The Ring of Solomon

might be able to do it fast enough to block his hand, but it wasn’t likely.
    ‘ What is your name? ’
    She focused on him reluctantly. ‘Cyrine.’
    ‘Where do you come from?’
    ‘Himyar.’
    ‘ Himyar? So small and far away?’ The king frowned. ‘But I have nothing to do with that land. Who, precisely, do you serve?’
    Asmira lowered her eyes. She had no answer. Her false identity hadn’t been prepared for capture and interrogation. In such circumstances, she had not assumed she would be alive.
    ‘Last chance,’ King Solomon said.
    She shrugged and looked away.
    King Solomon struck the arm of his chair in brisk impatience. He reached for the Ring, slipped it on his finger and turned it once. The room went dark. There was a thud; air shifted like a solid mass, flung Asmira back across the bed. She collided with the wall.
    When she opened her eyes, a Presence stood beside the king, blacker than shadow. Power and terror radiated from it like heat from a great fire. Elsewhere in the darkness, she heard the scrolls and parchments fluttering in their racks.
    ‘Answer me!’ the king’s voice thundered. ‘Who are you? Who do you serve? Speak! My patience is at an end!’
    The Presence moved towards her. Asmira gave a cry of mortal fear. She cowered back upon the bed. ‘My name is Asmira! I come from Sheba! I serve my queen!’
    At once the figure was gone. Asmira’s ears popped; blood trickled from her nose. The lamps around the room resumed their normal light. King Solomon, grey with weariness or rage, took the Ring from his finger and tossed it back upon the silver plate.
    ‘Queen Balkis?’ he said, passing his hand across his face. ‘ Balkis? Young miss, if you dare to lie to me …’
    ‘I do not lie.’ Asmira slowly struggled back into a sitting position. Tears welled in her eyes. Her sense of overwhelming horror had vanished with the Spirit of the Ring; now she reeled at the shame of her betrayal. She stared in blank hatred at the king.
    Solomon tapped his fingers upon the chair. ‘Queen Balkis …?’ he mused again. ‘No! Why should it be?’
    ‘I speak the truth,’ Asmira spat. ‘Though it matters little either way, since you’ll kill me whatever I say.’
    ‘Are you surprised?’ The king seemed pained. ‘My dear young woman, it was not I who crept in here to put a knife in another’s back. It is only because you do not fit the normal run of demons or assassins that I speak with you at all. Believe me, most of them are drearily self-explanatory. But you … When I find a pretty girl upon the floor of my observatory, flat out in a faint, with a silver dagger in her belt and another embedded in my floor, and no obvious sign of how she evaded the sentries of my palace and climbed up here at all – I must say I am perplexed and intrigued. So if you have a grain of sense, you will take advantage of my interest, wipe away those unbecoming tears and speak rapidly and well, and pray to whatever god you hold dear that my interest is long maintained. For when I get bored,’ King Solomon said, ‘I turn to my Ring. Now, then. Queen Balkis sent you, so you say. Why should this be?’
    While he had been speaking, Asmira had made great play of dabbing at her face with her dirty sleeve, and in so doing, shuffled forward on the bed. A last desperate attack was all she could hope for now. But she might still inch a little closer …
    She lowered her arm. ‘ Why? How can you even ask me that?’
    The king’s face darkened. His hand stretched out—
    ‘Your threats!’ Asmira cried out in panic. ‘Your cruel demands! Why should I spell it out for you? Sheba cannot withstand your power, as you well know, so my queen took what action she could to save her honour! If I had succeeded, my country would have been saved! Believe me, I curse myself for failing!’
    Solomon had not picked up the Ring, though his fingers hovered over it. His face was calm, but he breathed deeply, as one in pain. ‘This seems … an unusual course of action to take against someone who has offered marriage,’ he said slowly. ‘A rejection I can take. Assassination is a little more extreme. Don’t you think so, Asmira?’
    She scowled at his use of her name. ‘I’m not talking about marriage. Your threat of invasion! Your demands for frankincense! Your vow to destroy our nation when the moon is new!’
    ‘Terrible threats, indeed.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Except I never made them.’ He sat back in his chair, thin