Tales of the Djinn: The Double (5 page)

Seeming aware she’d stepped outside normal female boundaries, she slid off his desk and made an
I’m-sorry
face
.
Cade smiled enough to let her know he understood. The goggling official tracked Elyse to Arcadius as if she were an exotic talking beast.

Ironically, she was more of a novelty than Cade’s duplicate.

“Do have a seat,” Joseph said, pulling out a chair to distract the official. “You can tell the commander everything you told me.”

Cade suppressed a grimace. Hopefully
everything
wouldn’t be as longwinded as he feared.

~

Because they seemed to have gotten the go ahead, Elyse followed Arcadius out into the anteroom. Seated and standing, a crowd of men waited their turn with Cade. Their vibrant silk robes fell to sparkly slippers in every hue imaginable. Since Elyse loved pretty footwear she could walk in, she was a tad jealous.

As Arcadius stepped into their midst, the men perked up and leaned toward him in unison.

“Have you a moment?” inquired a plump gentleman in yellow.

“I’m afraid I’m otherwise engaged,” Arcadius said politely. “I know the other me will hear your concerns as soon as he’s able to.”

“Of course, commander.” The man in yellow inclined his head with respect. “May it please our merciful Creator to prosper your endeavors.”

Arcadius returned the bow, then placed his hand beneath Elyse’s elbow. With a determination that surprised her, he steered them swiftly into the outer corridor.

The glint of humor in his expression enlightened her.

“You
wanted
to dump that mess on Cade,” she accused. “You only pretended to vie with him to be in charge.”

“Perhaps I’m not utterly desolated at how our dispute turned out. Giving audiences never was my favorite duty, especially when I was had other things to do. Iksander was far better at it than me.”

The mention of the sultan sent a shadow across his face.

“He’ll make it back,” Elyse said. “From the stories Cade and Joseph told me, Iksander had a lot of fire. With all he’s been through already, a trip to my world won’t finish him.”

Arcadius tilted his head at her. Did he think she’d overstepped by making observations about his important friend? Elyse wasn’t inclined to apologize. Luckily, after a pause, he spoke.

“I forget the other me knows Iksander too.” Confession over, his face turned resolved again. “Whether the sultan returns or not, we must ensure this city recovers.”

“Pardon,” Joseph said, stepping into the empty corridor after them. “The commander desires that you have this scroll. If anything comes up, the spell embedded in it sends the equivalent of a text message straight to him.”

Elyse accepted the small rolled parchment. She glanced at Arcadius. “You can teach me how to use this?”

He nodded that he could.

“You wished to speak to me?” Joseph said to her. His manner was formal, not giving away that they’d become fond of each other. Elyse wasn’t sure why he wanted to keep that private, but she tried to respond in kind.

“Yes.” She pulled the small, framed portrait of Yasmin’s brother Balu from the pocket of her silk pants. “I apologize if asking this is silly, but can you get a magical bead on where this boy might be?”

Joseph took the picture, holding it in both hands. He considered it quietly for a few moments. “Hm,” he said. “All I’m sensing from this is surprise.”

“Not fear?” Arcadius asked.

“No,” Joseph looked calmly up from the picture to meet his other master’s eyes. “I’m afraid the likeness gives off no hint of location.”

Elyse accepted it back from him. “Do you know a harem girl named Yasmin?”

“Should I?”

She supposed having been a eunuch didn’t guarantee he would. “Just wondering,” she said.

“We should go,” Arcadius interrupted. “Why don’t I keep this for both of us?”

Without asking, he took the scroll and tucked it away. “Joseph,” he said by way of taking leave.

“Sir,” Joseph responded.

Elyse couldn’t help but notice Joseph and Cade were a lot friendlier.

~

Located to one side of the palace steps but inside the perimeter wall was a grassy tarmac for flying carpets. Many took off and landed, their movements coordinated by traffic controllers in dark blue robes. Four crisply uniformed djinn soldiers waited beside an empty rug, bent arms stiffly saluting Arcadius. The carpet’s guard walls were already folded up. Arcadius lifted Elyse over before she could prepare herself.

