"Stop pacing," Iago instructed, pacing.

Jafar stopped pacing. Instead he began to throw the gold tiara from hand to hand, which in Iago's opinion was even worse. He dived sharply down, snatched the tiara out of its arc from palm to palm, flew back to his perch and dropped it there. "You're making me nervous, Jay," he mumbled.

"That was my intention," Jafar said shortly. "I need someone to share in my nervousness with me."

Iago shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "What's this thing here?" he asked, desperate to find some neutral topic of conversation. He pecked at the tiara.

"I made it for her, with my own two hands," Jafar said quietly. "I could think of no wedding ring fine enough for her fingers, but I thought- I thought it would look well in her hair..."

"Oh, Jay," Iago said. His voice cracked. "I- I'm going to flap about in the garden for a while. Knock some flamingos over. You know." He fluttered briefly onto Jafar's shoulder and squeezed it with his feet. "I'm sure Mr Doctor Type Person will report that she's okay," he added in a choke, and flapped wearily out towards the extravagant, morbid gardens.

Jafar reached up for the tiara just as the door creaked open and the physician slipped in.

"What news?" he asked harshly. The man, terrified as he was of the Grand Vizier, threw himself to the ground and trembled profoundly.

"Forgive me, lord, I tried everything. Everything! But her body cannot take it... You must either choose the child or the mother, lord. I can only have it so one survives."

Jafar stared through him, then into the reflection on the gold. His old, tired, malicious face blinked back at him. "Wait here," he instructed tonelessly, then swept away into Suzuki's quarters.

He found her lying on a stained and ruined couch, quite naked. Her legs were covered in blood. If he squinted and looked slightly away, he could almost pretend the red was her harem trousers. Almost.

She was pale and ill-looking. A thick river of saliva ran from between her deformed teeth and she was panting heavily, her eyes bloodshot and rolled back in her head. Jafar wiped her mouth delicately and forced her to look at him. Very gently, he lifted the tiara and placed it in her hair. It was a grotesque, wonderful sight.

"Will you marry me?" he asked her in a whisper.

"You're going to let me die, aren't you," Suzuki said blandly. He took one of her hands and raised it to his lips, but as he kissed it his expression was faraway.

At length he said, "Yes. But you knew that already. Will you marry me?"

Suzuki laughed throatily. "Of course. If you'd chosen to let me live, though, I would have said no." She grinned a rictus grin. "I truly admire you, Jafar. You're a real megalomaniac- far greater than those mere men who would not have let their little wives go to their agonising deaths. I truly, truly admire you." She lifted the hand he held to her own lips, and kissed the cruel fingers weakly.

She met his eye. "Don't tell Iago," she added. "If he knew what you'd done-"

"I know," he said, calmly. "I won't tell him." He leaned across to kiss her on the mouth, and when he drew back he saw there were tears in her eyes.

"I love you," she croaked. "It's true, and I hope it punishes you. I love you so much I'm going to die."

Jafar didn't reply, but three cool tears fell from his expressionless eyes onto her lips. That was enough for her- she knew then that her husband returned her love, and she could die, not in peace, but suitably avenged.

He left her rooms not long after this. That was the last they ever saw of one another.

Jafar was not present at the horror story of a birth, leaving Suzuki to finish her life in unbearable pain, without her husband and lover by her side. The physician was there, and sang to her in Arabic as the life bled and bulged out of her. The physician took what came from between her legs, swept out of the room and washed what he held clean, for now he had to keep the offspring alive, whereas the mother would pass on without any help from him.

Iago was the last person to see Suzuki alive. He came in through the open window, drawn helplessly by the blood-curdling shrieks of the mother in labour, and stood by her tossing feverish head whispering consoling, useless things. He cried a lot, hysterically and openly, as Suzuki finally died.