Chapter Ten—Final Preparations

“Why can’t I sneak in, too?” Razul complained.

“Because,” Ali said. “We do not need half a dozen men sneaking in through the palace windows when one is enough.”

“Two is hardly half a dozen, brother.”

Razul said the words while swirling his wine. Ali walked up to him and took the glass and bottle from him.

“Hey,” he said. “I was drinking that.”

“Hafza is right. No more drinking,” Ali said.

“We need clear heads,” Shiro added. “The call can come at any time. Shai’na is readying for this…” he trailed off.

“Quest?” Dabaku finished for him.

Shiro nodded. “Hai.”

Razul looked at him funny.

“It means ‘yes,’” Ali said.

By now Hafza and her sister had returned with Nusah. They had retired to the upper rooms while Nusah made arrangements to hire a mason, painter and interior decorators to fix the drawing room that Razul and Debaku had completely destroyed.

Occasionally Hafza came downstairs to give him her input. “But wait until they are gone,” she had said, gesturing to the group. “We do not want strangers here while they plan to kill the sultan.”

Her mood changed. Now she spoke of ‘killing the sultan’ as if they were simply conspiring to steal his freshly washed lawndry.

Ali shook his head. “By the way, you and you have to pay for that!” he pointed in the direction of the drawing room.

“But I’ve already paid you,” Debaku said.

Shiro could sense a bemused air about the Mar’a Thulian that did not show upon his otherwise serious demeanor.

“Oh?” Ali asked. “And how is that?”

“I procured for you this top-tier adventurer for your quest,” Debaku said as he gestured toward Razul. “If you will remember, Razul was hesitant about joining us.”

“And you persuaded him?” Ali asked, nodding.

Razul narrowed his eyes. For once he didn’t have his feet up on the dining room table. As things had progressed, he actually seemed to become more interested in their plans—which up until this point, hadn’t been very well put together.

“Fine,” Ali said. “That leaves you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Razul said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You can take it out of my payment for this job.”

“Payment?”

“Of course,” he said. “I do not kill sultans for free.”

Throwing his hands up in defeat and frustration, Ali growled. “Once this is all over, think who will have the ear of Shai’na? You?” He pointed at Debaku. “You?” He then pointed to Razul. Then he whirled on Shiro. “You?!”

Shiro shrugged. “Don’t pull me into this,” he said. “I did not destroy your drawing room.

“You are right,” Ali said. “And even if you did, I would forgive you for rescuing me from Darius’s soldiers.”

As important as Ali’s drawing room was to him—and Shiro suspected it was more important to Hafza—they needed to get serious, to find out exactly how Debaku would smuggle them their weapons.

They couldn’t bring them in through the front gate.

Shiro stroked his chin and ignored the banter between the three men and started studying the map, in particular, the area surrounding the palace.

Debaku was a capable adventurer with high skills in stealth and even better skills in combat. Razul was too much of a loose dagger to trust with such a sensitive task and Shiro and Ali didn’t have the necessary skills to sneak into the Sultan’s Palace.

At least, not that he believed.

It had to be Debaku.

Then he called the Mar’a Thulian’s name. “Debaku? Can you look at the map with me?”

“Of course,” The Black Cobra said. He was wearing a blue tunic and white trousers of a considerably lower cost cut than usual. They would need to dress him in far finer clothes if he was going to sneak into the palace during a sumptuous banquet festival.

“What is it that you are thinking, Shiro?”

Shiro glanced at his friend. The grey snake eyes he was getting used to, but they still gave him an eerie chill, even to this day. Suddenly a curiosity came to him.

“Debaku,” Shiro asked. “How old are you?”

“How old?”

“Hai.”

The top-tier adventurer smiled. Apart from his eyes, he was a handsome fellow with a bald head and a thick brush of black stubble on the underside of his chin.

“I suppose, you could say that I am forty.”

“Suppose?” Ali asked.

“That is what I should appear to be.”

“Wait,” Razul said. “’Appear to be’?”

“You forget that I am jinni bonded,” Debaku said.

“What?!” Razul barked. “I did not know this. Why do I not know this?” He nodded, then to himself he muttered, “Now I understand.”

“When Archaemenes was lost to me, I had the advantage of long life,” he went on in way of explanation. Shiro believed that he would not have been saying this if it weren’t for his own benefit. Though he had warmed to Ali considerably over time.

