The Seal

by J F Mehentee

  3

  Emad helped Aeshma pull on his leggings. It was the same every morning.

  ‘Point your toes,’ Emad said. ‘That’s right. It’s easy when you point your toes.’

  Aeshma’s eyes brightened, and he beamed Emad a crooked grin. Moments like this reminded Emad why he’d left behind a carefree life, his beloved crew and trireme, Apkallu, and settled in Derbicca to care for his cousin.

  For a century, Aeshma had travelled between satrapies, playing his lyre, harnessing the humans’ energy to continue practising djinn magic. Then, suddenly, he could no longer tap into their auras and use the small amounts of their auric energy required to summon Core power. Knowing such power was forever lost to him, he succumbed to the madness that overcame one in three daevas. First, it ravaged his body, causing the scars left behind by Core power to thicken and merge until his skin resembled a carapace. The pain had made him writhe so much, he’d broken his jawbone over and over until it wouldn’t properly set. Then the madness shattered his mind, leaving behind a three-year-old inside the ruined body of a three-hundred-year-old djinni.

  Aeshma stood, his arms held away from his sides.

  ‘What do we say first?’ Emad said.

  ‘Please.’

  Emad tied the legging’s cord, then patted the roll of fat above it. Aeshma giggled. Emad looked down at his own prominent belly.

  ‘You and I need to exercise more,’ he said. ‘I will have to stop buying us pastries.’ Aeshma whimpered, and Emad held up an assuaging hand. ‘I won’t stop buying them completely. It’s just there’s no reason you and I need to eat so many.’

  To an outsider, Aeshma’s moue could have been mistaken for a murderous scowl. His crooked jaw, thickened brow and unblinking eyes made for frequent misunderstandings. After a decade of caring for his cousin, Emad recognised all his expressions. Moreover, Aeshma would sooner let a mosquito bite him than squash it.

  ‘Pull on your tunic and we’ll go get some breakfast,’ Emad said. ‘After I’ve finished work, we’ll go for a long walk. That way, we’ll be allowed a couple of pastries this afternoon.’

  ‘Yum,’ Aeshma said. He twisted his torso left and right to search for his tunic.

  On board Apkallu, Emad’s cabin was no bigger than this single-room residence. Back then, a cabin boy had kept the place tidy. Well behaved and obedient, Aeshma’s short attention span meant he often forgot what he’d been told to do. This left the floor strewn with things for Emad to step on or trip over. Tidiness—he’d admit to anyone who asked—didn’t come naturally.

  The two bundles of Aeshma’s clothes, clean and dirty, had fused into one. Emad pointed at it.

  ‘Just take the tunic on top.’

  He gathered up and bagged the chipped wooden animals his cousin liked to play with while Emad earned a few coins granting humans their wishes. With just three appointments today, they had plenty of time for walks. A backwater city in a backwater satrapy, there wouldn’t be much to see and do on their walks around Derbicca. The locals, however, tolerated the daevas living among them, and some were even kind to Aeshma.

  About to leave for the teahouse, Emad detected a sharpness in the air. He recognised the smell and groaned. Aeshma clapped his hands—he liked the bright colour that edged a portal.

  Emad turned to see a tall djinni with thick, wavy hair emerge from mid-air. Emad recognised the lad but couldn’t remember his name. His tunic and leggings looked as worn as Emad’s. Things had to be getting worse in Iram.

  Emad bit down a smile when he saw how the djinni’s nose wrinkled as he surveyed the shabby single room with their belongings strewn across the bare floor.

  The djinni finally faced him and bowed. Orange flames surrounded his brown irises. Without looking back, the djinni collapsed his portal.

  Here we go, Emad thought.

  ‘Prince Emad,’ he said, then bowed again. ‘My name is—’

  ‘Stop there,’ Emad said. ‘First of all, don’t use that title. It won’t be safe for me, or Aeshma, if Derbicca’s humans found out.’

  ‘Prince Emad,’ Aeshma said, then giggled.

  The djinni’s face flushed.

  Emad shot Aeshma his best glare. ‘Say that outside and there’ll be no pastries today and tomorrow.’ Before Aeshma could start blubbing, he pointed at the djinni. ‘Tell me his name for an extra pastry.’

