by Somaiya Daud
I remembered so little of it. Eight was not so young that the memories were obscured by time, but I was grateful for this neural trick.
“We lived in a village that was not a village,” I said. “It was a kasbah, abandoned by whatever makhzen had held it before the conquest. Nineteen families made their home there. Shortly before we left, the Vath attacked.”
“What?” Her voice was hoarse with shock.
“We were defenseless. Most villages have a magistrate, or a surveillance force. We were in truth homeless and trying to eke out an existence. They were slaughtered, looking for someone.”
I turned to look at her. Her face was drawn and colorless, as if I’d truly shocked her.
“Do you not know what the Vath are capable of?”
“I do.”
“Then don’t look so upset,” I said. “The dead are gone, and we survived.”
She swallowed hard. Her hand gripped the armrest, her back was straight and held away from the chair.
“Everyone imagines that a poor villager has no understanding of the operations of cruelty. That because she is removed from the center of power, she does not experience the way it is used. I know the Vath, Rabi’a, perhaps better than even you. I know what they will do in wartime. There is no survival to be had in this world.”
She looked away from me, as if she were embarrassed.
“You are talking about war,” she said, voice clipped. “A war we can’t possibly win.”
The problem, I thought, was that each of us had experienced our own particular hurt and thought the other would not understand its consequences. Rabi’a understood the violence she’d been saved from by her mother’s duplicity, and yet somehow believed I’d escaped that violence or did not understand its scope. It enraged me—my world until now had been small, and in a way I’d been lucky. Furat and Idris had never underestimated me or my experience.
“I’m talking about the line of succession,” I replied. “But she needs the support of an army that will not pledge itself to her without the support of a greater house.”
“So, at last we come to it,” she said.
Arinaas was coming to the continent—it was the right time, the best time, for Rabi’a and Arinaas to meet. For Rabi’a to see how serious I was, how serious the rebellion was. It wasn’t just a ragtag group of hungry citizens, but a cause and an army with a chance.
“A high-ranking member of the alliance will be here in two days—meet her, and then make your choice.”
“And what would they ask of me?”
“The army will not pledge itself to Maram without the support of a greater house.”
She laughed humorlessly. “So without me everything falls apart.”
“And the world slides into ruin.”
Her mouth twisted as she struggled. “I cannot promise you anything,” she said. “I will take the meeting—but if I’m unconvinced of your possibilities for success—”
“That’s all I ask.”
She came to her feet at last and stood beside me before the opening of the balcony.
“I expect to be impressed, Amani,” she said.
“And I expect that you will be.”
17
Arinaas had at last arrived at M’Gaadir. She would meet Rabi’a herself, and her revelation would cement whether Rabi’a was with us or not.
The allies Idris, Maram, and I had arranged could not do what needed doing alone. They would need the rebels as much as the rebels needed them. They had been demilitarized and disinherited, but the planet remembered them and mourned and wanted them to rise. And so, in giving Rabi’a, the strongest among them, to the rebels, I would forge an unassailable alliance between those held by the empire and those that would break it.
A dangerous risk. But one I knew would pay off.
Tala joined me in the salon with a small lantern and a heavier cloak. The days and nights had turned colder as we’d progressed through autumn. Not so cold as it was this time of year in the mountains, but cold enough.
“Here,” she said, and pressed a hand against a wall panel. There was a soft click and it swung toward us, revealing a dark corridor.
“Why is this palace littered with secret passageways?” I asked.
Tala grinned. “You know stories so well—do you not know the story of Kansa’s second husband?”
“Are you saying our ancestor was a bigamist?”
She laughed. “No.”
I shook my head. “You will have to tell me this story when I get back.”
She handed me the lantern and the cloak. “Follow the corridor—it leads directly to Houwa’s cave. Good luck.”
“Thank you—I will need it.”
* * *
The corridor was long and cold, and I was glad for both the fur-lined cloak Tala had given me and the lantern to light the way. It dipped down further into the ground, and eventually the ground turned rocky and covered in gravel. I had passed out of the estate’s limits entirely and was at the back end of the cave. When at last it opened up into the cave proper, it revealed several Tazalghit women standing guard. A fire was lit just under the mural of Houwa, and standing around it were several women—the one who caught my eye was Arinaas.
I’d forgotten the sort of presence she commanded. She stood across from a woman of height with her, though significantly older and with silver strands in her hair. They were all dressed for the desert, voluminous black and white robes, and loose trousers and blouses bound at the waist with cotton sashes. The woman next to Arinaas wore a black turban, with a silver brooch attached in the shape of a diamond, with a crescent moon piercing its uppermost angle.
“Your spy arrives,” she said when she caught sight of me.
Arinaas turned and grinned when she saw me. “Not my spy,” she said with a laugh. “A free agent. Perhaps a general.”
Like the turbaned woman Arinaas wore black, though her robes were stitched with gold. She seemed, somehow, taller than I remembered, her presence weightier. She put me, strangely enough, in mind of Aghraas. As if the very air would catch fire at her say-so.
She held out a hand—it had been a long time too since anyone asked a soldier’s handshake of me. But when I grasped her arm with mine, she drew me in for a hug.
