“I haven’t either,” said Tony. “He was strangling me, so I broke a couple of his fingers and he let go, howling. Then he swelled up to the size of a gigantosaurus, bellowing, while I coughed my head off. He was just about to come for me again when he started to sneeze, and he went into a panic and flew out the window like his tail was on fire. I haven’t the least idea why.”
The slave girl looked at him strangely.
“He sneezed? But lasf sometimes causes that! Not always, but sometimes. Had you lasf?”
“Not unless it was on my breath—which isn’t unlikely,” Tony said gloomily. “It’s foul stuff and the aroma lingers on. I had a drink of it yesterday. You gave it to me.”
“Lasf is poisonous to the djinn but not to human beings,” said Ghail with some reserve. “We anoint our weapons and bullets with it before we go out to fight the djinn. It is very poisonous to them. They run away. Sometimes they sneeze. But lasf is very rare. The djinn pay the Bedouin of the desert to uproot and destroy it wherever they find it.”
“Like DDT,” said Tony morbidly, “with bugs hiring rabbits to sabotage the whole business.” He had to use English words where he did not know the Arabic equivalents. She listened, uncomprehending. “Never mind. If you don’t know how I did it, nobody knows, so that’s that. So—I have to visit this djinn king, eh? If it’s under safe-conduct, I suppose I’m safe from further strangling until I get back?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ghail. “You and your attendants are safe until you return. Of course you will be offered bribes to betray us, and persuasion, and he may try to frighten you, and”—her voice grew suddenly angry—“he will have his djinnees try to beguile you. He does not want you to lead our armies against him.”
“I’ll try to resist the bribes and the beguilings, too,” said Tony. Then he shuddered. “If what I had yesterday was a fair sample… Tell me, where do I get this reputation as a general?”
Ghail said coldly: “I told the Council about the war you were in. Also, that djinnee in the courtyard may have been listening for days. One way or another, it would get back to the djinns.”