The boy turned around and began walking through the hallway. His steps carried confidence and poise - he clearly expected everyone else to get out of his way, rather than force him to make a detour. He didn't cast a single glance back to check if the djinn was following him - either he was clearly accustomed to people following his orders, or simply his ears were good enough for him to hear Zahir's footsteps.
There were slaves in the hallways - cleaning up the floor, running errands, carrying various items. All of them hurried to get out of the boy's way, dropping into quick bows as soon they saw him; though for all the attention he paid, they could as well have ignored him. The merchant princeling's gaze went past them as if they were just pieces of furniture. One might find his behaviour rude, but when considering what a master's attention could mean, perhaps it was for the best.
He led Zahir under a glorious arch, carved out of marble into a shape of a great serpent bending over the hallway. It led to a passage open to the sky, in a way - rather than a solid, impenetrable ceiling, it was covered by finely cut glass. It was no monolithic pane, but a mosaic of meticulously carved tiny pieces, arranged in a pattern that was impossible to discern when looking up, but quickly became apparent when turning one's gaze to the floor. There, on modest gray stone, fell the light filtered through the glass and shaped into dancing images, marred whenever someone passed through. At the other end of the path, there was only a muddy haze - probably a consequence of the cloud drifting across the sky.
Beyond the passageway, there was only one more stairwell to descend. The boy didn't let on that they were getting any closer to their destination, but as they rounded a corner, they happened upon an agitated older woman. Upon seeing the boy, she gasped and hurried towards him, as quickly as the embroidered fabric of her robe allowed. "Young master Mirza!" she gasped. "Here you are- I thought- Where-"
"Well, I suppose now that the speech lesson is over, you don't have to give me a good example to follow" he sighed. "What happened to 'subject, verb, object'? Actually, never mind. I'm not here for it anyway."
The woman calmed down enough to notice Zahir. Her eyes bulged out of her sockets as she stared. Several seconds elapsed before she got her libido in order enough to realize that she probably shouldn't succumb to lust in front of her pupil, leading her to look away immediately.
