Tales of the Djinn: The Double (11 page)

“No,” she said, deeply disappointed at losing her quarry.

The statue behind the counter blinked.

“That’s him!” she exclaimed excitedly. “He’s disguising himself with magic!”

Arcadius didn’t get a chance to respond. The front window with the swirly
Sweet Delights
lettering shattered without warning. The hundred knife-like shards didn’t drop. They floated into the air instead, every pointy tip separating and turning until it was aimed at her.

“Shit,” Elyse breathed, frozen like stone herself.

Arcadius had drawn his scimitar. She guessed it wasn’t good for throwing, because he flung up his other hand, palm out. “In God’s name, I command you to fall harmless.”

Elyse had forgotten he could do magic. Cade could too, though not as much as Joseph. The air around them trembled as if intimidated by Arcadius’s authority. At least half the shards fell to the sidewalk and broke.

The other half jerked like they were conscious and sped toward her.

What happened next happened lightning quick. The glass was only feet away. Arcadius grabbed her wrist, taking such control of her body that she had no say in her own movements. Her arm wrenched in its socket as he yanked her behind him and turned his front toward her. Then he tackled her and dropped them both. Her heels stayed on the pavement, her upper half smacking the street hard enough to knock the breath out of her. The shards of glass went
thunk-thunk-thunk
as they struck her protector’s back and went in. Arcadius gasped but didn’t let go of her.

Then everything was quiet.

Her heart pounded crazily. His did too, his whole body vibrating with the force of its contractions. He tried to get up and groaned.

“Don’t move,” she said, in case this caused the glass to do more damage. No one was attacking them right that second, so it seemed better not to run. She sucked in something near a whole breath.

“Guards,” she called as loudly as she could. “We need help!”

They were there before she finished shouting, having jumped on the carpet and flown after them. Trapped beneath Arcadius’s bulk, she heard four sets of boots leap out.

“You two,” one guard barked. “Guard them. We’ll check the area.”

“Someone was in the sweet shop,” Elyse said shakily. “Be careful of his magic.”

“Are you all right, miss?” a soldier asked.

“Yes. Only Arcadius was hit.”

Arcadius made pain noises as a guard checked him. The other two guards returned. “We didn’t find the attacker, and I don’t think we should search longer. We need to get the commander out of here for treatment.”

“Get the glass . . . out,” Arcadius rasped. “It isn’t safe to move me until you do.”

“Sir, are you sure?”

“Enchant it out,” Arcadius ordered.

They didn’t question him again. The senior guard led the others in a group prayer, which they repeated quite a number of times until all the glass was gone. Probably it didn’t take more than two minutes. It simply felt to Elyse like it lasted forever.

Arcadius sighed when the final shard backed out of him. He couldn’t stand. He could hardly even move. Amazingly, the hand that gripped his scimitar hadn’t let go of it.

“Help me lift him and load him in,” the lead guard said to the others.

The removal of his weight allowed Elyse to breathe normally again.

“Watch your step, miss,” said the soldier who hopped back out to help her. “There’s still glass underfoot.”

It crackled under her slippers until he swung her off them.

“Oh, my God,” she moaned when she got her first clear look at Arcadius.

Cade’s double lay on his face on the rug, his back and legs a mass of wounds that overflowed with blood. He’d managed to protect his head with his hands, but they too were cut up. As the carpet rose smoothly and shot forward, two soldiers stripped off their shirts to staunch his worst bleeding.

Elyse knelt and stroked his hair, the only part of him that seemed safe to touch.

“He’ll heal, miss,” one of the men assured her. “Djinn aren’t fragile like humans.”

“Are we going to the hospital?”

“We’re taking him to the palace. The magician can patch him up.”

They meant Joseph. The thought of him immediately comforted her. He’d do anything to help either of his masters.

“Take me in
quietly
,” Arcadius croaked. “I don’t want our enemies catching wind of any more weaknesses.”

The soldiers exchanged glances. Elyse assumed they were wondering which of those enemies was responsible.

Chapter Five

THE
quickest way for Arcadius to heal would have been shifting into his smoke form. Some djinni couldn’t change if they were in shock or pain, but Arcadius had relied on the trick many times on the battlefield. Like the troops who served him, he’d trained himself to do it under adverse conditions.

