The change in the towering djinn was no less startling—now a squat figure dressed in rumpled robes. Still bigger than a human, but nowhere the size of a Marid. His orange-striped overly large head resembled a cat’s, with a broad down-turned mouth that made him look petulant. With an undignified huff, he waddled over and promptly fell into a rickety worn wooden chair, resting his chin in his hands and whimpering.
Fatma and Hadia exchanged a look and moved to where he sat, trying not to stumble over the mess.
“Siwa,” Fatma said. “We just want to talk.”
The djinn whimpered harder, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head. Beside him, a rounded woven basket rattled—as if something were alive inside. She and Hadia stepped back, uncertain they wanted to find out what that might be.
“We know about the Seal of Sulayman,” Fatma said. “We know what it does.” That only made Siwa release a long terrible moan. “We also know that you had it stolen by the Forty Leopards.”
Siwa’s wailing cut off, and he looked up with eyes no longer hypnotizing but filled with fear. “The sweetest way of life we have experienced is one spent in indulgence and wine drinking!” he blurted. “For we are the lads, the only lads who really matter, on land and sea!”
Fatma sighed. This again. “We asked before about the money wired to you from this AW in Portendorf’s ledger. That’s who has the ring, isn’t it? The imposter calling himself al-Jahiz.”
Siwa shook his head harder now, his words choking. “He was all black, even as I tell ye! His head! His body! And his hands were all black! Saving only his teeth! His shield and his armor were even those of a Moor! And black as a Raven!”
“Who is this AW?” Fatma pressed, getting annoyed. “Who was it that asked you to steal the ring? Was it Alexander Worthington?”
Siwa emitted a strangled cry, pulling a knife from his rumpled kaftan. Before Fatma could stop him, he extended a long dark blue tongue and in one quick swipe—cut it off. Beside her, Hadia made a heaving sound.
The djinn slumped back into his chair, his ruined tongue bleeding messily onto his clothing. Then, as they watched, the blood stopped. The wound amazingly healed, and before their eyes, the tongue began to grow back. It took perhaps a minute, but at the end it had grown back fully. The djinn still held the severed organ in one hand, which jerked about—still alive. He moved to the woven basket and lifted the lid. Inside sat a mass of blue fleshy things that jumped around like fish. Only Fatma knew that’s not what they were. They were tongues. A mass of severed tongues.
“Ya Rabb!” Hadia croaked weakly. “Now I’m definitely going to be sick.”
The djinn closed the basket and looked at them with sad resignation. Fatma met his gaze. The magic that prevented djinn from talking about the Seal of Sulayman was one thing. But he’d cut out his tongue again at the mention of Alexander Worthington, not the ring. The angels’ magic was exacting, but this was different—cruel and sadistic.
“It’s another spell,” she realized. “On top of the one that already binds you not to talk about the seal. Any mention of al—” Her words cut off as Siwa tensed, gripping the knife with pleading eyes. “Any naming of the imposter,” she amended, “or talk of the theft, forces you to spout gibberish.”
“Not gibberish,” Hadia corrected, eyeing the thumping basket. “You said before it was literature, from his books. I recognized that first bit. It’s from one of the Maqāmah.”
Fatma hadn’t heard that term since university. “Aren’t they collections of stories from the ninth or tenth century?”
“That’s right. We had to read them to pick up the rhythm of the prose, which is also used in some Basri incantations. ‘The sweetest way of life we have experienced is one spent in indulgence … For we are the lads, the only lads who really matter.’ It’s a boast of one of the leaders of a group of thieves. I think he was responding to you about the Forty Leopards. He’s actually trying to talk.”
The thought that the djinn might be communicating with them hadn’t even occurred to Fatma. “‘He was all black…’” she quoted, recalling his frantic words. “‘His shield and his armor were even those of a Moor … black as a Raven.’ I don’t know where that’s from. But he must be speaking about al-Jahiz. Or the imposter’s illusion.”
Siwa relaxed the grip on his knife, exhaling lengthily. He reached again into his robes, this time pulling out a set of folded papers and offering them with a shaking hand. Fatma took the sheets, smoothing back their wrinkled surfaces. The first was filled with almost unreadable scrawling. Djinn script. Just two words.
“I told,” Fatma translated. The rest was erratic scribbling amid a red smear.
“I think that’s blood.” Hadia grimaced.
Fatma went to the next page. “Seal.” That was all, before the markings became obscure.
She shuffled through the rest, as Hadia read. “Spoke of … Gave … Wrong … Tricked … Messengers … Slavery … Damned. Damned. Damned.” That only word on the last few sheets grew more indecipherable between splatters of blood.
“An attempt at a confession,” Fatma worked out. She looked to Siwa, who covered his eyes with one hand, then to the basket of quivering tongues. “You tried to write what you’d done. But even the smallest bit cost you. This whole business of cutting out your tongue, the imposter did that to you.” She was struck with pity. How many times had he painfully maimed himself? Grabbing a nearby stool made for a djinn—which meant it was large as a bench—she pulled it close and sat down. Hadia joined her. Perhaps there was another way.
“You like
