Chapter 12: The Truce
Jafar al-Sharif and his companions waited nervously on the beach beside their small boat, anxious about Leila’s fate. There were so many plants in the scarouche’s djinn garden, and Leila only needed to make one wrong decision to bring about her own death at the hands of some angry djinn. To preoccupy themselves they readied their boat to leave as soon as Leila returned, but that took little enough time. Then all they could do was wait.
“Don’t you have anything you want to take with you from this island?” Prince Ahmad asked Fazil bin Abou. “You have only the clothes on your back, and we have much traveling ahead of us.”
“I want nothing from this accursed place,” bin Abou replied. “Except for decency, I would not even take these clothes. I would rather dress in rags
