while both forms exist, gave us pause. And yet we consented. To be free. For that we traveled to the stinking city of infidels where Jamra would easily hear of our fate.”
Yvette sat silent with her blanket pulled up to her chin, as if it might shield her from the terrible disease of bad news. She glanced again at the forgotten robe hanging on the peg by the door. “He didn’t make it back?”
Sidra shook her head. “Something went wrong. The dose. The spell. A symbol marked one way instead of another.”
“And they blamed you?”
“I was the only one to awake. That fool inspector arrested me for Hariq’s murder several days later, but not before I confronted Jamra.” Sidra ran her thumb over the engraving on the talisman, feeling the symbols tingle under her skin. “Him I would have killed, but he has always been stronger than me.” She smiled wickedly at the girl. “But I did manage to leave a scar on him he’ll never forget. It’s why he cast that binding spell on me last time I returned to the city.”
“All that time in jail together and you never once admitted any of this.”
“It’s strange that our fates were joined in that place,” Sidra said. “And then you and I being swept back to the city after the escape.”
“And Elena, too, showing up like she did. Wish she were here to hear this.”
Sidra drifted back from her curious thoughts. “Be careful with your wishes, girl.” She resumed studying the talisman, wondering if her precautions would be enough.
Two of the four jinn whose names were inscribed on the talisman were dead already. Only she and the old one remained, which meant the odds of the talisman’s energy being linked to her grew that much stronger should someone summon her for favor. But if she could collect all the talismans remaining in the village, the connection between her and the village would be severed. The trick was remembering who else had them.
Sidra flipped the medallion over in her hand, more determined than ever to fight back against Jamra.
“Ho
w’d you know the one-legged man would have that on him?” Yvette asked.
“The people, they ask for help. They inscribe names of the jinn into the metal in the hope we’ll answer.” She pointed to the mark of the star. “This is me.”
“But I thought he was already a sorcerer. What kind of help would he ask from a jinni?”
“Yanis? He knows a few spells. But even sorcerers have their moments of doubt. Like anyone else they look for signs. Omens. Maybe a nudge in the right direction when they cannot make up their minds about which way in life they’re meant to go.”
Yvette surveyed her with a sharp look of admiration. “And do you answer them?”
“Sometimes.” Sidra didn’t mean to be coy, but the answer was complicated. A nudge in the wrong direction could send a life careening down a perilous path. Some jinn, like Jamra and his ilk, were all too eager to engage in the sort of harmful interference that turned a man’s prospects in life to dust on the whim of a false thought or implanted self-doubt. “There’s a woman in an apartment two streets over. I’ve not seen her often, but she is one who asks for help. She wants to know if she should stay with the husband who beats her when he’s had too much to drink.”
“How do you know that? Can you hear her thoughts?” Yvette blanched. “Wait, can you hear my thoughts?”
“Thank the All Seeing I cannot,” Sidra said and let her lip curl in disgust. “But this one, it’s all she can think about.” She tucked the talisman away in her robe with the reminder she must find a hiding place for it in the morning. “There are thoughts and then there are desires. It is desire that coalesces in the body, causing heat and scent to rise from the skin. This I can detect. And this one hopes to leave one day and stay the next. But what sign do I give her? Do I place a long-forgotten photo of her and her husband in happier days where she will see it and plant the suggestion in her mind that if she waits out the storm, he will change? Or perhaps I catch her eye with a suffragette pamphlet pushing for women’s emancipation that nudges her out of her indecision and onto the path of independence? These are things people sometimes ask us for. To be favored. And sometimes we answer. Sometimes we don’t.”
“Like my wish?”
Sidra sucked in her cheeks in quick contemplation. “Wishes are different. Once they are granted, they fly like comets on their path. They cannot be stopped. I’m still not sure how yours came to be, but I still believe your heart stole that wish while my magic was in flux.”
Yvette scrunched her brows together. The light had come alive inside her again, though it glowed soft as moonbeams. “That wish saved my life.”
For once the girl wasn’t being overdramatic. Sidra affirmed the girl’s implied gratitude with a rare display of humility as she bowed her head and nodded once in return. Hopefully the result of Yvette’s wish wasn’t in vain. If their efforts to protect themselves from Jamra failed, they would likely both be dead in the near future.
CHAPTER TEN
Elena had curled up on her oversize pillow for the duration of the night. The thought of escape had remained a whirring fever of temptation, but in the end she concluded her cooperation was needed to help Jean-Paul. Still, she could not, would not, lead this foul-hearted man to their intended destination—where her friends, for reasons unknown, now found themselves. She would lead him south, claim ignorance as to the exact location, and then plead for her release and Jean-Paul’s recovery.
Look at him, she thought, snoring slack mouthed and still reeking of wine while sprawled on his back among the bedding, asleep in a cloud of silk. Ah, a final snort. So, her captor was waking at last. Jamra reached an arm toward the ceiling of the tent, stretching as he opened his eyes. He yawned, blinked, and shot up when he didn’t see Elena immediately beside him. When he spotted her lying in the corner, his shoulders relaxed noticeably, though he narrowed his eyes at her. “You put something in my drink.”
