Thief of Baghdad Read Online Free Page B

said.
    “From the way he’s holding his hands,” Amina said, “he plans to fall on top of the red-haired navel-winker. Right in front of everybody.”
    “Oh, my, what a scandal that would be! Still and all, it would give you some idea of what to expect when you’re married.”
    The Lady Amina had clenched her teeth in rage. She spoke through them: “A girl who has been raised in a harem doesn’t need education,” she said. “What she needs is a husband who isn’t going to maintain a harem, especially a harem with red-topped acrobats in it!”
    “Maybe he knows you’re watching him,” Lady Mariam said. “And if he does, he’s acting like that to make you jealous.”
    “I know why he’s acting like that,” Lady Amina said. “And sooner or later, he’s going to pay for it!”
    Against my better judgment, I stole a look.
    The main body of dancing girls—and what bodies—had already discarded all their clothes. But their leader, the Circassian wench, still clutched one piece of gauze to her. She had let it dangle down between her lovely legs, concealing that which should be last disclosed, and she was leaning far, far back from her narrow waist, making an arch of herself, its symmetry broken only by the mounds that Allah gave girls to distract men from their warrior-duties.
    Bent back at that impossible position, she still had perfect control of her hips; they were going round and round, and causing the gauze—it was dyed to exactly match her hair—to flutter and flirt in the still Baghdad air.
    The end of the gauze kept fluttering over Karim-as-Osman’s outstretched hands. But every time he thought he had caught it, it would flutter away from his fingers.
    That girl had the most wonderful muscular control I have ever seen in all my seven hundred and sixty-two years and three moons. I couldn’t look away, though I knew I should.
    Now she was moving away from Karim, still bent backward, still fluttering the red gauze. Karim half rose to follow her, and then sank back on the leewan again. I knew what he was thinking: that he had come there to steal jewels, not jades.
    Likewise, I was there for conjuring, and not for concupiscence, to get unnecessarily fancy.
    The cymbals gave a last tinkle and crash, the Circassian girl threw her piece of red gauze to Karim, and the girls ran off.
    Karim sat fingering the cloth as though it had fallen from Paradise. Perhaps it had.
    The Lady Amina said softly: “I would like to take that length of bazaar-goods and wrap it around his neck, and twist it until his eyeballs popped out!”
    Down below a juggler had apppeared. He started off the way jugglers always do, with three balls, but he had two girls behind him, ready to hand him all sorts of things, scimitars and extra balls and plates and daggers.
    Karim sighed, and seemed to settle back on the leewan. But I could see how tense his muscles were; playtime was over and he was about to go to work. I wondered if the juggling troupe were confederates, and then decided not; they had the ugly, fleshy look of Syrians about them.
    Now that the cymbals were silent, Abdir the Foolish had eyes only for the juggler. Karim dexterously removed Abdir’s great ring, the symbol of his sultanship.
    One of the ladies-in-waiting wasn’t interested in juggling so much as she was in young men. She said: “Great shades of the Prophet, I thought I saw the Prince— Oh, I couldn’t have.”
    Karim needed help. He didn’t know about this gallery full of man-hungry girls who weren’t going to be misdirected by any juggler, especially one who already had two girls and a Syrian face. I had better help Karim.
    Dematerialized as I was, it was easy. I floated down the gallery to where the serving maids were. Two of them were pressed against the screen, close together. I pinched one of them, where it would do the most good. It was a pleasure. Almost too much of a pleasure, in my lonely state, but it was well within the limits of my jinnship