No Wish Scenario
(The Gruntverse wasn't my first go at Urban Fantasy. Originally I had the concept of an ex-henchman, who didn't really know what to do with his life after the local hero failed to kill him. All of the good bits I eventually wound up cannibalizing for Travis and his friend circles.
If there's an overarching theme to the Gruntverse, it's, "What do you do with the power that you have?" Travis isn't a moral philosopher by any stretch of the imagination, but he's well versed in how power can be used well and abused badly. Jazz was designed from the ground up to be a measure of his moral compass in the practical and the ideal realms. That and It gave me a reason to have a kickass and insanely powerful bibliophile that was kept from taking over the world because of the devils in the details.)
If there's an overarching theme to the Gruntverse, it's, "What do you do with the power that you have?" Travis isn't a moral philosopher by any stretch of the imagination, but he's well versed in how power can be used well and abused badly. Jazz was designed from the ground up to be a measure of his moral compass in the practical and the ideal realms. That and It gave me a reason to have a kickass and insanely powerful bibliophile that was kept from taking over the world because of the devils in the details.)
Ramadi, Iraq.
“Clear!”
Nobody relaxed. The nigh-imperceptible loosening of tension in the air couldn't be called relaxing. But it was welcomed for what it was. I watched my sector on the second floor of the bombed-out, filthy building and kept an eye out for anything in the chaos that might try to kill me. The few streetlights that hadn't been burned out, shot out, or blown out merged with the gibbous moon to spread a blue overcast to everything, contrasting with the green of my night vision monocle. As I spared one hand to take a drink of water off my camelback, I heard Sgt. Baker, my squad leader, get on the net.
“Charlie CP, this is Charlie two-two. Second deck clear. I have one EKIA, ATB the trigger man, break... One MAM with a cellphone and an AK. Looks like he took a burst from somebody... Negative... Roger that, two-two out.” He let go of the radio. “Doc, check this guy for I.D. Brandon, Hunter, take his weapon and phone and I want pics of him. We'll send em up the chain.”
My name is Travis Brandon, and I'm a Wizard. No, there's not a twelve-step program for us. Although given the state of our modern educations, there probably should be. How I went from there to sweating off a pound of body weight every other day as a Marine Corps Engineer is a long story. Short version, even magic doesn't have easy or ethical ways of pulling college money or job skills from thin air. And after my senior year, another long story, a war zone wasn't the deterrent it could have been.
Hunter appeared out of nowhere, as was his usual habit. Hunter was an elf, and had spent most of his life as one of the Hunters, capitalized and everything. He'd taken down prey I hadn't even heard of. Yet another long story short, he was ordered by his liege to keep an eye on me. So when I enlisted, he joined with me on the buddy program. We wound up together from boot on out. For an elf, he was a pain in the ass, going through the terrible two hundreds. As a Marine, he was stellar enough to be annoying: a PT beast, soaked up knowledge like a sponge, knew exactly how to play the stupid hierarchy games, you get the hint. “We taking the body with us, Sargent?”
Baker shook his head. “No time and no room. We're already towing what's left of truck four behind us. We don't have casualties of our own, his own people will find and take him, and I'm not looking that gift horse in the mouth.”
“Aye, Sargent”
Baker headed back down the hallway in an NCO's casual stroll. I snapped several photos of the bomber as he lay on the floor, then stepped back. Doc finished pulling on rubber gloves and patted down the corpse of the bomber. I have no idea what he placed or how, but the ass end of one of our trucks went up in flames. No shrapnel or fragments, no gunfire, just a thump and a fire. The guys in truck four managed to bail out and get the fire put out, and one of the turret gunners saw movement and lit the bomber up. Which explained the unfired AK in the room and the blood spray on the wall. Just another Tuesday in Iraq.
Doc stepped back. “There's nothing on him.”
Hunter unloaded and cleared the AK, dropping the mag in a spare sandbag. It had one of the folding metal stocks on it, probably made it easier for the former owner to hide under his track jacket. I straddled the corpse and got some close-ups of its face. There was no insignia or labels on his robe or jacket, so close-ups were the last pictures I needed. I murmured, “no hard feelings” to the corpse under my breath between shots.
Guideline Twenty-Six: Don't hold grudges you don't have to. Especially against anyone you've already killed.
When we got back, I'd give the pictures to the watch officer after debrief. Everything would go up the chain of command and be forwarded to the Intel bubbas, there to vanish from our eyes forever. Or at least it seemed that way. I was moderately surprised we'd found him. Normally the local fighters worked at least in pairs, and they went to a lot of effort to clear out their dead.
Hunter headed after Doc as I was snapping photos, stepping just outside the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something reflect the light of the flash. Checking the camera to ensure good pictures had been taken, I stashed the camera in a pouch and prowled into the corner. Finding no sign of a trap wasn't a guarantee, as the city was full of ways to hide them, but three months into the deployment, I'd gotten a feel for what was supposed to be there and what wasn't.
Nestled in the months-old garbage, dust, and debris in the corner was a small, silver ring. The band was thick as a man's wedding ring and had a raised but flat bezel, looking like some sort of signet. It was tarnished to hell and wouldn't have been seen if I hadn't taken pictures, but here it was.