“I did no such thing,” she said, sitting up. “You’re simply not accustomed to the potency of fine wine. And you drank the entire bottle.”
He grunted, then stared down at his disheveled appearance. He straightened his hat and magicked his attire so his shirt, tie, and suit jacket replaced his wrinkled caftan. “Enough of these mortal comforts. We must go.”
Elena collected her satchel and rose from the cushion. The tent vanished as if the vision had been blown away on the breeze until they stood once more in a damp and moldy alley that reeked of wet dog.
“Take hold of my sleeve,” he said.
Feeling she had little choice, Elena grabbed a handful of pinstripes. Immediately she felt a tug as though she’d been yanked forward through time and space at incredible speed. The alley shrank behind her in a kaleidoscope tunnel. The closest comparison she had for the motion was when she’d ridden in an automobile for the first time as Yvette raced down the Chanceaux Valley road. As the car had hit top speed, Elena’s hair flew out behind her, a terrifying yet freeing sensation. Only now the feeling was ten times faster so that light and shape blurred in her vision and her lungs ached for air. Then, just as suddenly as they’d accelerated, the motion stopped. Her feet touched the ground again, and the grassy slope where they’d landed the evening before came into focus. Elena was sorely tempted to ask how he’d transported them so quickly at a mere touch of his sleeve, but the inquiry would only lead to another boast.
She opted to appear unimpressed as she caught her breath. “Not one for taking in the view as you travel, I take it.”
Jamra ignored her as he stared with his arms folded at the tree where he’d stashed their prime transportation. The rolled-up tapestry was gone.
Someone or something had removed it from the branches while they slept. The treachery clearly rankled him as his jaw muscle pulsed with repetitive grinding. His bad mood could also have been the effect of the hangover from the wine and the spell, but Elena wasn’t going to bring it up.
“The wind?” she said and made half an effort to scour the grassy hillside for evidence of the lost tapestry. She thought it more likely some resourceful scrounger had found her lovely wool wall hanging, a beautiful mix of olive-green and powder-blue flowers with that gorgeous red fox running through a field of gold, and taken it for themselves.
“A thief!” Jamra answered. “I would punish him with the flames of eternal torment for this action.”
“Couldn’t we . . . ,” she began, then borrowed Yvette’s phrase when she couldn’t think of the right term, “. . . poof off like we just did?”
“I cannot carry you that far in the ether without killing you. Believe me, I’ve tried it with your kind before. You would die a choking death with your lungs withering from the inside out before we got more than a few miles away.”
Elena pressed a palm against her chest. “Ah, thank you for thinking of me, in that case.”
“Your directions will do me no good if you’re dead too soon.”
Too soon?
Calculating their location using the position of the daylight stars, she judged they weren’t quite halfway to the coast. She supposed the beast could simply conjure up another ride from, oh, a bit of thatch or a wooden crate perhaps, but if so, why was he so upset about the loss of that particular textile? She was the one who had ample reason to be heartbroken over the theft, not him.
“Did you protect it with a spell to prevent discovery?” she asked on a hunch.
“It would have been invisible to any mortal,” he said and walked around the tree, keeping his eyes on the branches before searching the ground. Jamra sniffed the air as if trying to follow a familiar scent, then lost it again just as quickly. “Enough. We must leave this place,” he said as he cast a last glance at their surroundings. For what, she didn’t know, but he hurried like a man afraid.
Curious. Something had spooked him. Or someone. Elena tried to detect anything amiss on the air, but there was only the damp from the river and the scent of fish. And maybe the moldering smell of worms turning in the moist ground beneath their fee
t.
Again, he held out his sleeve. Recalling what he’d said about withering lungs, she reluctantly took hold. Before Elena had time to reconsider, Jamra whisked her away in a blur. He returned them to the old part of the town, reanimating inside an arched walkway that connected one building to another. A traboule. He hurried her along the corridor until they arrived at a shop window displaying bolts of fine silk. The shop wasn’t yet open, but that did not dissuade him from barging in through the front door with a shove from his hand to create a detonation. Honestly, he was absolutely reckless with his magic.
Inside, he unfurled a bolt of red damask silk so it rolled out on the floor. The color and texture were exquisite, too fine to touch with their unwashed hands, let alone to be spread out on the floor. Yet he yanked a good ten feet off the roll, grabbed a pair of enormous scissors, and sliced through the cloth, leaving the frayed remains of the rest of the bolt on the floor.
“Get on,” he said.
“Oh, you’re not serious. The cloth is much too flimsy. It will never hold us both.”
Between the hangover and the theft, the jinni had been confronted with one too many difficulties that morning. His anger boiled over and his eyes simmered with something dangerous. Jamra’s arm swung around to attack, either with magical intent or a physical blow with the back of his hand. Elena flinched. But just before the strike made contact, she felt a tug at her back and was swept away in another blur of intense motion.
This time bright lights flashed in her periphery until she landed in yet another covered traboule. She stood in a maze of red stone arches before a row of small windows that overlooked the train station. She saw no one in the covered hallway, yet she knew she wasn’t alone. A ticket for the train appeared in her hand, and in her ear someone whispered, “Get on!”
The Conjurer (The Vine Witch) Page 7