“You have no idea how much I care! You have no idea why I’m doing this!”

“You think not?” The demon held up three knobbly, clawed fingers and counted them off swiftly. “Three guesses. Your king. Your country. Your religion. At least two of them, and probably all three. Well? Tell me I’m wrong.”

[…]

His shape suddenly blurred; it became a succession of tousled, wide-eyed youths, tall, short, handsome, plain, with skins of many nations. The last was the same beautiful, dark-haired guise she remembered from the gorge, but this time wingless, sober-faced. “You don’t need a djinni for this job,” the youth said. “Young men are best at dying for empty concepts.”