“Ah,” Shiro said. “And now that he is gone?”

“Now that he is gone, that advantage is lost to me. But I would say I was ten years younger at that time.”

Shiro nodded, having gotten his answer.

“Why do you ask me this, Shiro?”

“No reason, my friend. I simply wish to know more about you.”

Debaku nodded. Then glancing to the map, he said, “Shall we find my entry into the palace, then?”

“Of course!”

They all considered the palace, but without being able to physically be there to decide the best place of ingress, they were left to guess based on the map.

“The grounds are extensive,” Razul said. “A lot of water is necessary to maintain the gardens and keep them in good order. Could you swim up this thoroughfare?”

“Do you mean this?” Ali asked as he pointed at a thin waving line.

“Yes. This is a stream, no doubt used by the gardeners. I’ve seen this before.”

“When?” Shiro asked.

“A different quest,” Razul said, then he chuckled. “You should have been there. We snuck into King Hadusha’s palace and stole his most treasured jewel, the Jewel of the Ardinases.”

“You did what?” Ali asked in astonishment. “You lie! We would have heard of this theft!”

Debaku leaned back with a smile on his face.

“No,” Razul said with a huge grin. “Hadusha did not want to report the theft to avoid the shame of it. You know why.”

“Why?” Shiro asked.

Ali said, “Because he had previously promised that jewel to a princess he was courting.”

“Did she marry him?”

“No,” Razul said. “Probably because of the missing jewel.”

“I still say you lie,” Ali accused his brother.

“No,” Debaku said, and they all looked at him. “I made my way into the king’s palace myself to take that jewel.”

“And?” Razul asked.

“I found only a blue cushion with an indent for a sapphire the size of a fist, but nothing was there.”

“Ha!” Razul scoffed triumphantly.

Ali’s mouth dropped open. “This is impossible. I cannot believe it!”

Shiro couldn’t help but smile.

“So I have bested you in a way,” Razul said with a laugh. “Better luck next time, Mar’a Thulian!”

Debaku’s lips twisted into a wry smile.

“What happened to the jewel?” Ali asked.

“Oh,” Razul said lightly. “Sold it on the black market in Kufu.

Ali rubbed his forehead. “I cannot believe this.”

“Why not?”

“Why did you two not tell us before what excellent thieves you are?”

Razul shrugged. “Don’t you know?” He patted the blade at his side—the one he had taken from the dungeon guardian in Azurbadan.

“We could have sent you two into the Sultan’s Palace to steal the lamp!”

“Lamp?” Razul asked.

Ali’s eyes widened.

“Nothing,” Shiro said. “We are not going to the palace for that. We go for Jessamine, and the end of the sultan.”

“Yes, well, of course,” Ali said, covering is tracks—the big-mouthed buffoon!

Kami-sama, Shiro though. He had almost revealed what they were truly after to Razul, and it didn’t need to be said between Ali and Shiro that Razul was not to be trusted with such a great item of wealth and power.

“Rumor has it,” Dabaku said, “that Darius is jinni bonded.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Razul said.

“I do not believe it,” Debaku said. “I would know.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

Razul shrugged. “So, do you take this thoroughfare into the gardens and then make your way into the palace proper from there?”

Shiro was suspect that Razul let the matter of a jinni lamp drop so easily, but said nothing else to draw more attention onto the matter.

“It is not a bad way,” Debaku said.

“But what if he should be seen in the gardens?” Shiro asked. “There are bound to be many guards. This is Darius we are talking about.”

Razul looked at the map and squinted, then he dragged his finger across the steam in question. “Indeed. But it’s so neat and easy. It gets us into the walls.”

“I know!” Ali said. “The gardens surely have many places to hide things. Debaku can stash the weapons while we bring him a change of clothes.

“But how do we get the weapons into the palace?” Razul asked, bringing up the problem once again. “It is not like we can simply walk into the fortress with a pile of swords.”

“Hmm,” Shiro noised, thinking hard.

“I will just have to hide the swords,” Debaku said. “We can retrieve them at an opportune time when no one is in the gardens.”

“Do you really expect a time when they will be empty?” Ali asked.

“Indeed,” Razul said.

“Yes,” Shiro said. “Ali, you said that Darius was planning these festivities to have no end date. Surely everyone will have to retire into their chambers eventually.”

