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Chapter One

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering...--Colossians 3:12-13

Friday, September 19, AD 1259

Domo to Rhodon, Constantinople

Arjumand abd al Warda, Protector of the House of the Rose, stood unhappily before his consort Sharibet in the room called the Red Solar. Wide windows, high up on the wall above the red tapestry that provided the chamber's dominant color, overlooked an inner courtyard shadowed by twilight gloom.

"I know I promised..." He heard his own whining, and wished he had more control over his voice, or over his fate.

Sharibet frowned and put down her pen. "Yes, you did promise to Transform my daughter Nadira, and so you shall."

"I promised 'if God wills it'!" he countered, drawing from his flawless memory the regrettable words he had said on that rainy Christmas evening in Acre, two years ago.

"You forget, mon coeur, that we djinni are as very gods to the House, who are my children. And I do will that you make my daughter Nadira one of us."

"I don't will it." Arjumand insisted. "She's not...she's...I can't explain it, but it would be wrong to Transform her."

"If you can't explain, then you cannot change my mind." Sharibet picked up a parchment from her desk and pointedly began reading it.

Clearly dismissed, he huffed and turned to go.

"Arjumand," she said sweetly, just as he opened the door.

He paused, hating his weakness for doing so. "Yes, lady?" Impotent rage swirled through him, until he could feel it surrounding his body, charged and prickly as the air before a lightning storm.

"Be sure to check the pigeons this evening. I'm waiting for word of Lady Cecilia's safe arrival in Ypres."

"I'll remember." He never forgot anything, these days--except his courage. Not that he'd had much to begin with.

"Until later, then."

He stalked out, wishing he could hit something. Or someone. Perhaps one of the men of the House might spar with him later, to let him work off some of his frustration.

Damn tradition.

* * *

Saturday, September 20, AD 1259

As squalling winds rattled tree branches in the courtyard outside the children's wing, Nadira bint Abdulaziz handed her son off to the waiting nanny. The child was heavy now, his first teeth well in. Finally weaned!

She rubbed her sore breasts and washed them as the nursemaid burped the baby. Smoothing her camisia back over her arms, Nadira enjoyed the cool richness of silk upon her skin, and thought of the gold she would soon be entitled to wear. Soon she would be a djinniah, one of the lords of the House of the Rose.

The nursemaid disappeared through the tall doorway, and Nadira began to comb her hair, anticipation singing through her. Though she had been as exalted a servant as the House had known in a thousand years--a Seer, able to identify the auras of the reborn--she had not been the equal of the djinni, who could see the memories of the past, and return them to the kin.

Soon she would become one of those gods of the people of the House--at long, painful last, after so many babies. Babies were fine as long as they didn't talk. Before then, they were simple bundles of need. After, they became too complex, too full of questions and desires that weren't simple at all, like her eldest, Khalil. He wanted so much from her: loving attention to his school recitations, tender caresses, and more; some sense that she truly cared for him, she guessed. Well, soon he would be disappointed, poor thing.

She would have her Crown of Service, and Sharibet could keep the sons she had demanded for her House.

Soon, she would have the honor and the immortality she had craved since first she was Raised and Named, and promised a gambler's bargain: after this life, if you are reborn into the House, you can live again, with your memories restored. But if you are not born into the House, only if you are Found by a djinn or a Seer will you remember your lives before.

Too many ifs for her.

She sauntered to the barred window of the nursery and stood listening to the music of the city: brawling voices, merchants singing the praises of their wares, and the constant ringing of the Christian bells. She missed the calls to prayer that she had heard all her mortal life, growing up in Alexandria and Baghdad.

Soon, soon she would be liberated from this prison, no longer a feeble woman in need of a guard, but herself a Protector, more powerful than ten men, and a wielder of magic besides. Soon...She only had to endure Arjumand's touch, his paralyzing kindness, and his burning indifference. She only had to survive her Transformation, eluding a terrifying death brought far too near for comfort. She only need shed her mortality and don the garment of immortality.

Her hand gripped one section of the lattice, tightly enough that the rich color of her skin fled her knuckles, leaving them dun as desert sand. Soon, she would breathe the air of freedom. Or she would cease to breathe at all.

She stood at the window for a long time, treasuring breath.

* * *

Saturday, September 27, AD 1260

One more chance. Arjumand slipped, naked, into Sharibet's bed. One more try to convince her in the darkness they shared.

"Mmm?" Sharibet said sleepily.

By now, Arjumand knew very well how to please his consort. She required no distracting variations. Her responses were simple, but never safely so.

They shared blood, with its ecstasy and the guardedness that characterized all his interactions with his lover. He saw the stair-girdled temples in her memories, and the lyre, broken on the floor from Menelaos's grief-stricken rage. Repetition had dulled any heat or flavor from those memories. Oh, yes, yes, the same old scenes replaying...

"Ahhh," he whispered into her ear. He kissed her, and stroked her where he knew she liked, until she shivered, murmuring her satisfaction with him.

When she was relaxed and pliant against his body, he whispered, "I don't think Transforming Nadira will be good for the House."

Sharibet shoved him off the bed. "Get out!"

He landed with a thump on the thick carpet. "Sharibet..."

She hissed, but he persisted, spilling out the words. "I know it's Tradition! I know she earned it! I know all these things! But I know Nadira, too, and she won't be a good djinniah for the House."

Sharibet groaned. "I appreciate your diligence in this matter, Arjumand," she said with weary formality, absurd in the aftermath of their lovemaking. "But you must let it rest. She will be Transformed. You promised to do so. She has earned her right to it. Whether she deserves it or not is not at issue. Whatever she does later, we must bear." She smoothed the silk sheet with her hand. "I wish you would agree to be Raised and Named. Dealing with your continual ignorance is wearying."

Darkness thundered in his ears. "Why must we set ourselves up for tragedy?"

"For gods' sake!" She pulled a pillow over her face.

He didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't leave.

"Gah!" She threw the pillow at him.

He caught it just before it hit him squarely in the chest. It gave up a burst of rose perfume that smothered all other scents.

"Arjumand, Arjumand. We can't know what she will do. She may surprise us. If you haven't learned the value of surprise by now, then you need, as I have said before, to be Raised and Named. Now go away, and let me sleep."

He tried to understand. He tried to curb his disappointment. But he could only storm into his adjoining chamber. Once he slammed the door, he lit a dozen oil lamps all at once, driving the air with his aura hands into sparks of heat that ignited the wicks and sent light gleaming from the silk that upholstered every surface. He wanted to smash something, to release the anger that surged through him, but instead he carefully extinguished all but one of the lamps he had just lit, sealing the air from each wick in turn until it died, smoking.

He couldn't even think the words he wanted to. Words like fool, stupid...Dangerous. No matter to whom he addressed them.

He let the emotion dissipate. No help for it. He'd tried. He'd done his best. As Sharibet had said, whatever happened, they must bear it.

He stood, contemplating his own, lonely bed, until he went for a bath, instead.

* * *

Eve of the feast of the Archangel Michael, Sunday, September 28, AD 1259

Nadira found it most unfair that, with food smells permeating the House in honor of her coming Transformation, she was not allowed to eat anything. She hadn't been allowed to eat any of her favorite foods in weeks. Today there would be no eating at all, no touching anything, no shopping in the market, no exercise since her bath, nothing but water and herbs to purge her body.

