A certain smugness spread through the pile of the carpet. It held its tattered edges proudly straight and sailed sweetly forward into the golden sunlight above the mist. A small blue jet came out of the bottle and disappeared again with a yip of panic. “Well, I wouldn’t do it!” said the genie.

At first it was easy for the carpet not to be seen. It simply flew above the mist, which lay below them white and solid as milk. But as the sun climbed, golden-green fields began to appear shimmeringly through it, then white roads and occasional houses. Whippersnapper was frankly fascinated. He stood at the edge staring downward and looked so likely to tip off headfirst that the soldier kept one hand strongly around his small, bushy tail.

This was just as well. The carpet banked away toward a line of trees that followed a river. Midnight dug all her claws in, and Abdullah only just saved the soldier’s pack.

The soldier looked a little seasick. “Do we have to be this careful not to be seen?” he asked as they went gliding beside the trees like a tramp lurking in a hedge.

“I think so,” said Abdullah. “In my experience, to see this eagle among carpets is to wish to steal it.” And he told the soldier about the person on the camel.

The soldier agreed that Abdullah had a point. “It’s just that it’s going to slow us down,” he said. “My feeling is that we ought to get to Kingsbury and warn the King that there’s a djinn after his daughter. Kings give big rewards for that kind of information.” Clearly, now he had been forced to give up the idea of marrying Princess Valeria, the soldier was thinking of other ways of making his fortune.

“We shall do that, never fear,” said Abdullah, and once again did not mention their bet.

It took most of that day to reach Kingsbury. The carpet followed rivers, slid from wood to forest, and only put on speed where the land below was empty. When, in the late afternoon, they reached the city, a wide cluster of towers inside high walls that was easily three times the size of Zanzib, if not larger, Abdullah directed the carpet to find a good inn near the King’s palace and to set them down somewhere where no one would suspect how they had traveled.