The Forbidden Wish(27)

A well-aimed fig hits him square in the forehead and bursts. He splutters and licks the juice that drips down his cheek.

“Point taken. Thank you, Zahra.” He rises and leans in the doorway, his arms crossed, and watches me as I pace the room. “To be honest, though, it all makes me kind of sick. To think so many of us grow up sleeping in gutters, like rats, when all this space is given to one man just because he has an extra word in front of his name.” He pauses, his face darkening. “Did you see him? Standing up there like a king, thinking himself untouchable. The great vizier of Parthenia.” A small, dry smile twists his lips. “And here I am, right under his nose.”

A knock sounds on the door, and then a pair of servants—a girl and a boy—enters with fresh clothes for us.

“Your Highness, my name is Esam,” says the boy, “and this is Chara. We will be at your service for as long as you are here. Please allow me to assist you in dressing for the evening meal.”

Aladdin turns a bit red and stammers, “Ah, I don’t think—”

“It is customary in our homeland for princes to dress themselves,” I insert, a bit hastily. It won’t do to have anyone seeing the lamp hidden under Aladdin’s clothes. “It is a tradition going back many generations. Here, I’ll take those. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere, right?” I crowd them to the door and then shut it, smiling, in their faces.

? ? ?

“So if I meet a noble who is older than me, but of lower station . . .” Aladdin stands in the grassy courtyard and scrubs wearily at his hair. “I bow like this?”

He leans over and throws out an arm.

“Gods, no.” I’m sitting in front of him, enjoying a fresh pomegranate and attempting to cram as much etiquette into him as I can before dinner. “That one is for a minister who has held his office for more than ten years, or who has a personal fleet of ships.”

“Are you sure? I thought that one was like this.” He attempts another awkward bow. “Why am I listening to you, anyway? You’ve been living in a lamp for the past five hundred years!”

I flick a seed at him. “I still know my way around a court, which is more than can be said for you! Now try the proper greeting for a man who is related to the king, but with no possible claim to the throne.”

He thinks for a moment, then puts his hands together and hesitantly leans forward, before cocking a hopeful eyebrow at me.

“I give up!” I groan, tossing the rind of the pomegranate aside. “You’re hopeless. Just stick with a basic bow at the waist, and let them credit your appalling social graces to your foreignness. People are always more lenient with foreigners.”

With a sigh, Aladdin collapses into the grass. “This is exhausting. There has got to be an easier way to bring Sulifer down—a way that doesn’t involve bowing to him.”

It has been a week and two days since we arrived at the Parthenian palace, and still I have found no sign of Zhian. I wish I had the power to freeze time, but time is the one element no jinni can control, not even the Shaitan.

At night, when Aladdin sleeps, I slip into the hallway, shift into a cat, and explore the palace. But my invisible chain does not reach far, and though I have covered every inch I can, most of the palace is out of my reach. I hope I didn’t make a mistake in bringing us here, only to find that Zhian’s somewhere else entirely.

When Aladdin is awake, I drill him on court etiquette, making him a prince in manner as well as in name. Servants bring us meals twice a day, and Aladdin is well supplied with clothing and other necessities, as well as invitations to dine with various curious nobles and merchant lords in the evening, which gives me a little time to search other parts of the palace, still to no avail.

Aladdin is impatient to meet Caspida—as Prince Rahzad this time, instead of as a kidnapped thief—but she is elusive, and no one, not even a prince, may call on a princess uninvited. And so we are both frustrated and edgy, and the lessons aren’t helping.

As he states several times, rather strongly, “I can figure it out as I go.”

“You’re more stubborn than a stinking camel!” I protest.

He only shrugs and grins in that maddening way he has. “I’ve been called worse.”

Sometimes, I think he makes mistakes just to infuriate me. Like today. We’ve been over these bows a thousand and one times, but he keeps bungling them.

Someone raps on the door just as Aladdin begins to doze off in the grass, ignoring my protests that he’ll stain his clothes. He squints at me.

“Get that, will you?”

I glare at him. “I’m not actually your servant.”

“I know,” he says, with a wicked half smile. “I just like it when you get angry with me. Smoke comes out of your ears.”

“It certainly does not.”

I open the door to reveal two young nobles. One I recognize: Raz, the tall archer who was there the night the princess kidnapped Aladdin.

The other noble is a handsome young man with a Tytoshi complexion and dreadlocks tipped with silver. I can tell at once that he is brother, likely even twin to Nessa, the princess’s jinn charmer and handmaiden. Does he too carry a jinn-charming flute?

I bow to Raz and greet the Tytoshi in his native fashion: by pulling my hair over my shoulder and tugging the ends, displaying my untipped locks and thus my inferior status. A look of surprise and then appreciation flits across his features. Then he turns and bows to Aladdin, and I step aside.