As I picked it up, my senses began to tingle. Once you've been around magic long enough, you know how it feels like. How it smells like. And this little bit of silver in my hand was definitely magical. What I most certainly did not do was try it on. I'd seen those movies, and they didn't end well for guys who did that. I pulled a small silk handkerchief out of my sleeve pocket, rolled the ring up in the hanky, and tucked it all back into the sleeve pocket before moving out.
Guideline Eighteen: Magical items are like any other hazmats. Be prepared to handle them properly.
* * *
“Hey, Branden!”
Hunter waved me over from his spot at the remains of truck four. It was late afternoon the next day. Enough time for us to have gotten some sleep and avoided the worst of the day's heat. Unfortunately, rebuilding the truck was something that could only be put off so long. Given that the ass end of it had burst into flames, it didn't look too bad for a war zone vehicle. Back in the real world, we'd send a Humvee like it back to some maintenance depot. Here, it got parts thrown at it until it was back in service. Hunter spread his hands wide, as if offering it as a prize.
“You ever see a truck hit like this?”
I walked around it, trying to get a sense of what I was looking at. The rear third was blackened, which continued in streaks into the backside of the passenger compartment. But there was no other visible damage. Not so much as a dent. I finally shook my head.
He prodded a boxy part I recognized as a fuel tank with the toe of his boot. “Check this thing out.” The tank was just heavy enough that treating it like a badly designed soccer ball wasn't recommended. On the top was a jagged hole a little over an inch in diameter, the edges curling outside. Tipping the tank onto it's side, I saw another hole about the same size. But this one had the edges curled in the other direction, going inside the tank.
I narrowed my eyes. “You got what punched these holes?”
Hunter shook his head. “Nope. And I looked before we pushed off. No hole in the road to hide something that could do this, either.”
That divided by zero in my head as I redesigned whatever had lit up the truck. “That's... not likely.” You learned not to use words like 'impossible' after being around magic long enough.
“Nope. Whatever did this punched an inch-wide hole through two steel walls, went through several inches of JP fuel on the way without notably slowing down, ignited the fumes enough to start a massive fire, then vanished.”
“Well that's unsettlin.”
“They should, man. Officially, I'm going to report this as 'no flipping idea.' Unofficially? Last time I saw something like this? It was a flaming sword. Thrust by someone stronger than me.”
* * *
Decatur, Georgia
Four months later
The sun had fallen just below the treeline when I finally cracked a beer. Normally I'd have left the moment my leave papers said I had, driven the eight hours from Camp Lejeune to Atlanta in one go and tried to pack every moment I could. Instead, I took a nap in my room, easily able to sleep among the leave block stupidity that infested the barracks, woke up around midnight and left then. I skipped the usual weekend liberty traffic, had an easy drive with the sun at my back for the last few hours, and managed to pick up some groceries to make my time at my Uncle Mac's house more livable. A decent lunch, an afternoon nap, and some time to relax was very welcomed before deciding how I liked my solitude for the immediate future. Not that I wasn't fond of my comrades. But I was a loner by nature. This was my first night being well and truly alone for several months.
I'd unloaded all of the trip junk from my day pack and picked out the wrapped ring. I'd kept it wrapped in the hanky the rest of the deployment, eventually adding some cheap costume jewelry I'd bought in Kuwait for a nonexistent girlfriend. Customs hadn't looked twice at it. It still looked like an old signet ring, tarnished so bad I couldn't tell you the silver content. I pulled a shop towel off the roll on my dining room table, then gently rubbed at the bezel while I took another swallow of beer.
The ring suddenly grew warm in my hand, blue smoke billowing from under the bezel. I dropped the ring and towel, drawing my wand from my pants pocket. Yes, I carried my wand on deployment. It was the same size and shape as a permanent marker, and the few who saw it thought that's exactly what it was. If something human and hostile had appeared, I'd have drawn a pistol. But whatever was pouring out of that ring was anything but. I cursed the fact that I'd relaxed without renewing the wards on the house.
The smoke coalesced before me, rapidly shaping itself into a humanoid form. I trained my wand on it, prepared to make a big mess. I had a half a second before it began to move to realize it was female. Abundantly female.
Her skin was bright blue, a shade somewhere between royal and robin's egg. Long black hair with an indigo sheen in the fading sunlight was held back with an ornate silver headband. Bright baby blue eyes set in a face with a vibrant smile. A figure that made me think a fertility goddess had posed for Coop's latest pinup set. I could read a software agreement through her harem pants and DARPA would love to get their hands on the silk strong enough to keep her top together.
I dropped my beer. “Fuck me in half!”
I know, I'm a paragon of elocution. But it was that or drop my wand, and my survival instinct was too hard-wired to even contemplate that.
With a grace that was either all natural or very well rehearsed, she took a step back, bending her knee and bowing her head. “A'Salaam Aleikum, Sayyidi Jadid!”
I fought hard to close my jaw, then scoured my brain. A big beautiful blue woman had appeared in my room in a puff of smoke and a handful of translucent lingerie, genuflected, and said hello in a soprano's Arabic. And I'd barely even started the night's drinking.
Guideline Ten: if all else fails, be polite.
“Ah, um... wa' Aleikum Salaam... Fuck, my Arabic is shit. Uh, Ya anesa. Ahalan wa Sahalan fil harbi. Ana Travis Al-Biharin, wa ana Saheron. Wa anti?”
