Alibaba’s smile was just a little strained. “I know that’s what Sinbad wants. But I’ve got a better plan.”
“Oh you do, huh?” Cassim let one brow climb.
The smile evened out. “Trust me?”
Cassim snorted. “Do I look that crazy?”
A golden blink. “Maybe?”
Yeah, maybe I am. Cassim took one dramatic step away, and flung back his hood.
Time to give that bastard king a nightmare.
“If I’d known you spread that story, Abhmad, I’d have slit your throat years ago.” Cassim bared his teeth. “I’m the one who robbed you all blind.”
The crowd rippled in shock. Nobles whispered behind their hands, one or two outright staring. The ambassadors drew together, in a way that suggested some of the rest were catching on that the Partevian guy’s impulse to head for the gates might not be a bad idea. The merchants and sailors that’d come in with Alibaba tensed, fingers straying near knives or hidden saps. Just because they hadn’t come to fight didn’t mean they wouldn’t.
Cassim smirked, feeling one dangerous redhead’s gaze sweep him, toes to twisted hair, gauging just how to best plant her lovely bare foot to crush his throat. Aww. Alibaba finally had someone who took him seriously enough to kill for him. What a girl.
“-The leader of the Fog Troupe, the king of thieves!”
There. There was the right panic to stomp his way into. “They know who I am,” Cassim challenged that supposed-to-be king. “They know what streets I own, and that my word is better than yours could ever be, because when I say I’m going to kill a man, he dies. And if I’d known King Rashid dying would leave you in charge….” He drew out the sober silence, then grinned like a shark. “Nah, I’d still have robbed you all blind. But I wouldn’t have set the treasury on fire.”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
And another pointed reminder about the dangers of using paper for money instead of hard coin.
Heh. Wonder if Cassim realizes he’s just underscoring the danger just exposed to relying on the Fan…
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“Boy, treasuries sure a flammable, aren’t they?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, they’re full of gold and-”
“-Kindling.”
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I’m not sure who else noticed, but I bet Alibaba had a sudden epiphany….
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Of the “oh, my gosh, is *that* what a heart attack feels like?” variety, I’m sure.
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That and/or, “My plan to do Much Nastiness to the Kou really will work, and they’d better never ever figure out it was me.”
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True, that. If they ever *did* figure it out, execution would be getting off easy! 😃😬
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Of course, it hasn’t gone off. Yet. Thaaaaat’s going to be interesting, given the timing of the Kou fleet in canon….
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I sense a Chinese curse coming….
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*G* Given the Kou are explicitly based off, I think, Manchu China – that is entirely appropriate.
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…King of Thieves, eh? In a monarchy that considers ‘aggressive asset reallocation’ a valid tactic in an emergency.
Also, just had a nasty thought: Cassim emptied them treasury, and a few years later it’s full of the Fan. Is this coincidence, or more Al Thames at work? How long had they been working on Balbadd’s gangs to get someone mad enough to do what he did?
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I believe it’s canon that they’d been corrupting the nobles of Balbadd for at least a generation.
-Albert
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*Nod* Far as we know, the problem started under Rashid – it’s strongly hinted either Al-Thamen got to his wife or she was just no good when it came to raising responsible heirs.
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/ “Nah, I’d still have robbed you all blind. But I wouldn’t have set the treasury on fire.”/
After all, it’s pillage then burn.
Or if you can manage it, pillage then come back with crowbars and wheelbarrows for the stuff you couldn’t get on the first pass.
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*Snrk*
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*giggle*
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So is Kougyoku still here? Is Cassim going to be bringing up his full resume himself, too?
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*G*
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Suddenly I can’t help but wonder: How many hearts are floating around Kougyoku’s head, as Cassim is saying all this?
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Based on her characterization here, many! Also, pry out the nails at the end of the second pillaging run, they may not be much iron individually, but get enough of them…
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*G* Probably a lot, especially when he mentions setting stuff on fire. That lady is a born maniac on the battlefield.
