“Your friend the djinn,” Sophie said. “I think we distracted Ben at a crucial moment.”
“The djinn intended that you should, O former feline,” Abdullah said. “If you recollect, he remarked as he was leaving that he expected one of us to help him steal the Princess.”
Other bells around the city had joined in ringing the alarm now. People ran into the streets and stared upward. The carriage jingled on through an increasing clamor and was forced to go more and more slowly as more people gathered in the streets. Everyone seemed to know exactly what had happened. “The Princess is gone!” Abdullah heard. “A devil has stolen Princess Valeria!” Most people seemed awed and frightened, but one or two were saying, “That Royal Wizard ought to be hanged! What’s he paid for?”
“Oh, dear!” said Lettie. “The King won’t believe for a moment how hard Ben’s been working to stop this from happening!”
“Don’t worry,” said Sophie. “As soon as we’ve fetched Morgan, I’ll go and tell the King. I’m good at telling the King things.”
Abdullah believed her. He sat and jittered with impatience.
After what seemed another century but was probably only five minutes, the carriage pushed its way into the crowded innyard. It was full of people all staring upward. “Saw its wings,” he heard a man saying. “It was a monstrous bird with the Princess clutched in its talons.”
The carriage stopped. Abdullah could give way to his impatience at last. He sprang down, shouting, “Clear the way, clear the way, O people! Here are two witches on important business!” By repeated shouting and pushing, he managed to get Sophie and Lettie to the inn door and shove them inside. Lettie was very embarrassed.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that!” she said. “Ben doesn’t like people to know I’m a witch.”
“He will have no time to think of it just now,” Abdullah said. He pushed the two of them past the staring landlord and to the stairs. “Here are the witches I spoke to you about, most heavenly host,” he told the man. “They are anxious about their cats.” He leaped up the stairs. He overtook Lettie, then Sophie, and raced on up the next flight. He flung open the door of the room. “Do nothing rash—” he began, and then stopped as he realized there was complete silence inside.
The room was empty.
* * *
Chapter 17
In which Abdullah at last reaches the castle in the air.
There was a cushion in a basket among the remains of supper on the table. There was a rumpled dent in one of the beds and a cloud of tobacco smoke above it, as if the soldier had been lying there smoking until very recently. The window was closed. Abdullah rushed toward it, intending to fling it open and look out—for no real reason except that it was all he could think of—and found himself tripping over a saucer full of cream. The saucer overturned, slewing thick yellow-white cream in a long streak across the magic carpet.
Abdullah stood staring down at it. At least the carpet was still there. What did that mean? There was no sign of the soldier and certainly no sign of a noisy baby anywhere in the room. Nor, he realized, turning his eyes rapidly toward every place he could think of, was there any sign of the genie bottle.
“Oh, no!” Sophie said, arriving at the door. “Where is he? He can’t have gone far if the carpet’s still here.”
Abdullah wished he could be so certain of that. “Without desiring to alarm you, mother of a most mobile baby,” he said, “I have to observe that the genie appears to be missing also.”
A small vague frown creased the skin of Sophie’s forehead. “What genie?”
While Abdullah was remembering that as Midnight, Sophie had always seemed quite unaware that the genie existed, Lettie arrived in the room, too, panting, with one hand pressed to her side. “What’s the matter?” she gasped.
“They’re not here,” said Sophie. “I suppose the soldier must have taken Morgan to the landlady. She must know about babies.”
With a feeling of grasping at straws, Abdullah said, “I will go and see.” It was always just possible that Sophie was right, he thought as he sped down the first flight of stairs. It was what most men would do faced with a screaming baby suddenly—always supposing that man did not have a genie bottle in his hand.
The lower flight of stairs was full of people coming up, men wearing tramping boots and some kind of uniform. The landlord was leading them upward, saying, “On the second floor, gentlemen. Your description fits the Strangian if he had cut off his pigtail, and the younger fellow is obviously the accomplice you speak of.”
Abdullah turned and ran back upstairs on tiptoe, two stairs at a time.
“There is general disaster, most bewitching pair of women!” he gasped to Sophie and Lettie. “The landlord—a perfidious publican—is bringing constables to arrest myself and the soldier. Now what can we do?”
It was time for a strong-minded woman to take charge. Abdullah was quite glad that Sophie was one. She acted at once. She shut the door and shot its bolt. “Lend me your handkerchief,” she said to Lettie, and when Lettie passed it over, Sophie knelt and mopped the cream off the magic carpet with it. “You come over here,” she told Abdullah. “Get on this carpet with me, and tell it to take us to wherever Morgan is. You stay here, Lettie, and hold the constables up. I don’t think the carpet would carry you.”
“Fine,” said Lettie. “I want to get back to Ben before the King starts blaming him, anyway. But I’ll give that landlord a piece of my mind first. It’ll be good practice for the King.” As strong-minded as her sister, she squared her shoulders and stuck out her elbows in a way that promised a bad time for the landlord and the constables as well.
Abdullah was glad about Lettie, too. He crouched on the carpet and snored gently. The carpet quivered. It was a reluctant quiver. “O fabulous fabric, carbuncle and chrysolite among carpets,” Abdullah said, “this miserable clumsy churl apologizes profoundly for spilling cream upon your priceless surface—”
Heavy knocking came at the door. “Open, in the King’s name!” bellowed someone outside.
There was no time to flatter the carpet any further. “Carpet, I implore you,” Abdullah whispered, “transport myself and this lady to the place where the soldier has taken the baby.”