Mahdi hadn’t gone out to the tavern before he slept that night, not feeling up to the rowdier company of his usual companions – or more of their jokes.  Instead he finished his jar of wine and started a new one, drinking himself into a pleasant haze before he carefully climbed the stairs and attempted to put his room into order, then collapsed into bed.

The wine might have explained the vivid dreams, but perhaps not their subject matter, which was decidedly more intense than Mahdi was used to.  Intense, graphic, and salacious.

No clear image met his eyes in the last dream, but warm limbs were all around him, and he had the definite impression that more than one person was touching him, stroking his back, his sides, caressing his neck and chest.  In the way of dreams, if he’d ever had clothes, they had vanished, and all the skin that met his eyes was unclothed as well.  Lost in a web of melting, lustful sensation, he had fallen over the brink again and again, until everything came to him through a mist of pleasure, and for the first time in months he was completely without worries or regrets.

Then someone chuckled quietly, and a torso moved aside to show Jadir standing in the doorway in his true genii form, gold eyes fixed on the scene, tattooed blue face unreadable.

Glancing around him, Mahdi saw clearly that the people around him were unconcerned with the inhuman regard, even amused, and he realized for the first time that his lovers were beautiful young men.  Afraid now, he looked back at Jadir and felt like ice through the warm haze of lust the impact of the djinn’s disgust and scorn.  He started to struggle upright, fumbling for an explanation, an excuse, but he couldn’t move fast enough or speak more than incoherencies.

Jadir’s lip curled and he turned his back, shimmering into a golden cloud that wisped away into thin air, and Mahdi knew that the djinn had discovered how unworthy he was to have a genii lamp, and had left the human world forever.  The bodies around him hadn’t moved, but somehow the touch of hands on his body was no longer alluring, and Mahdi’s companions couldn’t understand why he wasn’t enjoying himself.  They didn’t seem to care much, shrugging and turning to each other for satisfaction, while he curled in on himself for warmth and watched the doorway where the genii had been.

When he woke, he wasn’t sure what bothered him more; the content of the dream, or the implications that snuck slyly up on him.  Clearly he cared more about what Jadir thought than was probably safe with a djinn; and he also had better realize that the genii was just as unlikely to understand Mahdi’s particular… romantic and courting difficulties… as any mortal.  It was a hope he hadn’t even consciously realized, but despite their conversation the day before, at the back of his mind he’d wondered if at least he could tell the genii his problem, not to have it solved but to have someone at least minorly sympathetic.

That wasn’t going to happen, no matter what, and it had been stupid not to know it from the beginning.  Djinn might not be human, but they knew as well as any mortal that some things were unnatural and some desires wrong.  Wrong to have, perhaps, but even worse to give into.  People could die for it.

Mahdi stared at his ceiling and reached out for the wine jar, thankful that he’d brought it upstairs with him last night.  This morning he was going to need all the help he could get to start the day.

*                                                          *

Asad frowned absently as he inspected the slender thread of the wish-created shield around the wineshop.  It shone blue and silver in the polished sheen of the ebony view-stone, and he was having trouble finding the edges of the perameters Jadir had given it.  Of course, since it had been the result of a wish, he could only do so much to make it foolproof beyond the actual words of the command, if he was indeed trying to hide himself from Asad, and the words were quite clear in the frail line of light. 

“Make it that anyone looking for your lamp will be unable to find it.  Or me, or this place.”

A sudden smile curled the edges of midnight lips fashionably tinted green, and Asad straightened up and flicked the stone blank.  Jadir was confined to the bounds of the words given him, wasn’t he?  And while the shop, the mortal, and the lamp were specifically mentioned in the wish, Jadir himself was not.

Deep, rich chuckles rang softly across the chamber and muffled themselves in the embroidered hangings on the opposite wall.

That petty magician’s spell was turning out to be hugely useful.

*                                                          *

This morning Jadir had not been invited down to the shop room, so when he watched his master it was invisibly, without using any sight mortals would recognize.  Thus it was that without ordinary sight distracting him, he saw what he had not realized before.

Mahdi was ill.  Not lethally, not yet, but inside his mortal body things were not as they should be, and it took little thought to realize that he was unwell.

On further examination, though, he didn’t act as if he was unwell.  One hand ever on a wine jar, he greeted his customers and found the vintage they were looking for and sent them away with as ready a smile as before.  Surely if he were truly ill, he would act it?

Jadir pondered the matter as the day wore on.  He took to scanning the body of each mortal who entered the shop, comparing their health with Mahdi’s, and discovered that most of them lacked the problems he had noted in the wineseller.  Of course, since djinn were hardly versed in mortal illnesses, this didn’t exactly help him find what was wrong.  It wasn’t until a young woman entered the shop and lingered to talk with Mahdi that the genii finally learned what the source of the illness might be.