She lifted her head up and smiled brilliantly. “Ana Yasmin bint Ibrahim Amin Muktabaten amat Kanuni Sultan Suleyman, ya Sayyidi.”
I ran it over again in my head, phrases I'd dropped the second they stopped being useful were pulled out of the woodwork of my brain.
“Jasmine? Your name is Jasmine. Ok... Zein. Makuu mushkila. This gonna take a while. My Arabic wouldn't fill an episode of Sesame Street in Cairo, and I ain't comfortable asking to read your mind right now. And did you just call me Master?”
She diplomatically tried to stop herself from giggling. But what her stoic gaze hid, her shining eyes and gently jiggling torso told the world. “You were managing well enough, Master. But if you'd rather I speak English, all you had to do was ask.”
I blinked. I considered picking up the bottle, but then pulled out a chair and offered it to my newfound guest. “Fair enough, Jasmine. Have a seat. I got questions. And oddly enough, I think I figured out my newfound title on my own.”
“Yes, Master.”
I found my own seat, trying not to stare at the wiggle in Jasmine's walk as she rose and took her own. A whispered prayer of thanks to Frigga that I'd fired up the greatest hits album of my porn stash and relieved some personal tension earlier in the day ran through my mind. I needed my primary brain functioning.
Barely remembered lectures about Djinn from school were going through my mind at a mile a minute. They were some form of spirit, and ridiculously powerful ones. Unlike most, they could appear corporeally in the physical world and the otherworlds without a whole lot of effort. Supposedly, King Solomon, the one from the Bible, uncovered or created a form of magic that could bind them into servitude. Depending on who you asked, Mohammad had figured out something similar. A lot of the Djinn left the physical world for some kind of spirit realms before the Ottomans came to power. But rumors abounded of ones left behind, bound to lamps and rings and whatnot.
And now there was a cute, zaftig, half-naked one sitting politely at my dining room table. At least I wasn't going to be bored on this leave.
“So, what were you doing in Ramadi?”
She tilted her head in confusion. “Ramadi?”
“The city. About 70 miles west of Baghdad. On the Euphrates. That's where I found your ring.”
“With my last Master, Yusuf. He wasn't a very nice man.”
“Let me guess. He had you strike a truck full of infidels with a flaming sword.”
She dropped her gaze, like a kid who knew she'd been caught, but would appreciate it if you wouldn't force her to admit it.
“Fair enough. Explains what happened to truck four, anyway. Where did he find you?”
“He never said, Master. My last Master before him was a man named Smith. He was the director of the Museum of Baghdad.”
“Huh. Makes sense. I thought I read something about museums being looted... Wait a minute, didn't you say Suleiman earlier?”
“Oh yes. He was my first Master. And that of my parents.”
“Suleiman the Wise or Suleiman the Magnificent?”
“Magnificent, Master.”
“Not to be rude and comment on a lady's age, but that makes you pretty young for a Djinneyah.”
“Is that a problem, Master?”
“My best friend is in his third century. So, as long as you're considered an adult by Djinneyah standards, I don't think so. You have a trade?”
“I am a librarian and archivist, Master.”
Not only was she cute, friendly, and dangerously curved, she was a bibliophile. Thank you, Frigga. I took a breath. It was time to focus.
“Intriguing. Forgive my ignorance, but what does being your Master entail?”
She gave me a smile that implied things illegal in seven states, and I knew I'd walked right into it. I somehow still had the willpower to pay attention to what she was actually saying. “I must serve and obey you to the best of my ability, Master. It has varied over the centuries. But most masters these days are only concerned with wishes."
"How many?"
"Most stop at three.”
I didn't go any farther down that particular tangent. There was a bigger one I needed to see. “Fair nuff. You know what the phrase, 'the elephant in the room' means?”
“I'm afraid I don't, Master.”
“It means an issue or a problem that everyone knows about, but nobody will bring up for fear of confrontation or simple rudeness.”
She connected the dots. “I see, Master.”
“I apologize if I'm being rude or hurtful to you here, Jasmine. But I need to know certain things before I can make some very big decisions concerning you.”
“Yes, Master.”
I took a breath before letting it drop. “What's the difference between a command and a wish?”
“Partly wording, but mostly intent. I can serve a great deal, both at your command and on my own initiative, Master. But to change reality in accordance with your desire requires a wish.”
“I see. I bet that service is conditional with my possession of your ring?”
“Yes, Master.”
I got the impression that she wasn't all that powerful as djinn go. Then again, if she was setting out to hose me, she wouldn't be the first to use my weakness for feminine presence against me.
“Jasmine... can I call you Jazz?”
“Yes, Master.”
Guideline Thirteen: Most supernatural creatures are fine with respectful nicknames. Any step away from true names is just good practice.
“Jazz, I got some things to mull over. You hungry?”
“I can attend to my own needs, Master.”
I stood up from my chair. “I don't doubt it. But if you're gonna serve me, I should feed you at least once. Wait here for a bit.”
I wandered back into my own bedroom and rummaged around for a bit. I returned with a flat strip of leather, an O-ring secured to the center of it.
“If you're going to keep calling me that in public, put this on. It'll keep the questions to a minimum.”
