Rajah's Curse

Chapter 20: Paperwork

Jafar's resignation and flight turned the palace upside down. Department after department started turning to Jasmine for guidance and soon her desk was more paper than wood.

Jasmine and I did our best to take in all the new information, but it all seemed to be bad news.

"Since when are we on bad terms with Shehrabad and Getzistan?" she asked me one day.

I shook my head. We'd negotiated trade agreements with both countries recently without any problems.

"We're understocked on food," she said to me another time. "I thought the council had allotted the funds to buy supplies weeks ago."

I just looked at her. It was a mess. Somehow Jafar had held it all together, but without him, it was falling apart.

After a week of endless work, Prince Ali showed up with a bouquet of flowers. I realized I hadn't seen him in days. Every day after Jasmine put down her quill for dinner, I just went to my bed and slept.

"Hey," he said smiling at her. "How about a break? There's this festival going on in the-"

"No thanks," Jasmine said, not looking up. She was reading about Agrabah's crime issues.

"But, Jasmine," he said, "We haven't gone out in days and then there's..." He whispered the next part, "the wedding. I want your opinion on the music."

I grimaced. Officially, with the crisis of Jafar leaving, the wedding had been postponed. Jasmine had promised we'd address my issues with the prince later and I believed her. And honestly, we had more pressing problems at the moment. Not that Prince Ali understood that.

At first, he had been furious that Jafar had in his words "escaped". The prince claimed it was the former grand vizier who tried to kill him but that was highly suspect. Prince Ali was hazy on the details behind his kidnapping. He somehow hadn't seen the faces of the ones who had dumped him into the ocean. And the prince had stubbornly said that he had no idea what Jafar might have "found". By the end of his talk with Jasmine and the sultan, even Prince Ali seemed unsure of his accusation.

And of course, he would be. Despite the former grand vizier's flaws, I could scarcely imagine Jafar murdering someone. The idea of it was a bit sickening. After all, Jafar had been the sultan's most trusted advisor for a reason. His resignation had to be a coincidence.

No. If I had to guess who the true culprit was, I'd say that it was the prince's main advisor. He and the prince had always had a strange relationship and the advisor had been missing all week because, according to Prince Ali, he had "gone home".

Because of course, it was perfectly plausible for an advisor to suddenly decide to leave and travel across the desert alone and on foot without any notice.

Regardless of my opinion of the subject, the prince insisted that the sultan and Jasmine find Jafar. They had tried, but it was clear the former grand vizier had left the city. And we didn't have the resources to track him down at the moment because again we had more pressing problems.

With Prince Ali tantruming, the court panicking, and the kingdom falling to pieces, I decided to give Jasmine a suggestion that I was still not happy about. I told Jasmine to let Prince Ali "secretly" plan their wedding.

Jasmine had been surprised by the idea, but I knew, in theory, it was a good one. Jasmine's birthday was in a few months. People were expecting a wedding. The idea of a surprise wedding kept people like the sultan off of Jasmine's back. And it also kept the people of Agrabah happy and distracted while we and the remaining viziers focused on fixing the kingdom. And most importantly to me, having people think that Prince Ali was secretly planning a wedding gave us an out in case, as I was hoping, things didn't work out. No one could complain about a canceled wedding since no one was supposed to know about it. It would just become another false rumor.