Thief of Baghdad Read Free Page A

guards?”
    The door guard looked at the Chief Guard, and then he looked at the Vizier, and then he looked at the floor.
    Ghamal said: “What is your name?”
    “Abdoul, O Grand Vizier.”
    “Chief of the Grand Vizier’s Guards Abdoul, never forget what happened to your predecessor!”
    Abdoul blurted out: “What did?”
    “You beheaded him,” Ghamal said, turned away, and hurried out of the hall. Outside in the courtyard trumpets were blowing, not very melodiously; I guess the Sultan rehearsed the royal trumpeters himself.
    Abdoul was dragging his predecessor toward the entrance of the great hall. I brought my ear back; I had less desire to see the ex-Chief Guard beheaded than I did to listen to the Sultan’s playing.
    This left all of me, both ears and everything, leaning on the stone fretwork of the gallery outside the harem. The cooing noises back here were still going on; they’d never really stopped, but I had tried not to hear them with the one ear I hadn’t teleported down to the Grand Hall.
    Really, I had no business in the harem; any further observation of the Lady Amina would only increase my loneliness, which is a polite word for what I was suffering.
    But I’m only a jinni; I went, still dematerialized, into the women’s quarters.
    And came right out again. The Princess Amina was in her bath, with her handmaidens pouring soothing waters over her.
    It was a sight calculated to drive a lonesome jinni out of his seven-hundred-and-sixty-two-year-old mind.
    Down in the grand hall, the Sultan was banging and tinkling away. I wondered why he scratched his left ear so often; obviously both ears were dead.
    So I flew out of the palace and down to the courtyard.
    It was full of troops, a regiment of Janizaries that the Pasha of Turkey had given the Sultan for his last birthday, a squadron of Bedouin cavalry, and the regular palace guards. As I watched, Abdoul arrived to take his place at the head of the guards. His uniform robes didn’t fit very well; they were the ones the former Chief Guard had been wearing last time I saw him. Abdoul was a smart man; most people would have beheaded the Chief Guard in his robes and ruined them.
    They were all lined up facing the big main gate, and up in the towers slaves were holding onto the big ropes that would open the gates. I figured—clever old jinni—that somebody was about to come in.
    It would have to be Prince Osman. Only a stranger to Baghdad would bother with the main gates; every Baghdadian knows that there are a dozen side gates and three back gates that haven’t been closed in fifty years.
    The ropes that ran from the towers to the gates were awfully old; I hoped they wouldn’t break and disgrace Baghdad. Of course, they were made of the best twisted camels’ hair, and that is supposed to last forever, but maybe to camels’ hair fifty years is forever; if I were any part of a camel, time would pass very slowly.
    Flying across to the towers, my ears were assailed again by the noise the palace band was making. It was certainly time for a new sultan, one with a better sense of rhythm and tone . . .
    The Lady Jinni of the Rocky Sands was very, very musical. Maybe if I appealed to the Council of Suleyman for the temporary loan of a musical spirit for the Sultan’s band? After all, this aggregation here was bestial and extraordinary punishment to my jinni-ears.
    No. They’d send someone else, like the Hairy Jinni of Cairo. They’d never send a lady jinni. Never. Arabian musicians wouldn’t listen to her if they did.
    She’d have to materialize as a woman, that’s the rule, and palace music is martial music, not suitable for women to teach . . .
    Sighing, I came down between the main inner gate and the main outer gate. I stepped into an embrasure and materialized; it was perfectly safe, because when Prince Osman had come in through the outer gate, a whole bunch of curious Baghdadians had crowded in with him.
    My Baghdadians treated the palace as though it