The Ring of Solomon

five seconds that will make me give up one of my fine, dark-eyed camels to you?’
    The girl reached inside her riding cloak; when her hand reappeared, it had something the size of an apricot stone glittering in the palm.
    ‘It is a blue diamond from the Hadhramaut,’ she said. ‘Shaped and sanded into fifty facets. They say the Queen of Sheba wears one similar on her headdress. Provide me with a camel and it’s yours.’
    The merchant sat very still; peach-and-orange light moved upon the surface of his face. He looked towards the closed tent flap, from where the sound of the marketplace was muffled. The tip of his tongue ran between his lips. He said, ‘A man might wonder whether you had more such things …’
    Asmira moved so that the front of her riding cloak fell open; she rested her fingers on the dagger hanging loosely at her belt.
    ‘… but to me,’ the merchant continued heartily, ‘such payment is more than adequate! We can make immediate arrangements!’
    Asmira nodded. ‘I’m so glad. Give me my camel.’
    ‘She is going down Spice Street now,’ the thin man reported. ‘She’s left the beast at the square. They’re equipping it for tomorrow. Not sparing any expense either. A canopy and everything. She’s got money in that bag of hers.’ As he spoke, he played with a long strip of cloth, twisting it between his hands.
    ‘Spice Street’s too busy,’ the beggar said.
    ‘Ink Street?’
    ‘Good enough. Four of us should manage it.’
    It was true what Asmira had told the bread-seller. She was not a magician. But that did not mean she was innocent of magic.
    When she was nine years old, the senior guard-mother found her as she was practising in the yard. ‘Asmira, come with me.’
    They went to a quiet room above the training hall, where Asmira had never been. Inside were tables and cabinets of ancient cedar wood, their half-open doors revealing stacks of papyrus scrolls, clay tablets and pottery shards notched with signs. On the centre of the floor two circles had been drawn, each containing a five-pointed star.
    Asmira frowned and pulled a lock of hair back from her face. ‘What’s all this?’
    The senior guard-mother was forty-eight years old and had once been First Guard of the queen. She had put down three tribal insurrections in the Hadhramaut. She had a thin white sword-scar slashed across her wrinkled neck and another across her forehead, and was regarded with awe and veneration by the sisterhood. Even the queen herself was said to speak to her with some humility. She looked down at the scowling girl and said mildly, ‘They tell me your training is going well.’
    Asmira was looking at a papyrus scroll laid out on the table. It was covered with an ornate and densely written script – except in the middle, where a sinister figure, half smoke, half skeleton, had been sketched with a few deft strokes. She shrugged.
    The guard-mother said: ‘I have seen you with the knives. I could not throw as well as you when I was your age. And nor could your mother.’
    The girl did not look at her, nor change expression, but her bony little shoulders stiffened. She spoke as if she had not heard. ‘What’s all this magical stuff, anyway?’
    ‘What do you think it is?’
    ‘Ways of summoning demons of the air. I thought it was forbidden. Only priestesses are allowed to do it, the guard-mothers say.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘Or were you all lying?’
    In three years the senior guard-mother had had cause to beat the girl innumerable times for truancy, disobedience and cheek. Now she only said, ‘Asmira, listen. I have two things to offer you. The one is knowledge, the other is this …’ She held out her hand. Between the fingers hung a silver necklace; on its end, a pendant shaped like the sun. When the girl saw it, she gave a little gasp.
    ‘I do not need to tell you that it was your mother’s,’ the senior guard-mother said. ‘No, you may not have it yet. Listen to me now.’ She waited till the girl had raised her face: taut, hostile, tamping its emotion down. She said: ‘We did not lie to you. Magic is forbidden to everyone in Sheba but the priestesses of the temple. Only they may summon demons in the ordinary way. And it is right that this is so! Demons are wicked, deceitful things, dangerous to all. Think how volatile the hill-tribes are! If every chieftain could raise a djinni whenever he argued with his neighbours, there would be a dozen wars a year, and half the population