“It is good to see you alive,” she said. “I did not like our last meeting.”
“It is good to see you at all,” I replied. “It is too dangerous for you to be here.”
“Your free agent is sensible,” the woman said to her, then turned to me. “Would that my daughter would listen to sense.”
“Uma.” No one in the worlds or in heaven would accuse the rebel leader of whining. But calling her mother came dangerously close. “This is my mother—Tinit, Queen of Queens, leader of the Tazalghit. Uma—Amani. Of whom you know much.”
The turban and pin began to make sense.
“Your Grace—”
She shook her head. “Tinit al-Hurra is fine,” she replied.
I inclined my head. “Tinit al-Hurra, then—it is good to meet you.”
“You look very much like your mother,” she said.
My eyes widened. “You know my mother?”
“She is overseeing her relocation,” Arinaas said. Tinit said something in Izilghit, and Arinaas replied, but neither let me in on their conversation.
“Are they…” I interrupted.
“Yes,” Tinit said with a smile. “They are safe. We have a recording, if you would like?”
For a moment it felt as if the whole world stopped. I knew the ocean was just beyond the cavern, and that there were dozens of women in this cave, but I heard none of it. All I heard was the beating of my own heart and the blood rushing in my ears.
“Really?” I gasped. “They’re safe?”
“We are women of our word, Amani,” Arinaas said. “You kept your end, and we have kept ours.”
Tinit held out her wrist and revealed the same gel-like substance that made up my communicator clinging to her s
kin. It lit up and a moment later an image projected into the air: my family—my mother and father, my brothers Husnain and Aziz—making their way up a mountain path, surrounded by rebels. And rebels they were, to be sure, for they all wore the red flag stitched onto their left sleeves.
I reached out to the screen as if my fingers could pass through it, and break through space to be beside them. They looked tired, but alive and healthy.
For a moment I couldn’t speak. Dihya, I missed them like a physical ache in my chest.
“It is not your face,” Tinit said to me suddenly, eyeing me. “Though you and your mother certainly have that in common. It is something else that puts me in mind of her.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that. It seemed she knew my mother well; something about the way she spoke, the surety with which she made her pronouncements, made me think she had not just been surveilling her for extraction.
“Where are they?” I asked, without looking up.
Tinit pulled her sleeve back over her wrist and the image disappeared.
“Is that information you want to risk knowing?” she asked softly.
“No,” I said. “The risk if I were captured would be too great.”
Tinit nodded, approving.
“Let me talk to her, Uma. You have much else to do.”
Tinit, it seemed, was used to her daughter’s brusque airs and smiled.
She nodded. “I will see you again, Amani of the Kushaila.”
We both watched her walk down further into the cave and collect a bevy of guards around her.
“I see where you get it,” I said.
“Get it?” Arinaas asked.
“When I first met you and even now—it feels like being around an unquenchable flame.”
She grinned. “Careful. I will grow too flattered.”
I smiled back. “So? What would you have of me until the lady arrives?”
Her face grew serious. “Furat says you are quite close with the princess,” she began.
“Surely that doesn’t surprise you?”
“She is Mathis’s daughter—”
“She is Najat’s daughter,” I interrupted. “She is a direct descendant of an ancient and royal house that has ruled this planet for millennia. But most importantly, she is the only ruler the galactic community will recognize as legitimate.”
Arinaas looked at me, eyes solemn, hands held behind her back. “I suppose that’s why you’ve allied three of the most powerful families on the planet with her?”
“Should I have left her destiny in the hands of the war? She did not choose the circumstances of her birth, or her father, or her upbringing. She is a scared and lonely girl with the potential of much good in her—and if the rebellion turns on her, we risk creating a worse enemy with a more legitimate claim.”
Arinaas sighed. “She is a puppet of the Vath, and your empathy has gotten the better of you.”
I resisted the urge to suck my teeth in frustration. “Think better of me than that, Arinaas.”
“I think very well of you,” she said.
Arinaas appraised me. “She will side with the rebellion?”
“That I’m still working on. But in time, yes, I believe so.”
Arinaas stared up at the mural of Houwa, then closed her eyes.
“There are few people I would trust in such a thing, Amani,” she said at last. “Do not fail in this.”
I smiled, relieved. “I won’t.”
* * *
Beyond the berth Arinaas’s women had made at the entrance to Houwa’s cave was a wider cavern, and it was there that they’d set up a small camp. A few open tents for the night, with lush carpeting, richly embroidered cushions, and low tables. It was clear that this was the queen’s retinue—the tables were laden with figs and dates, fragrant pastries, and tea. Hanging from the cloth ceilings were anti-detection probes, though they looked like incense bowers. It was there that Arinaas and I stood, overlooking the entrance to the cavern, and waited.
Rabi’a arrived with a single guard of her own from the same entrance I’d come through. She was dressed simply, with no jewels, though I saw beneath her mantle the shape of a small blaster inside a velvet bag. She paused on the outcrop of the entry ledge with two of the Tazalghit blocking her path.
