Page 26 of The Wishless Ones
Jafar hesitated, and Rohan didn’t know why that made him feel so good about himself. Jafar considered the path to their left, which was darker but seemed linear, and then he looked to the right. “But it’s a maze.”
“And I can guide you two through it,” Iago replied.
Rohan could see his brother considering the parrot’s route. “Jafar, I—”
Iago swerved between them, flapping his wings at eye level with Jafar. “Do you trust me?”
Jafar took a deep breath, and Rohan couldn’t see if he nodded, but he heard his decision loud and clear: “We don’t have time. Iago, lead the way.”
He disappeared into the fray, Iago’s bright red form guiding from above, zooming through date palms and hanging laundry.
Rohan gritted his teeth and followed, trying to stay on Jafar’s heels.
Jafar veered right, between two posts carved with attempts at inspiring inscriptions, and Rohan struggled to keep up. He might have been more muscled, but Jafar was far taller. At a particularly gruff shout, some part of him seized up, thinking of Baba. Thinking of the fire. Thinking of death.
I killed him.Rohan didn’t welcome the thought, but he had no power to stop it.
If only he were more like Jafar. Certain and calm. Confident and fearless and—
“This way!” Iago yelled, leading them through a massive hole in the wall.
—stupidly never questioning that bird even when Rohan wished he would. Jafar toppled an abandoned cart behind them to slow the guards even further. They finally came to a wide alley, clear of people and secluded from view.
Iago landed on a window ledge. “You’re welcome.”
“Well done, Iago,” Jafar panted, and Rohan hated the grin that spread across the parrot’s face. It was also a little terrifying.
Iago rose to the skies and returned, nearly diving into a line of laundry dancing in the dry breeze. “It looks like they’re catching up.”
The alley stretched to either side of them. Jafar looked over at Iago. “Which way?”
Rohan stepped between them with the map in hand and squared his shoulders. “Left.”
“Are you sure?” Jafar asked, eyeing the rubble in their path.
“Yes, Jafar,” Rohan said, not the least bit certain, but he wasn’t going to let the bird take any more credit or any more of Jafar’s attention. Baba was gone, Jafar was all he had left, and if Iago kept at it, Rohan would take care of him, too.
Rohan paused but didn’t have time to dwell on his dark thoughts before Jafar took off to the left, glancing back only to make sure Rohan was keeping up. Iago flew away with a loud harrumph, but Rohan couldn’t have cared less. He and his brother ducked through clothes hung to dry, darted past a man slipping a woman coin, and then meandered through barrels waiting to be toppled.
Until they skidded to a breathless halt.
A dead end.
The alley ended at a building, tall and imposing. There was no way around it.
“There they are!”
And the guards had found them again.
“Well,” Jafar mused. “Too late to go right.”
“Too bad you two can’t fly,” Iago snarked.
Rohan wanted to crush the bird’s skull. He wanted to be swallowed whole by the ground and freed of this embarrassment. He wanted—
“Wait. Jafar! There are plenty of footholds,” Iago called from the sky. “You can make the climb if you hurry.”
The building was lined with windows, worn wooden pegs, deformed stones, and tiny windcatchers. And if they could climb the precarious stack of crates in front of them, they would get halfway up the building.