“They said it was an afrit,” the girl smiled, putting a hand clinking with bangles on one hip, “but I say that Walid wouldn’t know how to tie a wind-proof knot if you gave him the word of the Prophet on it.”

“If fools were fish, the streets would shine with silver scale,” Mahdi shrugged, and the girl laughed.

“Yes, but some fools are foolish by nature, and some by choice.  My cousin Sofian,” she lowered her voice and glanced out the door of the shop, “has been at the lek-mist again.”  She paused for a moment, nodding, while Mahdi slowly shook his head, and Jadir reflected idly on contradictory mortal body language.  “We tell him that this world is better,” the woman continued heavily, “and he should drink the water and breathe the air and think less about what he doesn’t have…”  She stopped, and Mahdi made a wordless noise that seemed to be sympathetic.

“Still, if the man doesn’t care,” she continued softly, “there’s nothing you can do to change his mind.”  One stubby hand rose to finger the jewel in her necklace, bangles jingling on her wrist, and she gave Mahdi a thoughtful look.  “Like you.”

Slender frame stiffening, the wineseller sat very still, brown eyes closed and wary on the girl’s round face.  Jadir sensed the way her shoulders rose slightly in response, and the breath she took before speaking again.

“Tir’ Ayasha, I’ve bought wine from this shop since before you came to work for your uncle.  How long ago was it?  Two years?  Not so long, I think, even if everyone’s forgotten it used to be different.

“I remember because Tir’ Yasir was never nice to me, I don’t think he was nice to anyone, but he always sneered at me as if I had no business buying wine from him.”

Short fingers toyed with the tangle of bracelets around her other wrist as the girl avoided meeting Mahdi’s eyes. 

“You’re a very kind man, everyone likes you.  You never tell me I talk too much, even when I stay here longer than I should.”  She stopped, and for a long moment it seemed that she could find nothing else to say.  Then words tumbled out of her mouth in a nervous stream, and Jadir’s idle attention abruptly focused clear and sharp. 

“But ever since you’ve been here I’ve never seen you without your uncle’s wine in one hand, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t drink your wares, everyone does that, it’s just that you drink all day long, my mother says, and Sofian’s father died that way, he drank for years and then he died of it because he couldn’t live without the wine but you really can’t live with it either, it kills you!”  Wide brown eyes finally met Mahdi’s startled ones.  “And I… I know you weren’t happy when you came here, and wine helps things – ”

Mahdi cut her off, his expression losing its cool edge but still a little distant.  “I’m pleased that you and your mother are so concerned for my welfare, but this is hardly a conversation you should be holding in a wineshop.”  He smiled a little, moving one hand in a gesture at the stock of jars, the wares that she was warning against, and she closed her mouth in embarrassment.  “Still, thank you, and I don’t think I’m going to die of wine anytime soon.  You shouldn’t worry about it.”

Olive cheeks rosy, the young woman nodded awkwardly and hesitated, mouth open but empty of words, before she finally muttered, “Prophet’s Blessing on you,” and ducked out of the shop.  Mahdi slowly slumped on his stool, one hand lifting the wine jar to his mouth.  A moment later he realized what he was doing and set it down, brow creased. 

Jadir wondered distantly what his master was thinking as one long hand rubbed the back of Mahdi’s neck, but most of his attention was taken up with following the path of the last sip of liquid through the mortal’s body.  There was the organ most badly affected by the constant inflow of wine, and there...  The genii sank even deeper as he followed the effects all the way through the body, the behavior, the mind, by the simple expedient of letting one thread of power slide from the man’s body into the ether, where it gathered more pertinent knowledge around it.

By the time he was through, Jadir understood exactly what was happening to Mahdi, and he was more than a little concerned.  Unfortunately, in the span of time he’d been intently focused on the inner workings of a mortal body, everything had changed.

*                                                          *

Mahdi thought about nothing in particular, and found it very restful.  He watched the crowd swell and fall away in the street, swelling again in the rush before the dinner hour, and vaguely considered finding himself some food.  His stomach flexed uncertainly around its liquid cargo, and could probably do with something else in it, but he had little desire to search out a meal, and less to speak with the only – being – currently available to man the shop while he was away.

Little as Mahdi had ever prided himself on courage, neither would he ordinarily consider himself any more cowardly than other men, but he could not bring himself to face the djinn who’d entered so disconcertingly into his dream last night.  If he could wait an entire moon before he had to see that handsome blue face again, he might forget enough about that dream to believe that Jadir could – No.  To believe there was a chance that an immortal might not hate him as a mortal would, if he ever found out.

Thoughts snared deep in confused anxiety, Mahdi blinked to find a customer standing expectantly before him and wrenched his usual friendly smile back into place.

