I followed the wall around the palace until I came to the front entrance. An evil-eyed woman came out from behind the gate.

“What are you doing, Rahim?” she snarled. “You’re supposed to be patrolling the perimeter.”

I held up the walkie-talkie. “It’s broken. I need a replacement.”

“You would.” She waved me through. “Just be quick about it. The cameras over there won’t be fixed until next week, and we’re flying blind until then.”

Ah, that was the reason for the gap in the surveillance. “I’d be quicker if you stopped hassling me.”

She didn’t say anything else, deciding instead to slide back into her booth. I continued up the long drive toward the main house, which grew in stature and size with each step until it towered over me when I stepped up the stairs to the front door.

I didn’t know where the communications room was to exchange my walkie-talkie, but I didn’t plan to go there anyway. My walkie wasn’t broken, after all. It worked just fine, and any idiot could see that, even if they weren’t an expert. I flicked it on when I turned the doorknob and entered the house. My earpiece squawked with a droll voice giving directions to the different guards on where to patrol, with intermittent interruptions from other guards checking in from across the property.

I used the information from the earpiece to avoid the guards posted around the interior of the residence as I scoured the house looking for a gaudy, gilded room with anachronistic furniture in it. Sitting rooms were often in the front of the house, but the front rooms of this mansion were filled with paintings beautiful enough to rival all but the most prestigious galleries in Europe.

I moved through the foyer into a large, open-air room with a fountain in the center of it. A beautiful, inanimate stone woman spit water out of her mouth into the fountain, which was filled with lily pads and koi fish. Hallways broke from the fountain in four directions, including the one from where I came. I took the path to the right and followed the hallway to the end only to find a kitchen offset from a large banquet hall.

I backtracked and took the path to the left, narrowly avoiding a patrol walking through the room with the fountain in it. That hallway had several offices, a library, and a billiards room but no sitting room.

“Rahim, come in,” the radio crackled to life. “You haven’t checked in for half an hour. Is everything okay?”

I pressed the button on my walkie. “Everything is fine. I had to adjust my radio, but it’s fine now.”

“Very good. Return to your post and check in five minutes from now.”

My heart settled a bit when the reply came, and I wasn’t in trouble, but five minutes wasn’t a lot of time to find the dagger and escape. “Yes, ma’am.”

I made my way back to the fountain room and took the final path. Immediately I saw several guards stationed in front of every door. I spun into a small alcove before they could see me and continued down the narrow hallway. Those must have been the bedrooms, and the family must be asleep. I wondered why the security was light around the whole rest of the complex. There were guards, but not nearly enough, but it made sense if they were concentrated around where the family slept. It was past midnight, after all.

The alcove broke open into a gaudy room I recognized from the pictures. It was floor to ceiling gold and filled with what must have been the most uncomfortable furniture in the world. I walked around the walls, looking for the hooks that held the dagger…

…except when I finally found them, a long scimitar rested in its place instead. The dagger had been moved. You must be kidding me!

No, this couldn’t be. I was so close. I was on my way home, and now I—

“Rahim!” I turned to see a broad, clean-shaven man in a black suit at the entrance to the room. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be patrolling the outside wall.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry. I had a faulty walkie-talkie and was fixing it.”

“Yes, I heard you on the radio, but when I talked to the communications officer, she hasn’t seen you all day, which begs the question…how did you fix your radio without her help?”

Crud. I didn’t have an answer for him. Instead, I moved forward as quickly and inconspicuously as I could. When I was within striking distance, I pulled the man into a chokehold before he could counter and slammed him hard into the ground. He kicked and fought against me, but he was out like a light before he could escape my grasp. I pulled off his clothes and replaced them with mine, and then covered him with an ugly tapestry that hung in the far corner of the room.

I flipped open his identification to find that he was the head of security, a fortuitous turn of events since now I could use his visage to enter the sheik’s bedroom without question.

I transformed my body into an exact copy of the man and turned to walk up the hallway. Not only were the guards nonplussed by me walking past them, but they also saluted me for the privilege of my presence. When I reached the most ostentatious door at the end of the hall, leafed with gold and painted with flowers, I stopped.