* * *
If you're south of the Mason-Dixon line and need to meet a supernatural creature on neutral ground, go to Waffle House. At least half of every third shift is either read in or a supernatural being themselves. And no matter what kind of creature of darkness you are, sometimes you just want a cup of coffee and some scattered, smothered, and covered in peace. Thus “keep the conflicts outside” is the unwritten rule. Taking a supernatural fight inside is inviting the staff and other patrons to join in kicking your ass.
The bonus of that is that nobody questions anything. So when I wandered in escorting a blue-skinned brunette whose only opaque clothing was some curly-toed slippers, my old jacket, and a black leather collar, nobody batted an eye.
I'd been going to this particular one since high school. Loretta, the head waitress for third shift, gave a wave and a smile from across the room before we seated ourselves at a back corner booth. To human eyes, she looked like any other middle-aged working lady with the forearms of a blacksmith and a bosom that could save your life in a car crash. A look under the glamour and you'd notice a beard that would make most mall Santas jealous, bound up in a beard net she wove herself. She walked with a slight limp, which she claimed was from being born with a club foot. But her grandson Leon once told me she physically broke several toes off in an unruly customer's ass back in the Sixties, and they'd never healed properly. I also knew she kept a battle hatchet under the register, and could pick which eye socket she wanted to split open with it from fifty feet away.
“Hey Travis! You home on leave, honey?”
“Just got in a few hours ago, Loretta. How's Leon doing?”
“He done moved out to Austin, gone wildcatting with his cousins. I get an email now n' then saying he gone visit, but I'll believe it when I see his skinny ass.”
A lot of dwarves work in the oil business. Digging holes for gold is digging holes for gold even if you add a few more steps these days. Loretta sat us both down and got our drink orders put in. I already knew the menu, so I passed it to Jazz. She read the laminated folio in fascination. I'm not sure she noticed when Loretta came with black coffee and ice water. I gently tapped it to get her attention. I'm not sure how a lady with blue skin managed to blush, but there she was. Once again, she ordered what I did. Which meant that I was feeding a Djinn a cheeseburger and hash browns. I'm classy like that. We put the menus away and relaxed a moment before I got down to business.
“So tell me, Jazz. If you weren't bound to the ring, what would you do?”
This took her a while. For the first time, I saw her drink the coffee.
“I'm not sure, Master. My parents are long gone, and I've never been to the City of Brass. Find a library to work in, I suppose.”
“What would freeing you entail?”
“A powerful wizard would have to unweave the Solomanic ritual that bound me to the ring, then destroy the ring itself.”
“Any side effects?”
“I would lose the ability to grant wishes. And a wizard who knew Solomanic magic could bind me into another object.”
“Could I use a wish to free you?”
“You could, Master. But you have read the stories. The results of any wish are... unpredictable.”
“OK. How would one get to the City of Brass?”
“Enter the otherworlds from waypoints. The one I know of is in Baghdad, but there may be others. From there, fly across the copper desert until you reach the city.”
“You say you've never been to the City. But you must have met other Djinn who did. Tell me, how would they react to a human wizard showing up on their doorstep?”
She looked sheepish, but nodded as she saw where I was going. “They would not be very hospitable, Master.”
“I'm gonna let you in on what I'm thinking here, Jazz. First off, I picked up your ring as a souvenir of a war zone I fought in, but I'll admit I fill the requirements to be your Master. I have a definite thing for bibliophiles, bare midriffs, and kinky power exchange, which means your very presence in my company is doing camel crosses up and down my libido. That said, the thought of no-shit compelled servitude makes my hackles raise in a go-on-the-warpath-to-stop-it sense.”
“Secondly, even assuming your cheerful personality ain't an act you're putting on to placate the latest Master, you are dangerous. You can rip reality open like cheap pantyhose at the whim of whatever yahoo happens to have your ring. You're the mystical version of a nuclear warhead. A hot nuclear warhead I'm trying not to stare at or drool over, but I digress. If you weren't so apparently kindhearted I'd think long and hard about tossing your ring overboard in international waters just to be safe. But it wouldn't work. And if it did, it would be cruel. And I ain't comfortable with cruelty any more than I am with slavery.”
Her eyes had grown wide when I mentioned deep-sixing her ring. I was convinced she was being honest, or at least benevolent. But I couldn't risk it. I could, however, do the next best thing.
“Thirdly, I'm sure I don't know all the details, but I know there was bad blood between Solomon's cronies and your entire species. Liberating you and taking you for all intents and purposes home would involve learning a very uncommon branch of magic I never studied, and unweave spells laid down by the founder of that entire branch. Then I'd have to travel to an actual war zone, cross over to the otherworlds, fly across an enchanted desert and end up in a city full of Djinn who, in all honesty, would love to get a piece out of a human wizard. I could only skip all that time and effort and risking my life itself to get you home with a wish. But that would bring us back to ripping open reality. Not sure I want to take the risk.”
Her eyes were downcast again. If it was an act, it was a good one. I decided to take a risk.
"Would you like a job?"
Now I had her really confused. "Master?"
"I leave active duty in a year and change and come back home. Assuming I live, I'll be able to practice magic more openly. Which means sooner or later I'll be dealing with things I don't really know about. I could use a good research assistant. You'll have a good bit of off-time, you can read what you like. Dunno if I can get Wifi in your ring for you straight off the bat, but a stack of paperbacks or something I can get easy enough."