“Have you a skin of Gold Moons ten years old or so?”

“A connosoir!”  Startled and off-balance, Mahdi did his best to hide his distraction from the man with flattery as he rose from his stool.  “Good sir, so few patrons can request a vintage by year, I remember the face of every one.  Such a commanding visage as yours – I don’t believe you’ve patronized these humble premises before?”  He was making his way towards the back of the shop, where the older wines were kept, while keeping a courteous eye on the customer for his answer.

Without replying the man smiled, standing patiently in the middle of the room.  A leather thong held sleek black hair in a knot on the top of his head, and his clothes were of a more elegant cut than Mahdi was used to, embroidered around the hems.  His frame was slender but strong, sculpted with more substance than Mahdi had, and hinted at free time to spend at noble sports, honing a handsome shape.  Yasir would be less than pleased if such a man walked away empty-handed.

A quick smile and bow to let him know Mahdi understood his silence and would make haste, and the wineseller turned away from his customer to search through the jars and skins for the proper year of Gold Moons – not one of the cheaper wines.  He had not yet found the section of ten years aged when something thumped against the back of his shoulder, and then a sharp pain bloomed there and grew.  Mahdi’s hand rose to the pain and clutched at it, the room swaying dizzily around him.

Quick steps sounded behind him and he tried to turn, lurched to the side and fell to one knee.  Above him someone chuckled softly, and then there was an incredible yank on the thing sticking in his shoulder – an odd, strangled, airless noise escaped him – and a voice to match the aristocratic clothing said, “An apology, friend, I’ve no quarrel with you, but we can’t have you getting in the way.”

Then the dagger’s hilt slammed into the back of his head and everything whirled lurchingly away into peaceful blackness.

*                                                          *

Asad gloated over the image in his viewstone, watching avidly as the intelligent, ambitious mortal he’d finally managed to secure took the lamp out of the wineshop, tied at the waist under his outer garments.  Once Asad had created a charm to locate Jadir himself rather than his lamp or the mortal who held it, the only difficulty had been finding a mortal with the assets necessary to bring the scheme through to fruition.  He wanted more than a commoner this time, a man with a taste for power and the mind to use it, having realized at last that mortals of lower caste were worthless in any case, but especially for his purposes.  After scanning all the families of the upper classes, at last he’d settled on this eldest son, restless to make his mark in the world and possessing the skills to do it.  

Only one flaw held this mortal back, and once more a smug smile curved Asad’s tinted lips.  It seemed proper and fitting to him that the man to steal the lamp from that irritating little wineseller should share the same taste in bedfellows.  One mouthy servant-boy and his reputation was lost, despite his oft-mentioned wife and son.

The servant-boy had died mysteriously a few days later, and it was this quiet ruthlessness than sealed Asad’s approval for his new mortal assistant.  What could such a man do with a genii bound not to give him three wishes, but as many and as extravagant as he wished?

Asad couldn’t wait to learn.

*                                                          *

Mahdi woke and faded out several times before he gathered the will to hold onto consciousness.  Agony was hardly a sufficient description for his head and his shoulder combined – although the pain seemed to have spread all down his back, making him wonder vaguely if he’d been beaten – and when he opened his eyes, the blurry, reeling vision added intense nausea to the mix.  Moving scarcely seemed like an option.

For a while he lay still, eyes closed, drifting blank-minded through a slippery space of time.  When he finally slitted his eyes open again, light no longer speared through his head because the shop had grown dim with dusk.

Gradually, moving by careful degrees and stopping when the sick feeling grew too strong, he raised himself to a crouch on his knees.  He had been tucked in the hidden niche behind his stool, lying on his back with a wine jug beside him.  Without the blood visible in the dim light, any late customer who’d come in would have seen only a wine-sodden merchant sleeping off an overindulgence in his own wares.

Mahdi’s jaw clenched of its own volition.  Drinking was all very well, but the possibility of having been seen by customers in what looked to be a drunken stupor sat very ill with him.  He might lack courage, ambition, and any semblance of a successful life, but at least as a wineseller he could hold his drink.

Then a more important matter, which had been wholly eclipsed by pain and surprise, slipped back into his mind like a quiet dust viper onto a crowded street.

Where was Jadir?  Surely that nobleman had not come merely to harm Mahdi, not when he’d said he wanted him out of the way – and what had any stranger been so intent on recently but the lamp?

Stumbling to his feet without thought, Mahdi barely kept his stomach where it belonged, swaying for a long moment before he turned unsteady steps toward his bedroom.  The stairs were a test of his determination, his entire body one aching throb by the top, but he ignored it for a wild stare around the room.

At first it seemed that nothing had been touched.  His cupboard doors hung at the same slightly crooked angle as before, after his hasty repair job.  Around his bed all the pillows were only as disarranged as he’d left them, his blankets still hastily folded.  Compared to the disaster he’d expected, the room showed no evidence of a search.