She almost missed feeding her baby. Her breasts had hurt for days. She had been preparing for endless weeks. Endless dullness. Endless effort.

Where was the honor, the excitement of her Transformation?

Sitting on a low cushion in the women's quarters, surrounded by chattering, excited kinswomen, having her finger and toenails trimmed, her palms painted with henna designs, her eyebrows plucked, her hair everywhere below her eyebrows torn out ten painful strands at a time, she didn't want to admit she was afraid.

"More water," she said, just to watch her sisters and her cousins scurry to find a cup of the special herbal tisane, and carefully pass it from hand to hand with many smiles. And then to have Philomena, Grandmother of the House in Constantinople, present it to her with a bow: now that was more like what she had hoped for, from her Transformation.

She opened her Seer's eyes and fought to control her grimace at what she saw: the ugly mustard color of jealousy, flaring from the elder's aura. Worse: the old woman's Raising and Naming mark rose like a plume of fire high above her forehead. Philomena wasn't only an elder in body, then. She was perhaps as old as Sharibet herself.

But she was doomed, Nadira told herself, doomed, as all mortals were, to repeat the endless cycle of birth and death that she herself was escaping tonight.

No need to wonder where jealousy sprang from.

She viewed the auras of all the women present. Ugly mustard. Ugly mustard. Blue and indigo--how nice, they were detached from the pettiness of life and happy for her. Red anger. That was one cousin quarreling with another. Black sickness.

Should she warn the woman? Diagnose the disease?

She drank the greenish tisane proffered by Philomena and deliberated. No one else had the Sight. Despite Sharibet's breeding program, very few of the kin developed the ability. No one here would know that she had looked at them with her Seer's vision, unless she mentioned that she had done so. And if she did, they'd never forget that she knew exactly what they were feeling. Then she would be even more alone, on this evening before her Transformation. Afterward, she promised herself, she would tell the woman. In private. As a djinniah, a Protector of the House, protecting the family from small ills, as well as large ones.

If she did not waken from her Transformation? Another of the djinni would see the woman's aura. They would tell her. There was really no need to tell her now. Nadira shivered.

"Are you cold, habibah?" her sister Amina asked solicitously, leaning close, calling her 'beloved' as she had when they were still little girls together. "Would you like us to light a brazier for you?"

The room was packed with females, and the combined body heat was raising a glow of perspiration on all of them. Nadira looked at her sister, and fought to close her Seer's eyes. She didn't want to see ugly mustard, the cherry red of hate, and the plume of ancient history in her sister's aura. "No, I--" her fingers twitched as one of the henna painters missed a stroke.

"Sorry!" the girl cried, and bent to her task more carefully.

Firmly looking at her sister with everyday sight, Nadira smiled with teeth-gritted graciousness. "No, but I thank you."

Amina nodded, and went back to mixing the next batch of henna paste.

Nadira let her family complete their ministrations, thinking, Everyone is older than I am, but I am going to be a djinniah before any of them. She tried to remember why that had seemed such a good thing to her, just yesterday.

The sun moved against the sky. Evening approached, and dinner smells intensified. A dinner she could not eat. She would never eat again. After tonight, blood would be her only food. Her stomach growled.

"More water," she ordered, and tried with all her strength to keep it from leaking from her eyes.

* * *

The family members--upwards of fifty people from Constantinople and nearby cities--gathered in the hall that had once been an atrium when the house was new, before earthquakes and fires and long centuries of occupation altered every feature. They came to feast and celebrate the exaltation of their kinswoman to djinniah.

Arjumand knew he should moderate his surliness and pretend to participate in the occasion, but what was happening was wrong, and somebody should stop it. But nobody did.

The number of people and the volume of their chatter made him nervous. He swiveled to glare at an impromptu dancer, who was leaping in place and clapping his hands, singing some yowling ditty at the top of his lungs. Nobody cared that Arjumand was annoyed. They were too busy enjoying themselves.

He tried to keep from glaring at Nadira, garbed in bridal finery of costly silk, and burdened with a cap of gold coins worth a city's ransom. By the way she played with the coins, he knew she hadn't been informed that they were only a loan.

At the end of his rope, Arjumand contemplated ways that she might not survive her Transformation. It was tempting. Could he actively prevent her from awakening? No.

Fine Protector he was! To see a threat, and not be able to act on it. If he could only see the future, and know whether his action, or his inaction, would most harm the House.

Damn! He slammed his glass goblet full of fresh lamb's blood down on the table, drawing a narrow-eyed scowl from Sharibet. A hasty servitor brought him a less-clotted cup. He waved the server away. More blood was not what he needed. He was going to drink far too much of it later tonight.

The evening went on interminably. He knew everyone here, and everyone knew him, but he didn't want to talk to anyone tonight. He wished he could go home, back to the simplicity of his youth in green Artois, but nostalgia was useless. He couldn't even take refuge in getting drunk, for djinni digestion did not allow it. What could he do? How could he get out of this? He could just fly away--so tempting. But he'd be flying away from all his responsibilities, all the oaths he'd sworn, and from the refuge that the House afforded him. Bah! Was he only concerned for his own skin, after all?

Sharibet glanced at him, smiling with one corner of her lip curled.

He drained the cup he held in one gulp, trying to erase her mockery. Unbidden, dark temptation returned. Drink Nadira's life. Fail to complete her Transformation, and blame it on his own incomplete memories.

Self-disgust made him raise the cup to his lips. Unpleasantly cold blood slid past his teeth. A whiff of the servant's perfume was the only clue that he'd missed seeing her refill his cup.

Around him, the party continued unabated.

* * *

Too soon, the time arrived when he had to retire from the banquet with Nadira. Surrounded by family and djinni, all wishing her the best and easiest of Transformations, and slyly teasing Arjumand about the hardship of his coming duties, he plodded toward his suite, like a reluctant bridegroom saddled with an ugly bride.

It was disconcerting to see Abdulaziz, his valet of many years, standing at the doorway, flushed with pride at his daughter's success in achieving the ultimate prize awarded to the kin, and apparently not caring that Arjumand was about to have sex with her again, as he'd taken her virginity a decade ago.

Arjumand smiled sickly at him, replied, <Yes, I know,> twenty times to Sharibet's hasty, last-minute mind-to-mind instructions and reminders regarding the procedure, and shut the door firmly, finally alone with Nadira, who had aged gracefully since she had been his concubine. Her skin was still soft, and her figure was only minimally changed since bearing four sons--or was it five? Arjumand had never bothered to keep track. None of them were his. Thank God.

She was standing there, rubbing her forehead. He supposed she must have a headache from all that gold hanging around her face. "Are you well?"

"Yes, lord," she whispered.

"Do you need help to, um, disrobe?"

"No, lord."

"Good. Ah, good."

She tugged vainly at the coin-laden cap encircling her skull.

He sighed. "Let me help."

Her hands made an abortive movement, as if to protect the gold as he moved close to her and unpinned the heavy ornament. But she consciously straightened her fingers and let him set the thing down on a shelf. Six or so chains encircled her throat, and he had to peel them off one by one so they didn't tangle. Bracelets from wrist to elbow, a triple-stranded belt, and anklets also needed removing.

When she was finally free of it all, she looked sixteen, silk billowing around her, almost ready to float up to the gilded ceiling. A small smile appeared and disappeared on her daintily painted lips as he surveyed her.

"Thank you, lord," she said, looking at him from under eyelashes darkened with kohl.