Her voice had gotten very small, to the very limit of my gunfire-stunted hearing.
"I can read what I like?"
"If I have a copy, you're welcome to it."
Her smile shone like the last streetlamp before home.
This could still come back to bite me in the ass. Sooner or later, something nasty enough to tempt me into wishing was going to show up. And there's always the chance Jazz could take me down in a moment of weakness. But until then, I had someone else to back me up. And in a life like mine, those things are worth more than anything Aladdin had handed to him.
( Copyright©2019 by Jay Peterson )
“Clear!”
Nobody relaxed. The nigh-imperceptible loosening of tension in the air couldn't be called relaxing. But it was welcomed for what it was. I watched my sector on the second floor of the bombed-out, filthy building and kept an eye out for anything in the chaos that might try to kill me. The few streetlights that hadn't been burned out, shot out, or blown out merged with the gibbous moon to spread a blue overcast to everything, contrasting with the green of my night vision monocle. As I spared one hand to take a drink of water off my camelback, I heard Sgt. Baker, my squad leader, get on the net.
“Charlie CP, this is Charlie two-two. Second deck clear. I have one EKIA, ATB the trigger man, break... One MAM with a cellphone and an AK. Looks like he took a burst from somebody... Negative... Roger that, two-two out.” He let go of the radio. “Doc, check this guy for I.D. Brandon, Hunter, take his weapon and phone and I want pics of him. We'll send em up the chain.”
My name is Travis Brandon, and I'm a Wizard. No, there's not a twelve-step program for us. Although given the state of our modern educations, there probably should be. How I went from there to sweating off a pound of body weight every other day as a Marine Corps Engineer is a long story. Short version, even magic doesn't have easy or ethical ways of pulling college money or job skills from thin air. And after my senior year, another long story, a war zone wasn't the deterrent it could have been.
Hunter appeared out of nowhere, as was his usual habit. Hunter was an elf, and had spent most of his life as one of the Hunters, capitalized and everything. He'd taken down prey I hadn't even heard of. Yet another long story short, he was ordered by his liege to keep an eye on me. So when I enlisted, he joined with me on the buddy program. We wound up together from boot on out. For an elf, he was a pain in the ass, going through the terrible two hundreds. As a Marine, he was stellar enough to be annoying: a PT beast, soaked up knowledge like a sponge, knew exactly how to play the stupid hierarchy games, you get the hint. “We taking the body with us, Sargent?”
Baker shook his head. “No time and no room. We're already towing what's left of truck four behind us. We don't have casualties of our own, his own people will find and take him, and I'm not looking that gift horse in the mouth.”
“Aye, Sargent”
Baker headed back down the hallway in an NCO's casual stroll. I snapped several photos of the bomber as he lay on the floor, then stepped back. Doc finished pulling on rubber gloves and patted down the corpse of the bomber. I have no idea what he placed or how, but the ass end of one of our trucks went up in flames. No shrapnel or fragments, no gunfire, just a thump and a fire. The guys in truck four managed to bail out and get the fire put out, and one of the turret gunners saw movement and lit the bomber up. Which explained the unfired AK in the room and the blood spray on the wall. Just another Tuesday in Iraq.
Doc stepped back. “There's nothing on him.”
Hunter unloaded and cleared the AK, dropping the mag in a spare sandbag. It had one of the folding metal stocks on it, probably made it easier for the former owner to hide under his track jacket. I straddled the corpse and got some close-ups of its face. There was no insignia or labels on his robe or jacket, so close-ups were the last pictures I needed. I murmured, “no hard feelings” to the corpse under my breath between shots.
Guideline Twenty-Six: Don't hold grudges you don't have to. Especially against anyone you've already killed.
When we got back, I'd give the pictures to the watch officer after debrief. Everything would go up the chain of command and be forwarded to the Intel bubbas, there to vanish from our eyes forever. Or at least it seemed that way. I was moderately surprised we'd found him. Normally the local fighters worked at least in pairs, and they went to a lot of effort to clear out their dead.
Hunter headed after Doc as I was snapping photos, stepping just outside the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something reflect the light of the flash. Checking the camera to ensure good pictures had been taken, I stashed the camera in a pouch and prowled into the corner. Finding no sign of a trap wasn't a guarantee, as the city was full of ways to hide them, but three months into the deployment, I'd gotten a feel for what was supposed to be there and what wasn't.
Nestled in the months-old garbage, dust, and debris in the corner was a small, silver ring. The band was thick as a man's wedding ring and had a raised but flat bezel, looking like some sort of signet. It was tarnished to hell and wouldn't have been seen if I hadn't taken pictures, but here it was.
As I picked it up, my senses began to tingle. Once you've been around magic long enough, you know how it feels like. How it smells like. And this little bit of silver in my hand was definitely magical. What I most certainly did not do was try it on. I'd seen those movies, and they didn't end well for guys who did that. I pulled a small silk handkerchief out of my sleeve pocket, rolled the ring up in the hanky, and tucked it all back into the sleeve pocket before moving out.
Guideline Eighteen: Magical items are like any other hazmats. Be prepared to handle them properly.
* * *
“Hey, Branden!”
