by Somaiya Daud
“The fortune-teller looks for four lines: happiness, fortune, passion, and love,” he said softly. “For some passion and love are separate, but for you they run parallel along your heart line.”
His finger swept from the upper left corner of my palm, over the curve, and to the upper right. I shivered and my hand twitched at the barely there touch.
“What does that mean?” I asked before I could think better of it.
His finger swept from the tip of my middle finger, skimmed across my palm, and stopped at my wrist.
His eyes met mine as he spoke. “I think for you, it is impossible to have one without the other.”
It was not a unique insight, but one born out of knowledge. For who else had I loved but Idris, and how passionately did I love him. I curled my hand so that my palm was hidden from him. Heat unfurled in my belly as my chest tightened around my lungs and thinned my breath.
For a moment, I allowed myself to wish that my lines for love and happiness were linked. Because what good was a passionate love without the ability to be with the object of that love and passion? It was a thought I had had many a time when it came to Idris, but a fruitless one.
“We should go back,” I said, pulling away. “The sun is gone. They will come looking.”
He watched me silently for a moment, then nodded and helped me to my feet.
“Amani,” he said softly. I paused as he leaned his forehead against mine and wound his fingers in my hair.
I wrapped my fingers around his wrists, as if to pull him away, but could not bring myself to it. Friends. I’d known what an impossible thing it would be, to smother my heart. I remembered being in a carriage with Idris and his low laugh. Just friends, he’d asked. No. Never just. Never for two hearts made one. And yet, despite that, here we were.
“I just wanted to say your name,” he sighed. “Before we went back.”
02. Maram
STARDATE 4393, FORTY DAYS UNTIL THE IMPERIAL WEDDING
The sky was still lit with stars. Dawn was coming, but the air was still chill, the grass frosted with ice, the stars suspended in heaven. Maram stood in front of the balcony, one hand on its engraved railing, the other clutching a string of red beads. They’d belonged to her mother and were meant to be used for religious remembrance. Maram was not Dihyan—she wasn’t really anything. She only ever thought of Dihya when she thought of the dead. But the beads were her mother’s and she couldn’t wear them, couldn’t hold them at court, in the Ziyaana, anywhere her father’s people and Nadine might see them. Weakness or treason—they were the same, weren’t they? There was no room for grief. There never had been.
She’d risen early, before the first cry of birdsong, and bathed and dressed. Around her, Dar at-Tuyyur was waking up—servants lit sconces, the kitchen was accepting food deliveries, the gardeners and arborists were making their way through the estate. In the wan lantern light of her room she’d nearly broken her mirror looking at herself. Did she look Kushaila? She’d bound her hair away from her face, and the bulk of it hung down her back in a thick braided rope. There were no gold pieces in her hair, no fabric woven through it. It was just her, her eyes lined with kohl, her face stark and plain.
She looked like Najat, but was that enough? Did she want to look Kushaila?
Her hand tightened around the beads.
The door to the office opened, but Maram didn’t turn around. She knew Fatiha’s gait, that she would first set a tray down on the table by the door, then turn on an extra lantern.
“When were you going to tell me you’d hired a falconer?” she said quietly.
Fatiha paused, then joined her at the balcony. “It’s in today’s dossier as I continue to hire and delegate staff, Your Highness. How did you find out about the falconer?”
“I ran into her on the property,” Maram said dryly, and turned away from her view of the garden. Fatiha was old, she thought suddenly. Old enough to have been her wet nurse—old enough to have raised her, in another world where her mother yet lived. Perhaps she shouldn’t have hired her to be stewardess of a hidden retreat. Perhaps she should have given her a pension and let her retire.
Fatiha rolled her eyes, a move that elicited a surprise grin from Maram, and gestured toward the food.
“I told her to tread lightly until you’d overseen her approval,” she said as Maram sat. “But she was eager—apparently there are some species of raptor on this part of the continent that don’t breed anywhere else.”
Maram was quiet as she stared at the plate of food. It was all Kushaila fare—she wondered briefly if Amani knew how to cook this. It was bread—something she’d handled with ease the last time they’d been in a kitchen together. Cheese, some jam—Amani probably knew how to make those things from scratch.
Her traitorous heart wondered if Amani would like this place—would she approve of the paintings and the gardens and the fountains? Would she love the open air and the Kushaila arches and the honeycombed stone?
Amani is a traitor, she told herself angrily. She does not love or care about you.
“Your Highness?”
Her head jerked up to look at Fatiha.
“I can terminate her employment if it displeases you.”
Maram’s eyes widened. “No! Why should you terminate her?”
Fatiha fought back a smile. “You looked quite displeased, Your Highness.”
“She just caught me unawares,” she said. “She was … arrogant.”
And she had been—arrogant and defiant and unafraid. Only Amani had ever looked her in the eye like that. Even Fatiha and the staff deferred to her—she was their future queen, not their friend or equal. A strange frisson worked its way over her skin—she didn’t know if she was unsettled or excited. How many equals did she have? Idris, sometimes, when it wouldn’t cost him anything.