By God's bones, let me get through this night with my dignity intact!

She took the initiative now, reaching out to grasp the gorgeously embroidered tablion of his mantle to draw it off his shoulder. He shrugged off the heavy garment, which fell to the floor behind him like a foothill between himself and the door. Another tug or two, and his tunic became a layer of snow on the growing mountain range. There was no escape in that direction, anyway.

Carefully he lifted her loose tunica over her head, together with her camisia, embroidered at upper arm, elbow, and wrist, to match the glittering hem of her tunica. When she was also naked, they moved together toward the huge bed dominating the room. He extinguished the candles with several hands of air. He didn't want to see what he was doing with Nadira.

When she squeaked at the unexpected darkness, and stood, blind, unable to step up to the high bed, he wanted to slap his forehead for his foolishness. He took her by the shoulders and the back of her thighs, lifted her, and placed her on the bed.

At the first touch of his aura she gasped, then her hands spread on the bed's soft surface, testing its limit. She relaxed and changed her posture subtly, raising her knee, and tilting her pelvis invitingly.

He smelled her musk, overpowering the clean fragrance of roses and mint washed into the linens of his bed.

He remembered her body. He had made love to her often when he had first become a djinn, trying to make a baby to entrap--or, as they said, rescue--a Lost soul for the House. He knew her soul from drinking her blood and seeing the persistent ambition beneath her outward compliance. It was almost enough to make his prick shrivel. He wanted to stop here. Just walk away. But no, he had to uphold the House's damned tradition. Maybe if he just concentrated on the sensations and forgot the hateful person inhabiting this delightful body...

He lay down on the bed and began to caress her. The woman beneath him made encouraging noises, squeaks and not-quite-soundless catches of breath. He couldn't tell whether she was making those noises for herself, or for his benefit. He didn't care. His task was to Transform her, step by ritualized magical step, into a djinniah. Sharibet had drummed the steps into his memory. First, the mingling of essences--not too difficult, and supposed to be a pleasure.

The woman squirmed as he moved energetically, holding one breast in his hand, licking an ear with his tongue. It worked until she sighed his old name in mimicry of passion. "Roland!"

Jarred beyond his ability to pretend, he rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed, trembling with the effort it took to restrain his urge to beat her.

"Lord?" she said in a small voice.

"Nadira," he replied, not trusting himself to say more. He had abandoned the name and the life of Roland d'Agincourt, Crusader, when Shajar ad Durr, the ruling Sultana of Egypt, had given him a new name fit for a djinn of the House of the Rose. Only his late brother, Robert, homeward bound from Acre to Artois, had called him by that name since then. Arjumand had worked so hard to forget that life, those loved ones, hiding the memories from Sharibet's prying mind.

With one word, Nadira brought back everything he had been hiding from himself: Michel, his Templar cousin, even now being recruited by Cecilia in Ypres as another Protector for the House of the Rose. Whether she wanted him solely for the House, or to ease the dangerous obsession of her current consort, Dominic, Arjumand did not know, but he had done everything he could to hide Michel from Dominic's obsessive search.

Michel was a grown man, with all the resources of the Templars behind him, but his sister, Mathilde, lived in Ypres too. Roland had loved Mathilde without reservation before he'd joined King Louis's Crusade. He had tried so hard to keep her safely isolated from this House of sorcerers, even if it meant he would never see her again--or her daughter. He couldn't stand the thought of linking his old life to the strangeness of this House and their djinni. Why did Nadira have to remind him? Why couldn't he keep a single piece of himself unsullied by all the damned magic?

"Lord?" she asked again.

"Be silent." He didn't want to hit her. She hadn't done anything on purpose. She was just Nadira. He felt her cowering in the darkness beside him. He reined in his anger. That she feared him...hurt. Yet he wanted her to fear. He wanted her to di--Breathe, he commanded himself. Breathe. Don't think. Don't feel.

Somewhere in the House a girl laughed. A young man's voice rose in song, and happy clapping accompanied him. Arjumand clutched the linen sheet and willed himself to be calm, to be reasonable.

In the silence between his own breaths, he heard Nadira's panting. The irregular, terrified rhythm of it incensed him. "Nadira," he said softly.

"Y-yes, lord?"

"You are not to call me by that name. That name is dead, forgotten."

Her gasp reminded him that Forgetting was the House's greatest curse. He sighed.

"Let's get back to step three, shall we?" he said, as gently as he could. Sharibet had led him through each step and corrected his practice on pathetic little monkeys, purchased at great expense for his training. Afterwards, he had killed them, and burned their changed bodies into ash. He knew what to do. He knew how to do it correctly. All he had to do was complete this Transformation, as he had been commanded to do. As he had promised.

Chapter Two

Have you a scripture that promises you whatever you choose? Or have We sworn a covenant with you--a covenant binding until the Day of Resurrection--that you shall have what you yourselves ordain?--Surah 68:37-39 "The Pen," The Holy Qur'an

His unresolvable problem resolved, Arjumand reached to touch her. The woman had gone dry, waiting for him. He didn't push, although he could have. He caressed, and stroked, and murmured kind words (he had cultivated a talent for lying) until she was ready for him. He applied all the skills he'd learned from Sharibet until the woman shattered with ecstasy.

Step four of Transformation stated: "when the applicant is relaxed and drowsy, begin to drink his or her blood. At this point the applicant should not show any resistance. Unconsciousness may result after the loss of one part in ten of the total volume of blood. Death may result after loss of two parts in ten, therefore time this step carefully."

At the first taste he convulsed, coming hard, seeing the pictures through the bond formed by blood: the triumph of Seeing Robert's aura, and knowing she had gained the House's greatest prize...her nights with Roland: hot slick lovemaking, impersonal kindness, and failure to capture his heart, or his child...discovering in her own Raising and Naming that she was a lowly newcomer to the House...waiting impatiently for her older sister's Raising and Naming--and then the shock of meeting the different person Amina had become...

Beyond the first, rapturous taste, the deeper memories: fumbling in darkness for the last cup of water, and spilling it...fighting a desperate battle, scythes and knives running red with blood...she sits, hour by impatient hour, crosslegged, scooping the brain matter out, bit by bit, through the nostril of the Osiris cat, soon to be interred in a funeral rite more splendid than she, a slave to the temple, will ever be granted...

True to Sharibet's instructions, after about two pints, the woman's eyes rolled up into her head. He was sorely tempted to continue drinking, but he stopped, as directed, closing the wounds he'd made. Now for step five, the hardest of all. He had expected to quail at this most complicated task, but instead he felt strong, poised, and ready.

He wrapped the wings of his aura around the woman's body and through it, filling all the interstices of flesh and bone, fluid and air. He concentrated, opening his Seer's eyes to view the energy of her spirit. With multiple hands of air, he grasped her aura from the tip of the small plume that showed she had been Raised and Named, to the soles of her feet. With one mighty jerk, he tore it asunder.

The body under him writhed with pain. He held it securely in his physical arms, while his hands of air kept her amorphous aura from joining together. Biting his tongue, he raised a drop of blood; then he thrust it into her mouth, ensuring his blood touched the soft tissues at the back of her throat.

His blood would provide a template for the physical Transformation. If he'd been Raised and Named, Sharibet had told him, he would already have the memory of the changes he would induce in her body, the sum of which would make a djinn. Without memory, he must follow a map. The changes were clear and simple, like moving colored beads on a string. He just had to make so many of them, over and over.

