“You could have fooled me!” said the soldier. “Where’s Midnight got to? She must have been frightened to death.” He made such a pother over hunting for Midnight in the bushes that Abdullah did not try to explain any more of the lore concerning djinns, which every child in Zanzib learned at school. Besides, he feared the soldier was right. Hasruel might have taken the Seven Vows that made him one of the Host of the Good, but his brother had given him the perfect excuse to break all seven of them. Good or not, Hasruel was clearly enjoying himself hugely.

Abdullah picked up the genie bottle and put it on the carpet. It promptly fell on its side and rolled off. “No, no!” the genie cried out from inside. “I’m not going on that! Why do you think I fell off it before? I hate heights!”

“Oh, don’t you start!” said the soldier. He had Midnight wrapped around one arm, kicking and scratching and biting, and demonstrating in every way she could that cats and flying carpets do not mix. This in itself was enough to make anyone irritable, but Abdullah suspected that most of the soldier’s ill humor had to do with the fact that Princess Valeria was only four years old. The soldier had been thinking of himself as engaged to Princess Valeria. Now, not unnaturally, he was feeling a fool.

Abdullah seized the genie bottle, very firmly, and settled himself on the carpet. Tactfully he said nothing about their bet although it was fairly clear to him that he had won it hands down. True, they had the carpet back, but since it was forbidden to follow the djinn, it was no use at all for rescuing Flower-in-the-Night.

After a prolonged struggle the soldier got himself and his hat and Midnight and Whippersnapper more or less securely on the carpet, too. “Give your orders,” he said. His brown face was flushed.

Abdullah snored. The carpet rose a gentle foot in the air, whereupon Midnight howled and struggled and the genie bottle shook in his hands. “O elegant tapestry of enchantment,” Abdullah said, “O carpet compiled of most complex cantrips, I pray you to move at a sedate speed toward Kingsbury, but to exercise the great wisdom woven into your fabric to make sure that we are not seen by anyone on the way.”

Obediently the carpet climbed through the mist, upward and south. The soldier clamped Midnight in his arms. A hoarse and trembling voice said from the bottle, “Do you have to flatter it so disgustingly?”

“This carpet,” said Abdullah, “unlike you, is of an ensorcellment so pure and excellent that it will listen only to the finest of language. It is at heart a poet among carpets.”