Alaskan Fury (16 page)

Unfortunately, the magus had
avoided both bargains and mess for almost as long as he’d known her.  That
she’d made
two
bargains in as many days was leaving him a little
light-headed.

Well, almost.  He had
wanted
the first one to be a bargain, but she had twisted him into giving her a gift,
instead, which had been even
more
exciting.  He’d still had to open
himself to the Law, but the thrill had been ten times greater, sharpened by the
heart-thrumming fear that he was totally screwing himself in the goat ass. 
Djinn, after all, thrived on risk.

When he had caught his breath
enough to look up, his magus was giving him an analyzing look.  “So why do you
want me to stop insulting you so badly?” she asked, once he met her gaze.  She
almost looked like a vulture, cocking its head at a nut, trying to figure out
if it was edible.

Immediately, ‘Aqrab found himself
dancing on very wet sands, words-wise.  While technically she probably wanted
to know the reasoning behind his sudden change in demeanor, she had
asked
about his motivations, of which there were many.  “I am tired of being treated
like an animal,” he said, levering himself up off of his feet.  “As a son of a
sheik, I assume I deserve a bit more respect.”

“You assume much,” she scoffed.

‘Aqrab felt the breathtaking rush
of magic drive through him even as the Fourth Lands wrested his tongue from him
and boomed, “You have reset your seven days.”

Seeing the startlement on the
magus’s face following those words was easily the most precious moment of ‘Aqrab’s
long life.

The beast had tricked her
somehow.  Simple
observations
were now resetting her seven days, and it
didn’t seem as though there was anything she could do about it.

Finally, in disgust, she cried,
“Telling you your song is coarse and vulgar is not an insult!”

“It is when you twist your face
like you’re tasting the shit of a camel,” the djinni said, smugness written all
over his ebony face.

Kaashifah sniffed and returned
her attention to the unending forest ahead of her.  Perhaps silence was her
best medicine, in this case, as the djinni was obviously much too sensitive. 
She glanced at the treetops, which had fallen to utter stillness over the
course of an hour.  Beside her, the djinni re-launched himself into his
disgusting ballad of drink and union.

“
Please
stop singing,” she
growled.  “Someone will hear your cacophony.”

“You have reset your seven days,”
the djinni boomed in that unearthly, triple-toned retort that rattled the air
in her lungs.  Then he turned to glare at her.  “Do you
have
to keep
interrupting me?  I’m just getting to the good part, woman.”

Kaashifah looked down at her
hands in despair.  Oh, what she wouldn’t give for her
sword
, so that she
could cut out his damned heart right
then
.  “Do not,” she grated, “call
me ‘woman.’”

He made a dismissive gesture. 
“We’ve already discussed the alternatives.  You didn’t seem to find those
acceptable, either.”

“‘Man,’ ‘trollop,’ and ‘wench’
have as much business coming off your tongue as ‘slave’ has coming off of
mine.”  Kaashifah almost thought that her words would reset their bargain, so
sensitive did the Fourthlander Law seem to be in regards to this particular
issue, but she was pleasantly surprised to see the djinni only raise an eyebrow
at her.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“…Why…?” she sputtered, taken
aback.  “Because it’s
insulting
, you b—”  She choked off the rest in a
strangled sound and glared. 

The djinni merely watched her
with that classic djinni holier-than-thou
look
, high amusement plastered
all over his smug face.  “You were saying?”

Oh
, but she wanted to drag
him out onto a creek and shove him through the ice.  Somehow reining herself
in, she smiled pleasantly at him and said, “The winds have died.  They’re going
to be launching the helicopters again soon.”

“And it’s getting cold again,” he
noted, gesturing to the snow that was falling, where it had been rain before. 
Instead of discussing that, however, he launched back into his lecherous
obscenities, making the treetops ring with the force of his lungs.

Groaning in disgust, Kaashifah
stomped past him.  The djinni was taking
much
too great a pleasure in
her vow of silence.  “When you’re done with your
singing
,” she snapped
over her shoulder, “perhaps you would help me find a place for us to spend the
night.”  She did need to get the bullets out of her body, but she was going to
do it
alone
, when the djinni had slipped to the Fourth Realm for the
night.  As an afterthought, she added, “And some food!”

“You were the one who was in such
a rush she did not take the time to pack us a few meals to take with us on the
trip,” the djinni reminded her, infuriatingly.  Then he cocked his head at
her.  “You could always wish for supplies, I suppose.”

“No wish,” she snapped, for the
hundredth time that day.