How long did it take? Minutes? Hours? When the woman's aura stayed separated of its own accord, he allowed himself to collapse. He made one more check with his Seer's eyes to confirm that the nascent wings of a djinn wavered and flared from Nadira's body. They were tiny, hardly larger than her natural aura had been. But they would grow a few fingerwidths per century, so long as she lived Transformed.

<Well done, mon coeur,> Sharibet's mental voice whispered to him. She was playing her lute in her chambers, waiting for him to finish.

<I don't agree,> he snarled.

<I know.> Her voice was fainter than the ringing of fatigue in his ears. <But it is the Law. She earned it.>

Stupid damned law.

* * *

Thursday, October 1, AD 1259

Nadira didn't so much waken as slowly come to realize she existed. She felt a repetitive vibration somewhere nearby. Slap. Slap. Slap.

There was sensation, as well: some kind of pressure. Why was there motion? Sound? She felt heavy with a sleep so profound that she could not remember herself, her name, her place. She had a body. That was what felt heavy.

The tapping continued. As awareness increased she realized that it was coming from herself. Oh--that was her hand. That was a wall. She was calling for help. She was pounding on the wall behind her in order to summon assistance. She had been left here, alone, for some reason. Who was she calling? Why did she need help? There was a sense that something had happened. Something painful. She recognized pain now, in the bones of her hand, hitting against the unforgiving solidity of the wall.

She stopped. Her fingers throbbed. She felt different, although she couldn't remember what she should feel like. What had happened to her?

She tried to blink, but her eyelids were gummed shut. She tore them apart, letting in too-bright light. She squinted, seeing a pink halo. She brought a distant hand close, closer, until it bumped into her forehead, her nose. She took a breath, and felt a momentous vibration--a heartbeat in her chest. She opened her Seer's eyes, and gasped. In front of her a glory of light shone with silver-green and red radiance, shaped like wings.

"Leila!" Nadira gasped, her memories crowding into consciousness, her normal sight taking in the details of the room. Her own room, her own bed. Windows dark with night. No lamp lit, but she could see everything, including the Crown of Service djinniah sitting beside her bed.

"It is good to meet again, little sister," Leila said. "I'm glad you have awakened." She lifted up a jug, marked with the seal of the djinni.

Nadira knew what was in it and what the wedge-shaped mark upon the seal meant. The only thing she didn't know was how the blood would taste. She covered her mouth with her hands. Not yet! She didn't want to know just yet.

Leila waited patiently. Her silence drove Nadira to speech. "It is good to meet again, sister."

"Elder sister, you must say," Leila corrected.

"Elder sister," Nadira repeated, puzzled. "Why are you here? Where is Ro--Lord Arjumand?"

The sadness in Leila's face intensified. "He is not here."

"But isn't he supposed to--? Doesn't he want to know how my Transformation--?" Nadira stumbled to a halt and covered her face with her hands. He had been so angry, so cold. "He hates me, doesn't he? For failing to give him a son."

Leila gave an exasperated sigh. "He doesn't hate you. You're of the House. You did your best to please him, and he knows that. He kept very strict watch over your Transformation."

"They why isn't he here for my awakening?"

"He has other duties."

Nadira groaned. The sense of injury, of rejection, burned, a familiar, hated pain. But when the burning persisted, she identified it, at last, as hunger.

She put out her hand. "Give me--"

Leila pulled the jar out of reach.

"What are you doing? I'm hungry!" She tried to lunge forward, to grab the jar, but invisible hands held her down.

"Nadira, newly-created djinniah of the House of the Rose," Leila said formally. "Your life has been, and shall be, a life of service to the House. The House provides you shelter, and the requirements of your life: food, clothing, and tools. In return, you must swear to accept only what the House willingly gives to you, and to seek this food nowhere else, without permission. You must swear, Nadira, and your oath must be binding."

Her hunger was growing hotter, stronger. She feared she might blacken in its burning. "What? No! I want--"

"You must pass many tests, younger sister, before the end of your ordeal." Leila warned. "If you fail any of these tests, you will be killed. So swear to me now."

"Live or die at your whim?"

"Have you ever wondered why there are so few djinni? The life of a djinn is hard. The House cannot afford to have you fail. The family must be protected. This is the first Rule: while in the House, you must never drink any blood not willingly offered to you."

The fire in Nadira's belly raged. How could she quench it? A promise is easily given. "I swear to it!"

"So heard. So witnessed." Leila broke the seal, and handed her the jug.

The liquid was laced with herbs whose names and properties she had been taught. She recognized the sweet taste of oranges. But the blood--All the children of the House who guessed the secret of their djinni Protectors licked their blood from little cuts, but she had never imagined it would taste like this. It was salt and iron, with an imprint of pain from a swiftly-slashed throat. The echo of death was in it.

She swallowed, and tried to make sense of it. Was it a popping? No, an eggshell cracking. No, a...she couldn't encompass it, or describe it. But she knew that breaking the seal of death gave her power, even from the drained and stored blood of a lamb.

Blood. She been afraid of this. Blood was supposed to be life, but she was only drinking death. And she could not stop until the jar was empty.

"How do you feel?" Leila asked, as she took the jar away.

Nadira felt energized and sick. She wanted to hide, and at the same time accept the accolades of her kin. "Fine," she said, inadequately.

"Then let's go to the bath."

They will bow to me. I am mistress of them all!

But to Nadira's dismay, the house, or this wing of it at least, appeared deserted. It was disappointing, but she started to relax a bit in the steam room of the bath house. The cleansing oil slathered on her skin was fresh, and Leila's hands were practiced at scraping it off. The water in the pool was cool and made her feel lovely and light, but Leila, who usually chattered nonstop, was being unusually, almost rudely, silent.

Nadira tried to occupy herself with the pleasures of breathing, and moving, and seeing everything in spite of the dark. But Leila's--was it preoccupation?--became annoying. Or was she jealous? Nadira was afraid to look, and see for sure.

She waved ripples in the perfumed water. The kin had spent a week's income to scent this for her. She tried to feel grateful, and satisfied, but it was hard to muster up such enthusiasm in the face of Leila's silence. Was she supposed to start the conversation? Ask questions such as when would she start protecting them? And from what? Well, she wouldn't! During her entire childhood she had been told, "You'll understand when you're older." Now she would grow as old as they were.

Then the room began to spin in dizzy swoops. In the air around her body something congealed. It was not quite pain, but for all that, it was the most awful feeling she had ever experienced. They had told her that Transformation might kill her. Sharibet had carefully explained that it was not a death and resurrection, but a complete alteration of her body and aura. However, right this moment, she felt three days dead and rotting.

"Leila?" she whimpered.

"Time to get you back to bed, I see." Leila helped her up out of the pool, wrapped her in a robe, and carried her back to her room.

"What's happening?" Nadira managed to ask, although her voice cracked like ninety-year-old Philomena's.

"You're a new djinniah. Stay calm. Over-exerting your emotions only makes it worse. And, when you speak to me, you should say, 'elder sister.'"

Nadira lay on her bed, helpless and wracked with an invisible agony that never touched her flesh, but ate down into her bones. How wonderful her life was now! O, Merciful!

* * *

In the dark, she felt like a horseshoe on an anvil, red hot, and beaten with hammers. She didn't want to sleep any more, not with the frightening dreams that had stalked her into wakefulness.

