Castle in the Air

“That is correct, mighty monarch,” said Abdullah. “The djinn came before we could elope.”

The Sultan glared down at him in what seemed to be horror. “This is the truth?”

“I swear,” said Abdullah, “that I have not yet so much as kissed your daughter. I had intended to seek out a magistrate as soon as we were far from Zanzib. I know what is proper. But I also felt it proper to make sure first that Flower-in-the-Night indeed wished to marry me. Her decision struck me as made in ignorance, despite the hundred and eighty-nine pictures. If you will forgive me saying so, protector of patriots, your method of bringing up your daughter is decidedly unsound. She took me for a woman when she first saw me.”

“So,” said the Sultan musingly, “when I set soldiers to catch and kill the intruder in the garden last night, it could have been disastrous. You fool,” he said to Abdullah, “slave and mongrel who dares to criticise! Of course I had to bring my daughter up as I did. The prophecy made at her birth was that she would marry the first man, apart from me, that she saw!”

Despite the chains, Abdullah straightened up. For the first time that day he felt a twinge of hope.

The Sultan was staring down the gracefully tiled and ornamented room, thinking. “The prophecy suited me very well,” he remarked. “I had long wished for an alliance with the countries of the north, for they have better weapons than we can make here, some of those weapons being truly sorcerous, I understand. But the princes of Ochinstan are very hard to pin down. So all I had to do – so I thought – was to isolate my daughter from any possibility of seeing a man – and naturally give her the best of educations otherwise, to make sure she could sing and dance and make herself pleasing to a prince. Then, when my daughter was of marriageable age, I invited the prince here on a visit of state. He was to come here next year, when he had finished subduing a land he had just conquered with those same excellent weapons. And I knew that as soon as my daughter set eyes on him, the prophecy would make sure that I had him!” His eyes turned balefully down on Abdullah. “Then my plans are upset by an insect like you!”

“That is unfortunately true, most prudent of rulers,” Abdullah admitted. “Tell me, is this prince of Ochinstan by any chance somewhat old and ugly?”

“I believe him to be hideous in the same northern fashion as these mercenaries,” the Sultan said, at which Abdullah sensed the soldiers, most of whom ran to freckles and reddish hair, stiffened rather. “Why do you ask, dog?”

“Because, if you will forgive further criticism of your great wisdom, oh nurturer of our nation, this seems somewhat unfair on your daughter,” Abdullah observed. He felt the eyes of the soldiers turn to him, wondering at his daring. Abdullah did not care. He felt he had little to lose.

“Women do not count,” said the Sultan. “Therefore it is impossible to be unfair to them.”

“I disagree,” said Abdullah, at which the soldiers stared even harder.

The Sultan glowered down at him. His powerful hands wrung the nightcap as if it were Abdullah’s neck. “Be silent, you diseased toad!” he said. “Or you will make me forget myself and order your instant execution!”