She set the lantern down in front of him as he seated himself on the rug. “A lantern for ambiance?” He flashed a smile at her. “What a great idea.”
“It was Qadir’s idea. He wants to help you.”
Mazen turned, half expecting the bodyguard to be standing behind him, but the sullen ifrit was nowhere to be seen. He looked quizzically at the merchant, who pointed at the lantern. He followed her gaze to its base.
A small black lizard with gleaming red eyes blinked up at him.
“Qadir can shapeshift,” she said. When Mazen continued staring, she sighed and said, “He rides on my shoulder sometimes. It’s less conspicuous.”
Without warning, the ifrit lizard scrambled up Mazen’s leg and arm until he was sitting on his shoulder. “I’m doing this for Loulie,” he said in a voice so soft it sounded as if it were coming from inside Mazen’s head. But the gruffness—Mazen startled at the memory of it. He remembered this voice. It had spoken to him during his first encounter with the shadow jinn, had pulled him out of his trance.
So Qadir had been with her then.
“I thought I was crazy,” Mazen mumbled.
“Because you are. A sane man wouldn’t have gone on this journey,” Qadir said.
He frowned. “That’s not—”
The merchant hissed between her teeth. “Stop. You look like you’re talking to yourself.” She reached down to wrap the tail end of his ghutra around his shoulders and mouth. The ifrit immediately tucked himself away into the folds. “There. Now you at least look mysterious.” She stepped back, arms crossed. “But mysterious doesn’t sell. How are you going to make coin without a reputation? No one’s heard of Yousef the Storyteller.”
“Yet. But they will.” He grinned at the surprise that flickered across her expression. He may have been a man of few talents, but storytelling was in his blood.
“Can you manipulate the fire?” Mazen whispered to the ifrit.
A flame burst to life inside the lantern, glowing red and blue and green and yellow. Mazen considered it. And then he smiled. “Here’s what I want you to do…”
It began with a clap. With a bright smile he flashed at passersby.
He clapped again, and the fire in the lantern flickered.
A third time, and it flashed white.
A fourth time, and the flame darkened to the murky blue of the deep ocean. Some of the citizens paused to inspect the mysterious fire.
On the fifth clap, the flame dimmed to a green that cast the area in deep shadows. Quite the crowd had gathered by then. A young boy pushed his way through it and pointed at the lantern, mouth hanging open. “How are you making it do that?”
“What, this?” Mazen lifted the lantern, looked at it for a long moment, then blew onto the glass. The audience stared in awe as the fire inside disappeared—and then roared back to life. They cheered, as if he’d performed some magic trick.
He lifted the lantern with a flourish. “Behold! This is no ordinary fire.” The blaze dimmed further, so that his audience was cloaked in darkness. “This is an immortal flame, crafted by none other than the Jinn King of Fire.”
Qadir scoffed in his ear. “Such pretty lies you spin.”
But Mazen did not think it was a lie at all. To him, stories were truths painted over in gold.
He set the lantern down. “Neither here nor there, but long ago…”
The first story he told was of the so-called King of Fire, who was so fearsome he could burn anything, even the sand on which they stood. But the King of Fire was not without a heart, and he fell in love with a human, a girl who dressed in stars. The king loved her dearly. So dearly that upon his death, he ordered the girl to bottle his flame so he could watch over her always. The girl honored him by gifting his fire to her descendants and having them tend it forever.
“And it is that same fire you see before you.”
When the story was over, the audience clapped and cheered. Mazen grew drunk on their adulation. He forgot about the gold. He forgot about everything but the tales, which he told well into the night. He told them stories about the Hemarat al-Gayla, the fearful donkey creature that devoured children who strayed too far from home in the heat of the day; of Bu Darya, a fish-man who drew his prey into the ocean by pretending to be a drowning human; and of the firebird, the majestic bird that trailed streaks of flame through the sky.
Loulie al-Nazari spoke in between the stories, holding out a pouch of silk and proclaiming, “The storyteller Yousef has traveled far and wide to share these stories with you! They are rare and precious, like relics. But every treasure has a value measurable in coin…”