Free The Price of Freedom by Jenny Schwartz Page B

promise to Andrew and her duty to the Guardian Council, she could only stand and watch.
    “Who stole my djinni?” Umar Haya glared at Ilias. “What white-skinned son of a—” The rant exposed the man’s unbalanced thinking, the hate that ruled him.
    Bile rose in Ilias. “I have it,” he snapped.
    “You?” Haya tried to rise from his chair but the shackles held him.
    “Me.” Ilias ignored the major, who watched from the far side of the table. He fumbled in his pocket and drew out the bottle.
    “It’s mine.” The shackles aborted Haya’s lunge.
    “No.” Ilias shook with disgust that such as Haya had controlled a djinni. The bottle in his hands warmed.
    Rafe materialized. “Master?”
    “Rafe,” gasped Mischa.
    He ignored her.
    The major’s eyes closed in magic-induced forgetting.
    “Kill him,” screamed Haya. “It is my wish. Don’t fail me again.”
    Rafe turned his back on Haya. “Master?”
    Ilias stared at the djinni. Tall and somber, power radiated from him.
    “Did you try to kill me?”
    “It was my order.”
    But even faced with a legendary being, Ilias had spun words too long and in too many pressured environments to be misled. “Did you want me dead, O djinni?”
    A suspicion of a smile rewarded his shrewdness. “No.”
    “Just no?” Ilias prompted carefully, inviting fuller explanation.
    The djinni bowed his head a fraction, a gesture of pride rather than submission. “I cannot change a man’s heart, and Solomon’s binding requires me to fulfill three wishes for whoever holds my bottle. There are many actions in my life that I regret. But I have learned. I have had millennia to learn how to twist a man’s wishes and frustrate them even as I serve.”
    “And so I live,” said Ilias. “By your will.”
    “You are a good man. There are people who would mourn your death.”
    “Demon spawn. Cheat. Liar,” Haya howled. He was sound and fury, signifying nothing, and he was ignored.
    Ilias stared at the djinni who loomed over him. There was the scent of the desert on his clothes, its fierceness in the djinni’s green eyes. Such power shouldn’t be held.
    “How many men have you called master?”
    “Three hundred and twelve.”
    Haya slammed his manacled fists onto the table. Rage and hate twisted his face into a gargoyle’s image. Blasphemies streamed from his lips.
    The djinni had been forced to serve such men for centuries. It was unimaginable suffering, a torture of the spirit, yet he emerged from it with honor and the strength of character to live compassionately.
    “It is enough.” Ilias set the djinni bottle carefully on the table. “I wish you free.”
    The wind that swept the room swallowed Haya’s unclean curses.
    Ilias closed his eyes against the storm of light and sound. When he opened them, the room was still and the djinni knelt before him.
    “My name is Rafe, Ilias Aboud, and I thank you.” In a clap of thunder, he vanished.
    “You’re a fool,” said Umar Haya savagely.
    “But I can sleep at night.” Ilias shivered, still tingling with the power of the djinni’s release. How many centuries of suffering had he just unbound? A thought lit within him. If he could unbind a djinni, it was a good omen for his peace work. Faced with men such as Umar Haya, he would remember this moment. Freedom and respect, and the power of both.
    “What is he saying?” The major was awake again.
    Ilias laughed. “He thinks I’m a fool.” He picked up the bottle, empty glass now. “And he tells me this is his djinni bottle.”
    The major snorted. “A lunatic. Ah, hell. We won’t waste our sleep on him. We’ll question him in the morning.”
     
    “Ilias, thank you.” He couldn’t hear her, but she’d never forget this gift. Her Rafe was rising from the floor, free and powerful. His hawk eyes glowed, his mouth curved in triumph. All rage and grief was transformed to love and exultation.
    “Mischa!”
    They slammed into one another, the impact tearing the air.