A knock at the door interrupted their breakfast, and a moment later a page walked in and bowed.
“Your Highness. Stewardess. The falconer is here.”
Fatiha started to rise to her feet. “I’ll deal with her.”
“Pardon, stewardess,” the page interrupted. “She is here for Her Highness.”
Maram blinked, uncomprehending. “For me?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
* * *
As protected as the grounds were, Maram was not foolish enough to go traipsing around the property with Aghraas alone. They took three guards with them and Maram brought a small blaster, strapped at her hip beneath her jacket besides. The falconer seemed even grander on her horse, her seat comfortable and easy. Her body swayed with the horse’s easy gait, and she held the reins in one hand, the other braced against her thigh. She wore black and gray, her sleeves long and the vambraces Maram saw yesterday gone. Her many braids spilled down her back instead of being bound up by a single clip. There was a collection of braids that sprouted from her crown that were a shocking white, as if someone had terrified her once, and only a sliver of her had aged.
Maram watched her from the corner of her eye as she led them through the estate as if it were her own.
“Where are you from, Lady Falconer?” she asked.
“Aghraas will do, Your Highness,” she replied.
Maram’s mouth twisted, just a little. She did not like the familiarity of calling a person by their name if she could help it.
“You did not answer the question,” she said instead.
The falconer shot her a half smile. “My family traveled a great deal, Your Highness.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re not Kushaila?” Maram knew the Kushaila were not the only people who wore daan on their faces, but Aghraas’s were quite distinct. They looked like feathers, and she’d seen such markings in some Kushaila art, but never on a person’s face. Perhaps she had never met quite as dedicated a falconer as Aghraas.
Aghraas lifted a shoulder, a gesture she would have found both intolerable and profoundly rude on anyone else.
“I’m as Kushaila as you are, Your
Highness,” she said at last.
Maram bristled. “What does that mean?”
She smiled. “I was not raised among them. I might have been born here, but as I said: my family are interstellar travelers. We do not stay one place for very long. We love the stars too much.”
“What brought you back?” she asked before she could think to pretend indifference. “It’s hardly a vacation destination.”
“Isn’t it?” Aghraas countered.
Maram couldn’t stop the sharp laughter from bursting from her mouth. “It’s a planet on the brink of civil war and has been for the last twenty years,” she said, her words equally sharp. “No one with any sense ventures here or chooses to stay.”
“Sometimes,” she said contemplatively, “all the paths lead where we would rather not go. Sometimes you can’t outrun home or destiny.”
For once, Maram resisted the urge to mock. “What destiny could possibly be waiting for you here?”
“That remains to be seen,” Aghraas said, and smiled. “And in the meantime, there is my work.”
“Your work?”
“I’m an ornithologist,” she said. Maram stared at her blankly. “I study birds,” she clarified.
“So you’re not a falconer.”
Again, that half-amused smile. “I am a falconer.”
“You have just told me that you’re an ornithologist.”
“We are far past the times of antiquity, Your Highness,” she said. “It behooves a falconer not just to train the birds, but to study and understand them.”
Maram drew her horse to a stop and stared at Aghraas. Had she ever had a conversation like this? With Amani, perhaps—few dared correct her. Idris did it betimes when she was relaxed and not on guard. For the first time she wondered if her future husband was afraid of her? She had never seen evidence of it, but now—
“Your Highness? Have I said something amiss?”
“Are you not frightened of me, Lady Falconer?”
Aghraas’s eyes widened in surprise. “Have you given me cause to fear you?”
“Surely you jest?” Her horse pranced beneath her, as if it scented her banked anger. “You may not have been raised here, but—”
“But I should give credence to every rumor and whisper I hear?” Aghraas said, raising an eyebrow.
“They are not just rumors—”
“Are you determined that I dislike you?”
“You have interrupted me twice,” Maram snapped. “Do not do it a third time.”
Aghraas brought her horse forward so that they were facing one another.
“I must tell you,” she said calmly, “that if you wish for someone weaker or more susceptible to rumor, you will not find her in me.”
“And if I demand it?” Maram said dully.
“You may demand all you like, Your Highness,” she said. “That is your right, after all.”
“Most people would endeavor to please me, Lady Falconer.”
“You will find, Your Highness,” she said, moving her horse so that they were side by side, “that I am not most people.”
Maram felt as if there were an iron hand around her throat. She struggled to say something in the face of Aghraas’s calm but could not. I am not afraid—if she was not afraid, then what else was there?
“We are nearly there,” Aghraas said, and Maram blinked as if coming out of a dream. “We can walk, if you like?”
She barked out a half-deranged laugh. “Certainly. Why not?”
She watched as Aghraas climbed from her horse, swung her leg over, and then froze as the falconer helped her down from her stallion, hands around her waist. She remained perfectly still as her feet touched the ground, and it was only fear of being labeled a coward that forced her to raise her head to look up. Aghraas’s eyes were serious when she met them, her mouth a flat, stoic line.
