Chapter Text
Although not many sources had survived to testify to the exact development of the facts, the most accredited theory established the beginning of everything in a colossal solar eruption that would have wiped out most of the living forms on the planet, upset geology, ecosystem and, not lastly, much of the technology on which the society of the dominant species at the time was based was destroyed: homo sapiens. Everything suggested that the human species, and more generally life on planet Earth, was destined to become extinct.
Then, the Anunnaki had arrived.
That day was now a subject of study for archaeologists: thousands of years had passed and the world had changed radically; it wasn’t known with certainty even if indeed, as some theories asserted, it was the Anunnaki themselves that caused the blast (considering the singular timing of their arrival on Earth). However, there was no real evidence of their involvement in the drama that occurred, so most simply considered them as vultures attracted by the echo of the catastrophe and happy to take advantage of the desperation of humans.
Apparently they presented themselves as saviours at first: they said they had already been on Earth in the past to bring knowledge and civilization to humans and promised to do it again, raising the fate of the survivors of the catastrophe.
As much as everyone attributed to despair the choice of humans to rely on newcomers without asking many questions, Altaïr believed that it was rather naivete, stupidity and the unmotivated presumption of possessing some special value compared to other life forms in the galaxy. What else could lead them to believe that a people could make a journey of millions of light-years in the sidereal space with the sole purpose of running to their rescue?
If he had found himself in the place of those humans, he would never have trusted they. But Altaïr was born millennia after those events ... and to be honest he wasn't even human; so he never wasted too much time speculating on the subject.
Altaïr was a jinn, an ʿifrīt to be more precise.
According to sources, its species was introduced, together with several others compatible with the terrestrial environment, with one of the first measures taken by the newcomers in order to repopulate the planet and fill the ecological niches that remained empty due to the extinction of numerous indigenous life forms. The strategy proved successful: the previously compromised ecological balances were restored in a short time, the new creatures acclimated and related to the endemic ones as if they were a single well-oiled mechanism, healing the planet and making it flourishing as it had not been for thousands of years .
The only flaw detectable in the project was precisely the jinn, who proved to be formidable predators of humans and capable in a very short time of significantly reducing the ranks of the few survivors of the catastrophic solar flare.
To the increasingly vehement protests, the Anunnaki seemed to have responded by explaining how this propensity of the jinn was an unexpected implication of their predatory attitudes and ensuring the imminent start of a program aimed at correcting this problem. In the meantime, they would have taken charge of the protection of the population thanks to the coexistence with the families of Anunnaki as the innate technologies and abilities of the latter would have discouraged the attacks by the jinn, who would certainly have opted for easier prey.
Unfortunately, the initial peaceful coexistence gradually and inexorably turned into a state of subordination and, subsequently, of real slavery; when the humans became aware of it, the trap had already taken place, their civil rights had faded and their fate apparently sealed. Apparently the Anunnaki were experts in this process which they had already carried out countless times and knew very well how to behave. As for the jinn ... Well, the fact that, after millennia, many of them continued to do what they were genetically programmed for, it said a lot about the steps taken by the Anunnaki to correct their apparent error of assessment.
Unfortunately, the initial peaceful coexistence gradually and inexorably turned into a state of subordination and, subsequently, of real slavery; when the humans became aware of it, the trap had already taken place, their civil rights had faded and their fate apparently sealed. Apparently the Anunnaki were experts in this process which they had already carried out countless times and knew very well how to behave. As for the jinn ... Well, the fact that, after millennia, many of them continued to do what they were genetically programmed for, it said a lot about the steps taken by the Anunnaki to correct their apparent error of assessment.
And it was precisely the hunt for a human that brought Altaïr to the top of one of the tall buildings in the city, on that cold autumn evening: his prey had eluded him for two days and he was nothing short of frustrated; admitting that he had underestimated that little rat's ability to disappear was an annoying price for his proud soul.
He took a deep breath to calm down and re-examined the panorama of the city that lay beneath him in search of some clue or place that he might have left out.
New Babylon was a rather large city, with the uneven architecture typical of border settlements, disorderly scattered at the entrance of a large valley bordered by wooded hills. It was built right next to the limes, the border between civilized lands and the vast territories where wild and ferocious beasts lived and hunted (heavy legacy of the times when the war for freedom unleashed by humans had pushed the Anunnaki to create beasts increasingly fierce to fight against the insurgents), places that had not yet been recaptured by humans and where they do not willingly venture. Surely his target was not there; nor was it in the east, the most modern and richest area, where police and private guards patrolled the streets capturing jinn and dissident humans with remarkable efficiency. Altaïr himself avoided that part of the city if he could. The historical part remained, closer to the hills, and the more dilapidated neighborhoods to the west, where he was now.
