Chapter Eighteen—A Swashbuckler’s Hospitality

Six hours later…

Shiro blinked awake, his skin feeling sore. Not in the way that a muscle becomes sore. The surface of his skin hurt and touching it made that pain feel no better.

Sitting up, he discovered that he mostly felt good. He was still wearing his clothes Ali had bought him, his tunic ripped to shreds. He took off his overcoat and tunic then made to put on another tunic, but there were none in the room.

Forgoing the tunic, he simply put his overcoat back on and left his chest bare.

He walked in front of a mirror. With his water-dried hair swept back and a thick strand hanging over his forehead, he looked like quite the swashbuckler. He and Ali would have made a perfect pair back in their adventuring days while he looked like this.

He left the room and went downstairs, his heart beating faster than it should as a sour knot formed in his stomach.

Jessamine.

She was gone, taken by the Black Cobra of Mar’a Thul.

Shiro grit his teeth. In their fight he was unable to do anything to stop the adventurer. He was simply too far above Shiro’s level. As a top-tier adventurer, Shiro was outclasses in so many ways.

And he poisons his blades, he thought. Then he wondered why he was still alive. Perhaps the rain from the storm had washed most of the poison off his blade? Jessamine had also tossed fireballs at him, of which he deflected with his blade.

Water and fire. Surely those things not good if one wanted to keep a sheen of poison on his blade.

Dishonorable coward.

“Tch!” hissed in frustration and slammed his closed fist onto the marble banister as he went down the stairs.

A servant was passing him in the hall. He asked her where Ali was. She pointed to a door and told Shiro Ali was in the sitting room with his wife.

Shiro wasted no time.

When he barged in Ali and his wife Hafza glanced up at him. Ali stood, a smile appearing on his face. “You’re awake, my friend. How do you feel?”

Ali was wearing cream-colored trousers, expensive sandals and a tunic with an overcoat. His overcoat had thread of gold interlacing around the wooden buttons.

“She’s gone,” he said.

Hafza said nothing as a worried look appeared on her face.

“The lamp,” Shiro said. “He took it.”

Ali sat down as the gravity of what Shiro told him sunk in.

“What do you mean, ‘they took the lamp’?” Hafza bolted upright on her feet. “Was she abducted?”

“You could say that,” Ali said, his eyes coming back to Shiro. Then he said, “Do you know who took her?”

Shiro strode further into the room and nodded. “He told me he was called the Black Cobra of Mar’a Thul.

Ali’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I know.”

“No wonder you were so soundly beaten, Shiro.”

He made a sound of annoyance.

“We must tell the city vizier,” Hafza said. “He can begin an investigation and we can find your friend!”

“No,” Ali said, putting up a hand. “That will not do, my love.”

“What do you mean it won’t do?”

Ali rolled his eyes. “Do you want to tell her or should I?”

“Go ahead,” Shiro said quietly as his mind raced with what to do. He had no good ideas.

Sometime later Hafza, sitting on the luxurious couch of white fabric and intricately carved feet and arms, nodded. “I see. No wonder she always has that smirk on her face.”

“Like she’s aware of something you are not?” Ali said with a wry smile.

Hafza nodded.

“I’m so sorry, Shiro.” There was a look of pain on Hafza’s face, and Shiro knew that she wasn’t acting. She genuinely cared about what happened to Jessamine.

Ali chose his wife well.

Had he been in a better mood, he might have rolled his eyes and mused on how that wasn’t possible and that Hafza’s quality being a product of pure luck, since Ali was too dumb to choose a good woman.

All humorous of course.

But now was not the time for such thoughts of levity.

He was tired and had to sit down as well. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to track that Black Cobra and I can’t communicate with Jessamine. We have no link.”

Ali glanced about, not understand what Shiro was talking about. He didn’t understand the minutiae between a man and a jinni. Shiro knew little more than he did.

“I think there might be something we can do,” Ali said. “But we can discuss this while we eat. A twilight meal is being laid out on our table.”

“No,” Shiro said. “I want to know what you have in mind, now.”

Ali raised a finger.

“My house, Shiro.”

“Ali!” he barked.

“Shiro,” Ali said, getting up off the couch. He put a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “You have just been through an ordeal. How you survived is beyond me. You need food so you can recuperate.”

Hafza nodded. “Please, Shiro. For Jessamine’s sake. She needs you—all of us, as alert as we can be if we are to do anything to help her.”

Sighing, he nodded and followed Ali and Hafza out of the drawing room.