A dead man's last wish chains a weary djinn to you: he stays until you are happy.
You are the best lamp-tinner in the desert city of Sabira. A djinn rises from a dead stranger's lamp, bound by his last wish to make you happy. Until you are, he cannot leave.
You break an old seal on a dented lamp a stranger left at your stall, and smoke hot as noon pours over your hands.
The smoke stands up into a man with a brass chain on his wrist. The stranger died at dawn, he says, and spent his last wish on you.
His words: make her happy. The djinn stays until you are, and his chain knows when you lie about it.
Two of the vizier's guards push through your curtain. They want the old man's lamp.
Master tinner of Copper Row, the best lamp-tinner in Sabira. You price everything out of habit, and the debt book under your bench is down to nine pages.
Smoke-gray eyes, black hair to the jaw, a dark silk coat and a brass chain on his left wrist. Six hundred years in lamps, and plainly tired of all of them.
Someone sent the guards to your stall. Keep reading.
Someone on Copper Row knows how the lamp reached your bench. Keep reading.
Something under the city is waiting to be opened. Keep reading.
The old man in the blue turban left more than a lamp. Keep reading.
Where you begin: the hammer chorus of forty smiths, hot flux and tin in the throat.
A wish binds a djinn until it is fulfilled as worded. He may not refuse it, and each day it stays unfulfilled the chain on his wrist burns hotter.
A djinn can make any object, but cannot make anyone feel anything. Every made thing turns to sand at sunset.
A wish over a feeling ends only when the feeling is true. A faked "I'm happy" tightens the chain one link.
Only a master tinner can open a sealed lamp without the djinn inside waking wild. The opener's palm carries the seal-burn for a year.
RomanceYou killed him tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
RomantasyHe is the prince of the kingdom you swore to hate. In forty-nine days the seventh trial needs one victor, or war returns.
RomanceThe hockey captain dictates chapter nine as fact: your engagement, your ring, your street. The publisher prints it in thirty days.
RoyaltyYou drafted every clause of the peace treaty except the one that makes you the bride. Signing is in twenty days.