A Master of Djinn

Fatma arranges an audience with the reclusive angels by dropping the words “Seal of Sulayman” in her request. Along the way, the agents re-read notes from Rami to remind themselves of the confounding spell. Hadia points out that true angels have no free will and live with God; these “angels” are something else.

The angels’ leadership reside in an old medieval building, al-Gawhara Palace. A female djinn named Azmuri is the agents’ escort. After completing nine exhaustive forms for the bureaucratic angels, the agents follow Azmuri through the palace. In one room, they pass “a great machine of rotating gears with men and women moving about frantically to maintain it” (281). Azmuri jokes that this machine “keeps the world going” (281).

Finally, Azmuri delivers them to a private room, where four angels sit around a wide table, their ethereal forms housed in complex clockwork bodies. One introduces himself as Leader. The others are Harmony, Discord, and Defender—then the fifth angel arrives, and Fatma pulls her pistol, recognizing her as Maker. Leader clarifies that this is another Maker, a replacement for the one Fatma killed. Fatma uneasily accepts this explanation, and they begin to discuss