That knack was lost, he feared. He truly might be less powerful now that he’d split in two.

Their escort took him at his word about wanting to slip into the palace quietly. He wasn’t sure how they convinced the royal flight controllers to wave their carpet past the main landing site, but they set down in the secluded courtyard outside the sultan’s rooms.

Alarmingly, he didn’t have sufficient strength in his limbs to rise.

“Don’t struggle,” Elyse advised, her fingers combing his hair gently—as she’d been doing all along. “Let the soldiers do the work of moving you until you feel better.”

He wanted to ask her to stay with him. Fortunately for his pride, he had to bite his lip against the discomfort of the guards lifting him. Compounding the pain of his wounds, being carried made him dizzy.

He recognized the bed they laid him on as Iksander’s. Though neatly made, the covers smelled of Elyse and the other him. Something primitive inside him couldn’t help but find that comforting. When he closed his eyes, he almost fell asleep.

“I’ll summon the magician,” a male voice said.

Maybe he had drifted off. Only a second seemed to have passed before he heard Joseph and the other him speaking.

“Holy hell,” breathed his double, leaving Arcadius in no doubt as to how bad he looked. “Who did this to him?”

“We were attacked,” Elyse said from her perch beside him on the bed. “It was my fault. I ran after someone I thought looked suspicious. I should have waited for the guards. Arcadius had to shield me.”

Arcadius didn’t like her blaming herself. He was the one who knew magic. He should have spotted the danger.
Not your fault,
he tried to say but only got out a useless groan.

“Why were you—”

Joseph cut his double off. “Let me see if I can spell Arcadius to shift. Both of them can answer your questions then.”

“Of course,” Cade said, sounding stiff and chastened at the same time. “Let me know if I can help.”

Arcadius nearly smiled. He’d forgotten that ability of Joseph’s: to boss anyone he chose when he felt sure of his position. The sultan himself hadn’t been immune to it.

He tried not to fight Joseph’s magic. Resisting would make the shift harder. Despite knowing this, it wasn’t natural for him to yield control to someone else. Finally, after a few minutes of chanting, Arcadius’s particles flashed hot and spread out. He was a man-shaped cloud, larger than before, with the pleasant sensation of being feather light. The pain he’d been suffering ceased. That was a relief . . . until Joseph spelled him back to solidity. Then he had thirty tricky seconds while he struggled not to throw up.

Being shifted by someone else’s was stressful for djinn systems.

“I’ll never get used to you guys doing that,” Elyse murmured.

Being referred to as a
guy
was odd for Arcadius.

He was shaky but able to sit up. Blood dried unpleasantly on his clothes, gluing them to his back.

“Do you want to bathe?” Cade asked.

“That can wait until you question me,” he said.

Perhaps he sounded prim. The corners of his double’s mouth turned up. “Okay then. Why don’t you start by telling me what happened?”

He and Elyse told the tale by turns, including their discoveries at the bathhouse. Cade listened quietly, letting them speak until they ran out.

“This man you saw,” Cade said to Elyse. “What made you go after him?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, still beside Arcadius. “Something about him seemed familiar, though when he turned to me for a second, I didn’t recognize his face. I guess he struck me as suspicious.”

“You don’t chase everyone you see as suspicious.”

Elyse pulled her mouth into a funny shape. “I can’t explain it. Some gut instinct took hold of me. I know it was stupid, but I felt like I had to go after him.”

“You weren’t stupid,” Arcadius chided. “Maybe running after him was but not your suspicions. They were more on the mark than mine.”

Cade’s eyebrows rose at the admission. “The man she chased didn’t set off red flags for you?”

“No,” Arcadius confessed. “Or for the guards. I should also tell you I found the spell our attacker cast on the glass hard to override.”

“How hard?” Joseph asked sharply.

Arcadius shrugged, uncomfortable with the question. “That’s difficult to say. Maybe it would have been easy for me before. My abilities seem . . . diminished.”

“Mine too,” Cade said absently. “Though I wouldn’t say they were halved.”

“I wouldn’t say mine were either,” Arcadius retorted.

His huffy response caused his opposite to smile creamily. “I can change on my own. In case you were wondering.”

“Now who’s being an ass’s hat?” Arcadius snapped.

