A Whole New World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,24
World interrupted me—you know, limitless powers don’t excuse you from manners, Your Worshipfulness—there are a few provisos, a couple of quid pro quos. To your three wishes.”
He hung in the air, his blue smoke calmly waving back and forth.
Jafar didn’t say anything, but Jasmine saw the edge of his mouth begin to twitch in anger.
“Here are the basic laws of magic, students. Listen up. Rule number one: I can’t kill anyone. Rule number two: I can’t make anyone fall in love with anybody else.” He looked pointedly at Jafar, then gave Jasmine a kind wink. “And rule number three—which I suspect is not going to apply to you; you don’t seem like the ‘I made a terrible mistake, let’s bring him back from the dead’ type—I can’t bring people back from the dead.”
The sultan looked relieved. He stood next to his daughter and squeezed her arm.
It was a big relief. There was no worse fate—she could currently think of—than being a love-slave zombie to that hideous shell of a man.
But they weren’t safe yet. Jafar was not someone who reacted well to disappointments.
Jafar worked his jaw, trying to control himself.
“What is the use of a genie who has limitations?” he growled.
“Hey now…” the genie said, getting offended.
“I’ll show you what real power looks like! Hold them, Genie!”
Jafar threw his cape aside and strode forward. Jasmine found she suddenly had golden shackles around her wrists, drawing her hands together. So did her father. The genie swooped in behind them, and she found herself compelled to march, trailing behind Jafar.
The genie leaned forward to whisper to them.
“Sorry. You guys seem like a nice couple.”
“The sultan is my father,” Jasmine snapped.
“Oh. Whoops. My bad. It’s not so unusual, you know—old kings, young girls. That whole May-December thing. Not totally my fault.”
“At least I won’t be married to anyone against my will now. Not even Jafar,” Jasmine said grimly.
“Yeah, how about we not give Mr. Revengey-pants here ideas?” the genie suggested archly. “There’s a substantial legal and magical difference between forcing to love and forcing to marry.”
He had a point. Jasmine kept her mouth shut.
Jafar continued to the royal balcony. As the strange procession passed through the halls, things changed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to the sorcerer’s tastes. Flowers disappeared or wilted; decorative paintings turned black and jagged. Even the stones they walked on became dark and shiny, like polished onyx.
Jafar threw open the curtain to the Public Balcony and glided onto it. He beckoned and the genie shooed Jasmine and her father out there as well. They made a strange quartet, the mostly naked sultan, the blue genie, Jasmine in her shackles, and the crackling-with-power Jafar.
People were running to the square below them from all quarters of the city like ants to a dropped piece of melon. How had Jafar summoned them? The sky swirled madly with the promise of a coming storm, and lightning arced overhead. Not the sort of weather anyone would willingly venture out into…
Jafar smiled, his one gold tooth glimmering in the strange light. He raised his staff, waiting patiently for what looked like everyone in Agrabah to assemble and quiet down.
“People of Agrabah,” he said. Although he wasn’t shouting, his words echoed off every building. “At long last, the suffering you have endured at the hands of the old sultan is over.”
Jasmine couldn’t help sneaking a look at her father to see how he reacted to this accusation. He seemed mildly surprised. And just two days earlier, she might have reacted the same way. But since then she had seen starving children dressed in rags. She had seen organizations of thieves that only existed because there was no other way to make a living. She had spent the day with a boy who had only ever eaten what he had stolen.
“With the support of the palace guards, an incredibly powerful genie, and Princess Jasmine…I, Jafar, am the new sultan of Agrabah!”
If he was expecting a cheer, with his arms uplifted, he was disappointed. His eyes flicked left and right. But rather than panicking, he continued speaking.
“I will be a sultan of the people. Attentive to their—to your—every need.”
There were a few murmurs from the crowd below.
“We’ve heard that before,” someone shouted back, hands around his mouth to make his voice carry.
“Yes!” shouted someone else. “Remember the wedding? The new sultana promised us decades of prosperity!”
Jasmine felt her breath catch. Her mother had said that?