He had searched these last two areas from top to bottom without finding any trace of his prey. By now the sunset was fading into the shadows of the night and Altaïr needed to rest a bit in the heat, after spending the previous two nights on the trail of man: he was tired and cold to the point that he had almost completely lost his sensitivity by hand, feet and tail, despite the thick gloves and padded boots he had procured. The ʿafārīt were creatures suited to the hot and dry climates of the deserts, not to the cold and humid ones of the region where he was now.
His gaze absent-mindedly focused on a completely dark area of the old quarter: it was the monumental cemetery, a practically abandoned area, spared from demolition only because of the corpses buried there, whose relocation was a nuisance that nobody wanted to take on. It was not a nice place: time and neglect had made it a decadent and spooky place, colonized by numerous dangerous creatures, a place from which even a large-sized jinn like him would have duly kept away, especially at night. Altaïr shook his head: although he was not frequented by guards of any kind, it was still not a good place to rest, he should have bet rather ... It stopped in the middle of the act of descending from the lightning rod antenna on which it had been perched.
He hadn't checked the cemetery; that that madman, driven by despair, had holed up over there? It was an absolute folly: a human alone had little hope of surviving a night in that place, but his prey knew he was being hunted and probably also knew that on his tracks there was Altaïr himself. Perhaps he had considered his chances of salvation superior in the cemetery rather than elsewhere ...
The big jinn grunted, annoyed at himself for not having thought of it before and dropped onto the roof of the building. Visiting the cemetery did not entice him, but he had to make at least one attempt; he pulled the hood lower on his face and jumped on the roof of the neighboring building, choosing a path that would allow him to stay as long as possible in the upper part of the buildings.
As tired and cold as he was, Altaïr took the liberty of enjoying the ride to the cemetery walls. Life had never offered him particular joys or moments of serenity and those breathtaking runs were one of the few occasions that the jinn had to clear his mind and find some fun; furthermore, the movement would reactivate the circulation in his numbed extremities, heating them and making them pleasantly tingle. He felt free and light as he sneaked onto the ledge of a building, using the flagpole of a flag as a springboard to jump onto the roof of an adjacent building and rolling on landing to cushion the fall. His maneuver alerted a dog to guard a nearby balcony and Altaïr hurried down the sloping roof to prevent the dog owner, alarmed by the furious barking, from surprising him by wandering around that area: he certainly did not need someone who call the police to investigate him.
In a few strides he reached the other side of the roof, then covered the distance that separated him from the next building by running on a rough beam and using the long tail as a barbell. The cemetery now loomed over him, soaring with its high ruined walls beyond the line of adjacent buildings. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath, then carefully descended from the roof on which he was standing.
There was an area of about thirty meters completely free around the sepulchral complex where no one had even built a sidewalk, little frequented and poorly cared for. Altaïr would have had to cross that area exposed to anyone's eyes, a maneuver that did not excite him much: despite being dressed in dark, he had no way to hide his shiny white horns streaked with gold that came out of the hood and which would have shone in the light streetlights like headlights in the dark; attracting attention was never a good idea in those places.
Fortunately, the jinn knew how to remedy the inconvenience: he took a deep breath and detached himself from the wall, sliding into what was called a subtle form, to go unnoticed through the exposed area that separated him from his goal.
The ability to assume the subtle form was innate in almost all known species of jinn yet, like many other phenomena related to those creatures, it escaped the full understanding of researchers and scientists. Although not definable as a real invisibility, it still concealed a jinn in the eyes of humans, even if the creature had been directly in front of the observer: it was seen, but not noticed. Obviously this ability had limitations by not effectively making those who used it invisible: to be able to hide in full view it was necessary to do nothing that could alarm the onlookers, therefore making sudden movements or making loud sounds would immediately break the balance. According to some scholars, the subtle form was actually a kind of hypnosis that the jinn were able to induce in those who looked at them, and pushed the observer's brain to completely ignore their shape. This explained another limitation of the subtle form: it did not work when jinn were filmed or photographed.
Altaïr did not have to fear surveillance cameras in that area of the city and no one willingly wandered near the old cemetery, eliminating the risk of accidental impacts that would have broken its subtle form, however the walk that led him to one of the entrances it also seemed to require an eternity, there being always the possibility of some unexpected. In the world that the Annunaki had left behind fleeing Earth, Altaïr was undoubtedly one of the most dangerous predators, but he was neither alone nor the largest.
