Archive of Our Own ^beta

As a spirit¹, I have never not believe in this pesky thing humans call “fate”. Coincidences, yes, of course, even the most ridiculous ones, like when the commander of an enemy battalion during the Battle of Castillon was a fellow I knew from the Crusades and who, for some inexplicable reason, had a very large axe to grind with me. Some spirits just take it all too personal; maybe that was also just something that happened to you when you serve the English one time too many.

In addition to that, some spirits were just so stellar that they survived even the greatest odds. As a djinni with over four millennia of experience to his name, I had seen quite a few colleagues come and go, and unless it happened to be the English bloke, it usually made for a bit of pleasant smalltalk either while serving together or in the midst of trying to impaling the other on a spear. Oh, fancy seeing you here, how have the last centuries been? Ah, yes, dreadful, I know. If only the next bizarre illness some nice vagabond rodent carries could make all the magicians burn their books and scripts before they croak. Me? Oh, Mesoamerica. Yes, very pretty but no one bothers to give temple-dwelling djinn the scenic tour.

Some strange human might call my continuous run-ins with my old friend Faquarl ‘fate’, I just found them annoying.

Usually, that was.

It was evening and I was lounging about in the kitchen in the shape of a human servant girl chatting with the cook, an older matron with rough hands who was cutting up Swedish turnips for our master’s dinner, when a little flea² jumped on my shoulder.

“I think there’s trouble on the way. Five men who are not as human as they pretend to be.”

I resisted the urge to flick the insect away and furrowed my pretty brow. “Are we talking foliot?”

“Three, but two of them probably not.” The flea swallowed³.

I sighed. Our master was a man with as many admirers as enemies, and the latter tended to be particularly powerful as they were men of the cloth. The common peasants considered him a magician (which he was), the well-off citizens a conman (which he was as well), and the clergy a heretic (which, technically for those times, he was as well). He was among the first people who could call themselves protestants in their desire to denounce the Church in Rome and its executors over the continent. That very act put them in league with the Devil, according to whichever scion of an Italian noble family⁴ was currently sitting pretty in the Holy See.

“I’ll take care of it.” I could have told the foliot to alert Chelamma as well, but it was a nice opportunity to stretch my essence a bit. The foliot could be taken care of within five seconds, and I could take two djinn in a fight with one arm tied behind my back.

“Really, on your own? I don’t know, one of those blokes looked rather— eek!”

I had flicked the flea away and into the pot of boiling water where the turnips were about to be boiled. The foliot screeched, far too loud for a flea, as it jumped out of the pot, scaring the living daylights out of the cook who jabbed the knife in her hand into her finger and let out a vile curse that could be seen as good reason for an excommunication. I took the chance to slip out of the kitchen and into the narrow corridor.

With my master being a paranoid wreck of a man who knew how many people would have loved to see him doing the gallows dance, the house was full of security measures that surely even the Holy Roman Emperor would have shaken his head at. If they set even one antenna across the threshold, hell would break loose. Because my master was a mean dog of a magician who would punish me soundly for ruining his sacred turnip dinner, I was intent on not letting that happen.

I hurried over to one of the windows and tried to catch a glance at our would-be assassins. There were standing in front of the door and arguing, presumably over the extensive security measures. I took a better look at them on the Seventh plane; three foliots indeed, two djinn—one of which was Faquarl, in the guise of a pock-marked⁵ bailiff.

That was enough to ruin anyone’s evening.

The last time I had seen Faquarl was when I served in Rome under Giovanni Borgia, a stint luckily cut short due to his death, but hearsay was it that Faquarl served Giovanni’s brother Cesare for quite some time afterwards. Given the rumours of Cesare’s involvement concerning his brother’s death, under any other circumstances it would have been reasonable to open the door, shake Faquarl’s hand, bid him inside so he could kill this master as well, and be on my merry way back to the Other Place.

But not only was I bound — this was Faquarl we were talking about.

The knob-heads were still standing at the door and arguing, although I could see Faquarl pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers, which meant that soon they would not just talk anymore.

You know me to be a quick-witted djinni who knows when to act.

I stepped away from the window and went down the stairway as quickly while silent as I could. My plan, hatched within less than a minute, would cost quit a pretty pfennig, but that would be worth it.

