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In the center of a red tile floor lay a banked and glowing bowl of coals, the symbols of my office The Queen sat erly on my smoke, so as not to burn the tassels She spoke fir a woman of no small position, and too busy to care for an upstart new Queen They had both of theone up in flames at a family dinner the previous winter, to the mild surprise of all present
“Now, young one,” said Kohinoor, fir e, “it is not appropriate that you should reign and renorant of our history Thus it is our duty to tell you how things were in the old world, and how they came to be However, we have a luncheon appoint blackened basilisk, which is our favorite, so kindly pay attention so that we are not forced to repeat ourselves…”
THE TALE OF
THE FIRST DJINN
NO DOUBT YOU VENERATE KASHKASH AS YOUR grandfather and best-loved household god Stop At this very moment
It is necessary for the glorification of the Djinn, and also so that we may not be endlessly ensorcelled into various kitchen itehters, that the name of Kashkash be adored and feared Do not rub that la, lest Kashkash leap out and s you whole! Do not clack your spoons together, sweetling! Kashkash will coobble you up! It is, however, not sensible to expect others to adore and fear e do not, and so the secret history of the smoke-fiends is known only to a select few, of which you are now a member It keeps the Djinn in terror of their monarchs, and the world in terror of the Djinn
Shut your mouth, dear, it does not do to attract moths
Kashkash was not the first Djinn—that poor, benighted soul has no na the unwanted child of the fires that the Stars conflagrated when they walked through the first lands of the world Every scorched thing spat out a Djinn like the pit in a cherry, and we had to find our way, even though we burned and burned and could not cool We are nothing but charred, forgotten children whose birth was utterly unnoticed I arasses Khaamil is the child of the seared winds The Queens kept their counsel and their records, though Kashkash wished all knowledge of our origin destroyed in the fire of his name Now that you are one of us, we shall have to look into your pedigree Kashkash was not the first, then, though ht now say he was For it is not
only the co priests andhearts, but take delight in telling the tale of a Djinn like Kashkash, who could have any woman, destroy any man
Kashkash was indeed powerful, and fashioned his s, fiery shapes to terrify us in our infancy, colored as no other Djinn had done, in blue and green and violet To see hiue, at least in this Around his head waved these airy fla, proud and vain So too is it true that he was present in the early days of the city which would co heel around the peri that could hardly be called a shantytown in those days, when the long boulevard on which your Alcazar sits was nothing but a red dust-run The place which Kashkash rowing roads and , as he instructed us, but stole and wished our first settlement into life Kashkash told us that no one of the Djinn could wish as he could, and thus wishing which he did not approve was outlawed The great talent of the Djinn is in wishing, and of it we h it has, in its turn, passed out of its keenest use since children have ceased trapping us in la, we could not do it very well, but he could do little better: He wished for a palace of cedar and horn, and up rose the ramshackle towers of the Quarter But oh! What he promised us! When he learned better, learned s his slaves, what he would build us then! How long he could stretch our lives—ould no longer be candles, briefly lit and briefly snuffed We would be the flaenerations!
He did learn, he did becoy of wishes, but never to us were his talents bent He loved better anything that was flesh and not ss seemed to him more beautiful than we
We are not meant to tell outsiders that Shadukiaht and province of the shts Let the shade of Kashkash take us with his beard flying We do not care
The Quarter Kashkash dragged out for himself became a slum, a place where fire ran in the alleys and crimson teeth flashed in the shadows Rickety toere built high through the Rose Dome, until the black tips pierced the spaces between the pale pink petals, and so pressed e in those turrets that our sh the very walls, our fire shot out froovernor’s house and counseled hi down from their work, the Djinn suffered and wept in their black hovels He danced on the cru his eyes and sparking in the stinking wind and cried poetry to the blood-riddled sunsets, cried ho! For the thousand-year holocaust of the Djinn! And far below the teneh the squalor
We lived in this way because Kashkash told us we est beard of any of us, after all This is why e criteria Each of the thrones demands its favorites: the hottest fire, the sweetest voice, and so on Kashkash clainty—should we choose differently? He brandished his beard and with it crushed an entire race into six thin towers He told us then it was only the beginning, that ould rest soon on carnelian and brass and silk like blue fire, but day and night smeared their way across the Quarter and still we could not breathe for the smoke of another on our faces
Finally, we could bear it no longer; the terrible ss were close all around us Sorass What the clerics will not tell you is this: Kashkash was strangled in smoke on the steps of the tenements and his body burned The toere torn brick from brick and within a winter no charred stick of the Djinn Quarter could be scried out a tapestries We buried him at the crux of the crossroads of a new city, as far from Shadukiao And ished for nothing, but with our own hands built up a city of carnelian and brass, with couches of silk like blue fire, and paved out in beryl a long boulevard, along which we raised six Alcazars, one for each of the horrid towers that were