I paused. “Oh.”
“That was the purpose of Suleiman’s binding,” Arachne said. “It was intended to force jinn to grant their wishes to whoever held the item by creating an artificial bond. And it worked. After a fashion.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “For some strange reason, the jinn bound to these items didn’t have very much motivation to make sure the wishes turned out well.”
“Funnily enough, yes,” Arachne said. “The binding process did great harm to the jinn. Weaker ones were driven to madness, while the stronger ones were filled with hatred and the desire for vengeance, first against the mages who bound them, and eventually against all humans. They couldn’t disobey their masters—not at first—but they could twist and corrupt the wishes they were forced to carry out. And the more their master relied upon them, the more influence they gained over their bearer in turn. Eventually they could strike their bearer down, or carry them away to torment at their leisure.”
I started to answer, then stopped dead, my eyes going wide. “Wait. The monkey’s paw—”
“Yes,” Arachne said. “When you first told me about it, I suspected. After I heard what happened to Martin, I was sure. You remember I told you never to use it.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered. I remembered that time I’d come home to find it lying on my pillow, and felt a chill. What would have happened if I hadn’t listened to Arachne? Or if Luna hadn’t listened to me? “There’s a jinn inside?”
“And a powerful one. An ifrit if not a marid.”
I thought about it for a second. I wondered how long the creature had been trapped there. “Could I just free it?”
Arachne looked at me, then quite unexpectedly reached out with one foreleg and patted me on the head, and when she spoke her voice was warm. “You’re a good person, Alex.”
“Hey,” I protested.
“It wouldn’t help, I’m afraid,” Arachne said. “That jinn’s body was destroyed millennia ago. There’s nowhere for you to free it to.”
“Oh.”
“In any case,” Arachne said, “mages eventually came to accept that their bound jinn were more harm than help. So they destroyed the items, or sealed them away, or left them forgotten in treasure hoards until they themselves died, whereupon the items would be passed on until they found their way into the hands of normal humans. And over time, knowledge of the jinn faded into folktale and myth. But underneath it, the essence remained. A human who called up the jinn according to the old rituals, with the jinn as a willing partner, could still unlock their full power.”
“But according to you, that’d only work if the human actually cared about the jinn in the first place.”
“Yes.”
“So for Morden and Richard to carry out their secret plan and get a jinn as a superweapon, they need someone who empathises with magical creatures?” I laughed. “Good bloody luck. The average empathy level of that band of psychos has got to be lower than even the Light Council. They’re going to have serious trouble finding anyone who . . .”
I trailed off.
Arachne looked at me.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Figured it out yet?” Arachne said.
“Wait,” I said. “That can’t be it. It doesn’t . . .”
“You’ve said in the past that you were never quite sure why Richard chose you,” Arachne said. “Perhaps he was hedging his bets. He chose his first three apprentices in the classical Dark mould, but he understood that came with limitations. So when it came to choosing his fourth and last apprentice, he selected someone different. Someone with the potential for other things.”
“No,” I said. “He has to know I’d never agree. Not to that. Okay, working as Morden’s aide is one thing, but . . .”
“And you remember how that came about?” Arachne said. “What if Richard and Morden simply tell you: bond with the jinn, use it as we order, or we’ll kill Luna? Or Anne, or Variam, or everyone else you care about?”
I opened my mouth to give an answer and couldn’t think of one.
“Richard isn’t stupid, Alex,” Arachne said. “He has little enough empathy himself, but he understands how to exploit it in others.”
“How long have you been suspecting this?”
“I’ve suspected ever since your trip to Syria. This”—she tapped the phone—“makes it more than a suspicion.”
“But Richard didn’t get that box from Syria,” I said. “The Council did. If there really was a jinn inside, he missed his chance.”
“There are other jinn,” Arachne said. “So for the meantime, I would strongly suggest that you do all you can to make a breakthrough with the dreamstone.”
I’d already been feeling uneasy, and the mention of the dreamstone made my mood worse. “What kind of breakthrough?” I demanded. I gestured over to the right, where the dreamstone sat on a small table on its stand. “We’ve been working on that thing for months now. We’ve tried command words, we’ve tried spells, we’ve tried fifty different channelling methods, and all for what? So the damn thing can sit there and do an imitation of a chunk of rock, which is apparently a really good imitation since it hasn’t broken character once! I’ve explored every single possible thing I could do with this focus and nothing works!”
Arachne was silent for a moment. “I am starting to suspect,” she said at last, “that the stone may be testing you.”
“But I’ve tried to pass its tests,” I said. “I’ve tried every possible interaction with this stone that I can imagine.”
“With your divination.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Perhaps the issue is one of commitment,” Arachne said. “Many imbued items require some kind of sacrifice before they will accept a bearer. Blood, possessions, oaths.”
“I already tried the bleeding-on-it plan,” I said. It said something that I’d been willing to even consider that future in the first place.
“You didn’t actually try it,” Arachne said. “You looked at what the consequences would be if you did.”
“What’s your point?”
“This item may be more intelligent than you give it credit for.”
“So what are you saying I should do?” I asked. “Start cutting myself?”
“No,” Arachne said. “Doing that on my say-so would work no better, I think. The impetus must come from you. But whatever you try, I think you should do it soon. We may be running out of time.”
| | | | | | | | |
I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept thinking about what would happen if Arachne was right, and I remembered that prophecy I’d been told last Christmas, about how the Council believed that Richard’s rise to power would be done through me. The two blended together into a series of worst-case scenarios that just got more and more horrible, and at some point I fell asleep and they turned into a muddle of frightening dreams where I was a monstrous beast roaming an abandoned London.
I woke tired, with grit in my eyes and a sore throat. Morden didn’t need me in at the War Rooms until tomorrow, but there was a message on my phone from Luna, asking for me to come meet her. I might have been tempted to put her off, but the place she named caught my attention.
| | | | | | | | |
Luna was waiting for me at the end of the street. “Okay, I have to ask,” I said as I walked up. “Why did you want to meet here?”
Luna grinned. She was dressed in white and green, with a ribbon in her hair, and somehow she looked different from usual. Luna’s never been classically beautiful, but she’s got vitality, and today there was a particular sparkle to her eye. I could see passersby giving her second looks. “You’ll find out. Come on.”