The Forbidden Wish(38)

When Ensi and Khavar creep around the corner, I shift back into a human, drop from the ceiling, and land in a crouch behind them. Ensi shrieks and Khavar whirls, batting my arm aside, her hand sliding around my throat, her other hand producing a knife. She slams me hard against the wall. Ensi, her eyes wide, holds a handful of red powder that she’d been about to throw in my face. Khavar’s snake rises on her shoulder, hissing.

“Well, well.” I can’t help grinning. “Caspida has a little coterie of girl assassins, just like Roshana did. Do you call yourselves the Watchmaidens too?”

Ensi, looking sheepish, pockets her poisonous powder in a concealed satchel beneath her thin silk coat. “Let her go, Khavar.”

“No,” the other girl snarls. “I don’t trust her. She asks too many questions.” She presses her forearm against my throat, and I wince and suck in a thin breath. “I thought you were sick?”

“I’d listen to your friend, if I were you,” I croak, smiling still.

“How’d you get up there?” Ensi asks, studying the ceiling curiously. “You must be very nimble.”

“Who are you really?” Khavar demands. “Speak, or I’ll strangle you.”

I shrug. “I gave you a fair chance.” With a twist, a spin, and a grunt, I reverse our positions, pressing Khavar’s face into the wall and wrenching her arm behind her. She bares her teeth at me angrily, while Ensi gasps and covers her mouth.

“Let me make one thing clear,” I say softly into Khavar’s ear. “There will be no spying or shadowing my master and me. We mean you no ill will, I swear, but I will not tolerate being watched all the time. It’s exhausting and pointless for you and me both. Khavar, I’m going to let you go now. Let’s agree to talk like civilized people.”

When I release her, Khavar turns and throws up her hands defensively, but I am already standing several paces back, hands spread amenably. Ensi, her eyes darting nervously from me to her friend, steps between us.

“So. You are Watchmaidens, then?” I ask.

Ensi sighs and twists her hair in her hands. “We’re descended from the original Watchmaidens created by Queen Roshana.”

“Your order has survived all these centuries?” I ask.

Ensi smiles proudly. “Our knowledge was passed down, mother to daughter, for generations. We’ve been protecting the Amulen queens and princesses for hundreds of years. Khavar here can even trace her ancestry directly to Parys zai Moura, Roshana’s personal scribe.”

I glance at Khavar’s sour face. I bet she can. Parys had never liked me, and I can see the same mistrust in Khavar’s eyes. “Go back to your princess,” I tell them. “Please pass along my regards, and tell her Prince Rahzad will not be spied upon.”

They nod and back away, watching me warily until the corner comes between us. I stand for a minute and listen until I am certain they’ve gone, then let out a long sigh and run to see what my master has got himself into this time.





Chapter Thirteen


I FIND ALADDIN IN, of all places, the library.

For a moment I pause behind a tall case of scrolls and watch him. He stands in a beam of sunlight that pours from a high window, dust motes swirling around him, staring at an open scroll. Shelves around him overflow with parchment and papyrus, in sheets and rolls and bound stacks. Aladdin is dressed in a knee-length red waistcoat, his head bare and his hair tousled. His lips move as he reads, though I don’t think he realizes it. As I watch him, I feel a subtle stirring inside, a swirling in my heart of smoke, a warming of embers. I know what it means, and I know how wrong, how dangerous it is. I almost cannot bear to smother it, it is so small and fragile and hopeful.

“What happened?” I ask, stepping from behind the case.

Aladdin starts, and his hands clamp the scroll shut. He blinks at me for a moment, until his eyes focus and his mind leaves whatever world it had been lost in.

“Zahra! Um, I thought—” His hand goes to the lamp, and his eyes dart to his right. I follow his gaze and see Jalil sitting at a low desk a short distance away, painstakingly inking a sheet of parchment with a long peacock quill. He seems lost in his work, but still, we must be careful what we say.

I walk to Aladdin and take the scroll he is holding, pretending to scan its contents.

“I nearly shifted,” I whisper. “Right in front of her. What happened? Why did you leave your rooms?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers back. “He insisted on showing me the library and said if I was determined to learn about Parthenia this was the place to start. I couldn’t think of a way out of it.”

I look back at his scroll and raise an eyebrow. “A treatise on the jinn, hmm? Very historical.”

He snatches the scroll back. “I was just—”

“Looking for information on me. Or my kind, anyway.” I frown and fold my arms. “You can read? A boy from the slums?”

“Don’t look so surprised. My mother was a scribe once, and she taught me letters. And anyway, we weren’t that bad off, not at first.” His eyes turn distant. “My father had a good business, tailoring, and my mother penned letters and ledgers for people. We did all right, until . . .” He shakes his head and furls the scroll. “What did Caspida want?”