He hopped in without assistance—like he was vaulting the driver’s door to a convertible. He and Cade were both athletic, a fact she sometimes forgot due to the serious way they carried themselves.

The soldiers followed his example with similar panache. They very studiously didn’t look at her. Maybe her headscarf wasn’t enough modesty for them.

“They’re coming with us?” she asked Arcadius.

“They are. The city is . . . unsettled at present. We’ll take no chances with your safety.” He gave the lead soldier a signal. The man held the metal staff carpet pilots used as control sticks. Planting the end firmly, he bowed his turbaned head and murmured one of the djinn’s prayer-like spells. The rug rose upward without a bump.

As it did, Elyse realized the spots on her waist where Arcadius had lifted her were tingling. She tried to ignore that as their vehicle sailed over the palace wall.

“Do you wish to sit?” Arcadius inquired politely.

Elyse shook her head. She wanted to look around Cade’s home probably as much as Arcadius did.

In some ways, the djinn’s Glorious City could have been any old world European metropolis. No skyscrapers or telephone poles spoiled the time-traveling effect. Buildings were historic, beautiful, and quaint. The central avenues were broad like Paris, the farther streets narrow and twisty. The foliage was Mediterranean, with palms and flowers and other sun-loving greenery. Yasmin’s family lived in a handsome villa on a hill. The soldiers set them near an attractive garden next to a sparkling pool.

Elyse braced herself for Arcadius to lift her out again.

“I’ll speak to the father,” he informed her, seeming not to notice anything amiss. “Please interview the mother and any female servants.”

Cade would have squeezed her arm before they parted, in case she was nervous.

“Will do,” Elyse said, pretending she wouldn’t have liked that.

~

Aside from her daughter being the property of a sultan, Yasmin’s mother struck Elyse as a normal concerned parent. According to her, Balu was a good boy. He wouldn’t run away. He was just a little wild these days. She blamed the view cafés. All that human media put wrong ideas into the minds of their city’s youth.

“Begging your pardon,” she added, remembering whom she was speaking to.

“That’s all right,” Elyse said. “Sometimes human media puts wrong ideas into our youths’ minds too.”

Yasmin’s mother smiled unsurely.

“I need to ask one more thing,” Elyse said, “and I apologize if the topic is sensitive. Yasmin mentioned you had another son?”

“I have one son,” Yasmin’s mother averred hotly.

They sat on cushions in the women’s quarters of the villa, opposite each other at the inevitable tea table. Sunshine flooded in from high windows, making it clear that Yasmin’s mother had once been as beautiful as her daughter.

“Right,” Elyse said, trying not to wriggle awkwardly on her folded legs. “Once upon a time, though, you had two.”

Once upon a time
seemed to be a phrase Yasmin’s mother could accept. She sat straighter than before, her posture proud. “That one shamed us. We no longer speak his name.”

“Yasmin said he killed someone?”

“Out of jealousy he knifed his best friend, the son of a close associate of his father. When Ramis turned ifrit, we could no longer shelter him in our family.”

Elyse took note of the name without mentioning she’d heard it. “Do you think the incident might have anything to do with Balu’s disappearance?”

“I don’t see how,” Yasmin’s mother said. “We paid the dead boy’s family their vengeance price years ago. They accepted the settlement in oath court. They wouldn’t risk their souls by retaliating against Balu.” Her lips pressed together more primly. “If you were a proper person, you’d know that.”

O-kay,
Elyse thought. So much for interspecies cooperation and respect.

~

Their next stop was the view café Balu was last seen in. According to his mother, it was located in the Glorious City’s grand bazaar. Elyse was grateful for Arcadius’s presence. She’d have gotten lost in two minutes among the covered warren of colorful shops.

Despite the city’s recent tragedy, business in the bazaar was bustling. Proprietors hawked their wares with great energy, many calling Arcadius by his title to buy them.

“Not today,” he said to all of them politely.

Between a brass emporium and a store piled temptingly high with slippers, they found the establishment they were looking for.

Two of the four soldiers who accompanied them took up positions outside the café’s entrance. The other two preceded them inside, sending Arcadius small professional nods when they’d decided it was safe to go in. The armed escorts made Elyse feel strange, but the djinn who caught sight of them didn’t appear alarmed.

