clench my teeth. Then I sink to my knees and press my forehead to the earth. I have no choice.
‘Djinni,’ she says, mollified, ‘I have a task for you.’
‘Mistress.’
‘Vizier, show him the plans.’
I raise myself to hands and knees in order to look down at a bent old man with a grey beard, who comes forward unfurling a scroll. He looks like he is about to soil his silk robe in fear. He can’t even look me in the face. On the parchment is a picture of what seems to be a wall.
‘Do you see?’ says Bilqis. ‘I want you to build me a dam right across the Wadi Dhana here. To those measurements. With sluice gates at either end, as depicted – so that, when the river runs full again, water may be trapped here and used to irrigate the land around. Do you understand, djinni? It must be built of stone and fit to stand for a thousand years. That is my command.’
I dig my talons into the sand. But part of me recognises that I would rather be out here, even slaving as a menial builder for her, than be confined again inside the Lamp. It is a welcome respite.
‘To hear, mistress, is to obey.’
* * *
I was a parting gift. Imagine that, if you can! King Solomon gave me to her as a slave, the day she gathered up her entourage and set out from Jerusalem on the long journey home. She carried another farewell present inside her belly that day, though I do not think he knew about that. The unformed seedling in her belly was a blazing fire to my eye, but I was certainly not about to volunteer any such information to him.
The arrogance of the man takes my breath away still. He’d had lamps of brass and gold made to hang in his palace – each one the shape of a tear, as if the sun itself had wept. Into each lamp he’d bound one of my brothers or sisters, so that their undying flames might illuminate his stinking slovenly rooms. Can you comprehend such an obscenity – the Firstborn, the Children of Fire, the Lords of the Sky and the Earth, imprisoned and made to light up the corners of some miserable little sandstone palace in a backwater shit-hole? I, who have stood upon the ziggurats of Uruk and Harappa and Babylon, and had emperors cast their crowns at my feet! I, who have walked the Walls of the Earth, and looked over into the star-strewn void!
Solomon the Wise, eh? Solomon the Sorcerer. His people profess to abhor the magical arts, but he is the most cunning, ruthless and puissant of wizards. He has dug secrets out of the underworld and tricked the divine names from the lips of angels.
Bilqis knows all that, of course. She sought him out because his wisdom and learning were renowned, even among the maggot-headed Children of Earth. She tested him with her riddles – yes, we watched that from our prisons; the two of them sitting up long into the night, sparring verbally – and when he passed her test she lay with him to get a child worthy to be her own heir. Oh yes: a wise sorcerer-king for the great realm of Sheba; that was what she desired. The moment she knew she was carrying, she was out of that place. Before he could imprison her too, I do not doubt, and keep the child for his own.
I do not want to think about him. Remembrance fills me with such ire that the binding spells he wrought upon me – those words he etched onto my skin – burn and gnaw at my flesh, searing me to the bone. If I could, I would tear off my hide and incinerate it in the inner fires of the Earth, and then I would be free of him.
But what is written is written.
* * *
She summons me forth once more. This time I am indoors, and cannot grow to my full height. I rein myself in before I smash through the carved cedar beams of the roof.
There is a squealing and a shrieking, a flurry of panic at my arrival. I look down and see the room is full of women. It makes me grin to see them shrink away and cover their faces – though several are peeking through the slits of their fingers, and that makes me grin too. I have arrived clothed, because Bilqis commands me thus, but my silken trousers do not fully disguise the extent of my exuberance. They are all young and lovely; their breasts bare and firm, their shapely thighs and rounded bottoms a field of delight that my rampant share urges me to plough. In Solomon’s palace, I would assume that this is the apartment of his concubines. Here in Sheba, they must be the queen’s handmaidens. It is clear they have not been expecting the arrival of any male, and their consternation is enchanting. I wish to rush in among them like a cockerel among a flock of hens.
‘Djinni!’
I force my attention back to Bilqis, who kneels upon cushions in the middle of this fluttering crowd, with a slender maiden cradled in her arms. ‘Mistress?’
She’s dressed less formally today. I can see her ebony nipples through the damp and clinging gauze of her robe. I understand that the land of Sheba is considered punishingly hot by humans. ‘Djinni,’ says she, ‘my slave here has been bitten by a viper. Can you heal her?’
The girl in her arms is twisting with pain, her dark skin grey now and glistening with sweat. I can see her injured foot, swollen to twice its natural size, propped upon a cushion.
‘Pray to the God of Solomon, mistress,’ I suggest sourly. ‘Does He not promise to be merciful?’
‘I have. And to Shams and Ilmaqah and Athtar, who rule this land. The gods do not answer me. So if it lies within your power, djinni, I command you to heal this maid.’
I briefly consider some way to twist her words, but my heart is not in it. I am too distracted by the perfumed, quivering throng of women. And the girl is pretty, for a human, or will be so when well. I twitch a single finger – mostly to show how easy this is for me – and the poison hisses out of her, issuing as a faint green cloud from her open lips. Her leg reverts instantly to healthy flesh.
Everyone in the room utters a wahwahwah of wonder. Except Bilqis, who smiles and nods, and the girl, who sobs and buries her face in her queen’s breasts.
‘There, there,’ says the monarch of all Sheba, both left and right of the Red Sea. ‘You are fine. No need to cry, my sweet one.’
And my eyes widen as the maid pulls down the fine gauze of the queen’s robe and sucks a big nipple into her mouth.
Bilqis closes her own eyes for a moment in pleasure, then opens them, meeting my gaze with a long, considering look. ‘You did well, djinni,’ she says. ‘It pleases me to reward you.’ With a couple of clicks of her fingers she jerks two of the women at the side of the chamber from their knees. ‘You two: see to his pleasure.’
I’m taken aback, but far from dismayed. The young women are curvaceous of body and beautiful of face, and they advance towards me with rapidly rising and falling breasts, bright-eyed but gratifyingly nervous.
‘It would help, djinni,’ says the queen in a dry voice, ‘if you were to assume the size of a mortal man.’
I comply, shrinking my towering form down from the ceiling, until I am only the size of a very large man. The two handmaidens kneel before me on the cushioned floor, and reach for my hidden weapon, wetting their lips as they tug at my clothes. They are eager to obey their queen, I note, approving.
‘Do not hurt them, djinni,’ Bilqis adds as an afterthought.
I bare my sharp teeth in a grin at her. But I clasp my wrists at the small of my back, safely out of the way.
Then