"Leila?" she croaked.

No one answered. Had they left her alone to die? "Leila!" Was she going to have to crawl out of her bed in search of someone? What if she really were dying? "Leila!"

Now she heard light footsteps approach outside her room. The door opened and gently closed. Amber radiance nearly blinded her. Hurriedly, she closed her Seer's eyes. She hadn't even known she'd opened them! But when she opened her physical eyes, the radiance was still blinding.

"Leila is busy right now, daughter," came a chiming voice.

O, Annihilator! Sharibet! Nadira shrank back from the candle's glare. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to--to--"

"To summon me? Of course not. I know you would never commit such discourtesy. You're a well-brought-up daughter of my House."

Dark guilt churned amidst the anvil's heat, then a cool, small hand rested briefly on Nadira's forehead. "Still burning. You must rest." The hand withdrew. A rustling sound, then footsteps, retreating.

"Mother Sharibet? Please, I'm hungry."

A sigh. "Of course, child. Why do you think I came?"

Nadira wanted to sink through the bed, through the floor, and hide forever as there came the unmistakable sound of a clay seal being broken, a waft of citrus, the cool, smooth feel of the jug between her fingers, and blood, sliding past her tongue, bringing life to her body. She shuddered with the intensity of it. "Thank you, Mother Sharibet."

The jar disappeared. "You're welcome, daughter." A gentle hand briefly brushed hair away from Nadira's hot and sweaty face. "You'll come into your strength soon enough."

"Yes, Mother Sharibet."

The footsteps pattered away toward the door. Nadira dared to unseal her eyelids, but dark gold still shone brighter than the sun. Sharibet's voice came once more. "Daughter, you should remember, when you address Leila, to call her 'elder sister.'"

Then she was gone. Nadira wanted to groan and throw the sheets over her head, but she realized: if she could hear Sharibet's footsteps going away down the corridor, then Sharibet could hear her, as well. It was a terrifying thought.

Why had she ever wanted this Transformation?

After the light footsteps vanished into the depths of the house, Nadira let herself groan. But as she shivered there, she knew that deliberately acting on her impulses smacked of the childish.

Secretive child, they'd called her. How satisfying it had been when her Seer's eyes were discovered. She'd shown them all that she was not just an insignificant first-lifer. Her triumph had only become sweeter when she'd spotted the Lost Apkallu Utu in Acre.

She laughed weakly as her body roasted, as the not-pain that surrounded her threatened to crush her into oblivion. All her dreams, all her own jealousies and envies, were come down to this, burning in a darkness that ate her up in tiny bites.

* * *

Feast of Saint Hilary, Tuesday, January 13, AD 1260

Arjumand paced the length of Sharibet's office.

She was checking over his ledger entries, and it was never wise to interrupt, except when she herself wished for dalliance to relieve the tedious work.

He paused at one end of his arc to stare out Sharibet's extravagant glass window. From this fourth-floor vantage on the street-side corner, chilly winter sunshine winked off choppy waves in the Sea of Marmara. A city of ships lay at anchor in two huge harbors, resting from their travels carrying goods and gold from everywhere.

Would the House have anything to carry when the trading season resumed in the spring?

Mongols were already in northern Syria, like the first taint of gangrene in a wound. Their emissaries had even tried to gain an audience with the Latin Emperor of the Romans, heir to the Crusaders who had conquered Constantinople over fifty years ago.

Arjumand had seen representatives of those Mongols at Court, with their long mustaches and their spears bound with wolves' tails. Swaggering in silk coats and leather trousers, they assessed Emperor Baldwin's bankrupt dominion and found it ripe.

Mongols. They were like locusts. Arjumand stifled his disquiet and resumed pacing. He had read the reports from Cecilia detailing her journey along the Silk Road. Scarcely anyone was left alive in cities that had bustled with trade for three thousand years.

Sharibet's household had barely escaped from Baghdad before Hulegu Khan's hordes massacred every Muslim in the city. Caliph Musta'sim had liked his parties, his wine, his pretty boys. He had neglected his army. He had not, beyond resisting the siege for a month, tried to fight. Now Hulegu reigned between the two rivers, and wanted more.

Hard information was scarce, but Arjumand knew that Emperor Baldwin's officers and spies were trying to discover the Mongols' true plans. Were they willing to ally with Crusaders in the Kingdom of Jerusalem against the Saracens? Or would they raze and enslave indiscriminately? Had they set their sights on Constantinople yet?

If they had, it was certain the Emperor wouldn't be able to save it. Baldwin the Second had been scavenging for every penny he could scrape from the city he and his forebears had looted for the last half-century. He'd begged for money in every royal court in Europe, sold his birthright fief of Namur (not a day's journey from La Roche en Ardennes, where Michel had been born) and even mortgaged his son to the Venetians. He had few knights, and fewer allies. Beyond the walls of Constantinople and its suburb Galata, he was surrounded on three sides by hostile Byzantine states, remnants of the Empire the Venetians had brought down in 1204, which were themselves bounded by Mongol-conquered territories.

Back at the window, Arjumand wondered how long before they'd have to flee. Constantinople was such a strategic location, at the center of vast trading and pigeon-post networks. It would cost the House a great deal to reroute all those interlocking lines of communication.

To lose the city itself...He would regret it. Having ruled the world for almost a thousand years, its stones bore the forgotten faces of heroes, saints, and emperors. The kin had many stories of the city's life, along with tales about his former self, a self that he could not remember. Had Marcus really called lightning from the sky as a mortal youth? Rescued hundreds after a ruinous earthquake? Protected the House from rioters, and nearly died putting out a fire? Had he made love to all those women of the House? Arjumand cringed. Had he truly done those things?

And yet, when he walked the hilly streets of this ancient city, some places made his skin creep, some warmed him in a strange way. He didn't want to see it razed by Mongols.

Sharibet turned over the final page of the ledger, scanned it, and initialed it. She smiled at him when she was done. "A very good set of pages, mon coeur. I see you have learned your lesson about not entering anything you would not want known to current tax authorities, or the ages."

Except for a slight bow of acknowledgment, Arjumand kept his posture the same. She'd told him once about buried clay tablets dug up and used to levy post-dated fines against the House. He'd returned some breezy comment about parchment not lasting that long, and they'd had a furious row. Their lovemaking when they made up was equally furious, and he'd expected that would be the end of it. But it hadn't. Years later, she was still harping on the tired old subject.

"I have one question," she said. Of course.

"Why have you not inquired as to Nadira's progress?" Her voice was sweet and cutting at once.

He leaned on the window frame, under its ogive arch. "I assumed if anything went wrong, that you would tell me. If all went well, you would also tell me. Beyond that, I have no interest in her until she is ready for training. You know I do not wish to train her. And you know my reasons." Should Nadira fail after his training, no matter how hard he tried, it would forever be looked upon as his failure.

Sharibet shook her head, regretfully. "You are more like her than you admit, Arjumand. She has not asked about her children since she awoke, either."

Anger sizzled through him. "Lady, if you wish me to be like her, you have only to compare us further. I could show you her true nature in a way you will assuredly not like."

Sharibet blinked. "Well, the puppy does know how to snarl. What sharp teeth you have, too." She treated him to an extra-dazzling smile, as if to blast away his sullens. When that didn't work, she said, "Ah, mon coeur, don't frown at me so."

When that didn't work, she narrowed her eyes at him.

