Worldsoul

Twenty

Shadow sat on her heels by the cage containing the ifrit. The thing was vast, far bigger than the cage, its energies contorted within it in a way that could not be comfortable. But who knew how the ifrit saw matters? Shadow did not, however, think the ifrit was happy.

That made two of them.

“You have an entirely free rein,” the Shah had said that morning, when Shadow had sourly reported for work. “I trust your judgement.” This had not improved Shadow’s mood. The Shah was affable, but that meant he’d got whatever it was he wanted and that didn’t suit Shadow at all. And her concentration wasn’t up to much, either: memories of the disir, of the wrecked laboratory, and of Mercy Fane kept intruding. She wished Mercy was still here and that made her very nervous. Apart from Shenudah, Shadow was not accustomed to friends, and really, her friendship would not be doing the other woman any favours. Yet she’d felt that she could discuss things with Mercy, that the woman understood, and she certainly wasn’t used to having a sounding board. The fact the Shah was funding full repairs to the lab hadn’t helped, either. More unwanted obligations, more requirements for gratitude. Shadow had insisted on hiring the workmen herself, but she knew it gave the Shah the possibility to get someone inside the lab, perhaps sabotage the equipment for who knew what purpose further down the line. She could see a future in which she remained permanently tied to the Shah and she did not like it at all.

Now for the ifrit.

She could see nothing resembling features, or an eye. The ifrit could take semi-human form, but Shadow knew from experience that this was a loose term only: they were beings of fire, silhouettes of flickering eldritch light that freeze-burned the touch. Humans did not always survive long in their presence and this was why the Shah had confined this ifrit here, in a very expensive cage made of meteorite iron, and therefore holy. Shadow could see the many names of God as they wove and coiled around the bars, and resisted the urge to bow her head. She did not want to take her eyes off the ifrit for too long, wary of what it might do.

She had already tried speaking to it, in the old language of Persia, a tongue now lost or kept secret by the Fire Worshippers, the Zoroastrians. But the ifrit had remained within a vast and distant silence, like the quiet of the desert itself, at the breaking of the day. Shadow had not really expected anything else and repressed a sigh. They were not like angels, who might deign to talk to you, or demons, who were eager to do so in exchange for something else. They had an agenda which Shadow did not understand, and even the great mystics had failed to delineate their thoughts.

“If you will not talk to me,” Shadow said aloud, “Then I cannot give you what you want.” Yet she knew this was meretricious. She thought she did know, indeed, what the ifrit wanted: it wanted to be free, to roam the high places of the air beneath the stars, to step lightly with feet of flame upon the sands of the desert, to burn to a blaze that lights the night. She could not give it that, because the Shah had imprisoned it. So that meant forcing it into action.

Shadow swallowed, and went over to the latticed window. Below, the fountain played its music in the centre of the courtyard and a flock of golden doves wheeled above the Has, before settling onto the opposing roof where they cooed and quarrelled. That gave Shadow an idea. She walked back to the captive roil of the ifrit.

“You want to go back to your kind, don’t you?” she said. She pitched her voice low, almost seductive. “Back to your flock? I can help you.”

She lied, but she did not think the ifrit would know that. At least, not yet. The mass of energy slowed a little, she thought, although it could have been her own imagination. Wishful thinking… well, that was what magic was all about, after all.

“If you give me what I want,” Shadow said, “I will make the Shah help you. And then I will help you get your revenge.”

If the room were bugged, if she were challenged, she would say only that it had been a ploy to force the ifrit’s cooperation. Perhaps this was even true, in part.

The ifrit said, in a voice that was not a voice, within her mind, “What do you want?”

“The Shah wants knowledge,” Shadow said. “Not to live forever-he is too wise for that. But when he does die, he wants to know how he can force the hand of paradise. He wants the name of a particular spirit, and you can get that for me.” She lied, of course, and did not like the lie. Once the ifrit had agreed to do her bidding, then she could act: transform the ifrit into other parameters. That it should be changed into human form, the Shah had commanded, and Shadow would have to do her best to comply.

“It is a long time,” the ifrit said, “since I set foot at the gates of heaven.”

“Your kind are not allowed into paradise, are they?” Shadow said, hesitant.

Soft, vast laughter. “We do not wish to go. The sunset airs are enough for us.”

“But can you get me the name?”

“Which is the spirit?”

“He is a prince of the air,” Shadow said. The Shah had coached her carefully in what she had to say. “His number is nine and his stone is the moss agate. His hour of the day is six o’clock in the morning. That’s the only information the Shah has, and do not ask me where he got it from.”

“I shall look within memory,” the ifrit said. “In return, when will I be free? And what assurance do I have that this will be so?”

“I will go away while you are looking,” Shadow answered. “When I come back, I will bring the Shah’s own Court with me, as a guarantee. Its use in my magic will set you free.”

“Then I agree,” the ifrit said, surprising her. (It was only much later, Shadow realised, that she had omitted a crucial factor from her considerations. Set on the notion that the ifrit would want its freedom above all else, it had not occurred to her that the ifrit might have other ideas.)

She left the room, seeking the Shah. She found him in the long room that adjoined the courtyard verandah.

“How are you getting on?” She might have been a new secretary, typing a report.

“I’m not sure.” Shadow was determined to treat the Shah with as much neutrality as she could muster. She told him what the ifrit had said.

“Interesting. You may borrow the ring.”

Shadow had been expecting more protest, which either meant that the Shah wanted this very badly, or that he was playing a different game altogether. She was inclined to suspect the latter.

“The ifrit will know… ” she began. The Shah blinked at her mildly.

“If it is a fake? Yes, I am aware of that. I shall just have to trust you with the genuine article, then.”

“All right,” Shadow said, warily. “I’d best get back.”

The Shah removed the heavy signet from his finger and put it into her hand, curling cool fingers around her own for a disconcerting second. “Do try to look after it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

On the way up the stairs, she looked down at the ring. It was a heavy thing of pale gold, with a carved obsidian stone. The letters were in Arabic and glided across the surface of the ring. Shadow blinked, as the Shah had done, and the letters changed. All at once, she was conscious of being watched. It was as though she held an eye in the palm of her hand. No wonder the Shah had not suggested accompanying her back to the room in which the ifrit was held; he had not needed to. He could watch, and perhaps listen, through the very mechanism that she had requested of him.

Holding the ring tightly in her fist, Shadow stepped back into the room to meet the ifrit.