  Aeshma bent forward. His eyes narrowed with concentration. Emad enjoyed how the djinni tried not to cringe under Aeshma’s scrutiny. His cousin, who was taller than most djinn and daevas, looked at the lad as if he couldn’t decide which limb to tear off first.

  ‘Mu—’

  ‘Go on,’ Emad said. ‘Don’t forget, there’s an extra pastry in it for you.’

  ‘Mu… Mus.’

  A smiled curved the djinni’s lips. Emad decided he liked the lad.

  ‘Mus…’

  Aeshma screwed up his face as if in pain. He stayed that way for several breaths. The djinni cast a concerned look at Emad, who shook his head.

  Aeshma opened his eyes and rose to his full height. His eyes sparkled.

  ‘Muska,’ Aeshma said, nodding.

  ‘You’re almost right,’ the djinni said, nodding back. ‘My father’s name is Muska, and everyone says I look like him. My name is Shephatiah.’

  Emad held up the bag he’d been holding.

  ‘Very good, Aeshma. I think you deserve an extra pastry. Now, take the bag and check inside to see if I’ve packed everything you want to play with.’ He handed the bag to Aeshma, then pointed at a cushion. ‘Sit down while I talk to Shephatiah.’ He glanced at the djinni. ‘We won’t be long.’

  Once Aeshma had settled and was rummaging through the bag, Emad faced the djinni and said, ‘Thank you for indulging him. Little of my cousin’s memory remains, but he can still put names to faces. I keep hoping that a familiar face might bring back some other memories.’

  ‘Have they?’ Shephatiah said. He sounded interested.

  Emad shook his head and pursed his lips. When the madness first took him and during the brief gaps in his delirium, Aeshma had clung to the memories of his two cousins: Emad and Fiqitush.

  ‘He remembers very little now,’ Emad told Shephatiah. He straightened and folded his arms. ‘Now, tell me why my brother has sent another djinni to bother us. I already told the last one I can’t leave Aeshma on his own and return to Iram.’

  Shephatiah’s brow crimped.

  ‘That’s not why King Fiqitush sent me,’ he said. ‘He wants you to know that High Magus Sassan will arrive here in two days. As he’s done in other empire cities, the high magus’s soldiers will hunt down daevas and give them two choices: embrace the Divine Light as the One God and convert, or be tried for practising sorcery and face execution.’

  Emad chewed his lower lip. Hadn’t God, the Divine Light or whatever It called itself nowadays, punished them enough? And wasn’t it enough to have sent Solomon to subjugate them, rob them of their auric energy and turn them into daevas once what little remained of that energy ran out?

  ‘What is it the king is suggesting—that we all convert?’

  Shephatiah’s visage brightened.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘He’s offering safe passage for all daevas to the hidden city of Baka. There’s no need to convert. The king wants Baka to be a home for all of us, djinn and daevas.’

  A shiver of excitement crossed Emad’s chest.

  ‘Has he found the seal, Solomon’s seal? Has he found a way to cure the daevas, to fix our auras?’

  Shephatiah’s brow creased again.

  Aeshma crawled across the floor, searching under cushions, between last night’s dinner plates and shaking discarded clothes.

  ‘Camel,’ Aeshma kept repeating.

  ‘Not yet,’ Shephatiah said, then dodged Aeshma before being knocked over. ‘The king is very close to retrieving the seal.’

  Emad reminded himself the lad was just a messenger. If he was going to be disappointed with an
yone, it should be Fiqitush, and even then, his brother didn’t deserve his ire.

  ‘I’ll pass on your message to the other daevas,’ he said. ‘A league east of the city, you’ll find an abandoned farmhouse. If you raise a portal on its western side tonight, an hour after dusk, its walls will hide your portal’s light from the guards patrolling the battlements. There’s no guarantee the daevas will leave. Some will convert, and others will see execution as a way out before the daeva madness claims them.’ He nodded at the bag slung over the djinni’s shoulder. ‘Do you have a tablet with you?’

  Shephatiah nodded, then pulled a box from the shoulder bag. He opened it and uttered an incantation over the permanently wet clay. Emad gave the djinni the farmhouse’s coordinates for the destination window.

