Court of Lions

by Somaiya Daud

  Maram gracefully sank to her knees but did not bow her head. “I think you will find that I am more than equal to the task, Your Eminence.”

  I could not see his face as he looked down at her, but his body was perfectly still for long seconds. He was not there in truth, it was only a hologram, and yet he reached for her anyway, and swept a finger along her cheek.

  “Prove to me that you have risen above your mother’s breeding,” he said softly. “Do not disappoint me.”

  Even the mention of her mother elicited no reaction from her. “As you command, Your Eminence.”

  He did not say goodbye or wish her good health. His image simply rippled away. For a moment the room was silent, and then the diwan doors groaned open. Maram was on her feet, her face hard—I recognized the expression of deep rage, barely leashed. Nadine strode in, then drew up short. There was a tilt to her mouth, as if she’d won a prize.

  A frisson of rage ripped through me as I realized what she must have done, how she must have whispered in the king’s ear.

  “Do you no longer kneel to your future sovereign?” Maram said, her voice dangerously soft.

  Nadine bent her knees.

  “Lower,” Maram said.

  Nadine froze, eyes wide, her knees still bent.

  “Have you lost your faculty to understand my words,” she said, coming closer. “Lower.”

  The high stewardess sank to her knees. They’d barely touched the ground before she began to rise again.

  “I did not give you leave to rise,” Maram said. I had forgotten this girl—all rage, bent on someone’s humiliation. “Lower.”

  “Your Highness—”

  “I did not give you leave to speak,” she said. She waited, perfectly still, as Nadine laid her forehead on the ground. I thought if she’d had a crop in hand she might have whipped it across her face.

  She took a deep breath. “I suppose I have you to thank for this,” she said.

  Nadine raised her head. “I only reported on your success, Your Highness.”

  “You have set a trap,” Maram said softly. “Because you believe me to be the frightened girl you made me. I am not. I am the future queen of this world.”

  “Allow me to assist you—”

  “I would rather suffer the death of my mother a thousand times than accept your help,” Maram said. “And I do not need it. You should worry what will happen when this trap is sprung.”

  Something about her tone set a chill in me, and I was not alone. Nadine’s face paled, and a pair of red spots rose in her cheeks.

  “You forget your roots too often, Nadine cagir Elon,” she said softly. “And you forget my father’s nature. You have no ancient blood, no family to protect you when he decides to feed you to his wolves. And he will—it is his way.”

  Maram did not strike her, indeed she never raised a hand, never reached for the high stewardess. But I thought, perhaps, with the guards at the door, and the handmaidens waiting to attend to Maram, that might have been better. She remained on her knees as Maram swept out of the room, the train of her gown billowing out behind her.

  Too late, I thought to sink back into the shadows. Nadine looked and found me there, and her face paled yet further with rage. I said nothing, though my heart beat hard enough that my fingertips trembled with its beat. For long seconds she stared up at me, but I did not bow or sink to my knees. I waited, and at last she came to her feet, her eyes glittering with anger, and strode from the diwan.

  21

  The rainy season on the coast had at last started, which meant a suspension of the cavalry theatrics we had enjoyed until now. Any other day Maram would have taken her place among her peers, but the level of planning needed for the tour had seen her beg a day of reprieve from me. She could be at two places at once, and so she meant to take advantage of it.

  On a day like this most of the estate and its visitors would have found private means to amuse themselves. Rabi’a, however, wanted the collection of princes and princesses who had forged ties to visit in her large salon. In the courtyard where we normally met, any of the other families visiting could join. But in her chambers was a small retreat, closed to everyone else.

  Unfortunately for me, however, it meant that I could not escape Idris. We hadn’t seen each other since the night he’d caught me returning from my rebel assignation. In truth I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to see him again since then, but when I arrived in the royal suites, anger took hold of me. I grieved what we’d lost, but more than anything I raged—that he, a prince of the realm, could not see why the rebels were necessary was beyond my understanding. Those in power were meant to protect the weak, at any cost. That was the contract they entered into at birth. That he refused, that he saw my choice to step forward as a mistake—it was contrary to everything I knew and loved about him.

