Dalzel’s trumpet shouts seemed to inspire Hasruel. He began to get the better of the soldier. Abdullah tried to get a hand loose so that he could reach out to the golden ring, dangling just by his shoulder, under Hasruel’s hooked nose. Abdullah freed his left hand. But his right hand was sweating and slipping off Hasruel’s ear. He grabbed— desperately—before he slipped off.
He had reckoned without Jamal’s dog. After lying dazed for most of a minute, it stood up, angrier than ever and full of hatred for djinns. It saw Hasruel and knew its enemy. Back across the hall it raced, hackles up and snarling, past the tiny princess and Morgan, past Princess Beatrice and Valeria, through the princesses eddying around the throne, past the crouching figure of its master, and sprang at the easiest piece of djinn to reach. Abdullah snatched his hand away just in time.
Snap ! went the dog’s teeth. Gulp went the dog’s throat. After that, a puzzled look crossed the dog’s face, and it dropped to the floor, hiccuping uneasily. Hasruel howled with pain and sprang upright with both hands clapped to his nose. The soldier was hurled to the floor. Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night were flung off to either side. Abdullah dived for the hiccuping dog, but Jamal got there first and picked it up tenderly.
“Poor dog, my poor dog! Better soon!” he crooned to it, and carried it carefully away down the steps.
Abdullah dragged the dazed soldier with him and put them both in front of Jamal. “Stop, everyone!” he shouted. “Dalzel, I conjure you to stop! We have your brother’s life!”
The struggle on the throne stilled. Dalzel stood with spread wings and his eyes like furnaces again. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Where?”
“Inside the dog,” said Abdullah.
“But only until tomorrow,” Jamal said soothingly, thinking only of his hiccuping dog. “It has an irritable gut from eating too much squid. Be thankful—”
Abdullah kicked him to shut him up. “The dog has eaten the ring in Hasruel’s nose,” he said.
The dismay on Dalzel’s face told him that the genie had been right. He had guessed correctly. “Oh!” said the princesses. All eyes turned to Hasruel, huge and bowed over, with tears in his fiery eyes and both hands clasped to his nose. Djinn blood, which was clear and greenish, dripped between his great horned fingers.
“I should hab dode,” Hasruel said dismally. “It wad right udder by dose.”
The elderly Princess of High Norland detached herself from the crowd around the throne, felt in her sleeve, and reached up to Hasruel with a small lacy handkerchief. “Here you are,” she said. “No hard feelings.”
Hasruel took the handkerchief with a grateful “Thang you” and pressed it to the torn end of his nose. The dog had not really eaten much except the ring. Having mopped the place carefully, Hasruel knelt ponderously down and beckoned to Abdullah up the steps of the throne. “What would you have me do now I am good again?” he asked mournfully.
Chapter 21: In which the castle comes down to earth
Abdullah did not need to give Hasruel’s question much thought. “You must exile your brother, mighty djinn, to a place from which he will not return,” he said.
Dalzel at once burst into melting blue tears. “It’s not fair!” He wept and stamped his foot on the throne. “Everyone’s always against me! You don’t love me, Hasruel! You cheated me! You didn’t even try to get rid of those three people hanging on to you!”
Abdullah was sure Dalzel was right about that. Knowing the power a djinn had, Abdullah was sure Hasruel could have flung the soldier, not to speak of himself and Flower-in-the-Night, to the ends of the earth if he had wanted to.
“It wasn’t as if I was doing any harm!” Dalzel shouted. “I have a right to get married, don’t I?”
While he shouted and stamped, Hasruel murmured to Abdullah, “There is a wandering island in the ocean to the south, which is only to be found once in a hundred years. It has a palace and many fruit trees. May I send my brother there?”
“And now you’re going to send me away!” Dalzel screamed. “None of you care how lonely I shall be!”
“By the way,” Hasruel murmured to Abdullah, “your father’s first wife’s relatives made a pact with the mercenaries, which allowed them to flee from Zanzib to escape the Sultan’s wrath, but they left the two nieces behind. The Sultan has locked the unfortunate girls up, they being the nearest of your family he could find.”
“Most shocking,” Abdullah said. He saw what Hasruel was driving at. “Perhaps, mighty djinn, you might celebrate your return to goodness by fetching the two damsels here?”
Hasruel’s hideous face brightened. He raised his great clawed hand. There was a clap of thunder, followed by some girlish squealing, and the two fat nieces stood before the throne. It was as simple as that. Abdullah saw that Hasruel had indeed been holding back his strength before. Looking into the djinn’s great slanting eyes—which still had tears in the corners from the dog’s attack—he saw that Hasruel knew he knew.
“Not more princesses!” Princess Beatrice said. She was kneeling by Valeria, looking rather harassed.
“Nothing of the sort, I assure you,” said Abdullah.
The two nieces could hardly have looked less like princesses. They were in their oldest clothes, practical pink and workaday yellow, torn and stained from their experiences, and the hair of both had come unfrizzed. They took one look at Dalzel stamping and weeping above them on the throne, another look at the huge shape of Hasruel, and then a third look at Abdullah wearing nothing but a loincloth, and they screamed. Then each tried to hide her face in the other’s plump shoulder.
“Poor girls,” stated the Princess of High Norland. “Hardly royal behavior.”
“Dalzel!” Abdullah shouted up at the sobbing djinn. “Beauteous Dalzel, poacher of princesses, be peaceful a moment and look upon the gift I have given you to take with you into exile.”
Dalzel stopped in mid-sob. “Gift?”
Abdullah pointed. “Behold two brides, young and succulent and sorely in need of a bridegroom.”
Dalzel wiped luminous tears from his cheeks and surveyed the nieces in much the same way that Abdullah’s cannier customers used to inspect his carpets. “A matching pair!” he said. “And wonderfully fat! Where’s the catch? Are they perhaps not yours to give away?”
“No catch, shining djinn,” said Abdullah. It seemed to him that, now the girls’ other relatives had deserted them, they were surely his to dispose of. But to be on the safe side, he added, “They are yours for the stealing, mighty Dalzel.” He went up to the nieces and patted each on her plump arm. “Ladies,” he said. “Fullest moons of Zanzib, pray forgive me that unfortunate vow which prevents me forever from enjoying your largeness. Look up instead and behold the husband I have found you in my place.”
The heads of both nieces came up as soon as they heard the word husband. They gazed at Dalzel. “He’s ever so handsome,” said the pink one.
“I like them with wings,” said the yellow one. “It’s different.”
“Fangs are rather sexy,” mused the pink one. “So are claws, provided he’s careful with them on the carpets.”
Dalzel beamed wider with each remark. “I shall steal these at once,” he said. “I like them better than princesses. Why didn’t I collect fat ladies instead, Hasruel?”