Page 34 of The Wishless Ones
Iago squawked.Sultana?Jafar dropped to his knees, his heart launching into his throat.
The queen of Maghriz had stolen his rubies.
Rohan should have been happy to shed the anxious dread that had piled on his shoulders. He was finally on his way to bringing Baba back from the dead. But when that guard had praised Jafar and Jafar had smiled, his eyes glowing red from the sun reflecting off the mosaicked glass, as if he’d never known praise before, Rohan had felt…odd.
He wondered what Jafar had written about him in his application. Could that have been one reason the House of Wisdom had even accepted him?
The shelves towered, daunting and dull. Every spine looked the same, a drab stack of papyrus shoved between two covers with a title stamped into the linen. How was he to find anything related to the golden scarab without falling asleep? How did Jafar find any of this exciting?
He could only hope his brother would find what they needed first, sparing Rohan the trouble.As he always does.
Iago’s annoying laugh cut through the library’s hushed silence. He hated that parrot.
Rohan recognized many of the names in the Lore section from Mama’s tales, from the Dendan to the Ebony Horse. He smiled when he spied an account of a magical carpet that was as trusty as a steed and capable of soaring through the skies. He flitted from memory to memory, back in that cocoon of magic Mama would weave around him, transporting him away for just a moment. Shielding him from the world.
As Jafar did now.
Contrite, Rohan traced the ornate rug with the toe of his sandal. He was witnessing Jafar’s dream come true and had decided to be bitter about it. Someone had praised his brother’s intellect, and he’d decided to grouse.
He was behaving like Baba just then, and he despised himself for it. What was the point of finding the golden scarab and tracking down the genie and making a wish to not only return Baba to life butchangehim, when Rohan was becoming just like him?
The golden scarab could wait. Rohan had a brother to celebrate. But when he crossed to the other side of the House of Wisdom, Jafar and Iago weren’t reading or browsing the shelves as he had been.
They were being escorted away.
Jafar gave the man in the sapphire-blue robes his name but received no excitement or recognition. If they didn’t know him as the boy who had stirred the House of Wisdom with his application, whywerethey treating him as though they knew him?
“Follow us,” the man said, and Jafar began to refuse before he saw the light bounce off the rubies one last time as the Sultana slipped them into her dress pocket. He needed those rubies. Obeying the man might be the only way to retrieve them. “Come, Sultana.”
The Sultana nodded, and though Jafar recognized the man as her royal vizier, he appeared to be more like the queen’s keeper. Jafar had never before considered that though a king or queen might seem supreme, someone else might pull the strings from the shadows.
It was an interesting distribution of power, one it seemed the vizier enjoyed, for there was cunning in the man’s dark gaze, a sternness about him that Jafar couldn’t tell if it was being used for the Sultana, or against her.
“Where are you taking me?” Jafar asked.
The royal vizier looked back at him, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “The palace.”
He had only just arrived at the House of Wisdom and didn’t want to leave just yet. He certainly never thought he’d be escorted away by the queen of Maghriz and her royal vizier. Or find himself at the whim of another man old enough to be his father, but he needed those rubies.
“You’re not really going to let them order us around, are you?” Iago snapped in his ear.
“I am indeed,” Jafar said with a sigh.
“Why I oughta—” Iago began grumbling beneath his breath, but took no initiative to leave. Jafar hid a smile.
He steeled himself with a heavy inhale, and as the two of them followed the Sultana and the man in the sapphire-blue robes toward the great doors of the House of Wisdom, movement caught his eye. Rohan! He was emerging from the shelves.
“Wait!” Jafar said, albeit a little too loudly. Iago cleared his throat. Jafar swallowed. It wasn’t every day one met a queen, let alone the queen ofMaghriz.
Both she and her vizier halted and followed his gaze to Rohan.
“There are two of you?” the vizier asked, sounding perplexed.
“He’s my brother,” Jafar said, confused. “Can he visit the palace as well?”
He didn’t know why he was being escorted to the palace, but that was the most neutral way to put it. He didn’t think he was in trouble. After they’d stumbled upon him and stared like he was a dead man returned, the Sultana had said a single word.
Him.