“Is the sheik asleep inside?” I asked, hoping I was right. Usually, powerful men wanted you to know how powerful they were by taking space in the most ostentatious rooms available to them.

I only took a guess that it was his room, but when the guard nodded, I knew I guessed correctly. “Yes, sir.”

Flying by the seat of my pants would come back to bite me one day, but hopefully not this day. “I need to see him right now. I believe we might have an intruder or a spy.”

The guard nodded and stepped away. I pushed open the door and closed it on the other side, locking it behind me. All the windows in the room were open, which made the curtains on the left billow toward the four-poster bed in the middle of the room and those on the right billow out into the courtyard.

As I stepped forward, the light flickered on, and a portly man grabbed his thick glasses and glared at me. “What is the meaning of this, Mohammed?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, walking up to his bedside. “But I have an urgent manner I need to discuss with you.”

A woman groaned next to him. “What is it, honey?”

“Don’t worry about it, my dear,” the sheik said, turning back to me. “What could be so important that you interrupt my sleep?”

I was at the end of my rope. I didn’t have time to track the dagger across the rest of the world. I already was shot on this mission, but I also wasn’t about to call it quits, either. This would be my final mission, and it would be a successful one.

“I’m sorry for being indelicate, but I don’t have much time.” I pulled the gun off my hip and pointed it at the sheik’s head. “I need to know what you did with the black dagger that used to hang in your sitting room?”

“Are you crazy, Mohammed?” he shouted. “How dare you—”

I cocked the gun as I transformed my body into that of the flight attendant whose face I used earlier. “I am not playing around. Tell me now, or I will kill you.”

“My word!” the sheik shouted. “You’re a changeling. Fascinating.”

“Duh,” I replied. “Tell me something I don’t know, like the location of the dagger.” I stepped forward. “Right now.”

“You’ll never get away with this. I’ll have you killed by morning.”

I stepped forward. “Not if I kill you first. I really don’t want to do that, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know right now, I’ll have no choice.”

“My gods, Jaffar!” the woman next to him exclaimed. “Tell her what she wants to know. That knife was hideous anyway.”

“Never!”

“Men.” I rolled my eyes and turned my attention to the woman. “Do you know where it went?”

She sighed. “Of course I do. Nothing happens in this house without my knowledge.”

“Don’t say anything, Kali,” the sheik growled.

“Or what?” she spat back. “You’re feckless.” I tried hard not to laugh. “The knife was given as a gift to a very nice art dealer in Los Angeles who procured a large shipment of priceless paintings for us. He saw the dagger after the deal and took a shine to it. I never much cared for the thing, so it was easy to part with it.”

“What is the name of the dealer?” I asked.

She thought for a moment. “Blezor, I believe. He was nice, but he smelt of moldy cheese.”

Probably an orc, then. I uncocked my gun. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

The sheik lunged for his nightstand, and I caught his hand, squeezing it tight enough that he cried out in pain. “I’ll have your head.”

I squeezed tighter. “No, you won’t, but if you tell anyone about this, I’ll have yours. Think about how easily I got in tonight and how I could do it again, any time I wanted, so be good.”

“I’ll put up magical wards!” he shouted. “I should have listened to Kirkorov ab—”

“You can’t stay in this palace forever,” I replied. “I doubt your beautiful and intelligent wife would like that very much.”

“You have that right,” she said. “I’ll be sure he keeps his mouth shut, but you must be going if you hope to escape before the guards come.”

I pushed him away and turned to the woman. “Thank you for being sensible about this.”

“Well, we can’t have a gunfight, can we? That would be unseemly.”

I nodded and rushed to the window and rushed off into the night. It wasn’t much effort to get back to the car, especially after I took on Mohammed’s form again. The alarm didn’t sound, so I had to believe the sheik took my threat seriously, or at least his wife did.

When I reached the wall, I leaped onto the fig tree and hopped over it. I found the car and drove off into the night, leaving poor Rahim on the side of the road, naked and hog-tied.