Notes: So yeah, I'm working on this as well as the other thing. I really do enjoy this. And I'm totally using it as an excuse to watch 10th Kingdom for inspiration. Also, I really enjoy writing Cyrus' brothers and will definately be doing more of that.

White Collar

"You're thinking about that woman again," Taj said, poking Cyrus with the climbing grass stalks when he took too long to notice his brother handing the herbs down to him. It didn't normally take all three of them to gather potion ingredients, but with the cliff climbing that was involved, it was safer this way. Of course, in spite of the fact that Cyrus was far better at climbing, Taj insisted that his brothers stay on the ground rather than risk breaking their necks in a fall.

"I was not," he insisted, taking the grass and putting it in the bag rather more roughly than he meant to.

"You're either admiring the lovely cliff face or you're thinking about her lovely face," Rafi added.

"Don't you have school work tonight?" Cyrus asked. Knowing Rafi, he'd finished and double checked his work hours before they left, but changing the subject was better than putting up with their teasing.

"Finished." Rafi's slightly smug grin was too much like Cyrus' own for his comfort.

"Then how do you find the longest side of a triangle?" Taj asked, tossing another stalk down to Cyrus.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Ask Cyrus' girlfriend." The only thing more annoying than one of them teasing was both of them. Before he could open his mouth to respond, Rafi added on, "What was it you said about the cards? And I quote, "she just did the math."

"I met her for a few hours a week ago and…"

"You've been talking about her ever since," Taj said.

"She beat me at cards! That's worth talking about!" he said. As much as his little adventures made Taj worry, he still found some of them amusing. "And that handhold you're about to use is loose." He used to hide money on a ledge a little way up until the handhold got too treacherous to trust.

"It was worth talking about until you told the story for the hundredth time and she's gone from making smarter bets than you to predicting the cards you're going to draw three moves ahead."

"I'm not exaggera…" Another stalk of grass hit him in the face. He knew better than to insist, both of his brothers knew when he was telling stories, but it was a habit.

"You're always exaggerating."

"Speaking of exaggerating, how's that job going?" A few weeks ago, Taj pulled some strings with a friend to get him a job at a livestock auction. Things had been fine at first, but it was almost too easy to sell someone an old, worn down camel, and his commissions wasn't great. Then one day on his break, he spotted a lost looking man with a large money bag and the next thing he knew he was leading the man across town on the Tourist Trap and he never went back.

Not that he'd told anybody though. He'd had to duck through the livestock district in the bazaar on his way home in order to get the smell on him to keep up the charade, but if for a few weeks, nobody questioned where he got money, it was worth it.

"I get paid to magically make donkeys younger and horses faster. What could be better?" he said, carefully rolling his eyes to give the impression that he was bored, letting a bit of amusement creep into his voice. To really make the final sale, he added, "Ask Zhaleh the next time you see her to give me a raise though." If he didn't know any better, he would have said he felt genuinely proud of himself.

And to a certain extent he was. He didn't like lying to his brothers, but sometimes it was a necessary evil. A very necessary one given how little he wanted to involve Rafi in his plans and how much Taj would like to interfere with them. He'd gotten very good at it over the years. There was a little part of him that nagged at him for this, but like the part that told him not to pull the Tourist Trap and go back to work, he ignored it and his life was all the better for it. And he was of the opinion that a fine artist should always feel proud of his work.

However, the look Taj gave him killed off the warm, fuzzy feeling that a lie well told usually gave. He was used to Taj looking at him in disappointment. Ever since he grew up and started taking himself too seriously, there was never an occasion for Taj not to be disappointed with Cyrus. There was always another thing he'd done wrong or another lecture, but the fact remained that Cyrus contributed to the family every bit as much as Taj said he didn't. Just because he went about it a different way and preferred to be self-employed meant nothing.

But tonight, the look his brother gave him was enough to make him want to go out into the desert and never come back. It was only for a split second, not long enough for the youngest to notice, but just enough to let Cyrus know that Taj knew he was lying and he wasn't surprised about it. He wasn't angry either, he'd seen it happen too often for that. He wasn't frustrated, disturbed, annoyed, worried, any of the usual suspects as far as Taj was concerned. He wasn't even disappointed.

