Mazen turned to Omar and smiled. I have won, he thought. Even a heartless hunter would not attack his own brother.
Mazen flicked his wrist, and the nearest shadow shoved Omar to his knees, grabbed his knife, and held it to his throat. Even then, the hunter had the audacity to laugh. “You would go so far as to possess my brother for revenge, jinn? You truly are a coward.”
Mazen’s rage was a tangible thing. It made even his shadows quiver with fear.
“A coward that will have her revenge,” he said softly. “Goodbye, hunter.”
He snapped his fingers, and the shadows lunged.
10
LOULIE
“I’ll pay you fifty gold coins for it.”
The young man who had been eyeing the eternal hourglass finally stepped in front of Loulie’s stall. In his hand he held a bag of coins. Presumably fifty of them.
Loulie made a show of eyeing the bag, then the hourglass. The man stared at her, ignoring the murmurs of the crowd. Loulie counted down in her head, waiting.
Sure enough, another man, this one significantly more marked by time, stepped in and raised a bag of coins that was, presumably, heavier. “Sixty,” he said.
And so it starts. Loulie was glad for her shawl, for it hid her devious smile.
She loved bartering, but more than that, she loved watching customers argue amongst themselves. It was even more amusing when they fought over useless magic like the hourglass. When she and Qadir had first found the relic in a den of ghouls, she had thought it might reverse time or perhaps slow it down.
“No,” Qadir had said in response to her speculation. “It just endlessly refills.”
“We battled our way through a horde of ghouls for this? It’s worthless!”
Qadir had just raised his brows and said, “You should know by now that magic will sell simply because it is magic.”
He was right. The bid was finalized at 120 coins.
The hourglass was the last thing she sold that night. Now that she’d met her personal quota, she was eager to see if she could catch one of Old Rhuba’s stories. If she was lucky, Yousef would be there.
“You’re smiling,” Qadir said warily.
She finished packing up the last of the relics and hefted the bag of infinite space over her shoulder. “Aren’t you excited to hear the stories about Dhahab?”
Qadir snorted. “Hardly. You humans make up the most ridiculous tall tales.”
“What do you expect us to do? It’s not as if any of us have been there.” Loulie kept her eyes out for Rasul as they walked through the souk. She was curious about his merchandise. “And,” she added pointedly, “you won’t tell me anything about it.”
Qadir shrugged. “I am no storyteller.”
She rolled her eyes. “Kalam farigh. You don’t need to be a storyteller to tell me about your home.” Dhahab was another one of Qadir’s many secrets. He never went into any detail about it; it had taken him long enough to tell her he was from the great jinn city.
“You want to know more about Dhahab? It has sand and sun and jinn.”
Loulie smiled; she couldn’t help it. “Oh, I feel so enlightened.”
“As you should be.” Qadir looked dangerously close to a smile himself.
They turned down a bend in the pathway and came into the heart of the souk, where the most experienced merchants sold their goods. Loulie knew most of these people by name and had bartered with them before, offering magic for tools. This was where she had acquired Qadir’s shamshir, trading a relic—a glass filled with fire that sparked to life at a single touch—for the blade.
She eyed the smith’s shop in passing, noting the array of swords and knives hanging on the mounted wooden boards. The dagger Qadir had given her was not nearly as ornate as any of the weapons on that display, but she could not imagine replacing it. Her hand went to a hidden pocket in her robe, where she could feel the shape of the enchanted blade.
Small but lethal, she thought. And then she remembered her encounter with the shadow jinn and grimaced. The next time she was in a fight, she would make sure she did not lose.
The two of them had still not found Rasul as they approached the outskirts, but Loulie was unconcerned. There would be more opportunities to find him before they left for the desert. For tonight, she was done with the souk.
She was approaching the entrance when she heard the shouts. The same call, rising and rising in a panicked crescendo that made her vision darken with fear.
“Rat!” they cried. “Rat in the souk!”
Someone had revealed the location of the market to the sultan’s guard.