  After he’d closed the tablet and put it away, Shephatiah said, ‘So, I’ll see you tonight, P— Emad.’

  Emad pointed at Aeshma, who continued searching for the terracotta camel, then shook his head. Just as Fiqitush wanting him safe wasn’t the entire reason his brother kept sending djinn, what Emad was about to tell Shephatiah was only a partial truth.

  ‘Aeshma needs to be around familiar things. While I can control him here, I don’t know if I’ll be able to in Baka.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s better if we stay and convert. Then, the humans will leave us alone.’

  4

  The fragrance of burning cedar wood reached Roshan before she entered the temple. The double doors swung open. Inside, the younger novices lined the aisle between her, the fire altar and the high magus beside it. Compared to the novices’ white cotton tunics and trousers, Roshan wore a magus’s robe of the same material.

  Roshan stepped through the temple doorway and suddenly found herself next to the fire altar. High Magus Sassan glared at her. He held up the sash he’d wrap around her waist three times to mark her accession from novice to ordained magus. The high magus dropped the sash onto the floor and rubbed his heel into it.

  ‘Filthy djinni,’ the high magus said. The bridge of his nose wrinkled, and Roshan no longer saw the high magus but the guard she’d trapped under the dome of protection.

  ‘Abomination,’ the guard said, the word dripping hatred.

  Roshan heard Yesfir’s silver cuff bracelet jangle against a gold bangle. She opened her eyes and inhaled dry desert air instead of woodsmoke. Canvas sloped both sides of her and replaced the crossbeams of the temple’s roof. Beneath her, the coarse wool of her sleeping blanket made her itch.

  Yesfir’s face appeared above her. There was something different about the djinni.

  Am I still dreaming? she asked herself.

  Navid’s voice filled her head.

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Good,’ Yesfir said. ‘You’re awake.’

  The djinni had tied back her dark hair. Crescents the colour of a fading bruise hung beneath her eyes. Yesfir was three hundred and fifty years old, but she looked only forty human years. Roshan had never seen the djinni look so tired. However, that wasn’t the reason something was amiss. Roshan covered her mouth.

  Yesfir looked away.

  ‘Your eyes,’ Roshan said. The orange flames around Yesfir’s irises were now the yellow of goat butter. Something had drained her auric energy, and she’d have to abstain from weaving magic for decades before she replenished the energy she’d lost. If not, within a year, she’d use up the rest of her energy and become a daeva, like her husband, Behrouz.

  ‘Yesfir saved your life,’ Navid said. ‘The guard’s spear severed an artery in your leg. You were losing blood as fast as Yesfir could replace it, making it difficult to heal the wound. She was up all night and the first three hours past dawn.’

  While husband and wife had never treated Roshan and Navid as captives, having to learn djinn magic and use it during countless thefts of tablets and papyri reminded Roshan she and her brother were exactly that. Yesfir sacrificing so much of her auric energy, on the other hand, didn’t make sense.

  ‘Why did you save me?’ Roshan said.

  A sleepy smile tugged Yesfir’s lips.

  ‘Because djinn smoke flows through your veins,’ Behrouz said, his bald head thrust between the tent’s flaps. Like Yesfir, he smiled, but the concern for his wife deepened his crow’s feet. ‘The djinn take care of their brothers and sisters.’ He held out his hand to Yesfir, the cuff bracelet tight against his wrist. ‘If we’re going to Iram, both of you need to eat.’

  Roshan pushed herself up onto her elbows. Whatever Yesfir had done to her, Roshan didn’t feel weak and there was no pain in her leg. Yesfir placed a hand on Roshan’s blanket to stop it from falling.

  ‘I told the king about what happened last night,’ Yesfir said. ‘I know we haven’t been upfront with you both. And you’ve every right to resent our abducting you and coercing you to help us—but you weren’t meant to get hurt. The king wants to meet you both.’ Yesfir smiled. ‘King Fiqitush will explain everything.’ She took hold of Behrouz’s hand and rose. Before exiting the tent, she said, ‘There’s someone outside who wants to see you.’

  Roshan had only a moment to register what she’d heard when the tent flaps burst apart, and Zana narrowly missed butting a tent pole. The manticore covered the gap between them in a single leap and then dropped onto his haunches.