Hunter waved me over from his spot at the remains of truck four. It was late afternoon the next day. Enough time for us to have gotten some sleep and avoided the worst of the day's heat. Unfortunately, rebuilding the truck was something that could only be put off so long. Given that the ass end of it had burst into flames, it didn't look too bad for a war zone vehicle. Back in the real world, we'd send a Humvee like it back to some maintenance depot. Here, it got parts thrown at it until it was back in service. Hunter spread his hands wide, as if offering it as a prize.
“You ever see a truck hit like this?”
I walked around it, trying to get a sense of what I was looking at. The rear third was blackened, which continued in streaks into the backside of the passenger compartment. But there was no other visible damage. Not so much as a dent. I finally shook my head.
He prodded a boxy part I recognized as a fuel tank with the toe of his boot. “Check this thing out.” The tank was just heavy enough that treating it like a badly designed soccer ball wasn't recommended. On the top was a jagged hole a little over an inch in diameter, the edges curling outside. Tipping the tank onto it's side, I saw another hole about the same size. But this one had the edges curled in the other direction, going inside the tank.
I narrowed my eyes. “You got what punched these holes?”
Hunter shook his head. “Nope. And I looked before we pushed off. No hole in the road to hide something that could do this, either.”
That divided by zero in my head as I redesigned whatever had lit up the truck. “That's... not likely.” You learned not to use words like 'impossible' after being around magic long enough.
“Nope. Whatever did this punched an inch-wide hole through two steel walls, went through several inches of JP fuel on the way without notably slowing down, ignited the fumes enough to start a massive fire, then vanished.”
“Well that's unsettlin.”
“They should, man. Officially, I'm going to report this as 'no flipping idea.' Unofficially? Last time I saw something like this? It was a flaming sword. Thrust by someone stronger than me.”
* * *
Decatur, Georgia
Four months later
The sun had fallen just below the treeline when I finally cracked a beer. Normally I'd have left the moment my leave papers said I had, driven the eight hours from Camp Lejeune to Atlanta in one go and tried to pack every moment I could. Instead, I took a nap in my room, easily able to sleep among the leave block stupidity that infested the barracks, woke up around midnight and left then. I skipped the usual weekend liberty traffic, had an easy drive with the sun at my back for the last few hours, and managed to pick up some groceries to make my time at my Uncle Mac's house more livable. A decent lunch, an afternoon nap, and some time to relax was very welcomed before deciding how I liked my solitude for the immediate future. Not that I wasn't fond of my comrades. But I was a loner by nature. This was my first night being well and truly alone for several months.
I'd unloaded all of the trip junk from my day pack and picked out the wrapped ring. I'd kept it wrapped in the hanky the rest of the deployment, eventually adding some cheap costume jewelry I'd bought in Kuwait for a nonexistent girlfriend. Customs hadn't looked twice at it. It still looked like an old signet ring, tarnished so bad I couldn't tell you the silver content. I pulled a shop towel off the roll on my dining room table, then gently rubbed at the bezel while I took another swallow of beer.
The ring suddenly grew warm in my hand, blue smoke billowing from under the bezel. I dropped the ring and towel, drawing my wand from my pants pocket. Yes, I carried my wand on deployment. It was the same size and shape as a permanent marker, and the few who saw it thought that's exactly what it was. If something human and hostile had appeared, I'd have drawn a pistol. But whatever was pouring out of that ring was anything but. I cursed the fact that I'd relaxed without renewing the wards on the house.
The smoke coalesced before me, rapidly shaping itself into a humanoid form. I trained my wand on it, prepared to make a big mess. I had a half a second before it began to move to realize it was female. Abundantly female.
Her skin was bright blue, a shade somewhere between royal and robin's egg. Long black hair with an indigo sheen in the fading sunlight was held back with an ornate silver headband. Bright baby blue eyes set in a face with a vibrant smile. A figure that made me think a fertility goddess had posed for Coop's latest pinup set. I could read a software agreement through her harem pants and DARPA would love to get their hands on the silk strong enough to keep her top together.
I dropped my beer. “Fuck me in half!”
I know, I'm a paragon of elocution. But it was that or drop my wand, and my survival instinct was too hard-wired to even contemplate that.
With a grace that was either all natural or very well rehearsed, she took a step back, bending her knee and bowing her head. “A'Salaam Aleikum, Sayyidi Jadid!”
I fought hard to close my jaw, then scoured my brain. A big beautiful blue woman had appeared in my room in a puff of smoke and a handful of translucent lingerie, genuflected, and said hello in a soprano's Arabic. And I'd barely even started the night's drinking.
Guideline Ten: if all else fails, be polite.
“Ah, um... wa' Aleikum Salaam... Fuck, my Arabic is shit. Uh, Ya anesa. Ahalan wa Sahalan fil harbi. Ana Travis Al-Biharin, wa ana Saheron. Wa anti?”
She lifted her head up and smiled brilliantly. “Ana Yasmin bint Ibrahim Amin Muktabaten amat Kanuni Sultan Suleyman, ya Sayyidi.”
I ran it over again in my head, phrases I'd dropped the second they stopped being useful were pulled out of the woodwork of my brain.
“Jasmine? Your name is Jasmine. Ok... Zein. Makuu mushkila. This gonna take a while. My Arabic wouldn't fill an episode of Sesame Street in Cairo, and I ain't comfortable asking to read your mind right now. And did you just call me Master?”