“A bargain, then?” the djinni offered,
sounding almost hopeful.

She turned to glare at him.  “I’d
rather run my tongue along the bottoms of your filthy feet.”

“You have reset your seven days,”
the djinni boomed, in the magic of the Fourth Lands.  Then, deflating, ‘Aqrab
cocked his head and said, “How long
has
it been since you ate, mon
Dhi’b?  We djinni could eat or not…doesn’t matter much to me…but the Third
Lander you carry with you is, shall we say, delicate?”

Kaashifah glared at him.  “Like I
said, I would rather lick the bottoms of your—”

“Let me touch your hand until I
am satisfied and I will give you a sack of food and supplies,” the djinni
interrupted.  “Do you agree to that bargain?”  He had that narrow, tense look
he got whenever he was paying too close attention to the exact words she spoke.

“There will be no more bargains,
djinni,” she snarled.  “You mentioned nothing about the
size
of the
sack, nor its respective contents, and ‘until you are satisfied’ is completely
open-ended.  You could mean months or years, for all I know.”

‘Aqrab laughed.  “To hold your
hand for the next decade?  I’m sorry, mon Dhi’b, but I am not that fond of you.
 I will get bored rather quickly, I assure you.  It is a djinni’s curse.”

That stung.  Glaring at him,
Kaashifah considered how she was going to acquire enough food to make it all
the way to the Brooks Range without starving to bones and sinew along the way. 
Just like Africa.  Obviously, the same thing was running through the djinni’s
mind, because he had crossed his arms and was giving her that flat djinni stare
of which he was a master.

“It’s a simple bargain, mon
Dhi’b,” he said.  “I touch your hand for a few minutes, possibly as much as a
few hours.  You, in turn, have your first meal in a week.”

“Neek hallak, ‘Aqrab,” she
snapped.

He cocked his head at her,
drawing one of his big hands to his face to stroke his chin.  “Thirty pounds of
steak, perhaps?  A few legs of chevon?  Pistachios?  Pomegranates?  Roast
mutton?  You must be
starving
after losing so much blood.”

“
Enough
!” Kaashifah
screamed, but her stomach was already wakening, beginning its attack against
her spine. 

The despicable djinni smiled. 
“Perhaps you are in the mood for roast fowl, instead.  Swan, mon Dhi’b?  A
dozen ducks, stuffed with lemon and rice, basted in their own juices?”

Kaashifah almost doubled over in
the Third Lander’s yearning that followed.  While a Fury, like a djinni, did
not need to eat, a Third Lander, born of a cold world of darkness, where every
beast was in a constant fight for its life, ate enough for ten.  Kaashifah had
over time learned countless ways to ignore the hunger pangs, but doing so was
impossible when the djinni painted such a vivid description of what she was
going without.

It was with the wrenching pains
of the Third Lander’s need raking at her innards that Kaashifah managed,
“Just…my hand?”  After him touching her entire
body
for
hours
, it
seemed a small price to pay.

“Just your hand,” the djinni
agreed, his face taking on that utterly sharp look of a serval stalking a bird
through the grass.

“Give me the food first,”
Kaashifah growled.  “Then I give you my hand.”

“I offered you a bargain, mon
Dhi’b, not an act of faith.”

“With djinni, the ‘bargain’
always has the strange habit of the djinni getting what he wants first,”
Kaashifah snapped.

“Because we are bound by Law,”
‘Aqrab agreed.  “If the conditions are fulfilled, we
must
reciprocate.”

Kaashifah frowned up at him,
considering.  “You want to touch my hand.”

“To my satisfaction,” the djinni
said.

“And if you fail to find
satisfaction, then what?”

The djinni shrugged.  “You don’t
get your supplies.”

She peered up at his impassive
face, trying desperately to determine whether or not this was another
monkey-paw.  She couldn’t
think
of any reason why she wouldn’t make the
bargain, aside from her own uncleanliness afterwards, but that could be fixed
with prayer and ablutions, and she was already thoroughly soiled from the
djinni’s earlier attentions.

“Very well,” she gritted.  “Let
me hear the entire bargain.  Then I will decide.”

‘Aqrab stiffened, his body
suddenly radiating violet waves of Fourth Lander magic to Kaashifah’s second
sight.  His eyes, normally the light purple of amethyst, became a deep and
vibrant neon glow.  “I, Yad al-‘Aqrab, sand-singer of the Scorpion clan,
firstborn son of Bakr al-Shihab, eleventh djinni Lord of the Fourth Lands,
hereby offer a bargain to you, Kaashifah the Fury, Handmaiden to Ares,
Warrior-Priestess of Horus, Angel of Vengeance, and Justice of the
Battlefields:  Allow me to touch your hand to my satisfaction and I will
deliver to you thirty pounds of whatever foodstuffs you desire.  Do you
accept?”