Step faltering and pained, he made his way across to the cupboard and opened one door, reaching in with his good arm to feel behind folded extra clothes.  Cloth, bare wood, and the back of the cupboard.  No cool metal met his touch, no matter how far he felt around.

The elegant stranger had Jadir’s lamp.

Thought did not move well through the thick and unyeilding numbness that fell over his mind then.  Some time later Mahdi had managed to bind his shoulder with a clumsy crosswrap of bandages that made odd lumps under his caftan, and found himself wandering through familiar streets, blank-faced and silent.  He kept walking, far past when he would’ve turned to find lights and warmth, temporary comfort at best in the companionship of his drunken friends.

This was the Dust-Rim, a part of the city he rarely entered, where dwelt the mine-workers and others of lowest caste, and likely unsafe for an injured man alone after sundown.  He had no reason to be here.  No matter what he was looking for, he would not find it here.  He couldn’t say why he kept moving, but a stubborness had settled over him and he would not turn back.

A tight knot of hunger had twisted into his stomach, the world still reeled occasionally, and only that unreasonable obstinacy kept him standing when his shoulder made the whole left side of his body ache bone-deep, but still one foot landed in front of the other and drew him onward.

Then the haze of thoughtless walking cleared a little, and he blinked to find an old begger standing before him, filthy hands clutching a broken bowl hopefully.  Mahdi frowned dully, shook his head a little, and felt at his waist.  It was bare.  He’d left his money behind, or lost it somewhere.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and was startled by the hard rasp of his own words, as if he were angry at the old man.  He cleared his throat, which made his head spin, and said more gently, “I have no money, honored sir.  I have nothing to give you.”

“Truly, young one?” said the begger, and his voice made Mahdi even dizzier, being not the ancient, cracked and hobbling sound he’d expected, but something soothing and deep.  “I think not so.  I think you possess something priceless.”

Wearily the thought dragged itself through Mahdi’s mind that now even the humblest beggers in the Dust-Rim knew of his ownership of the lamp and pursued it, but the ancient cut him off.

“I think you have the truth.”

“The truth?” Mahdi repeated blankly.  He was too tired to decipher cryptic riddles, not at this hour, not this day…

“I seek truths,” the old man said eagerly in that deep voice like smooth thunder.  “I can see that you have learned something true this day, something vital, and I would know it.  Tell me your truth, and I will give you something in return.”

Normally he would extract himself as courteously as possible from such a conversation and make haste back home, but Mahdi was too drained to be skeptical.  A truth… vital truth…

And suddenly he understood without rational thought exactly what the begger was speaking of.

“I have learned,” he said numbly, “that I possessed the most precious thing in the world, and lost it without ever knowing.  And the value did not lie where I thought it did.”

“Ahh,” whispered the begger, sunken eyes gleaming from the seamed and dirty face.  “That has the feel of truth indeed, and sharing your truth will only make it more certain.”

“I need no one to tell me this,” said Mahdi, shaking his head, and turned away to the dark street.

“I know how to find precious things once lost,” sang the sweet rumble from behind him, and Mahdi stopped again.  Moving with crabbed ease, the old man edged up beside him, smiling.

“Three days into the desert,” he said quietly, dark gaze steady on Mahdi’s, which lay a head higher than his, “there lies an ancient and abandoned temple where a broken oracle resides.  It will answer one question, and that only in reference to a recent matter.  But there are rumors of another power there, which can help you follow whatever answer you receive.  It is limited, but I have heard that taking you to the place of whatever you have lost lies within its boundaries.”

Mahdi stared at the strange light in the old man’s eyes, and nodded slowly.  “Where in the desert does it lie?”

“Past the western oasis, and follow the third star in Gebbron.  You will find it.  Such is the gift I give you, knowledge granted for knowledge taken.”  Deep voice chuckling in amusement like a gathering thunderstorm, the begger turned and slipped away.

For a moment Mahdi stood and stared at where he had been, wondering dizzily if he was dreaming.  Then he turned and made his halting way back in the direction he had come, ready for a long sleep before he could make arrangements for a sudden departure in the morning.

Dark eyes gleamed in the shadows, looking after him.  Long minutes after he had gone, they changed shade to a glowing reddish gold, and moved upwards as the begger stretched somehow wider and taller, seamed dingy skin smoothing and paling to sky-blue.

Rafiq smiled in satisfaction, pointed canines very white in the dark.  His help was just subtle enough not to be noticed, yet ought to give poor trapped Jadir at least a slight chance against Asad.  That arrogant, narcissistic bastard was so full of himself he wouldn’t even be looking for resistance. 

A wicked chuckle rumbled through the air like thunder on the horizon and Rafiq vanished.