A Whole New World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,68

he just long to be at peace? Was he enraged at the living?

Whatever happened now was, in some ways, Aladdin’s fault.

He straightened his shoulders and shook off the nausea. Guilt he would deal with later. Mistakes he would make up for later. Right now they had to survive.

The four Street Rats watched as, in the distance, more and more squadrons of slow-moving flying soldiers assembled themselves over the city.

“As I said, that foolish genie really doesn’t know everything. I have now completely broken one of the three laws of magic and learned how to bring back the dead. Permanently. Under my control. Every time one of my ranks falls, he is replaced. Every time one of your ranks falls, he adds to my army. Death is my friend in the war for Agrabah.”

Morgiana muttered something in the language of her mother.

“Street Rats. Jasmine.” Jafar’s voice became less playful and more businesslike. “Even if you manage to avoid my army, you would still do well to turn yourselves in by dawn tomorrow.”

“Never!” Jasmine shouted to the sky. “We’d rather—”

But Aladdin touched her on the arm and pointed.

A great swirling cone of sand lifted up from the desert like a tornado. Unlike a tornado, it was broad and feathery at the edges. Sand danced around within the invisible wind in unnatural jerking motions. Suddenly, it made a picture:

A giant hourglass, sand pouring slowly through it. In the bottom were Maruf, Shirin, and Ahmed, desperately and silently slamming on the glass. Trying to get out.

Duban made a noise in his throat, a strangled cry.

“By sunrise tomorrow this little family of Street Rats will be dead. No great loss, I think. But if you actually bother to care about anyone besides your own worthless selves, you will turn yourselves in before the first light of day.”

And then, without a word or noise or lingering echo, Jafar’s voice just cut off. The sand that made up the image in the sky fell like rain.

“He has defeated us without drawing a single blade,” Morgiana said bleakly. “Duban, we will turn ourselves in. We can’t let them die this way.”

“And then what?” Aladdin asked, turning on her. “Do you really think that will change anything? Do you think he will just let them go, like he promised? And if he did, forgetting for just a moment what he would do to us then—I’m thinking a quick execution and then four more ghouls for his army—what’s going to happen to Agrabah? What’s going to happen to everyone else? There won’t be anyone left to fight him. The city will be his, one giant plaything for him to experiment on. And after that, who knows? The world?”

“I don’t care about the world,” Duban interrupted. “All I care about is my dad and my niece and my nephew.”

Jasmine started to say something. Duban held up his hand.

“But you’re right. Jafar has no reason to let them go. He has all the cards. And if they lived, I wouldn’t want them to live in the sort of world he is building.”

“But what do we do?” Morgiana demanded.

“What we should have done from the beginning,” Aladdin said. “Grab the lamp. Rescue the family. Get the genie to undo all this and everyone lives happily ever after.”

“Oh, is that all?” Morgiana rolled her eyes.

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Jasmine asked, eyes hardening as she thought about it. “He didn’t call us traitors or revolutionaries or insurrectionists. He said, ‘Death is my friend in the war for Agrabah.’ He thinks it’s a fair fight. He thinks we’re at war. As equals.

“Well, if it’s war he wants…we’ll give him one!”

THE FOUR WALKED BACK through the streets of Agrabah in silence. Any initial enthusiasm they had felt from declaring war on Jafar ebbed away as the reality of the situation sank in. There wasn’t a hint of the sorcerer’s presence in the city as they went; he was silent now, his voice withdrawn back to the palace while he waited for them to make a decision. There was something anticlimactic about it.

Agrabah itself was full of tense and strange energy: although it was now fully evening and the Peacekeeping Patrols were active, people buzzed behind their closed doors—or sometimes opened them a crack to trade opinions with a neighbor across the way, also behind a cracked door.

But no one could avoid noticing the corpses that were occasionally sprawled in the alleys, left there as a warning.

Morgiana was holding Duban’s hand, squeezing it and murmuring sympathetic