Elyse coughed out a little laugh. “Let’s not argue about that. I’m sure you’ll both admit we have more important things to focus on.”

The other him rubbed his chin and returned to seriousness. “If the man you encountered was the mysterious recruiter, perhaps he returned to the bathhouse to scoop up the boy you talked to. We should set a guard on him.”

“Can we spare the manpower, considering?”

“If the guard posed as the bath boy’s friend, it wouldn’t put the wind up your attacker. Posting a man there could improve our chances of catching him.”

Arcadius weighed the pros and cons.

“All right,” he agreed. “Let’s do that.”

Considering the matter settled, he scooted toward the edge of the massive bed and got out. This was a tactical error. Before his knees were properly under him, they buckled and he pitched forward. Elyse cried out in alarm. To his dismay, his arms failed to stop his fall. His teeth hit his lip so hard he tasted blood.

Joseph and Cade rushed to him. They sat him up and gripped his arms while he swayed like a pitiful drunkard. Arcadius couldn’t look away from Cade’s hands. Those were his knuckles, his veins. Cade wasn’t him but he was.

It was like meeting a future self.

Elyse was the event he’d missed out on.

“This isn’t good,” Joseph said, his mind on its own track. “Having two commanders helps make up for Iksander’s absence. If our enemies know one of you is weak, they’ll pounce.”

“I’m not weak,” Arcadius objected. “Just temporarily . . . out of sorts.”

Cade laughed dryly, still kneeling beside him. “You can’t hold yourself upright. If it were me sitting there, would you call it ‘out of sorts?’”

Arcadius glared, which he had plenty of strength for. “I’m strong enough to sit on my ass in our office. You can run around the city chasing unidentified sorcerers.”

“That might work,” Joseph said. “At least until it comes time for Arcadius to go home. I expect staff would notice he had to crawl.”

“I’ll stay here,” Arcadius said rashly. “If I’m shaky, I’ll use the servant’s passage to come and go.”

The other him’s brows lowered. “I hope you’re not proposing to stay here with Elyse. If I’m pretending to be you, I can’t take her to your residence.”

“We’ll all stay in Iksander’s rooms. People will assume we’ve reached an arrangement to share her. Nothing could be more natural than doubles being attracted to the same female.”

“Um,” Elyse said. “What about your not very secret opinion that I’m plain and inferior?”

“I’ll pretend I got over it.”

He realized the words were insulting only after he’d uttered them. Fortunately, his cheeks were already hot from having fallen flat on his face. He considered apologizing, but that seemed awkward too. And maybe Elyse wasn’t plain, simply an acquired taste. Because his reaction at the bathhouse suggested he was acquiring it, the topic was probably best dropped.

“Arcadius might recover faster in your proximity,” Joseph ruminated. “We don’t really know how the doubling process affects us.”

Cade pinched his lower lip. “Are you okay with this?” he asked Elyse.

She looked at Arcadius. He tried to maintain an impassive face. Interestingly, Elyse’s expression was cautious. It hadn’t occurred to him she might feel a similar erotic pull. The possibility that she did made his scalp tingle with awareness.

Other parts of him tingled too, but he was ignoring them.

“I suppose it would be all right,” she said. “There certainly is room.”

“All right,” Cade decided. “But only until he recuperates.”

Arcadius stubbornly refused to let himself change his mind.

~

Arcadius hadn’t realized how exhausting a single afternoon and evening behind a desk could be. Somehow he got through dealing with the people he had to see. On the bright side, the meetings kept him busy. He didn’t wonder more than once or twice what Cade and Elyse were doing.

The pair returned after sunset, which came late this time of year.

Arcadius was going over the happenings of the day with Philip’s father Murat, who was Iksander’s vizier. They’d moved their discussion to the small sitting area in the office, where they were drinking much needed tea. Cade and Elyse entered laughing, their arms slung loosely around each other’s backs.

Their ease with one another inspired a pang he pushed away.

“You seem to have spent an agreeable afternoon,” he observed dryly.

Elyse straightened, pushing her curls back as she sobered. He couldn’t decide if he was sorry to have turned her serious. “Cade made sure Kyros got his guard, and we checked on the new food banks. We discovered the
valide sultana
had been there ahead of us.”