Kaashifah made a face.  “Thirty
pounds will last me for one day.”

The djinni’s face immediately
melted into a grin.  “Then I suppose we shall have to make another bargain
tomorrow, won’t we?”

She considered, carefully looking
for some way he could be tricking her.  “These ‘foodstuffs’ will be the
choicest raw meat of a healthy—no less than a year old, yet no more than three—
bovine
cow, of the cuts I prefer, in sizeable portions comparable to those I cut
for myself, when I’ve had a carcass with which to do so.  If they are rancid,
maggot-ridden, or in any way inedible, it will be the last bargain you ever
receive of me.”

The djinni gave her a nod.  “I
wrap your conditions in Law,” he boomed.  “Do you accept?”  Then he waited.

Kaashifah sniffed, then glanced
down at her hand.  The idea of letting the djinni fondle it for however long he
deemed appropriate made her wince, but she did not relish the idea of using the
Third Lander to hunt game like an animal.  She, like the djinni, found the act
of eating rather barbaric, and the means of acquiring said meals even more so.

Besides.  This was a perfect
opportunity to discover whether or not ‘Aqrab’s professed ‘compromising mood’
was really just that, or yet another djinni trick.  Lifting her head to meet
his eyes, she said, “I accept.”

The djinni’s eyes widened in what
looked like surprise before the power of the Fourth Lands claimed his body
again.  She felt him tie yet another cord to her soul as the violet power
washed in swirls around him and he boomed, “As agreed, so decreed, the bargain
has been made.”

Then he collapsed,
giggling
,
to the ground in front of her.

…giggling?

Kaashifah took a wary step
backwards.  “What have you done, ‘Aqrab?”

Without raising his head from
where he stared at the ground between his hands and knees, ‘Aqrab waved a
distracted hand at her and breathlessly said, “Oh don’t worry, you old prude. 
I didn’t monkeypaw you.”  Biting his lip in a grin, he looked up at her, and
she saw joy on his face.

She squinted at him.  “You…
enjoy
…a
bargain, don’t you?”

He beamed up at her.  “It is one
of the finer pleasures in life.”

Kaashifah grunted.  “All this
time, you’ve told me there was no finer pleasure than twining your legs with a
djinni woman.”

‘Aqrab shrugged.  “Depends on
your mood at the time, I suppose.”

Grimacing, Kaashifah realized he
was serious.  A bargain gave him
pleasure
.  The idea of giving ‘Aqrab
pleasure
had the same taste in her mind as the idea of swallowing the feces of pigs.

“Oh stop wrinkling your nose, you
old prude,” ‘Aqrab retorted distractedly, shaking his head and lowering his
face back to the ground between his knees.  “You wouldn’t understand, anyway.” 
The djinni, she noted, was still breathing hard.

Turning away from him, she
examined the nearby woods through the falling snow.  With the last leaves on
the trees whipped away by the Chinook, it would be difficult to hide from the
helicopter, if it came again.  Still, though, she had to wonder how they had
managed to locate them in the dark.  She recalled the words whispered on the
winds, both a whisper of magic in her mind and a whisper of sound to her
Thirdlander senses.  The Inquisitors, it seemed, were using magic to power
their radios.  Not the wisest thing to do, when fighting a magus, but she was
not about to inform them of the fact.

To ‘Aqrab, she said, “What is
infrared, djinni?”

‘Aqrab lifted his head up to peer
at her, looking confused.  “In for red?”

“Infrared,” Kaashifah repeated. 
“When the helicopter was overhead, they said you lit up like a flashlight on
infrared.”

‘Aqrab cocked his head at her. 
“You heard them, mon Dhi’b?”

She shrugged.  “I was accessing
the wolf
and
they infused their radios with magic, so I was hearing it
in both my ears and my mind.”

“Then they were doubly dicked,”
the djinni chuckled.

Kaashifah winced.  “
Must
you be so vulgar?”

Slowly pushing himself to his
feet, ‘Aqrab said, “What is a dick, mon Dhi’b, aside from another piece of
flesh?”

“It’s disgus—”  Then she
swallowed, realizing that the over-sensitive Fourthlander Law might construe
that as another insult, considering that the djinni possessed one.  Coughing,
she gestured at the forest.  “Would you like for me to shape us a dwelling for
the night?”