She diplomatically tried to stop herself from giggling. But what her stoic gaze hid, her shining eyes and gently jiggling torso told the world. “You were managing well enough, Master. But if you'd rather I speak English, all you had to do was ask.”
I blinked. I considered picking up the bottle, but then pulled out a chair and offered it to my newfound guest. “Fair enough, Jasmine. Have a seat. I got questions. And oddly enough, I think I figured out my newfound title on my own.”
“Yes, Master.”
I found my own seat, trying not to stare at the wiggle in Jasmine's walk as she rose and took her own. A whispered prayer of thanks to Frigga that I'd fired up the greatest hits album of my porn stash and relieved some personal tension earlier in the day ran through my mind. I needed my primary brain functioning.
Barely remembered lectures about Djinn from school were going through my mind at a mile a minute. They were some form of spirit, and ridiculously powerful ones. Unlike most, they could appear corporeally in the physical world and the otherworlds without a whole lot of effort. Supposedly, King Solomon, the one from the Bible, uncovered or created a form of magic that could bind them into servitude. Depending on who you asked, Mohammad had figured out something similar. A lot of the Djinn left the physical world for some kind of spirit realms before the Ottomans came to power. But rumors abounded of ones left behind, bound to lamps and rings and whatnot.
And now there was a cute, zaftig, half-naked one sitting politely at my dining room table. At least I wasn't going to be bored on this leave.
“So, what were you doing in Ramadi?”
She tilted her head in confusion. “Ramadi?”
“The city. About 70 miles west of Baghdad. On the Euphrates. That's where I found your ring.”
“With my last Master, Yusuf. He wasn't a very nice man.”
“Let me guess. He had you strike a truck full of infidels with a flaming sword.”
She dropped her gaze, like a kid who knew she'd been caught, but would appreciate it if you wouldn't force her to admit it.
“Fair enough. Explains what happened to truck four, anyway. Where did he find you?”
“He never said, Master. My last Master before him was a man named Smith. He was the director of the Museum of Baghdad.”
“Huh. Makes sense. I thought I read something about museums being looted... Wait a minute, didn't you say Suleiman earlier?”
“Oh yes. He was my first Master. And that of my parents.”
“Suleiman the Wise or Suleiman the Magnificent?”
“Magnificent, Master.”
“Not to be rude and comment on a lady's age, but that makes you pretty young for a Djinneyah.”
“Is that a problem, Master?”
“My best friend is in his third century. So, as long as you're considered an adult by Djinneyah standards, I don't think so. You have a trade?”
“I am a librarian and archivist, Master.”
Not only was she cute, friendly, and dangerously curved, she was a bibliophile. Thank you, Frigga. I took a breath. It was time to focus.
“Intriguing. Forgive my ignorance, but what does being your Master entail?”
She gave me a smile that implied things illegal in seven states, and I knew I'd walked right into it. I somehow still had the willpower to pay attention to what she was actually saying. “I must serve and obey you to the best of my ability, Master. It has varied over the centuries. But most masters these days are only concerned with wishes."
"How many?"
"Most stop at three.”
I didn't go any farther down that particular tangent. There was a bigger one I needed to see. “Fair nuff. You know what the phrase, 'the elephant in the room' means?”
“I'm afraid I don't, Master.”
“It means an issue or a problem that everyone knows about, but nobody will bring up for fear of confrontation or simple rudeness.”
She connected the dots. “I see, Master.”
“I apologize if I'm being rude or hurtful to you here, Jasmine. But I need to know certain things before I can make some very big decisions concerning you.”
“Yes, Master.”
I took a breath before letting it drop. “What's the difference between a command and a wish?”
“Partly wording, but mostly intent. I can serve a great deal, both at your command and on my own initiative, Master. But to change reality in accordance with your desire requires a wish.”
“I see. I bet that service is conditional with my possession of your ring?”
“Yes, Master.”
I got the impression that she wasn't all that powerful as djinn go. Then again, if she was setting out to hose me, she wouldn't be the first to use my weakness for feminine presence against me.
“Jasmine... can I call you Jazz?”
“Yes, Master.”
Guideline Thirteen: Most supernatural creatures are fine with respectful nicknames. Any step away from true names is just good practice.
“Jazz, I got some things to mull over. You hungry?”
“I can attend to my own needs, Master.”
I stood up from my chair. “I don't doubt it. But if you're gonna serve me, I should feed you at least once. Wait here for a bit.”
I wandered back into my own bedroom and rummaged around for a bit. I returned with a flat strip of leather, an O-ring secured to the center of it.
“If you're going to keep calling me that in public, put this on. It'll keep the questions to a minimum.”
* * *
If you're south of the Mason-Dixon line and need to meet a supernatural creature on neutral ground, go to Waffle House. At least half of every third shift is either read in or a supernatural being themselves. And no matter what kind of creature of darkness you are, sometimes you just want a cup of coffee and some scattered, smothered, and covered in peace. Thus “keep the conflicts outside” is the unwritten rule. Taking a supernatural fight inside is inviting the staff and other patrons to join in kicking your ass.
The bonus of that is that nobody questions anything. So when I wandered in escorting a blue-skinned brunette whose only opaque clothing was some curly-toed slippers, my old jacket, and a black leather collar, nobody batted an eye.