He sighed with relief as he silently slid past the dented railing and took a moment to observe the new environment and get an idea of what awaited him.
In front of him lay a forest of dilapidated tombstones and ruined mausoleums interspersed with paths suffocated by twisted shrubs. The low light of the stars dyed the worn marbles of sickly, greyish and bluish shades, making the cracks on the stones stand out and blackening the mold stains on the cracked plasters. But Altaïr had no time to waste dwelling on the decrepit panorama: his pupils, similar to those of a cat in shape, dilated to catch even the smallest sign of movement, attentive to the silhouettes that crawled in large numbers on the ground among the various buildings present. There seemed to be no other jinn in that area of the cemetery, just as it did not seem frequented by other dangerous creatures for him: only mice, a few stray cats and a fair number of kobolds, grotesque creatures of various shapes and the approximate size of a chimpanzee, harmless for Altaïr, at least until they had bridled to defend themselves from a possible threatening attitude.
It seemed that luck was twice on his side that evening, since, in addition to not having found dangerous residents in the area, he only needed a brief patrol before seeing a footprint in the damp soil. It had been left by a worn-out shoe worn by someone who proceeded hastily and insecure, as evidenced by the signs of slipping on the sole; it was a recent footprint and too deep to have been left by a jinn, with the same size in fact, hollow bones made them lighter than humans.
A little further on, some broken branches signaled to Altaïr where his probable prey had turned to sneak into one of the arcades that led to the internal rooms of a building that housed the ossuary.
The big jinn slipped again in its subtle form so as not to be identified before following the track through semi-collapsed tunnels that in some places became so narrow and invaded by the rubble to force him to crawl on his knees; after a few turns, the light of a small fire warned him that he had reached his goal.
Altaïr leaned around a corner and saw his victim curled up in an alcove in the wall, next to a small fire; a few handfuls of salt and some stones ready to be thrown as his only defense from the creatures that inhabited that place. The poor man looked terrified, he jerked at every little noise and seemed really one step away from a hysterical crisis, Altaïr certainly did not blame him for the pathetic spectacle he offered, but he did not even feel pity for him: they were predator and prey, the death of one would ensure the survival of the other. The law of men was valid only among those who could afford to live in the highest strata of society, in the misery the law of the fittest was still valid.
The subtle form was less effective if the observer was frightened and alert, so Altaïr paid particular attention during the approach, but the accumulated fatigue and cold made him more clumsy and distracted, so he did not notice a loose stone that rolled noisily as soon as it was touched by its tail.
The human turned abruptly, and paled to find himself with a huge ʿifrīt a few meters away. Altaïr did not even have time to swear at himself for his inattention, before having to go in pursuit of the man, made incredibly fast by the adrenaline rush. He was almost crushed by a beam that gave way after being hit by his prey, but in a few strides he managed to compensate for the detachment and was behind the man. He took a long leap and landed directly between the poor man's shoulder blades; death was rapid, sharp claws emerging from an armor of golden scales covered his left hand and sank deep into the victim's back, severing the spine. His job had been completed: a quick, clean kill.
Altaïr remained motionless for a moment perched on his victim, then descended from his back and turned to make sure he was actually dead, but before abandoning him to the necrophages that were already approaching, he closed his eyes. He did it every time, or at least every time he had time, before he had to escape the crime scene.
It was not a way of asking for forgiveness, it was not a gesture dictated by pity or repentance: Altaïr did not feel these emotions; it was rather a form of respect, a kind of recognition paid to what could be called a competitor in a certain sense. They had both fought their best and the man had been a tenacious rival, there was no reason to deny it.
The instructions that the ʿifrīt had received were to leave the body wherever it fell as a warning, the instigator of that assassination frequently requested it so that all his subordinates knew what the consequences of insubordination were; then Altaïr got to his feet and moved calmly but without hesitation from the scene of the murder: the noise and the smell of blood would soon have attracted much bigger and more dangerous things than some member of the small people, better not being around when they had arrived. He waited until he reached an alley far from the cemetery before taking a cell phone out of his pocket and starting a call to the only number in the phone's contacts.
"Done" he said only.
"It took you too long. Come back here. Now” replied a harsh voice.