  I dressed with a steely resolve. When Tala opened the jewelry box, lying on a spread of velvet was the necklace from the bedding night. The emerald, framed by the stack of pearls, gleamed in the early-morning light. I saw Tala flush as though she’d made a mistake, and rush to close the box.

  “No,” I said. “The necklace.”

  Let him remember the trade he’d made, I thought. He had lost me in exchange for nothing. When I emerged from the dressing room, robed in green and black, he froze, his eyes fixed on the jewel at my throat. But he said nothing, only offered me his arm. And so away we went.

  On an excursion into town or to the beach, he could ride his horse and go to different markets. Rabi’a’s salon was large, but not so large as that. And being High Princess and Prince of the Vath meant that we were placed in a position of honor, beside one another. I was spared, however—‘Imad was quick to call him over for a game of shatranj.

  “Dihya, is there nothing else to do?” Buchra said. She was sprawled on her side among the cushions beside her sister, her head propped up on her hand. “It seems if we are not out of doors, all anyone can think to do is play shatranj.”

  “What would you have us do instead?” Rabi’a asked dryly. “Play cards?”

  “We could have a contest,” Buchra said.

  Her sister eyed her warily. “What sort of contest?”

  “Poetry,” I said without thinking. Their eyes all turned to me at once. “What?”

  “We did not know you had a poet’s ear, Your Highness,” said Tariq.

  “Perhaps not,” I replied. “But I do know the history of my mother’s estate. Poetry contests were the norm, were they not?”

  “Indeed,” Rabi’a said. “Though perhaps few of us have the talent to judge poetry over the language barrier.”

  “Then we shall raise the stakes,” I said with a smile. “A prize to the poet who can move us in their own language and provide an equally moving translation for my ears.”

  “What is the prize?” Khulood asked, her eyebrows raised.

  I considered for a moment, then tapped the emerald, and Idris made a harsh noise in the back of his throat.

  “Have you a comment, sayidi?” I asked coolly, raising an eyebrow. The room was quiet. It seemed the state of affairs between us had not gone unnoticed, and they watched us rapt, eyes wide.

  His throat moved, as if he were having difficulty swallowing. For long moments he stared at the necklace, and the longer he stared the warmer the flush at my chest seemed to get. When he at last met my eyes I felt as if someone had stolen the breath from my lungs.

  “A queenly gift,” he said at last, voice harsh. I knew him well enough that I could hear what was not said. Knew myself well enough that the sound of the pearls skating down my chest and into my lap echoed in my ears.

  “As you say,” I agreed. “Are there none among you who would defend their house’s honor, then?”

  “I will.” Buchra had left unmarked by anyone and returned, a loutar in hand. “Unless my sister would prevent me?”

  “No,” Rabi’a said, on the edge of laughter. “By all means. Defend us.”

  In the
time she’d spent at the estate, I’d come to like Buchra. To be sure, I loved them both—Buchra was quieter and more reserved, and she approached me with a great deal of suspicion. But she was lively and clever, and when comfortable, unafraid of making pronouncements or taking risks. She sat elegantly, her feet tucked beneath her, the loutar balanced carefully in her lap.

  The first note hummed through the air and I felt my heart clench in memory. The notes of this poem had been seared into my mind, and I was loath to interrupt her and tell her that her poem needed to be an original. I’d had none of her bravery the first time I’d sung the poem. She looked not at me or her sister or even her lap, but at Tariq. And he looked back at her as one possessed.

  I’d heard the song many times, but my clearest, sharpest memory was when Idris played the song on his loutar. It felt as if I’d been called from a dream, wandering through Ouzdad, hunting down the sound of the loutar. And there he’d been, still a stranger in some ways, sitting beneath a fig tree, his hair unbound.

