“I have graciously offered double what you paid.” Gideon stood stiff and unmoving. Not a flicker of expression crossed his face.
“We have a slightly different form of payment in mind,” I answered. Now was the moment of truth. “I’ll give you the lamp for only half what we paid for it.” We’d make the coin back. We always did. “If you agree to come with us to the kingdom of Baradaan. To bear witness to the prince of Baradaan breaking the Jinni code.”
“Bear witness,” he repeated.
Arie frowned at the phrase.
I’d picked it up in my inquiries. It was the Jinni’s ancient term for observing an action and passing judgment.
Legend had led me to believe it was a common practice in Jinn, but Gideon narrowed his eyes. “So you lust for revenge?”
I hesitated. How did he know that? “The princes are abusing their Gifts,” I answered after a long pause. I didn’t want to spill my story to a stranger. “Across all the kingdoms. Someone needs to hold them accountable.”
“You lust for revenge,” he repeated, and it was no longer a question. I wondered how he’d deciphered something I’d kept so carefully hidden. When I didn’t answer, he asked, “There is truly no other way I can convince you to part with it?”
“No.” I didn’t want it in the first place. I wanted his help.
“Then I’m truly sorry,” Gideon said. He knelt, scooping up a handful of rocks and picking through them. He chose a simple gray stone barely larger than his thumbnail, more a pebble than a rock, smooth and round. He dropped the other stones, placing the gray pebble in his palm, and running his other hand over it in a smooth motion. Was that... Was he doing a Jinni spell?
He held it out, but he offered it to Arie, instead of me.
I gritted my teeth yet again, keeping my face smooth, and peered over Arie’s shoulder to see it. There was a strange design etched into the previously smooth rock, a swirl that almost resembled a snail shell, intricate and detailed enough that someone could mistake it for an actual shell and not notice the uniqueness of the pebble.
“If either of you change your mind about selling the lamp, give my talisman a rub,” he told us, pointing to the pebble. Arie’s fingers curled around the talisman and she placed it within the folds of her dress pockets, making me nervous.
“We’renot changing our mind,” I repeated, emphasizingweto make it clear that Arie didn’t have a choice. I felt desperate and hated it. “What can we do to changeyours?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.” Gideon tugged his vest down as if to make himself presentable, though he was perfectly neat. Tapping his cane on the ground, he sighed. “I’m unable to spare time for your schemes, as I’m obligated to finish an urgent assignment of my own. Good day.”
The air bent around him as if folding him into it like a blanket, and he vanished. One second he stood in front of us, and the next we stared at the tree behind him.
“Wait!” I shouted into the thin air he’d left behind.
But he was gone.
CHAPTER 13