Altaïr ended the call, hearing that voice had had the power to rekindle the fire of anger in him, erasing tiredness in an instant; it had always had that effect but, in recent years, the grudge he felt had made it even more revolting in his ears. He would have liked to smash the damn contraption in his hand against the wall in front of him or, even better, do the same thing with the skull of the owner of that phone ... but it would have changed nothing, he reasoned putting the cell phone in his pocket, he had to wait the right opportunity if he wanted to get revenge: he would not have made the mistake of getting carried away by the heat, rashly throwing himself into a battle that he could not win.
The window of a shop not far away provided him with a reflective surface sufficient to check his appearance before starting: Tamir lived in a fairly sophisticated neighborhood and a disheveled and dusty jinn would certainly have attracted attention; remaining immersed in the subtle form for as long as necessary to reach his apartment would have required an amount of energy that he did not currently have, so the only alternative left was to look as much as possible to one of the neighborhood residents.
This also meant covering the rusty collar that surrounded his neck and that did not suit the jinn owned by a wealthy person.
His eyes focused on the reflected image of that ramshackle symbol of his slavery and a new wave of fury added to what was already boiling in his chest. Altaïr hated that object with all his might, for what it meant to him and what it meant for his species. He strongly hated collars, humans and other jinn, hated his past, was disgusted with his present and hated the idea that the next day a new dawn would arise, and then another, marking the passage of time in a prison from which he could not escape ...
It was the sound of shattered glass that triggered him out of the furious trance in which he had fallen, realizing immediately that he had just done a very stupid thing: abandoning his self-control he had punched the shop window with his fist, triggering the alarm of the building and waking up residents. Altaïr sprinted away, rushing into an alley and hoping that no one had noticed him, while at the same time cursing himself for having thus abandoned himself to anger.
Altaïr did not blame humans for the resistance they organized in those ancient times when they were oppressed and enslaved: everyone has the right to fight for life and freedom. What he considered ignoble was the way they had won.
Obviously there had been no evaluation error in the choice to introduce the jinn into the terrestrial ecosystem: the Anunnaki never fought, it was enough for him to create each time the type of soldiers best suited to the planet they wanted to conquer using their extraordinary knowledge of bioengineering . In the case of Earth, jinns had been created for this purpose, perfect not only to push humans into the trap designed by the Anunnaki but also, subsequently, to extinguish any insurrection that occurred in horrendous bloodbaths. Absolute loyalty to their creators was assured by the belief that they were divinities, after all only a god could give life to a new species, right? (Well, in hindsight, Altaïr certainly could not be said to be very proud of the enormous naivety shown by his people at that juncture ...)
That the Anunnaki preferred to send the jinn to do the dirty work, while they remained safe in their impregnable fortresses, soon jumped into the eyes of humans; just as it was immediately clear that, in a fair fight, they had no hope against the army created by the invaders. They then developed a different strategy: by gathering all the resources and knowledge available to them, they created a virus.
Biological weapons could not directly reach the Anunnaki, holed up in fortresses equipped with powerful systems of defense and filtering of air and water, but they could hit their armed arm, so the virus was designed to target only the species of jinn: once killed them, the humans would besiege the strongholds, having to do nothing but wait for the oppressors to die of starvation.
Skillfully disseminated all over the globe, the pathogen was not detected at first because it acted in a very subtle way, infecting the host organism and causing damage to the genome that would occur only in the next generation, therefore neither the jinn, nor the Anunnaki realized what was happening until it was too late: upon reaching puberty the endocrine system of the new generations of jinn gradually began to stop functioning, turning off their internal organs one at a time. The Anunnaki were unable to repair the damage caused, or perhaps did not want to waste resources on dealing with it, thinking that they could replace their soldiers when they were unserviceable and underestimating the gravity of the situation. No jinn was able to live beyond twenty-five, thirty years at best, becoming incapable of fighting well before that age; their ability to reproduce was limited by the shortness of their lives and their chances of training sufficiently to become good predators were equally reduced.
The army of the Anunnaki was getting weaker and less numerous, the humans began to gain advantage, inflicting defeats on defeats to the invaders until they forced themselves to barricade themselves in their fortresses that looked more and more like prisons, as the rioters cut their every chance of contacts with the outside world.
First exploited and then betrayed, the jinns saw themselves abandoned to their destiny when the plan of humans finally came to fruition and the Anunnaki left the planet judging it a place that has now become too inhospitable.
At this point something had happened that Altaïr just couldn't understand: some jinn chose to submit to humans. This never ceased to amaze him, as well as making him furious and disgusted by his own species. How had they dared ?!