Arjumand remembered the early years of their consortship, when that expression could send tremors of apprehension through him. He would ask himself in some terror: Doesn't she love me anymore? How have I displeased her? Now he only felt a great weariness. There were bigger terrors on the horizon than her frown, and he had no cure for them.

"Will you need me for anything else?" he asked, using his most respectful tone.

Her fingers tapped the thick leather cover of the ledger. "No. That will be all."

"I will be at Court."

She gave her regal nod, the one that showed off the length and slimness of her throat.

He nodded, too, an abrupt motion to show how annoyed he was. As he left her presence, he chided himself for taking such bitter pleasure in these foolish games. What did he hope to accomplish?

Chapter Three

To our Mother Sharibet, from your children in Venice. Sent via Captain Muzaffar al Warda, Captain of the Saint Barnabas. Written on the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist--Saturday, December 27, 1259 (received January 14, AD 1260)

As you have always instructed us to do, we are sending this report to advise that we have refused our willingness to allow Lord Dominic to search the memories in blood of a slave child of eight years called Smerdy, purchased by Lord Dominic in this city with his own coin, which has been repaid to him from the House's petty cash.

As we wrote to you in our last report, Lord Dominic has searched a handful of other purchased slave children, releasing them to the Underworld as they were too young to consent to join the House. We do not wish him to kill any more. It is too upsetting to our children in this House, and has become a scandal in Venice. However, you may be assured that Lord Dominic has not harmed any person or ally of the House.

Although Lord Dominic claims to be searching for the Lost, we respectfully requested him to cease and he agreed. We do not wish to bring him to the ax at this time. If he does not keep his agreement, dear Mother, please believe us willing to protect our House as necessary.

Sent with our deepest love and devotion, and sincerest wish that we may meet again.

By the hand of the Mistress of Venice, Maryam dalle Rose, True Name Ab-erra. Remember me!

Shrove Tuesday, February 24, AD 1260

Nadira rolled over onto her back. It didn't hurt so much anymore. For months she hadn't been able to think of anything but the pain, relieved only by short trips to the bathhouse. Today, she was just bored. It should be time for her to get up and learn to be a Protector. She wanted to know how to do djinni magic: moving objects at a distance, controlling men's minds, and all the rest. She'd earned it!

The afternoon crept by slowly, not at all relieved by the faint sounds and scents of overindulgent Christian revelry in the streets outside. They would start their lax Lenten fast tomorrow, but that was nothing to her. There was a spark of sunshine coming through the thick curtain they had hung over the doorway to the inner courtyard to protect her sensitive eyes. And she could hear the bare-branched sycamore in the courtyard shiver in the wind.

Nadira sighed. It was no good to lie here, being bored.

Leila--elder sister, she corrected herself--had left her some scrolls to read, but they were in the chicken-scratch script of the House. Ugh. It was unfair that the Raised and Named of the House just remembered how to speak and read it, and needed no instruction. She'd spent tedious hours learning it, hating every minute.

The light spark winked. Maybe the sun was going down, finally! No, the sounds of the city continued unabated. It had probably only been the breeze. If she didn't have something to do right now, she was going to go mad. She groaned, reaching for the basket of scrolls. And then someone scratched at her door.

Nadira stood up, running fingers through her hair--unbrushed, but not, she hoped, too unbecoming. Sharibet could be most disappointed if one didn't appear at one's best. To her delighted surprise, her visitor was Basil, Leila's consort. "Lord, it is good to meet again," Nadira said, placing her hands together at her waist and bowing. If she were polite enough, he might stay for a while.

"It is good to meet again," said Basil, in Arabic flavored with an old country-Greek accent. "But you should call me 'elder brother,' you know."

Not him, too! "Yes, elder brother," she said. She cast her gaze down, then looked up at him through her lashes. "Why do you honor me with a visit?"

He stepped into her chamber. "I am sent to teach you Greek, so you can easily converse with the people of this region when you are ready to carry out your duties."

Not more instruction! But where was he hiding the scrolls to teach her from? She gave Basil a completely bewildered smile.

Matter-of-fact, he began to remove his dalmatica.

A different kind of thrill washed through Nadira. "What--what are you doing, lo--elder brother?"

He winked. He was removing his tunica now. He wore no other garment.

"H-how will you--?" She couldn't finish the question, distracted by his chest, which was wide, with well-defined muscles. A multitude of freckles patched the vibrant ruddiness of his skin, giving him the look of a splendidly healthy piebald horse. A complicated tattoo twisted around his biceps, inscribed in dark ink.

He was uncircumcised, and ready for sex. Gently, but firmly, he removed her camisia.

"I--I--but--" Nadira stuttered. "Is this wise, lord? What of Leila?"

Basil drew her gently toward him. His eyes, smile-crinkled, were moss-green flecked with gold. "She knows well what I am about, by Mother Sharibet's command. This is the way of djinni. Let it be more than one lesson for you." His kiss demonstrated every century of his reputed expertise. Long before he exhausted his repertoire, she had melted into his arms. He bore her down onto the bed, and with a minimum of preparation, had her neatly impaled on his staff. He was far, far better as a lover than Arjumand. She was certainly not bored now! She climaxed with an intensity that would have shattered her if she'd still been mortal.

This is a wonderful way to learn lessons, she thought, when she had leisure to think again. As a djinniah she had strength, perception, and endurance she would never have expected. So did Basil. He was so clever. She was just rousing from deeply relaxed languor when Basil, who had not yet spent his seed, spoke into her ear.

"You liked that, little sister? There's more." He rearranged himself so that he lay on his side. He rolled her body, happily unresisting, to spoon her back to his front. She found new interest as he penetrated her from behind. One muscular arm brushed her breasts. The other, cradling her head, presented soft inner elbow skin to her lips. "Bite, and drink my blood," he directed.

Nadira considered. She had promised to drink only blood willingly offered. He sounded not just willing, but commanding. Would his blood taste better than a lamb's? She bit down, and the question answered itself. Warm, pure blood flowed smoothly into her mouth, tasting of salt, and iron, and--pomegranates? She exploded in ecstasy and the concussion slammed through her to lift Basil half off the bed.

Then the pictures rolled over her:...shock reverberates the length of the immaculate mandarah in Alexandria as Roland, newly Found Apkallu, replies to Cecilia's ritual offer "I will be the Opener of the Way for you. Will you let me in?" "Lady, I will not."...staring at the shining glory of the empty sea by the mouth of the river Orb as death after death of Apkallu burns through their bonds of blood...the ground shakes and the houses and temples fall. The water of the Middle Sea leaps from its bed to finish the destruction...waking with open Seer's eyes to the vast Apkallu auras of Cecilia and Menelaos hovering over him...Lady Cecilia, lying atop him, nude and perfect, as she drinks from his throat...bright-eyed Leila, in a red wedding stola embroidered in gold, smiles back as he places his iron ring upon her finger...

The noises she was making started to diminish, but she was still reverberating to the overwhelming sensations, floating, somewhere, finally reconciled to the changes in her nature, if they could bring her this...

Then Basil bit her throat. His teeth were sharp. They hurt, but before she could cry out, she felt him draw her blood into himself. His aura wrapped them both in an unbreakable embrace, penetrating her from head to foot, from surface to core. Every bit of her rang with the sensation of being enfolded, fully touched, exalted--and rejected.