  Lamma bada yatathana …

  When he began to sway …

  Hubi jamalah fatannah …

  His beauty seduced my heart …

  I have the voice of a village girl, I’d told him, and he’d laughed. It was this moment I remembered, even more than when I’d sung it to him a second time after Maram’s coronation. Because it seemed to me, in my loneliest moments, that this was what happened between us. That I’d drifted through a garden and found him, and his beauty had seduced me.

  I was foolish and chanced a look at Idris, only to find him already staring at me. The grief I’d sworn to disavow this morning rose up in me again, sharp as a knife, twisting in my heart. We had both made our choices, and they had separated us irrevocably. And yet and still I wanted to get up and go to him, to tell him that I would give it up.

  I could not.

  Aman, aman, aman …

  Mercy, mercy, mercy …

  The last notes of the poem echoed in the quiet of the room, and Buchra’s hands flattened against the strings of the loutar. Tariq, for his part, still watched her, his eyes wide and dazed, as if he’d been taken by a thunderstorm.

  “Well?” Buchra said at last, grinning brilliantly at me.

  The sound of her voice broke whatever spell she’d managed to weave, and Idris and I looked away from each other.

  “I think,” I said thickly, “your peers will be hard pressed to beat your performance, Buchra.”

  “Indeed, I think it is unfair to ask the others to do so,” Rabi’a drawled, eyeing her sister.

  “Unfair,” I’timad cried out. “We must all be given a chance for the pearls.”

  I had not expected a simple contest to have elicited so much feeling in me, and I wanted more than anything to be allowed to retire. But I had suggested it, and so it must continue.

  “By all means,” I said. “Shall you go next, I’timad?”

  * * *

  It was late in the evening when I returned to the royal quarters. In the end, I’timad, not Buchra, won the competition. Though Buchra was the better performer, I’timad’s translation had passed not only my bar, but everyone else’s expectations in the room.

  The lanterns in the courtyard and connecting chambers burned low. The usual sounds of the household winding down for sleep were absent. I had not been out so long that they should have finished, but then I supposed it didn’t matter.

  I paused in the parlor that connected Idris and my bath chambers. A single lamp burned in the hallway, but there wasn’t a soul to be found.

  “Hello?”

  Idris. In his bath chamber. The sound of wet footsteps followed, and a second later he was filling up the doorway, sopping wet. He wore a pair of soaking black trousers that hung too low on his hips and nothing else. His valet had yet to shave him, and his hair stuck to the sides of his face and neck. The khitaam on his arm seemed to glisten, covered in droplets of water. And there was, ridiculously, a rose petal stuck to his right shoulder.

  I stepped back, struggling against the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

  “Wh-what happened?”

  “They ran a bath and then absconded without leaving me clothes or towels.”

  “And you tried to wash your pants in the interim?” I said. He did not find my amusement gratifying.

  “I misjudged and they fell into the bathwater.”

  I could not control the grin spreading over my face. It was difficult to forget he was a prince, but with that came limitations. Among those: he did not think to prepare his own clothes before he went to bathe. Dihya, but he was beautiful. He’d spent so much time in the sun that his skin had darkened, and enough time training his stallion that the body I’d known had changed, if only a little. The strum of the loutar echoed in my head, and I felt—Dihya I felt such a need for him. The humor seemed to evaporate in half an instant and I found myself tracing his shape, the droplets of water caught at his throat, the way his eyes darkened when our gazes met.

  “Amani,” he said darkly.

  “Yes?”

  “I am cold.”

  I folded my hands in front of me. “That is hardly a question.”

  “Do you know where the towels are?”

  “I know where mine are kept, yes.”

  “Please. Surely you will not allow me to suffer like this.”

  “You will smell like jasmine,” I warned him.

  “I am cold,” he repeated stubbornly and followed me into my bath chamber.