She liked it better when she smiled but had given her few reasons to do so in the last few minutes. She felt adrift, as if she were caught in a wave rapidly approaching a cliff and she had no recourse.
“Are all ornithologists as brazen as you are?” she said at last.
She did not like the small spark of light in her chest when Aghraas grinned.
“No, Your Highness. I am singular in that respect.”
* * *
They walked through heather and tall grass in silence. Their horses and guards remained on a hill from where both of them could be seen, but enough about the morning was strange that in a fit of madness Maram instructed them to remain behind. They had crested a second rise that sat atop a cliff. Its descending slope was gentle, and rolled down into a wide valley, hedged in by high hills. In its center was a brilliant blue lake that caught the early-morning sun’s rays.
“If you deign to lie down in the grass, Your Highness?”
Maram said nothing as she sank into the grass beside her and laid on her stomach. Aghraas produced a pair of binoculars; Maram watched as she scanned the valley and then stiffened, their lenses focused up above.
“See there,” she said, handing them over to her.
It was a single bird, its wingspan nearly eight feet long. It hovered high in the air, gave one great push of its wings, and soared higher.
“Is that…” she started breathlessly.
“A golden eagle,” Aghraas confirmed. “There are twenty-seven in the northwestern steppes. Likely the descendants of eagles freed or lost during the initial wave of conquest. None of them native to the area. But that—”
“Is a descendant of my grandmother’s famous hunting eagles?”
“A descendant of her most famous hunting eagle, Your Highness,” Aghraas said. “The Golden Punishment.”
Maram didn’t return the binoculars, but instead watched as the eagle dropped into a sharp dive and slammed bodily into another bird. She wished she could bring just one in—she loved hunting with larger raptors. But Maram knew, without Aghraas asking her, that she would not capture any of the eagles here—there were too few to risk breeding experiments. And yet to have a descendant of her grandmother’s Golden Punishment in her mother’s favorite retreat …
“Have they bred?”
“Not in enough numbers,” Aghraas said, taking the binoculars back. “Maybe in another five years. She’s magnificent, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Maram breathed.
“People can’t cross into your estate, Your Highness. But the eagles do not have the same limitation. I worry—”
“About the birds?”
“Should I worry about something else?” she said. “They need official protection.”
Maram sat up in the grass.
“Don’t you wish to protect your family’s legacy?” Aghraas said, sitting up as well. “For as long as your grandmother had that eagle it was as symbolic of her as the tesleet.”
Maram looked out over the valley, its pristine emerald glow, the way the sun slanted over hills and grass, and seemed to halo the single eagle below. Perhaps she was overthinking it. Mathis—the Vath—would think nothing of a measure that at its heart was about natural conservation and not familial ties.
Except, for the Vath, everything came down to the blood. And Maram knew if the question were put forth to Mathis he would say, “Let her symbol die.”
“It depends,” she murmured, “on which family legacy you’re talking about.”
8
“Did you know,” I said a few days later, “the M’Gaadiri stewardess is terrifying.”
Maram’s eyes widened. “Aicha? She’s not frightening at all.”
“You’ve never had to review rooming assignments with her,” I replied with a smile. “I didn’t know the answer to a question, and I thought her glare was going to melt the flesh from my face.”
Maram laughed but, as I’d expected, did not offer to take her place back. Truth be told, I was surprised she’d even summoned me for this. We were reviewing the estate ledger, along with the aforementioned rooming assignments and meal plans. When I’d said a
s much, she’d scoffed. You’re not a princess, she’d said. Unless you know how to run an estate on your own?
Now, her eyes moved from mine to the doorway behind me.
“I take it you’ve come looking for your wife,” Maram said. I moved aside—Idris stood in the doorway watching both of us. It was the first time, I realized, that he’d seen us side by side.
“My wife has been absent since the wedding,” he replied smoothly. “I’ve wondered if she lives. Maram—”
She raised a hand to forestall him. “A conversation for another time.”
I resisted the urge to fist my hands in my skirt as she approached him. The two of them watched each other as if waiting for the one to strike. It seemed almost as if they were strangers, seeing one another for the first time. I felt as if I’d disappeared from the room. They’d known each other so long, certainly long enough to have a conversation without speaking.
“Maram—” he started. Something in his voice made me come to attention, and when I looked at him more closely, I felt something in my stomach drop.
“What’s wrong?” I asked without thinking.
Maram whipped herself around, her expression torn between surprise and frustration. But Idris raised his gaze to me, and I knew what he would say before he said it and felt my fingers clench in the folds of my skirt.
“‘Adil has been taken by the garda,” he said, voice flat.
I took a step back and closed my eyes. Dihya—he was so young. Innocent.
“What happened?” I said when I opened my eyes. Maram had moved to the side, as if to clear the space between us. “Who told you?”
“A messenger arrived from his parents’ quarters a little while ago,” he said. “He took one of the horses out after dark, beyond the city limits. Someone met him and offered him money for it and he agreed. A garda droid caught the interaction—the buyer was on a dissident list. ‘Adil never made it back to the estate.”