She thumped down on one side of the narrow bed, and Basil on the other as he made one small gagging noise. She was too shocked to say anything. What happened? She still felt wonderful, except for the growing chill of lying alone in the dark. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine. Thank you for asking," he said. He didn't sound sincere, at all.

Well, why is he suddenly so rude?

He jerked, grunted, and the smell of his barren seed was pungent in the bed between them. He edged further away. "I will give you another lesson, younger sister."

She hoped it would turn out better than this last one, although one more aftershock left her mellow and melting.

<This is how you close your shields.>

So that was how mind-to-mind contact sounded. Or, didn't. She lost track of the specifics of his instruction, trying to tell how she could be hearing his voice through the silence of the room.

<Listen to me!>

Oh! That was so loud. "I'm listening."

The bed wobbled as he surged up from his prone position and towered over her, aura luminous and seething. Was he angry? At her? Belatedly, she began to be afraid.

<This is how you close your shields.>

His many-handed aura pushed at her face. It felt like he built a cap, invisible, yet present, that went all around her head. Then he let go, and all the pressure went away.

<Now you do it.>

She would, once she got the knack. How did that go? It was too bad Basil was so haughty, now that he was done with sex. Well, many men were that way...Basil's aura surrounded her head so tightly she felt nearly crushed.

"Stop! That hurts!"

"You noticed? Good." Basil's smile showed mostly teeth. "Build your shield."

"I would if I knew how!" They always expected her to know things she couldn't know, and to be able to do things she couldn't do. And they never really taught her anything. If she hadn't had Seer's eyes, they would have completely ignored her.

"Nadira," Basil stared at her, his face no more than a handspan from her own. He looked very determined. "You must begin to control your aura. Every djinn discovers his own power and his own way to control it. Your time of discovery must be now."

"That's not very helpful! You tell me I must but you don't tell me how." She turned her face away from him. "It's not fair! I could do it if you'd just--"

"Feel this," Basil commanded, his aura penetrating hers and squeezing.

"Ow! Yes!"

"Good. What you can feel, you can control. Push back."

"But there's nothing there!"

He squeezed harder. "Push back!"

Was he going to crush her skull? Sharibet wouldn't let him do that, surely?

Basil was still pressing hard, like a mountain looming over her, creeping toward her, threatening to smash her flat. No! She didn't want him to--She pushed. His aura moved away. It was like...holding a broom. One hand pushing up, one hand pushing down, to make the broom move.

"Very good," Basil said. "Now make a shield."

He was going too fast. She was just getting used to this part. Hold and push. Basil's aura moved and she quivered with delight. She was doing magic, djinni magic. Hold and push. Take that! No one would tell her what to do! She'd give the orders. She'd--

"Nadira."

She had just swept his aura away but the mountainous pressure built again!

"You need to make a shield now."

Why? She was just--

<Nadira. I hear every word you think, and so can Lord Arjumand.>

She froze. Every thought? O, Great Forgiver! Cold horror replaced her delight. Could Sharibet hear her too? O, Preserver!

"She can't yet. But she'll want to, one day. So you need to know how to make a shield."

Yes! She needed to know this.

Once more he seemed to push at her aura around her head. She felt him do it, but there was nothing for her to grasp. She scrabbled to touch the intangible. Make a shield. Stop up their spying ears! But she had no experience of shields. She was not a fighter. She was a Seer, a djinniah, a woman...She knew nothing of shields, but she was intimately familiar with veils. She imagined a veil, black Mosul-cloth, sheer and light. She could see out, but others couldn't see in. She could be recognized, but not annoyed by them. God is forgiving and merciful. The pressure of Basil's aura eased.

"That's good. Lord Arjumand sends his thanks as well. No, don't stop."

How had he known her concentration had slipped? She hurried to re-imagine, reconstruct her magic veil.

Basil sighed. "Let's practice that some more."

They spent hours on it. Darkness came. Jars of sealed blood were delivered for their meal. Basil the teacher was impossible to satisfy. He insisted that she hold her veil against any distraction, and he invented far too many tests. Finally, somewhere on the other side of midnight, he relaxed, shook his head to dislodge the beads of sweat that had collected in his hair, and said, "That's enough for now. Don't forget this lesson, or let down your guard. Ever."

Though she had passed beyond exhaustion hours ago and felt like a wrung-out sponge, herself, Nadira drawled, "They told me djinni memories were perfect."

"The memories of djinni are perfect. The djinni who use those memories are not." Without another word, he donned his tunica and dalmatica, and left her room.

"Well!" she huffed as his footsteps faded into the quiet of the sleeping house. Wasn't she supposed to have learned Greek?

* * *

The next day was better. She sat up and practiced veiling her mind until breakfast arrived. Then Leila, very stiff and formal, entered with one of the Constantinople House cousins in tow, a mousy woman named Margarethe, and introduced her as Nadira's new handmaid.

Nadira's heart sang. At last, at last!

"Elder sister, it is good to meet again," her new servant said, bowing.

While Nadira chortled inside to hear this forty-year-old call her 'elder sister,' Leila poked Nadira using her hand of air, invisible to mortal sight. The elder djinniah frowned, mouthing: It is good...

Oh, yes. That tedious, overused greeting. "It is good to meet again," Nadira said. "I'm so glad you're here to help me--"

"Elder sister, my true name is Ka-ashbarudda."

Damn! Her name in the old language of the House meant Decision of the Sun, and her life-chip, just showing at her throat, showed the number one hundred and four. All Nadira's pleasure died, and the edifice of friendly service she had been imagining fell down in a crash of baked mud tablets.

All these people had been Sharibet's creatures since the unimaginably ancient past. Nobody here would be loyal to her.

Nadira opened her Seer's eyes. Ugly mustard. The old bird was jealous. Damn.

"We will remember you," Leila prompted.

"We will remember you," Nadira mimicked, half a beat behind.

"Margarethe is here to help you bathe and dress," Leila said after an awkward pause. Those had been her tasks for four months. Was there some other reason she didn't want to do it anymore? Was she jealous about Basil?

"You are to meet the elders of the House today. The meeting is at noon. Be ready," Leila said, and escaped.

Nadira concealed her anxiety behind her magic veil as Margarethe stood still in the middle of the carpet, waiting for something. "What?" Nadira snapped. "My clothes are in that wardrobe, and I want a bath!"

The handmaid's expression did not change, but her tone went flat and cold. "Congratulations on becoming a djinniah. It is my honor to serve you."

Nadira nodded in acknowledgment, knowing even as she did so that it was only a pale copy of Sharibet's regal gesture. Galling. It was all galling, what she had expected to be sweet as honey.

When Margarethe went to open the wardrobe, Nadira got another shock. Her Transformation garb was gone! All those beautiful silk garments and the coin-hung cap! She jumped for the jewelry box and wanted to shriek her rage. Gone! They were all gone, her bracelets, necklaces, and anklets. Vanished.

She would kill Sharibet, the thieving bitch.

<Nadira, you must shield,> came Basil's ghostly voice in her mind.

She took the nearest thing to hand, an empty blood jar, and threw it with all her might at the nearest wall. It shattered splendidly, releasing at least some of her resentment.

"Elder sister?" the handmaid asked, apparently unmoved.

"Nothing," Nadira answered. "Pick out something for me, and let's go bathe. You can clean that up later."

Margarethe started pawing through the dusty clothes in the wardrobe, making clucking noises as she touched one or another garment.