It seemed that since then there has been an ever deeper split between those who had chosen to submit and those who had not done so: the jinn who had chosen to live under the dominion of men were called Jinn Muʿaqqibāt, while those who had chosen the way to freedom were called Jinn Rajim. The two factions became more and more intolerant to each other and, within a few generations, they came to a real mutual hatred, also helped by the fact that humans implemented a selection process through targeted pairings aimed at strengthening this resentment so that their domestic jinns protected them from the attacks of the "wild" ones. In exchange for the loyalty of their new minions, humans should have studied a way to reverse the effects of the virus on at least domestic jinns, restoring the normal life span of their lives.
After many attempts they found a way to temporarily stem the problem: by exploiting a mixture of knowledge learned from the Anunnaki and notions that survived from an era before the solar flare, they developed a system that allowed some humans with the right skills to "support" the endocrine system of jinns. In practice one of these particular humans and a jinn could establish a sort of connection through the new devices (to be worn respectively on the wrist and neck) and, in this way, cause stimuli to the production of hormones, neurotransmitters and other substances necessary for life were provided by the first, thus compensating for the inability to generate them of the other. Obviously those who possessed the power to restore strength and health to the jinn began to demand even more unconditional submission and loyalty in exchange for their "support". They began to be called Domini, and promised that this would only be a phase, they would have made every effort to continue their studies aimed at definitively repairing the damage caused by their ancestors.
In some ways Anunnaki and humans did not differ much: Altaïr's predatory abilities (inherited intact from his ancestors) testified to the falsity of the former, the collar he was forced to wear despite the fact that millennia had passed since the beginning of their use, that of the latter.
The jinns' DNA was hopelessly compromised: it was not possible to undo what had been done to them in wartime, the scientists had realized it in a short time. This was why they had concentrated their efforts on the goal of finding an alternative solution, but they were careful not to inform the jinns of this. The news emerged only after centuries, when by now the jinn muʿaqqibāt had changed, selected to be increasingly dependent both physically and psychologically on their respective Domini, and therefore now completely disinterested in the possibility of regaining their independence.
Altaïr sighed, mulling over this and the cruelty of fate that seemed to be raging in every possible way on his species ... and on him in particular. He deviated along a less frequented street when he noticed some police officers patrolling the neighborhood street: at first glance it might seem like a common jinn engaged in his errands, but he knew he could not deceive anyone who had examined him more carefully.
By now there was not much lacking in his destination, so he hurried to concentrate on his assignment, banishing any superfluous thoughts that could distract him and make him make some mistakes: Tamir was not tolerant of those who were wrong.
The apartment suited the tacky tastes of its owner: a riot of gold and stucco, heavy velvet curtains, huge handmade rugs and cushions of precious silk everywhere. The walls were suffocated by a jumble of paintings and sculptures, luxurious furniture were piled up in large numbers and without any precise criteria, thickly covered with shiny trinkets, ultra-modern works of art and antiques from various eras; the colors matched in a cacophonic way, everything was piled up and pressed with the sole aim of exhibiting as many precious objects as possible, regardless of what their style was. In Altaïr, that house remembered the appearance of the treasure caves depicted in children's books, but the dragon guarding that treasure had neither scales nor tail, even if its heart was poisonous like that of a basilisk: Tamir was a Dominus.
Draped on a large sofa full of colored cushions, with his inseparable hookah that accompanied him wherever he went, his face always posed to an evil smile, the man studied him from head to toe and drove out a terrified ʿāmir with which he must have been amused a little earlier, judging by the bleeding marks of numerous lashes that plowed through his body; Altaïr gave him only a brief glance. The ʿimar were the most common of the domestic jinn species; small in size and fragile in construction, they were appreciated for their particularly docile and affectionate character, but were certainly not famous for their strength and robustness. That miserable sobbing creature would not have had a long life in Tamir's clutches.
The ʿifrīt knelt meekly at the foot of the sofa and put the cell phone given to him at the beginning of the mission on the ground, which was promptly collected by another āmir and placed in a locker used to store the different materials to be entrusted to the jinns who went out hunting on behalf of the arms dealer.
Tamir took several slow puffs of smoke, letting the silence fall into the living room and Altaïr let him do it: that he should do whatever he wanted, that he would think what he preferred, that he would order anything. Altaïr had decided to obey him and please him in every possible way, disguising resentment and disgust until the man, feeling confident and confident, had committed a misstep. The collar would have forced him to comply with the orders of the Dominus, who could therefore order him not to harm him and not rebel against him in any way, but he would not have gone into action in the absence of a direct order, or if the latter was not been formulated correctly: the coercive function of the collar was in fact based only half on the elaboration of the master's order, the rest depended on the interpretation given by the jinn itself; the ʿafārīt in particular were notoriously masters in circumventing this system, and Altaïr was no exception.
