Abdullah looked down at the genie’s bottle, intending to put the cork back into it now he had arrived. He was annoyed to find he seemed to have dropped the cork, either in the desert or on the journey. Oh, well, he thought. He held the bottle up to his face. “Where is the person who can help me find Flower-in-the-Night?” he asked.

A wisp of steam smoked from the bottle, looking much bluer in the light of this strange land. “Asleep on a bench in front of the Red Lion,” the wisp said irritably, and withdrew back into the bottle. The genie’s hollow voice came from inside it. “He appeals to me. He shines with dishonesty.”

Chapter Nine

IN WHICH ABDULLAH ENCOUNTERS AN OLD SOLDIER

Abdullah walked toward the inn. When he got closer, he saw that there was indeed a man dozing on one of the wooden settles that had been placed outside the inn. There were tables there, too, suggesting that the place also served food. Abdullah slid into a settle behind one of the tables and looked dubiously across at the sleeping man.

He looked like an outright ruffian. Even in Zanzib, or among the bandits, Abdullah had never seen such dishonest lines as there were on this man’s tanned face. A big pack on the ground beside him made Abdullah think at first that he might be a tinker—except that he was clean-shaven. The only other men Abdullah had seen without beards or mustaches were the Sultan’s northern mercenaries. It was possible this man was a mercenary soldier. His clothes did look like the broken-down remains of some kind of uniform, and he wore his hair in a single pigtail down his back in the way the Sultan’s men did. This was a fashion the men of Zanzib found quite disgusting, for it was rumored that the pigtail was never undone or washed. Looking at this man’s pigtail, draped over the back of the settle where he slept, Abdullah could believe this. Neither it nor anything else about the man was clean. All the same, he looked strong and healthy, although he was not young. His hair under its dirt seemed to be iron gray.

Abdullah hesitated to wake the fellow. He did not look trustworthy. And the genie had openly admitted that he granted wishes in a way that would cause havoc. This man may lead me to Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah mused, but he will certainly rob me on the way.

While he hesitated, a woman in an apron came to the inn doorway, perhaps to see if there were customers outside. Her clothes made her into a plump hourglass shape which Abdullah found very foreign and displeasing. “Oh!” she said, when she saw Abdullah. “Were you waiting to be served, sir? You should have banged on the table. That’s what they all do around here. What’ll you have?”