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/That lady is a born maniac on the battlefield./
No matter how hard she (badly) tries to hide it (it wouldn’t be ‘proper’ for a noblewoman to show such tendancies after all). I mean the expressions on her face when she was throwing down against Sinbad in canon? Yeah…..
I suspect a mutual ‘In Love with Your Carnage’ thing is going to be developing between her and Cassim. Alibaba is going to be congratulating himself on A: paring the spares (the two might actually calm each other down to a degree) and B: Dodging the whole marriage thing.
Unseen Morgiana starts purring behind him. Sinbad is smirking and even though he’s on the other side of the city, Ja’far feels a headache coming on.
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Problem is, that’s already Ja’far’s normal state of being — how would he be able to tell?
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/Problem is, that’s already Ja’far’s normal state of being — how would he be able to tell?/
Well I imagine he has normal headaches and then Sinbad headaches ™. The former he gets from having to deal with the general insanity surrounding his king. He only gets the latter when Sinbad does something particularly nuts (for Sinbad).
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My plotbunnies say this will be an entirely new kind of headache. Shades of “dealing with Hinahoho’s swarm of children, with added Magi and Djinn hijinks.”
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Hmmm, treasuries full of Fan. Also, the necessity of transporting lock boxes of the stuff. How good is Kou’s fire insurance, and/or fire safety protocols? I seem to recall Alibaba has a fire aspected Vessel…
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Indeed. Something else canon seems to skip over?
Far as we know, there were no Djinn Warriors along with the invasion fleet. The wooden, heavily lacquered invasion fleet….
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Well there was that one other one-shot Vathara did of this… where Amon had a date with the Fan treasuries…
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*G*
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/Hmmm, treasuries full of Fan. Also, the necessity of transporting lock boxes of the stuff. How good is Kou’s fire insurance, and/or fire safety protocols? /
And if Alibaba does commit some Kou bank-centric arson it’ll probably be even worse for the Empire than in the ‘Economics’ oneshot.
Because it’s been noted that he has been making/using counterfeit Fan in order to ensure that they get enough real Fan to buy back the marine rights etc. And that apparently there are other people switching to barter when dealing with the Kou.
/
Worse, this avoidance of the Fan was beginning to spread to other kingdoms, as well. The Empire had even caught a few overconfident smugglers on Kou’s own conquered shores, trying to persuade new citizens to deal in goods rather than paper.
/
Now while Ithnan seems to be at least partially aware of the brewing problem, I suspect he and the Kou royal family don’t know of the true extent of the oncoming/potential disaster (much less know how to avert/put the brakes on it).
So the Kou have an impending hyperinflation issue along with more and more foreign markets not accepting the Fan (meaning they are presumably going to be trading at a loss when bartering etc). I’m no economics expert but I can’t see Alibaba setting large amount of Fan to the torch do anything but make the problem/resulting chaos even worse.
Heck if he really wanted to twist the screws, take out the official presses (or whatever mechanisms etc the Kou uses to make the Fan). At which point, I can’t see any way of telling real Fan from fake without using the sort of magic Judar used to check Rashid’s will.
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*Evil Grin*
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/*Evil Grin*/
The Kou economy is going up in smoke
Up in smoke, up in smoke
The Kou economy is going up in smoke
My fair lady
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I wonder. Have you ever read “Howl’s Moving Castle” or its sequels? They were written by Diana Wynne Jones.
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Read the first, didn’t know there were sequels.
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“Castle in the Air” and “House of Many Ways” follow different lead characters, but Howl and Sophie make appearances in both books. I only ask because “Castle in the Air” has a Middle Eastern protagonist in a country based on the Middle East. Thinking about “Whispers of Fire” suddenly put me in mind of “Castle in the Air” for this reason.
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Aw, Cassim finally gets the grand reveal he’s always wanted. Good on ya, buddy.
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*G* Cassim is inherently Dramatic. This is going to be interesting.
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