Dalzel’s trumpet shouts seemed to inspire Hasruel. He began to get the better of the soldier. Abdullah tried to get a hand loose so that he could reach out to the golden ring, dangling just by his shoulder, under Hasruel’s hooked nose. Abdullah freed his left hand. But his right hand was sweating and slipping off Hasruel’s ear. He grabbed—desperately—before he slipped off.

He had reckoned without Jamal’s dog. After lying dazed for most of a minute, it stood up, angrier than ever and full of hatred for djinns. It saw Hasruel and knew its enemy. Back across the hall it raced, hackles up and snarling, past the tiny princess and Morgan, past Princess Beatrice and Valeria, through the princesses eddying around the throne, past the crouching figure of its master, and sprang at the easiest piece of djinn to reach. Abdullah snatched his hand away just in time.

Snap! went the dog’s teeth. Gulp went the dog’s throat. After that, a puzzled look crossed the dog’s face, and it dropped to the floor, hiccuping uneasily. Hasruel howled with pain and sprang upright with both hands clapped to his nose. The soldier was hurled to the floor. Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night were flung off to either side. Abdullah dived for the hiccuping dog, but Jamal got there first and picked it up tenderly.

“Poor dog, my poor dog! Better soon!” he crooned to it, and carried it carefully away down the steps.

Abdullah dragged the dazed soldier with him and put them both in front of Jamal. “Stop, everyone!” he shouted. “Dalzel, I conjure you to stop! We have your brother’s life!”

The struggle on the throne stilled. Dalzel stood with spread wings and his eyes like furnaces again. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Where?”

“Inside the dog,” said Abdullah.

“But only until tomorrow,” Jamal said soothingly, thinking only of his hiccuping dog. “It has an irritable gut from eating too much squid. Be thankful—”

Abdullah kicked him to shut him up. “The dog has eaten the ring in Hasruel’s nose,” he said.

The dismay on Dalzel’s face told him that the genie had been right. He had guessed correctly. “Oh!” said the princesses. All eyes turned to Hasruel, huge and bowed over, with tears in his fiery eyes and both hands clasped to his nose. Djinn blood, which was clear and greenish, dripped between his great horned fingers.

“I should hab dode,” Hasruel said dismally. “It wad right udder by dose.”

The elderly Princess of High Norland detached herself from the crowd around the throne, felt in her sleeve, and reached up to Hasruel with a small lacy handkerchief. “Here you are,” she said. “No hard feelings.”