Arinaas quirked her mouth into a half smile. “She looks Zidane,” she murmured.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“The Zidane always look like they’re ready to conquer something.”
“This from the daughter of a people who have forced tribute from every city on the main continent,” I drawled.
She laughed.
We watched as Rabi’a gave the small blaster over with a sigh, then waved her guard back when it seemed he might argue with the Tazalghit escort. I watched her make her way across the cave and then at last up the incline that led to Arinaas and me. Halfway up she paused, staring at Arinaas, her face blank with shock.
I watched Rabi’a take Arinaas in, her eyes going from the crown of Dihya inked into her forehead, to the gold thread sewn into her robe. I remembered seeing Arinaas the first time—the shock of a dead prophetess walking in daylight. I yet recalled the second shock of seeing the holy mark—gold embedded in her skin—and realizing how the rebellion had crystallized around her.
“Well,” she said when she reached us. “When you said a high-ranking officer, I did not imagine this.”
I gave her a half smile. “What did you imagine?”
“A doddering old patriot with a guerilla army.”
“Alas.” Arinaas grinned.
“I thought they were rumors,” Rabi’a said softly. “But you’re real. Cosmetic surgery?”
Arinaas did as she had done when I stared at her in disbelief. She pulled down the collar of her shirt and revealed the gold in her skin.
“Dihya.” Her hand made an aborted move, as if she meant to touch the gold in Arinaas’s skin but caught herself just in time. “No wonder the rebels are singularly motivated.”
“Injustice motivates them,” Arinaas said. “I’m the divine coincidence they need to act, that’s all. Follow me.”
Arinaas led us deeper into the caverns, into a great stone hall where her women had pitched their tents. By the wall was a large case, clearly filled with weapons. She lifted its cover and I drew in a breath of surprise. I’d expected firearms, or side canons—the sort of weaponry the Vath used.
They were bows. Sleek, to be certain, made of light metal, their surfaces engraved with beautiful designs. When she lifted one into her hand its surface lit up, along with a holographic display where the arrow would be loaded.
“The bow can fire with the force of a cannon, and its arrows are essentially small grenades.” Her smile was sharp. “But we’re nomadic hunters.”
“How many?” Rabi’a asked. “The Tazalghit were never counted—you retreated when the war was clearly about to be lost, and the Vath assume your numbers are much reduced. Those who surface are malnourished, their herds thin. But I suspect you could not have built a reliable rebel force with what the Vath believe to be left of you.”
“Eighteen thousand mounted cavalry.”
I felt a shiver.
“And infantry?”
“Forty-two.”
“Hundred?” Rabi’a said skeptically.
“Forty-two thousand,” Arinaas clarified. “Though that includes guerilla fighters, farmers, and peasants who have joined to swell our ranks.”
“Well,” Rabi’a murmured, looking at me. “I see you are not delusional. Though that is no guarantee you will win.”
I’d taken a gamble on this, trusted my gut instinct that the conversations I’d had with Rabi’a pointed to a person who saw the injustices as we saw them. Who understood that this planet and its people would not survive the Vathek occupation. And who, if given the right push, could help us pull back from the brink of collapse.
“If Maram were crowned,” I said, “then she would not only have the comb
ined armies of the rebels and the houses allied with her, but would also be able to call on allies in the senate. We would have a real chance.”
“The odds of winning versus the certainty of a slow death is difficult calculus,” Arinaas said, her mouth curled.
“Is it?” I said, looking at Rabi’a.
“I dislike the idea of going to war against an enemy we have already lost to,” she said, her hand trailing over the box of bows. “But you are right—it is a slow death, a quick one, or victory. I like the odds of the latter over the former.”
Our discussion went on for at least an hour. Tayfur province was not only wealthy in material but in men. While many provinces relied on Vathek droids, Arinaas and her mother had cultivated mounted cavalry—afraas—and they numbered in the tens of thousands now.
“It has come with problems,” Rabi’a said. “Mathis has installed spies. He will not tolerate a rival military presence. You will have to be careful.”
“We need safe houses for now,” she said. “Perhaps it will not come to war.”
Rabi’a scoffed. “Should we be so lucky.”
“We might,” Arinaas countered. “I do not utter dreams just to hear them, Rabi’a bint Ifran.”
“Well,” Rabi’a said, surveying the map. “Whatever you have need of, only ask.”
“Said with the brevity of the Zidane,” Arinaas replied with a grin, and held out her hand for a warrior’s shake.
18
It was not long after that we dispersed. Rabi’a returned with her guard by an alternate route, and after bidding farewell to Arinaas, I made my way back down the cavern path. I made it halfway back before I heard a quiet beeping. I’d only ever heard that sound the night of my majority celebration, standing in line beside the other girls.
I froze, my heart in my throat. Of course security monitored these passages, and if the probe got a scan of me, and the log fell into anyone’s hands—I didn’t want to imagine the consequences. A hand reached out of the dark and pulled me against the wall.
“Be quiet,” Idris whispered. I stared at him, torn between my fear of the probe and the shock of seeing him in the passageway. He had a beacon in one hand that vibrated when he pressed a button.