Recently they had traveled for a thousand miles on camelback across a 
great desert full of djinns, demons, sultans, and caliphs and finally reached 
the great onion-domed palace of the local Faery King—himself a djinn of 
great power—who ruled over all the desert lands. Princess Nell had 
devised a complicated plan to trick their way into the djinn's treasury. To 
carry it out, she and Purple had to live in the city around the palace for a 
couple of years and make many treks into the desert in search of magic 
lanterns, rings, secret caverns, and the like.