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“You’re Djinn!” I cried, pointing like an accusing child “No wonder that hair can play! How do you get it to stiffen like that?”

Agrafena laughed, a gravelly sound like coals raked over “No more than a quarter, I’m afraid, and on the paternal side—more’s the pity” Her eyes flashed their dim fire at me “We do not all lie on silk cushions in the vaults of Kash, you know And like h to be reasonable when I treat it nicely”

“But how? It is absolutely forbidden to ree to it—so many were crushed into spoons and lamps that day! There were too many ruined maids and inoperable boys for them to countenance There has not been a half-breed for centuries! Longer!”

“Thank you for using such a generous word for , I am a solid and smoky quarter-breed, and if you wish to arrest sorandparents, and I am sure they would be very cross about it”

I did not knohat to say She was an impossibility At home she would be burne

d immediately and that part of her which was inflammable sunk to the bottohal witnessed; such was the contract ard to their prettiest children I finally settled on the si I could summon up

“The Gate sent me,” I said

“Simeon? It will be ti you to call him Ajanabh yet? Silly old farmer, but a better soul you never knew”

“I as and Queens that is waiting to flatten this place”

Agrafena’s face darkened, and even a quarter-Djinn can go very dark “Yes, I knohich one you mean,” she rumbled

“I cas seek: a little carnelian casket, no larger than my arm”

“Your siblings?”

I drew my smoke up and the jewels of my waist flashed “I am the Ember-Queen”

Agrafena just laughed and scratched her scalp “And what is in this box?”

“I… I don’t know”