Nodding, Ali smiled and put his finger to his temple. “Now you are thinking. We can steal out of the palace in the night, get the weapons and take them back inside with us.”

“We cannot kill anyone in the grounds,” Debaku said. “Once an alarm is sounded, our quest will be done.”

“I agree,” Shiro said. “If we cannot find…”—he almost said ‘ the lamp’—“Jessamine—then we have but to kill the sultan.”

“So?” Razul asked. “Kill the sultan, find your woman. Easy.”

“Now you sound like me,” Ali said.

Razul grinned. “No, little brother. You always sound like me.”

Ali made a face.

“Perhaps,” Shiro said, “Shai’na can ask that her chambers face the north-east gardens. Look.” He pointed on the map. “She may be able to have window access to the gardens in this area to make things easier.”

“Good thinking,” Ali said. “We will ask her about this. It won’t be hard to spot the guards in the gardens, and if we have trouble, Naro can help us with that. He has good eyes.”

“Are you certain?” Shiro asked, thinking back to their time when he had spotted Ali’s slaves signaling them to swim across the river long before the cat eye did when they were infiltrating vizier Faridoon’s mansion. They had gone to rescue Jessamine—to get the lamp. But they had failed, and she ended up in Darius’ hands.

The thought made Shiro want to curse and grind his teeth in frustration at his failure. As difficult as that quest was, it would have been far easier to get Jessamine back at that time.

“Sure,” Ali said with a shrug. “He is a cat eye.”

Shiro raised a skeptical brown, wondering if the cat eye slave’s eyes were nearly as good as Ali believed.

The door across the chamber and down the hall slammed open and footsteps pounded across the tiles. “Master Ali!”

“What?” Ali asked in annoyance. “Just tell me, boy—don’t come running through here like a herd of stampeding rhinos!”

“Sorry, Master. But vizier Shai’na’s man has just arrived. He brought a carriage and has told me to tell you the vizier requests your presence at her manor immediately.”

“Really?” Shiro asked. “That was fast!”

“I know,” Ali said, glancing at Shiro.

“Yes,” Nusah said. “I was told to tell you to bring anything you will need for the ‘event.’”

Shiro nodded. “This is it.”

“Good!” Razul said. “I am tired of waiting and I’m craving some excitement.”

“Then let’s go,” Debaku said. “We have much work to do.”

“Indeed,” Ali added with a nod.

Shiro lead them on the way out, being the most eager of the bunch. But perhaps Razul was itching for some “fun.” Killing Darius was hardly fun. The man was crazy.

I do hope he doesn’t do anything stupid.

“Wait you fools!” Hafza barked from the stairs.

Shiro turned, his eyes widening. How had they forgotten Ali’s wife? For that matter, how had Ali forgotten his own wife?

She narrowed her eyes dangerously as she approached Ali, Debaku, Shiro and Nusah watching—waiting to see what she would do.

She sauntered directly to Ali and grabbed his chin forcefully and then thrust her face onto his.

Razul chuckled.

“Do not come back until Darius is dead and Jessamine is safe,” she said, then, looking at them all, she added, “Do you understand me?”

Shiro nodded.

Debaku said, “Yes.”

Razul added, “Do not worry. I won’t let anything happen to my little brother, so we must complete this quest.” He laughed. “Or we are camel fucked.”

“That’s right!” Hafza snapped. “Make sure you complete this quest—and protect my husband, or I will have you all castrated!”

Shiro almost laughed, but this was a serious situation, and Hafza, being unable to stop Ali, could only threaten them if any harm befell him.

“We will accomplish our goals!” Shiro said, and bowed to Hafza in a formal way that bespoke his sincerity.

“I believe you,” she said. “Naro, come down and go with them.”

As soon as the cat eye was in their group, Hafza tuned to go back upstairs. “Now go.”

“I will return,” Ali said. “Have no worries, dear wife.”

With a node, a subtle smile touched her lips and she left them there.

“Well,” Ali said, turning to the group. “That went a little better than expected.”

“Not if you come back here and we haven’t killed Darius,” Razul said.

“Don’t talk about that,” Ali said, wagging a finger. “Right, Shiro?”

“Mm!” he growled with a nod, his hand instinctually finding the hilt of his Urutai scimitar sheathed at his belt.