Arcadius drew longer glances than the soldiers did. She concluded the sultan’s commander was someone everyone recognized.

Leaving that aside, Elyse looked around. The café wasn’t short of patrons, most twentyish or younger, including a couple girls. Customers sat around scattered tables on floor cushions, drinking tiny cups of Turkish coffee and seeming mesmerized by two immense curving TV screens. One showed a Korean soap opera, the other a loop of nothing but German commercials. Elyse saw no subtitles on either, but the audience was laughing, so presumably they understood the words. A moment later, her eardrums gave a funny pop. Suddenly, she also comprehended what the actors were saying.

She made a noise of surprise and rubbed her ears.

Arcadius placed one hand lightly behind her arm. He bent closer to speak to her. “Part of the magic spun around the café allows visitors to understand different languages.”

“Kind of like me understanding djinn from hanging around the other you and Joseph?”

“Yes, kind of like that.”

Elyse broke into a grin. “That is so cool!”

Arcadius smiled faintly. “Let’s find the proprietors.”

The proprietors were a pair of young male sorcerers—magic nerds, from the skinny pale look of them. They remembered seeing Balu in the café on the day the curse took effect. “We came to be with our friends,” they said. “Balu was a regular. We played everybody’s favorite:
America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 10.
I think it cheered people up. Those catfights were off the hook.”

“I see,” Arcadius said, though Elyse wasn’t sure he did.

“Didn’t that show take place in New York?” she asked.

The sorcerers’ eyes went round as soon as they heard her accent. “Oh, my God,” one exclaimed with surprisingly human intonation. “You’re
from
there. And you’re human. Do you know Tyra Banks? That female is the bomb!”

“Snap, Miss Thang,” the other said as he swung his hand.

Elyse confessed she didn’t know the supermodel, which calmed them down a bit.

“Would you honor us by coming back here some night?” the taller of the two invited. His short spiked hair had blue and yellow tips. “We’d love to ask you about your life.”

“The consort has other responsibilities,” Arcadius said before she could respond. He said
consort
like it was an official title, and for all she knew it was.

“Sure,” the spike-haired sorcerer said before turning back to her. “But, you know, if it turns out you have time, we’d treat you like a princess.”

Elyse thanked them for their offer, not answering either way.

They spoke to a few more patrons, who had little new to add. Balu was a great guy. Balu would pay for other people’s coffee if they were broke. No, they had no idea where he’d gotten to or who’d think of hurting him. As far as they knew, he didn’t have an enemy in the world.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” Arcadius sighed as they emerged back into the bazaar. Their soldier escort fell into ranks around them.

“Oh, you never know,” Elyse said. “We might have learned something and not know what. Plus, it was kind of nice to be treated like being human was a good thing.”

She’d made the comment without thinking. Arcadius glanced at her. “Has someone insulted you?”

Of the people who had, he’d been the worst offender.

“I’m sure they didn’t mean to,” she said sweetly.

~

They followed up their visit to the café with a stop at a place Arcadius referred to as a bottle house. It was near the city’s port at the river mouth, up a narrow cobbled lane in a pale yellow three-story building. From the name, Elyse expected a wine shop. As soon as their carpet landed, she saw this wasn’t the case.

Some sort of priest in a deep purple cassock walked out the street level door. The plaque bolted to the yellow stucco above his head declared the building a refuge for homeless youth.

“Commander!” he exclaimed, pressing his hands together and bowing. “Thank you so much for coming. I wasn’t hoping for any more than a police sergeant.”

Arcadius swung Elyse over the carpet’s rail, the process more casual for him now. “You were expecting us?”

The priest seemed confused by his question. “I submitted an aid request. Asking what to do about the stone bottles.”

Arcadius’s face went graver than usual. “Perhaps you should show me.”

They followed him into a shop lined with wooden shelves. Brass amphora filled them, stacked three deep lying on their sides. Labels tied with red cord dangled from the necks. Names and dates were written on each one.

Elyse found the look of them inexplicably ominous.

“What is this place?” she asked, unable to hold her tongue.

“We are a shelter,” the priest explained. “A safe place for young people who have no homes.”