He realised too late that he had lapsed back into English. Perhaps it was just as well; he would have embarrassed himself, trying to say all that in French. The genie’s eyes had narrowed, but whether it was a sign of hostility or merely difficulty understanding him, Galen didn’t know.
He hoped the latter, and that Abd ar-Rashid understood enough to see the opening Galen had provided. And indeed, after a silent moment, the genie bowed. “I would die a hundred times, O Prince, before I bring shame to you by my behavior. I am content to wait. Perhaps in that time I find some service for yourself or your Queen, and prove my character to you?”
Now Galen turned to Lune, gratefully handing off the burden of this negotiation. The notion of introducing, not just a faerie, but a heathen faerie to the philosophers of the Royal Society was a staggering absurdity his mind could scarcely encompass, but perhaps it would be possible to disguise Abd ar-Rashid with a glamour of an Englishman, and to improve his English. Or just to conduct the entire affair in French. In the meantime, Lune could decide what price she wanted to put on Galen’s help.
With a rueful quirk of her lips, Lune asked, “Do the powers of a genie, by any chance, extend to the weather?”
The effort to find a weapon against the Dragon had sent Lune’s ambassadors farther than ever before—but never beyond Europe. For the first time in her reign, she found herself with a visitor about whom she knew precisely nothing.
A state of affairs she did not permit to last for long. A week and a half after the genie’s audience, she convened a small meeting of fae: Sir Adenant, Lady Yfaen, and the puck Beggabow.
Sir Adenant had not even brushed the dust off his boots, so recently had he returned from France. “My report, madam,” he said, handing over a sheaf of papers with a bow. “I judged it more important to get this information to you rapidly than to uncover every detail, but this is the essence of it.”
He was far from her best spy, but he’d gone to France before, and had friends in the Cour du Lys. “What did you learn?”
“He’s definitely a traveller, madam. Before France, it was Italy and Athens; his home, inasmuch as he has one, is Istanbul. But he seems to have gone there with that fellow he mentioned, Taqi al-Din, nearly two hundred years ago, and they met in Egypt.”
Beggabow whistled. Lune felt like doing the same. Most fae looked oddly even on those who served as ambassadors; travel was not something they did much of. But perhaps genies had a greater fondness for it. “Why all the movement?”
Adenant spread his hands. “It seems to be as he said, your Grace. A thirst for information. Madame Malline told me those later parts of his name mean ‘the traveller’ and ‘the seeker of knowledge,’ or some such.”
“What about the first part? ‘Servant of He Who Knows’?”
The faerie knight shuddered. “That’s the strangest part. They say he’s a heathen—that he follows the Mohammedan deity. And he isn’t the only one, either. He claims several genies are ‘of the Faithful.’”
Lady Yfaen laughed, a bright, disbelieving sound. “Surely you don’t mean they pray.”
“They do,” Beggabow said. “Or at least he does. Five times a day. I’ve been watching him the last week, wondering what in Mab’s name he thinks he’s doing.”
The puck was one of Aspell’s spies, diverted from the Sanists to follow Abd ar-Rashid. “Where is he living?” Lune asked.
“In Wapping,” the puck said. “Bold as you please. Makes himself look like a Turk, and rents a room from some Lascar near the Frying Pan Stairs, right by the river.”
Now it was Adenant’s turn to whistle. “Does the Lascar give him bread?”
Beggabow shook his head. “Not as I can tell. He don’t seem to need it. Iron don’t bother him, and neither do holy things, him praying and all. Wish I could learn that trick.”
It explained why he hadn’t asked for shelter in the Onyx Hall. Lune had been uneasy about that, not certain whether she wanted to offer it to him or not. Strangers were common enough, but not strangers whose capabilities and motives were entirely opaque to her. And while it seemed, at least so far, that this genie’s motives were honest enough, his capabilities were still a dangerous unknown.
Adenant’s report might contain something of that. So, too, might Yfaen’s contribution. The sylph had a tall stack on the table at her side, books and loose papers alike. “This is all I could find, madam,” she said, with an apologetic duck of her head, as if she hadn’t assembled a month’s worth of reading. “The Thousand and One Nights he mentioned—a French translation, and two English ones. Also a few other books, and a manuscript from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I don’t know if it says anything about genies, but her husband was the English ambassador to Istanbul about fifty years ago, and she went with him; this is what she wrote about her experiences. It may help.”
Anything that chipped away at Lune’s ignorance would help. She sighed, foreseeing a great deal of work ahead. “My thanks to all three of you. If you learn more—”
Beggabow snapped his fingers, then blushed and tugged his forelock in apology for interrupting her. “Sorry, your Grace. I just remembered. There’s a Jew around the corner from where he lives, a lens-maker named Schuyler; your Arab has him and a silversmith working on some kind of mirrored bowl. Not sure what that’s for, but it’s big.” The puck held out his arms, indicating something at least a yard across.
A chill ran down Lune’s spine. “I’ll have the Lord Treasurer disburse more bread to you. Watch him, and watch this Jew. We need to know what that bowl is for.”
“Mr. St. Clair,” Elizabeth Vesey said in a disapproving voice, “I am beginning to think you left the better part of yourself at home.”
One of the ladies let out an unregenerate cackle. She was an older woman, and not one Galen knew, but their brief introduction had made it clear she had a filthy mind, and no shame about it, either. Though she hadn’t voiced her interpretation of Mrs. Vesey’s words, Galen still blushed, and got another cackle for his pains.
“My apologies,” he told his hostess, shaking himself to alertness. “My mind was indeed elsewhere—though I assure you, in a place more pleasant than home.”
He realised too late how that would sound to the scandalous old woman. Her third cackle was even louder than the first two. Ah well, he told himself, resigned. Learn to do that on purpose, and you might pass muster as a wit.
But social reasons were the least part of his purpose here tonight. At one end of the room, Dr. Andrews was preparing his materials for a presentation. This was not the Bluestocking Circle per se, but a gathering of learned ladies and some gentlemen, and Galen was attending to continue his evaluation of the man. The days were passing, and he was painfully aware of them; but he was also aware that the consequences of trusting the wrong man could be severe.