The entry door to my master’s domicile in Heidelberg was a massive oak door upon which spells had been carved into, some of which were useful and indeed protective, others not so much⁶.

Getting all of that in your face was bound to hurt, and I was aiming for a lot of hurt tonight. I summoned my strength, put my hand close to the wood without touching it and launched a particularly nasty detonation against the door. Instead of splintering, it was torn out of its hinges, and whoever stood on the other side was hit with the full force of nasty protective spells and solid oak wood.

I froze for a moment. The alarm hadn’t been triggered — after all, nothing had crossed the threshold into the house. Internally, I did a little victory dance.

Someone cursed in Akkadian. I recognised the voice. Of course, that was enough to stop a few foliot in their step and perhaps a low-level djinni, but Faquarl was made of sterner stuff.

I was still the pretty maid, with luscious red curls, doe-like brown eyes and a body to die for from a human perspective, but also a metre forty tall and bipedal with two useless arms, not ideal for getting about unnoticed. I became a nightjar⁷ and took off into the air, my dark plumage allowing me to remain unseen. Of course Faquarl was no idiot; he would be on the lookout on all seven planes if someone was following him, and the murky lighting was only of advantage for a short amount of time, but I was still a bit miffed about several things that I gained memory of, in particular that business in Zimbabwe⁸.

. Just a piece of advice from me to anyone who cares to listen: sometimes it is fine to just say “water under the bridge” and call it a day. Since I was chronically unable to do so, especially when it concerned Faquarl, and about to endanger myself and my well-being, let it be a warning.

The pock-marked man was nowhere to be seen, instead an unsightly scrawny street dog ushered down the cobbled street. I followed him, roaring through the air on soundless wings⁹ and caught a passing glance at the four essence stains on the cobblestones that used to be part of three foliots and a djinni, respectively. Almost a complete set! I definitely had to bring that one up if my master was in the mood to give me the Stipples for using his door as a cannonball, provided I survived the following chase and the tables didn’t turn on me.

The dog was fast, which I attributed both to Faquarl’s strength and that his magician was surely going to be very displeased about his failure¹⁰. But flying beat running every time, and I came closer to catching up to him as he ran down the street that led to the marketplace. I opened my large nightjar mouth and launched another detonation through it, right at the ground which Faquarl’s hind legs touched.

The green explosion that sent cobblestones flying like projectiles and knocked the dog off its feet with a surprised yelp almost blinded me.

After all, I had really put some gusto in that one.

1. Believe it or not, there are certain people who believe that judging by our names—be it ‘spirit’ or ‘demon’—, we are particular ‘spiritual’ in the religious sense; sorry chum, that is something your fleshy ilk has a monopoly on. ^{[ ▲ ]}
2. Shush. It was obviously not a real flea — were I a human, I would make sure to always be clean anyway. ^{[ ▲ ]}
3. Trust me, I heard. ^{[ ▲ ]}
4. If I remembered correctly, it was a Medici, but it might have been a Della Rovere as well. Not that it mattered. ^{[ ▲ ]}
5. The light of the street lantern was so kind to show me that detail. His dedication to his forms being as ugly as imaginable had to be admired. ^{[ ▲ ]}
6. Remember how I said that my master was considered a heretic by the Church? Well, it didn’t just stop at that: at some point, someone denounced him as a sodomite as well. Me being the lyricist I am, dedicated a few rhymes to his sexual proclivities that could be mistaken for an incantation — in Sumerian, of course. A much more poetic language than these new tongues everyone was conversing in nowadays. ^{[ ▲ ]}
7. One of my favourites amongst the birds that populated this place, much more pleasant than the supposedly-dominant species, if only because their mouths were so comically large when they opened it. Ah, flying through the summer nights with my beak open and swallowing insects that fly in… what a life. I personally would prefer fried imps, though. ^{[ ▲ ]}
8. Don’t ask. ^{[ ▲ ]}
9. I know that owls could do that too, and even better, but let’s be frank: as far as birds go, owls were idiots. They only had a good reputation as particularly smart animals because of the association with Athena. ^{[ ▲ ]}
10. There were many things one could say about Faquarl, and I was always content to be the one saying them, but not even I could lie and say he was a coward. If anything, he was ready to take on the odds. Which I did too, of course, no matter what someone might have told you otherwise. ^{[ ▲ ]}