Qadir shrugged. “I hope for her sake he does not.”
Loulie watched as Qadir cleaned the relics with a rag. She thought about asking him how and why he was able to live in a world where jinn were persecuted for simply existing, but hesitated. She had asked many times and received the same cryptic answer. I am but a single jinn, he would say. I cannot change your land’s prejudices.
It was an infuriating answer because it wasn’t an answer. But she had long ago learned that Qadir was not like her. While she frequently stuck her nose into others’ business, Qadir never involved himself unless it was necessary. It was strange, how they could both be so distant from people yet have such different ways of coexisting with them.
“Hmm,” Qadir said. “You are suspiciously quiet.”
Loulie blew a loose curl out of her eyes. “I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“About you.”
Qadir frowned. “Now I’m even more concerned.”
“You should stop that. The worrying, I mean. It’s going to give your ageless skin wrinkles.”
The edges of Qadir’s lips curled ever so slightly. “I have aged more in the nine years I have known you than in the hundreds I lived before our meeting.”
Loulie grabbed a cushion off the floor and threw it at him. She grumbled when he caught it and set it on his lap. “How old are you, anyway?”
The half smile was still on his lips. “Ancient.”
“It’s no wonder you’re so cynical. You should take more naps; they might improve your temperament.” She gestured to the closed door on her right, behind which lay their sleeping chambers. There were two beds inside, though Qadir’s was rarely occupied. “What is it you are so fond of telling me? That even exasperating people become tolerable after a good night’s rest?”
Qadir snorted. “If you truly wanted to make my life easier, you wouldn’t leap so carelessly into danger.” He set one relic aside and picked up another: the string of sleep-inducing relic beads. “I do not need sleep. You, on the other hand, have been chasing trouble all day.”
Trouble that I would very much like to get to the root of.
When she’d first come to Madinne, Loulie had paid for her accommodations by delivering messages and tracking rumors for Dahlia. The tavernkeeper had taught her that knowledge was power. Blackmail, favors, connections—all of it sprang from a web of constantly shifting rumors. Not understanding the web increased one’s risk of becoming ensnared in it.
Loulie had taken that lesson to heart. It was why she always made it a priority to seek out gossip and why she still delivered and received messages for Dahlia when she was in Madinne. She hadn’t become so successful by ignoring suspicious people and occurrences.
This thought spiraled in her mind like an eddy until it mellowed to nothingness. Until she felt her eyelids drooping.
Qadir dimmed the orb with a touch of his hand. “You should get some rest. A tired merchant is easy to fool in the souk.” He was running the relic beads through his fingers.
“That’s why I have you as a bodyguard, fearsome old man.” She smiled as she closed her eyes, and when darkness came, she let it take her.
6
MAZEN
“A jinn!” Mazen threw open the door to his brother’s room. “There’s a jinn in the city!”
Save for a single lantern, there was no light in Hakim’s room. Mazen paused in the doorway. After the incident with the jinn, he was not eager to step into a dark room. But this was not the abandoned place of worship. This was Hakim’s room—a cozy if somewhat claustrophobic prison filled with towering stacks of tomes and maps. They surrounded even Hakim’s bed, making it impossible to spot from the doorway.
“Hakim?” He looked beseechingly at his brother’s back.
Hakim remained hunched over the scrolls and mapmaking instruments on his desk. “What’s this about a jinn? Is this from one of your stories, Mazen?”
“If only. No, I’m talking about a real jinn, Hakim.”
“Mm.” Hakim continued working on whatever he was working on.
Mazen blinked. Maybe I was not clear?
He drew closer until he could see what his brother was drawing: an intricate map of the desert that featured cities and oases so detailed they seemed to breathe off the parchment. It was stunningly beautiful, and for a few moments, Mazen let himself get lost in the landscapes he’d only ever visited in stories. The places he’d dreamed of traveling to since he was a child. He watched his brother work, and he forgot why he’d come.