In that moment, Cyrus wished beyond anything else that he couldn't read people like an open book because the look Taj gave him was unlike any he'd ever seen in response to his less than moral proclivities. Taj knew, and he no longer knew what to think.

X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X

"Well that could have gone better," Cyrus said, staring at the still open end of the bottle. No master had ever done this to him before, sending him back to the bottle with no intention of letting him out. But then again, he'd never had a master who he'd scammed. At least, not before they let him out of the bottle. He'd tricked quite a few after the fact, but after a while, and a good bit of self-reflection, he'd given that up. At least he'd left the other end of the bottle open when he went after her.

He hadn't thought about Alice in centuries, yet here she was, marching straight back into his life like nothing had changed. For the longest time, she was another mark, albeit one who'd beaten him at his own game, but they'd known each other for hours and he had been the opposite of honest with her about who he was. Yet as with anybody else, he could read her and he admired what he read. Curious, daring, intelligent, honest, and stubborn. As he was finding out now, so, so stubborn.

He'd been blessed with a remarkable memory and as he stepped out of the bottle again, he found himself thinking of the way she'd looked at him when he was telling her stories and that warm, fuzzy feeling he used to get from a well-run scam started bubbling up. As he realized what he was feeling, he stopped in his tracks and forced the smile from his face. He was not going to feel good about lying to her. He'd left that life behind and was not eager to return to it.

Then the smoke cloud started to form around his feet and the familiar sensation of returning to normal size started up. It happened every time, without fail, every time a djinn left their bottle. He glanced around the hedge maze, unsure of what to do next. He kicked the bottle a little further under the hedge for safe keeping as he had no way of carrying it himself without looking conspicuous and given what he'd seen the hedge do to some sort of small animal earlier, it would be quite safe there.

The first time around, he'd just followed Alice out of the maze, paying little attention to where he was actually going. Now, he had no idea how he was going to find her again. He wasn't even entirely sure if he should find her again. Alice made it very clear that she wanted nothing to do with him. Yet she was his mistress. Even if she refused to acknowledge it or act like it, he was supposed to serve her. At the same time, she'd ordered him to stay away and he should respect that.

He'd told her about the wishes. His previous master wished him to a world where Jafar couldn't get him, so he didn't have to worry about her getting tangled up with that sorcerer. Yet he wanted to be with her instead of being on his own. She was the first person to know him as something other than a ticket to their life's wildest dreams in years. Even if she didn't treat him as though he were a particularly well liked person, and he deserved it, she still treated him like a person.

He hadn't been outside his bottle without the purpose of granting wishes for years. He was in a strange land with no idea where he was, no idea where to go, and no idea what to do. He hadn't been able to decide what to do for himself for the longest time. He'd had some masters who'd let him roam around while they figured out what to do with their wishes, but this wasn't the same. They hadn't washed their hands of him.

The biggest choice he usually had to make was how to pass time in the bottle, but now there was a whole realm of possibilities in front of him and he had to figure out what to do for himself. He would turn left to start out of the maze, but other than that he had no idea where to go and there would be other turns and other decisions and so many mistakes he could make. It would be just like him to have something vaguely resembling free will and to misuse it.

He looked at the fork at the end of the hedge row, dreading the inevitable choice it would bring and the choices he would have to make after that. He wanted Alice to guide him through the maze again. She was smart. She knew her way around this strange world. She would know what to do next. He'd seen enough of her all those years ago to know that even if she didn't particularly like him and would likely never trust him again and he didn't deserve it, she would help him get unlost.

Setting off for the end of the hedge with far less bravado than the first time, he tried to think of where to go next. He'd always wanted to see other places, but he had no idea where he was and no idea how to get anywhere worth seeing. He kept thinking of her open, trusting face as he told her stories and for just a moment, imagined telling her some of his more exciting stories from his time as a djinn as they walked through the maze.