I'd been going to this particular one since high school. Loretta, the head waitress for third shift, gave a wave and a smile from across the room before we seated ourselves at a back corner booth. To human eyes, she looked like any other middle-aged working lady with the forearms of a blacksmith and a bosom that could save your life in a car crash. A look under the glamour and you'd notice a beard that would make most mall Santas jealous, bound up in a beard net she wove herself. She walked with a slight limp, which she claimed was from being born with a club foot. But her grandson Leon once told me she physically broke several toes off in an unruly customer's ass back in the Sixties, and they'd never healed properly. I also knew she kept a battle hatchet under the register, and could pick which eye socket she wanted to split open with it from fifty feet away.
“Hey Travis! You home on leave, honey?”
“Just got in a few hours ago, Loretta. How's Leon doing?”
“He done moved out to Austin, gone wildcatting with his cousins. I get an email now n' then saying he gone visit, but I'll believe it when I see his skinny ass.”
A lot of dwarves work in the oil business. Digging holes for gold is digging holes for gold even if you add a few more steps these days. Loretta sat us both down and got our drink orders put in. I already knew the menu, so I passed it to Jazz. She read the laminated folio in fascination. I'm not sure she noticed when Loretta came with black coffee and ice water. I gently tapped it to get her attention. I'm not sure how a lady with blue skin managed to blush, but there she was. Once again, she ordered what I did. Which meant that I was feeding a Djinn a cheeseburger and hash browns. I'm classy like that. We put the menus away and relaxed a moment before I got down to business.
“So tell me, Jazz. If you weren't bound to the ring, what would you do?”
This took her a while. For the first time, I saw her drink the coffee.
“I'm not sure, Master. My parents are long gone, and I've never been to the City of Brass. Find a library to work in, I suppose.”
“What would freeing you entail?”
“A powerful wizard would have to unweave the Solomanic ritual that bound me to the ring, then destroy the ring itself.”
“Any side effects?”
“I would lose the ability to grant wishes. And a wizard who knew Solomanic magic could bind me into another object.”
“Could I use a wish to free you?”
“You could, Master. But you have read the stories. The results of any wish are... unpredictable.”
“OK. How would one get to the City of Brass?”
“Enter the otherworlds from waypoints. The one I know of is in Baghdad, but there may be others. From there, fly across the copper desert until you reach the city.”
“You say you've never been to the City. But you must have met other Djinn who did. Tell me, how would they react to a human wizard showing up on their doorstep?”
She looked sheepish, but nodded as she saw where I was going. “They would not be very hospitable, Master.”
“I'm gonna let you in on what I'm thinking here, Jazz. First off, I picked up your ring as a souvenir of a war zone I fought in, but I'll admit I fill the requirements to be your Master. I have a definite thing for bibliophiles, bare midriffs, and kinky power exchange, which means your very presence in my company is doing camel crosses up and down my libido. That said, the thought of no-shit compelled servitude makes my hackles raise in a go-on-the-warpath-to-stop-it sense.”
“Secondly, even assuming your cheerful personality ain't an act you're putting on to placate the latest Master, you are dangerous. You can rip reality open like cheap pantyhose at the whim of whatever yahoo happens to have your ring. You're the mystical version of a nuclear warhead. A hot nuclear warhead I'm trying not to stare at or drool over, but I digress. If you weren't so apparently kindhearted I'd think long and hard about tossing your ring overboard in international waters just to be safe. But it wouldn't work. And if it did, it would be cruel. And I ain't comfortable with cruelty any more than I am with slavery.”
Her eyes had grown wide when I mentioned deep-sixing her ring. I was convinced she was being honest, or at least benevolent. But I couldn't risk it. I could, however, do the next best thing.
“Thirdly, I'm sure I don't know all the details, but I know there was bad blood between Solomon's cronies and your entire species. Liberating you and taking you for all intents and purposes home would involve learning a very uncommon branch of magic I never studied, and unweave spells laid down by the founder of that entire branch. Then I'd have to travel to an actual war zone, cross over to the otherworlds, fly across an enchanted desert and end up in a city full of Djinn who, in all honesty, would love to get a piece out of a human wizard. I could only skip all that time and effort and risking my life itself to get you home with a wish. But that would bring us back to ripping open reality. Not sure I want to take the risk.”
Her eyes were downcast again. If it was an act, it was a good one. I decided to take a risk.
"Would you like a job?"
Now I had her really confused. "Master?"
"I leave active duty in a year and change and come back home. Assuming I live, I'll be able to practice magic more openly. Which means sooner or later I'll be dealing with things I don't really know about. I could use a good research assistant. You'll have a good bit of off-time, you can read what you like. Dunno if I can get Wifi in your ring for you straight off the bat, but a stack of paperbacks or something I can get easy enough."
Her voice had gotten very small, to the very limit of my gunfire-stunted hearing.
"I can read what I like?"
"If I have a copy, you're welcome to it."
Her smile shone like the last streetlamp before home.
This could still come back to bite me in the ass. Sooner or later, something nasty enough to tempt me into wishing was going to show up. And there's always the chance Jazz could take me down in a moment of weakness. But until then, I had someone else to back me up. And in a life like mine, those things are worth more than anything Aladdin had handed to him.
( Copyright©2019 by Jay Peterson )