Nadira had waited so long, and worked so hard to achieve the status of djinniah, looking forward to the day when others of the House would call her 'lady' and leap at her command. Now it was all a mockery. She herself was still only a possession of the House.

That betrayal lingered through her bath and the primping session that followed as Margarethe plucked her eyebrows and dressed her hair. When they were done, she examined her face in the common bronze mirror Margarethe provided. Her eyes were on the yellowish side of the amber shade prized by the House. Her nose was nicely arched. Her chin receded, but perhaps, as she learned more magic, she would sculpt it, as she had been told that djinni could do. The only other question she had--She opened her Seer's eyes and started shaking. O Merciful!

Her aura had once been a vibrant blue-green flame, with the plume of her Raising and Naming rising above her head in a riot of red and gold. Now her aura was nearly transparent, a feeble ghost. The wings she had been expecting to glow brightly were pallid shadows that barely reached her shoulders. These wings could not cause effects at a distance.

What had gone wrong? What was wrong with her? There was no one she could ask. Leila, Sharibet, and even Basil had seen her, and none of them had expressed any surprise. O Reckoner. Had she been robbed?

Wait, wait, wasn't there something...?

She allowed Margarethe to draw her to the massage bench, and while her maid's strong fingers manipulated her muscles like butter, she recognized with some resentment the truth of Basil's warning about djinni memory. She did recall more precisely and clearly than she ever had as a mortal. But she wanted to remember something from before her Transformation! There was a snippet of conversation she had overheard once, when she was at a gathering of the kin. Was it Roland's Appointing?

"Relax, elder sister," Margarethe calmly commanded. "Let me do my work."

Nadira settled down onto the padded ledge, remembering: The old woman chats with the young one; both wear lifetime chips above a hundred. Nadira's necklace shows only one. "Remember when Elder Brother Basil's wings were the size of an eagle's? So beautiful--and tickly." She pats her withered breast, and grins wickedly. The younger one asks, "Can you see how large they've grown since?" The older woman's smile fades. "No. My Eyes have closed. Yours, too?" "Mother Sharibet tried to help me open them, several lifetimes ago but..." "We grow blind," the old woman says, with resignation. Nadira promises herself she will gain her prize this life, before her powers dim!

She had, and here she was, at the beginning of a journey that would, if she were careful, never end.

"That's right. Take deep breaths. Let go your cares."

She couldn't. If djinni wings grew with time, that would make sense of Basil's and Leila's small auras. Sharibet's aura was not nearly as large as Menelaos's, who was called the least of the Apkallu. And Lady Cecilia, the Undying, had the largest aura of all.

Did that mean she herself would have to live nearly forever in order to grow an aura large enough to be able to exercise the full magic of the djinni?

"Take deep breaths. Out with care, in with calm."

She followed Margarethe's instructions, even though obeying her servant stung like vinegar on a split lip. She would do as she was told--for now--and present a complaisant face. Later, she would be able to make better plans. Later, when she knew more magic.

* * *

The fusty elders of the House seemed as unimpressed with her as she was with them. But...She watched them watching her, and read the fear shining in their auras. Did they think she might jump up and tear their throats out? Behind her magic veil she imagined what that would be like.

That was her only amusement in the meeting. Old Philomena, officious as her son, Master Theodoros, welcomed Nadira with patently self-serving good wishes. Nobody wished her well. They just wanted to use her for their convenience. After all, who was at this meeting? Sharibet, of course. Basil and Leila. The Master, his wife Eudokia, their Raised and Named son and daughter-in-law; the Trader and his wife and their two sons; the other grandmother; the ship captains in port; all those who held power in the House. None of the maids or stable lads--no, she was wrong. There was the youngest of the maids, flaunting her lifetime chip on a silk ribbon around her neck: 159. More than all the others.

But Arjumand? Not here. Another sign of his contempt for her. Nadira forced a smile and pretended gracious acceptance of the elders' meaningless congratulations on her successful Transformation. It went on so long that she started to daydream about the gold and jewels and beautiful dresses she ought to have as a djinniah.

"We wish you to accept this token of our esteem for you..."

Oh no! What had she missed? Philomena was bowing to her in front of the group, showing off a lovely triple-strand pearl necklace.

Oh, yes! She reached to accept the gift, delight and trepidation warring within her. Would the pearls feel as cool as they looked? Would she be allowed to keep them? Panic descended once she had them in her hands, and the elders just stood there waiting for something. Were there ritual words for a newly-made djinniah to speak on receiving a gift from the elders? Why didn't they teach her these things?

Then Basil's mind-voice spoke to her, as if she had never created her magic veil. <Bow slightly and say, "I accept this token of your esteem with thanks.">

Feeling like a spooked horse given firm guidance by an experienced rider, Nadira complied, and was rewarded by the elders bowing deeply, hands crossed at their middles. She fondled her new pearls. She had waited for this moment all her life!

<Now you must tell them you return their esteem.> His mental instruction was calm, but in the background rode his true feeling: <Don't you have any social sense at all?>

Stung, Nadira snapped, "I return your esteem!"

Quickly suppressed scowls opened bitter wounds. Her life as a Seer had been much easier. She only had to report what she saw. She didn't have to be polite, or politic, or have to think of what to say next.

The elders stood, saying their prescribed farewells. Thanks to the Compassionate One! They were leaving. Nadira breathed a sigh of relief, then noticed that the other djinni remained. She quaked in her slippers.

"I see that you'll need some lessons in deportment, daughter," Sharibet said.

Nadira wanted to disappear. But Sharibet added, more kindly, "You did well enough. You cannot know everything at once. That is the reason for lessons, after all. Since you seem to be listening to Basil, he will continue as your teacher."

"Yes, Mother Sharibet," was the only acceptable response. The lesson of prompt agreement was one she had learned very early. And Basil would be the best. As an outsider to the House before his marriage to Leila, he was also a first-lifer. And he had survived a thousand years. He was friendly and charming toward the elders, yet not at all deferential. If anyone should be her model, it was Basil. He was a good lover, too.

"Very good. Basil, I'll leave you to schedule your lessons with Nadira. I'm sure you'll do your usual competent job."

Basil bowed his acceptance, then followed Sharibet as she swept out of the room, leaving only Leila, glaring at Nadira with a rare and terrible frown.

"Elder sister?" Nadira asked, growing more nervous.

"Don't ever touch him again," Leila said, raising an admonitory finger.

"Elder sister, he said it was the way of djinni," Nadira responded. She had been afraid of just such a confrontation. "I didn't--"

Leila stepped in close and grabbed the shoulder of Nadira's dalmatica. Nadira hadn't realized before that the other djinniah stood taller than she did. And was stronger.

"Stupid cow! The way of djinni is the way of pleasure. I wouldn't care if you'd pleased him, but he came back to me upset." Leila let go of Nadira's garment, stepped back, dusted off her hands, and strode away.

"I don't know what I did!" Nadira wailed.

"I don't care," Leila said, over her shoulder. "Just never do it again." She stopped and turned. "Or you'll be sorry." Her expression was the same as Mother Sharibet's at its fiercest.

They hate me. They all hate me. Feeling sick, Nadira rebuilt her armor, and rechecked her magic veil. O Protector! Let me be doing the magic right! She placed the ropes of shining pearls around her neck, and stroked them. Let them hate her. She would take what she needed and find a suitable revenge later.

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