  At thirteen years old, Zana’s mane had begun to cover the neck of his lion’s body and the porcupine quills beneath it. Behrouz had made a leather sheath to cover the needle-like barb at the end of his scorpion tail. Neither Yesfir nor Behrouz were sure when the barb would drip poison. Compared to the first time she’d first met him, the fat around Zana’s cheeks had melted away to reveal high cheekbones. If not for the triple row of sharp teeth, Roshan would have described the manticore’s human face as handsome.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you,’ Zana said, his green eyes moist.

  Roshan held the blanket to her chest with one hand and stroked Zana’s mane with the other, taking care to avoid the quills.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she soothed.

  Zana shook his head.

  ‘No, it’s not. If I hadn’t gone off looking for other manticores, I’d have come with you. It’s my job to protect the pride.’

  Roshan heard Navid laughing.

  The two of them hearing the other’s thoughts had started only after Yesfir had transformed Navid into a rat. Yesfir hadn’t known how or why it was possible.

  ‘Maybe it’s because you’re twins,’ she’d said.

  Grateful no one had heard Navid’s laughter, Roshan thought but didn’t speak her question.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘He’s doing his protect the pride thing again. He sees the five of us as a pride with himself as its leader.’

  Navid was right, but why think such a thing after what Yesfir had said? They were to meet the king of the djinn, and Navid would be human again. They were free and could return to Persepae, get back to their lives.

  ‘And you’ll become a magus—that’s if they’ll accept you back,’ Navid said. He’d overheard her thoughts. ‘And what have I got to go back to?’

  In recent months, they’d frequently had this conversation. Not knowing when Yesfir would turn Navid back into a human had made it moot. Things were different now.

  ‘If you’d paid more attention during classes and hadn’t dropped out, you could have been a magus,’ Roshan said. ‘Even when you didn’t study, you got better marks than me.’

  Navid climbed up her blanket, sat on her belly and faced her.

  ‘I’m not like you,’ he said. ‘I agree that it’s good to want to help others, and I’ll support you with that, but I don’t see why I have to become a magus to do it. And my being an apprentice gardener wasn’t going so well when Behrouz pointed his sword at me. After these last two years, I don’t want to go back to gardening. I’ll return with you, Roshan, but don’t expect things to go back to the way they were before all this happened. I won’t miss being stuck in this body, but I’ll mi
ss camping out in the desert, travelling by portal, visiting a different satrapy every couple of weeks.’ He took a step closer. ‘Go on, admit it, you’ve enjoyed it too.’

  Had she?

  Yesfir had taught her so much. Yes, she’d learned just as much about human magic while a novice, but djinn magic was a different matter. Created from smokeless flame, the djinn’s affinity for fire meant they could endure more Core power and for longer, which made their magic powerful, enduring and with complex results. As Yesfir had explained, she and Navid were descendants of a djinni who’d coupled with a human. Like humans, Roshan also had scars running along her arms and legs because Core power had burned her skin. However, her djinn heritage meant she’d never have to rely on the palliative poppy juice drunk by magi to calm their singed bodies. Her djinn stamina for enduring pain enabled her to raise portals and weave complex magic for longer than any human.

  Even if the temple readmitted her, could she go back to weaving only human magic? Unlike a djinni’s, her eyes were clear of flame. No one would know about the magic she could weave.

  Filthy djinni.

  If she were discovered raising a portal, she wouldn’t escape death a second time.

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Zana said.

  Rescued from a circus of curiosities and cosseted by his foster parents—especially Yesfir—Zana didn’t like being ignored.

  ‘We were talking about Navid becoming human again,’ Roshan said.

  Zana pouted.

  ‘Then everyone will be bigger than me.’

  Navid sprang onto Zana’s back, making him smile.

  Navid said, ‘Tell him that in a few years; he’ll be so big that you and I, together, could sit on his back.’

  Roshan told Zana and then ordered both of them out of her tent so she could dress. More than privacy, what she wanted was space to think about what would happen after Navid became human again.

  After breakfast, Roshan packed away her few belongings—three changes of clothes and two tablets—and unpegged her tent. It was time to leave.