Tamir interrupted his thoughts by touching him under his chin with a long bamboo stick, streaked in several places on the dried blood of the ʿāmir: "So you completed your mission?"
Altaïr let his chin lift, but kept his eyes respectfully low: "Yes, Sir" he murmured only.
"Where did you kill him?"
"The monumental cemetery, Sir"
Tamir let out a croaking giggle: “Had that fool holed up there? How inept, if I had understood beforehand which idiot he was, I would never have hired him! Is it still there? I mean the body "
"Yes, Sir"
Tamir nodded to himself and poured himself a glass of wine with a pleased air, taking several seconds to savor it before returning his attention to the ʿifrīt with a thoughtful attitude: "And tell me Altaïr, why did you take so long to catch him?"
Dominus had set the sentence because he wanted to see fear and surprise in the jinn's eyes; Altaïr was only disgusted, but he reminded himself that any act of submission would bring him closer to his golden opportunity, then he impeccably played his part, leaping with guilty air at the right time: “I underestimated his ability to hide, I fear "He murmured lowering his head as if he was overwhelmed with shame, then added plaintively:" And the cold does not help, Sir. It's been very cold lately "
Tamir's reply came as soon as the last syllable came out of the ʿifrīt's lips, in the form of a violent lash that hit the cheekbone and the ear; Altaïr avoided losing his balance by placing one hand on the floor, his cheek burning furiously and he felt the blow rumbling fiercely in his temple. Old bastard, the first mistake you make ...: "Forgive me, Sir" he murmured instead.
"Forgive you?" the arms dealer repeated with a surprised attitude: "But, my boy, if I granted you forgiveness so easily, what could you ever learn about it?" he added leaning forward and gently touching his healthy cheek to make him raise his head once more: "Look at me" he ordered.
Altaïr obeyed.
The man's wrinkled face opened in one of his obscene smiles: "What beautiful eyes you have Altaïr, none of my amber gems has this wonderful shade" he chirped running his thumb over the injured cheekbone, just below the left eye, and snatching a subdued hiss of pain from the jinn: "One day I might decide to do some madness for these eyes"
Yes, he always said it; Altaïr had to appeal to all his self-control so as not to roll his eyes in disgust.
“However, we can't let the owner of such a perfect pair of eyes behave so badly, don't you think? I speak for your sake, my boy. What do you say?"
"You told me to come back at the end of the third day, Sir, only two passed and ..." A slap interrupted his protest by hitting the already abused cheek and snatching another hiss.
“How many excuses… We are not here, Altaïr. We are not quite there "began the man starting to walk slowly around the kneeling jinn; obviously it was just an excuse: even if he returned only an hour after being unleashed for the hunt, Tamir would have staged this stupid performance. The old man seemed to enjoy these pantomimes immensely… well, they wouldn't last much longer.
“I am very worried about you, boy. I am afraid that lately you are resting on your laurels and that, consequently, you are becoming a little negligent in carrying out your tasks. You are certainly aware of how much it costs me to rent you every time; Al-Mualim would certainly not be happy to discover that a jinn to whom he has granted the honor of such a high price beats the limp "Meanwhile Tamir was explaining calmly, without stopping to walk around the ʿifrīt:" And you don't want to become lazy and sloppy, right? "
"No, Sir"
"Well," Dominus smirked as he nodded to one of the jinns who served him to bring him his correction tools: the bamboo cane would break soon and he would need something else to complete his lesson .
"Being a very caring Dominus, I will bear the burden of your correction, instead of telling your master about your laziness: it will be our little secret. You're happy? Besides, I know how much you like the way I teach you, don't I? "
I'd like to split that damned head, rather! He would have liked to spit Altaïr, but he could not; however, if he really had to choose, it was better to be "correct" by Tamir as disgusting as it was: the bastard had the lightest hand of his true master: "Yes, Sir. Thank you Sir"
"Well," Dominus smiled. "I expect correct behavior, boy."
Altaïr nodded, secretly pleased; correct behavior? the old man was beginning to give more general orders. He would soon forget or make a mistake in making an order. It would have been his last mistake.
Tamir was now standing in front of him: "Get up and get undressed"