A Whole New World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,84

reason you’re doing all this to Agrabah is to get me back. Well, here I am. Please call off your armies.”

“Hmmm,” Jafar said.

He paced around her, examining her from all angles, like a cat with a mouse trapped on a chair.

Aladdin had told Jasmine what he had witnessed in the Square of the Sailor. She tried not to tense up, tried not to imagine the horrible things that could be done to her.

“Hmmm,” Jafar said again.

The room was silent; even the scribbles of the secretaries had stopped.

“But I want you to love me,” Jafar finally said with a terrifying mildness. “So what are we going to do about that, Jasmine?”

“We can…make everyone else think I love you?”

“Hmmm,” Jafar said a third time.

“Your honest discourse is refreshing, even if its content is not appealing. I shall consider your offer. In the meantime, I would like to give you a little demonstration of what happens to those who lie to me. Or otherwise try to plot against me.”

He threw his arms open dramatically and used his staff to pull himself forward into the throne room.

Jasmine gasped at the different scenes playing out in the space.

In one corner was the hourglass. It was the opposite of one of her father’s models: instead of a large thing made tiny for play, it was a tiny thing made huge. In the bottom half were Maruf and the two children. He was tiredly, constantly moving: putting his terrified grandchildren on his shoulders, lifting them up every few moments so they could sit on top of the rapidly growing pile of sand, shifting to make everyone more comfortable. Despite being used to the everyday horrors of poverty and a dangerous life in the streets that killed grown men, Ahmed and Shirin had faces that were now raw from weeping and the haggard look of exhausted terror.

In the top of the hourglass there was very little sand left.

The three of them saw Jasmine. Ahmed’s and Shirin’s faces lit up and they shouted with joy—or probably did; no sound transmitted through the glass.

Jasmine’s first impulse was to cry out and run over to them. To pound on the hourglass. To try to get them out.

“And over here, in case you missed it…” Jafar pointed to the other side of the throne, throwing his arms open wide and letting his cape flutter behind him.

There was the genie.

Still larger than human, but pale and thinner somehow. He was tied down to a bed of nails, each point digging into his blue skin. The giant gold bracelets that covered his wrists were chained to a pair of boards crossed above his head. Everything glowed faintly purple.

“Hey, Princess,” the genie said weakly.

“Are you all right?” she asked, and then immediately regretted it.

“Oh, sure. Never better. How’s by you?”

“Quiet, fool,” Jafar snapped. He spun and stomped up the dais to where the—his—throne was. He sat down and his cape flared out around him. He laid his staff across his knees. He reached out with one hand as if to stroke a dog or cat lying next to him. Instead, he petted the old, battered-looking oil lamp that sat on a delicate golden table there.

The lamp.

And next to it was a book with a blackened cover and what looked like a living human eye set in the leather. Al Azif.

“I don’t take kindly to those who act against me,” Jafar growled. “As you can plainly see. So let me ask you one last time, Princess. Do you swear you are here simply to declare your everlasting love and betrothal to me?”

“I cannot promise the love,” she said as bravely as she could. “But I give you my word about the betrothal.”

The horrible twitch of a real smile began to grow in the corners of Jafar’s mouth.

The two thieves made it to the audience chamber without further incident. It was as impressive as the baths, in a smaller, understated way. A mosaic of Agrabah and the lands between the greater Western Desert and the Mountains of Atrazak covered the largest wall. A fresco—occasionally updated, it seemed, with fresher paint—on the other wall showed a reasonably up-to-date map of Agrabah itself, down to the small side streets. Aladdin wished he had more time to examine it closely.

“Ha,” Duban whispered, pointing at the Quarter of the Street Rats. “This part’s all wrong…that fountain hasn’t been there since my mother’s mother’s time.”

“Just as well,” Aladdin whispered back. “But help me find the wandering dervish in the mosaic…he should be