  I drew a towel from a wooden chest, and when I turned around Idris was so close the skirts of my gown brushed his toes. We were both quiet as I draped it over his chest and shoulders, then raised on my toes to pat the ends of his hair dry. He watched me carefully, quietly, his eyes fixed on my face. I played a dangerous game, I knew. Fight or no fight, I recognized the way Idris watched me, for it was the way I watched him. And I felt the echo of it deep inside me, shivering over my skin.

  His thumb traced the line of my throat—short one necklace—and I went perfectly still. “You gave it to her,” he said softly.

  “She won it,” I replied.

  “You did not have to part with it.”

  I had no desire to reply to that. “Where are all the servants?” I asked instead.

  “They have conspired,” he said. “Yousef—my valet—said I was being an unkind husband.”

  My heart gave a lurch, but I managed to speak with some humor. “It is good, at least, that they’ve decided you are the villain.”

  My hands had settled on his throat, with the towel keeping skin from skin. I had not been so close to him since the night he’d left. He laid his hands over mine and I froze. His head bent to mine, close enough that a droplet of water slid from a lock of his hair and onto my cheek. His lips were a hair’s breadth from mine, and for a moment I closed my eyes and didn’t think. Separation had not cooled my desire or my love. If anything it sat now like a dagger in my chest, twisting its way to my heart.

  “Amani,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”

  I didn’t want to answer. I wanted to kiss him, to draw him as close to me as possible, to feel that he was mine again. But nothing had changed.

  “I am not the one who left that night,” I said, my voice just as soft. “And my convictions haven’t changed. The empire still shadows us all.”

  I forced myself to release him, to step back.

  “Amani—”

  “I hope you know where your clothes are,” I interrupted, looking at the ground. “Because I cannot help you.”

  I paused in the doorway. “I will speak to the servants so they don’t … conspire again.”

  And with that I left, fleeing to my chambers.

  05. Maram

  STARDATE 4393, PRESENT DAY

  It was a strange thing to be sitting across from a husband she seemed to hardly know anymore. Stranger still to reenter a world which now felt alien and strange. She’d been raised among Vathek royalty, and the gloss and veneer of that c
ourt was a different world from the one Amani had built for her. A place of laughter and warmth. And though she was grateful, she itched to return to her estate with its crying hawks and secret poetry. The theory of ruling was easier to stomach than the act itself.

  And Aghraas.

  There were some nights when Aghraas seemed the shadow of her thoughts, when her whole body seemed wound in heat and her dreams of her were inescapable. The question she’d asked in Dar al-Zahra’ echoed in the halls of her mind.

  What do you want?

  Maram still didn’t know how to answer that question. She never had. There was no wanting among the Vath. There was your duty to the king. There was the blood he exacted from his subjects. There were the cold eyes that only rarely turned to his youngest daughter.

  What do you want?

  Today she wanted to throttle the world. She and Amani had organized a tournament for the court and opened it to the city. Aghraas was a stranger here, but it was easy to hide among the masses of people who wanted to show off their skill. Maram watched, caught in the grip of something powerful, forced to remain silent, as Aghraas beat fishermen and princes alike in duels and archery.

  The sea wind brought with it an oceanic chill, but the sun shined down and gilded the falconer, marking her apart from the rest. She’d won the longbow competition, and Maram’s mind replayed the stillness of her body as she’d aimed, broken only by her swaying braids.

  She looked across the table at Idris. They were lunching privately before the tournament resumed. He did not look miserable, but then her husband was practiced at masking how he felt. And she was practiced at seeing the cracks. He had paid little attention during the tournament and had declined to race his horse, which by all accounts was the apple of his eye.

  They had been friends for a long time. Not always allies. Not always confidants. But they were the same in more ways than Maram could count. Where they differed was control. She had little control until suddenly she’d been burdened with an abundance. Control stayed her hand and her heart.