by Somaiya Daud
My sojourn with Maram still lingered in my mind. If she could trust Idris, might there come a day where she would welcome Furat as well? The Wattasis had been close allies of the Ziyadis, and in another world Furat and Maram would have grown up side by side, hand in hand. Fear held my tongue captive whenever I considered bringing it up to the princess, but one day I would have to do it. She was a key member of the rebellion—there was no way for them to keep up the Vathek-instilled feud.
“You have been very busy,” she said, kissing my cheeks. “It seems you have the Banu Ifran on your side.”
I smiled and nodded. “Rabi’a met Arinaas a few weeks ago.”
“And showed you your family, I have heard.”
I grinned. The most daunting blade hanging over my neck had at last been neutralized. My family was safe and the Vath could not use them anymore to stay my hand. There was still danger, to be sure—every day under the eye of the Vath was dangerous. But never again could Nadine use their pain against me.
“So,” I said, sitting down. “What would you have of me this time?”
“Did Arinaas tell you why she came to this region?”
“The eastern continent is under siege.”
“And?”
I frowned. “And what?”
“They are going to assassinate the king.”
I felt as if I’d been struck. I found that for a moment I didn’t understand what she’d said. That my mind refused to comprehend the sentence.
“Assassinate?” I breathed. It would mean—Dihya, it would mean so many things. A rapid ascension to the throne for Maram, the expulsion of the Vath, a return to the world of before.
“Yes. Do you balk at it?”
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “No,” I said. “No. I just didn’t think we would take such action so soon.”
I remembered Arinaas’s comment, that we might avoid war entirely. If Mathis died, Maram would take his place and there would be no need for war. Just an expulsion of the Vath and their power structures. A difficult transition, perhaps, but one with us in power. With the state back in the hands of the people.
“What do you need from me?” I asked her, trying to focus.
“Plans—Arinaas says it will be most expedient if we catch him in transit. Any itineraries for the coming weeks and months. The more recent, the better.”
My mind raced with possibilities. The crowning jewel of the planetary tour was its end: the Court of Lions. It was a historic site, and for long ages had been the planet’s capital until it was moved to Walili. From it had sprung a hundred empires in our long history. It was where Maram and Idris would conclude the celebrations of their marriage with an enormous parade, peopled by all the major houses on the planet. If Mathis died there—
It would be a symbolic end, and a new beginning before the entire world. The galaxy.
“He will join the tour at its very end,” I said, voicing my thoughts. “I don’t even think he’s planetside now—but we know for certain he’ll be at the Court of Lions in Qarmutta.”
“We need details, Amani. An itinerary. You will need to get one from Nadine.”
My jaw went slack. “I’ve spent the last few weeks doing everything in my power to extract her from Maram’s inner circle and have therefore antagonized her completely.”
“She’s the only one who will have the true route—anything else you secure will be a decoy.”
I came to my feet and tried to think. I could not regret what I had done—“forced Nadine from her perch,” as Rabi’a had said. It was necessary. For as long as Nadine had cast her shadow, Maram was plagued with doubt about herself, her worth, her ability to succeed her mother. There had to be a way to secure the information we needed without compromising all of my work. Hadn’t I spent the last few weeks arming myself with information to better defend against her?
“Did you know that Nadine is not from an ancient and noble house?” I said into the silence. Furat’s eyebrows rose. “She was a foot soldier and came to Mathis’s attention when she razed a village on Cadiz to the ground. They needed to establish a supply port before they launched the campaign against the planet. The village wouldn’t yield, so she burned it and its inhabitants out of existence.”
She had made her marks in the ranks by being a ruthless military commander and ascending quickly during the war. But the fact was, the Vath prized blood and lineage over all. And nothing that she did would move her bloodlines from common to ancient and noble. She understood, I knew, the precarious position she occupied.
“A person like that,” Furat said, coming to stand beside me, “would do anything to secure her position. Whatever the cost.”
“‘Cost’ being the operative word,” I said with a lopsided smile. “Don’t worry—one way or another, I’ll get the information we need.”
Furat smiled back. “I never doubted it. We’ll need it three days before the event to plan properly.” She held out a small gel-like tab, no bigger than my smallest fingernail. “Place this on any of her networked devices—it will scan for the information and relay it to us.” I reached out for it, but she closed her hand over it. “Be careful, Amani. Nadine will always be dangerous.”
“I know that better than most,” I said. “And yet I’m here.”
“Yes. We are lucky to have you,” she said, and kissed my cheek.
“Baraka, Furat,” I said.
“Siha, Amani.”
24
I joined Rabi’a for dinner a few nights later. Her dining salon was a small terrace, shielded by a wooden trellis and a plasma shield. A small probe hovered in the corner, beeping at regular intervals, and would emit a single sharp blast if it detected any listening devices. The stone floor was covered in thick carpets and piled in turn with cushions around the low dining table. The spread of food was, to my surprise, not Zidane but Kushaila. I had expected her to serve her own ethnic fare in her quarters, and it was an unnecessary but welcome kindness that instead she’d served mine.
We were quiet as the servants finished laying out the dishes, and my eyes were drawn to the scene outside. At night, the city looked like a strand of pearls winding its way around the hill atop which we sat. My mind wandered as I wound the chain at my waist around my fingers. I heard, distantly, the click of the door shutting behind the last of the servants but couldn’t pull myself back. We would leave M’Gaadir in two days. Maram and the makhzen had worked hard to make this a successful endeavor. They’d chosen their Vathek accompaniment carefully, the locations, the public acts—it was all coming together.
Rabi’a rapped a finger on the table, at last drawing my attention back to the present.
“So?” she asked as she reached for the teapot. “What happened? With you and Idris.”
I stared at her blankly for a moment. I couldn’t tell if this was an olive branch or a barb. Since we’d allied things had been easier between us—since she’d met Arinaas her respect for me had clearly risen. And yet she’d picked the topic I wanted to talk about the least.
“Why does something have to have happened?” I avoided looking her in the eye even as my heart felt as if it were being wrung in my chest. I had talked with no one of what had happened between Idris and I. I had no desire to repeat or retread the events of that night.
“Please don’t treat me as if I’m stupid,” she replied with a tone of censure. “Up until a week or two ago the two of you seemed like newlyweds. Now it’s as if you want to be together and can’t.”
“He is not married to me,” I said softly. “So it seems we’ve at last caught up to the reality of our situation.”
She caught my hand. “I know you a great deal better than I know Maram, Amani. I even like you—it would help us maintain a friendship if you were honest.”
She was right. I had become friends with her and gained her trust. The least I could do was repay that trust in kind.
“He followed me to the meeting with Arinaas,” I said. “And his discovery of what I did
in secret…”
Time away from him had not made it any easier. Idris was one of the kindest people I knew—to imagine that he could stand idly by while our whole planet suffered violence and indignity made my stomach turn. I knew the cost was high, but I knew too that if we did nothing, the cost would only grow.
“He could not stomach it,” Rabi’a finished for me.
I shook my head. “He won’t tell anyone, but—”
“But he would rather you lived than risk your life for freedom.”
“You sound like you agree.”
“I don’t, else-wise I would not be sitting here with you. But I understand the sentiment—such a sentiment kept my mother alive and my family prosperous.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “The difficulty is in knowing when you have waited long enough, and when just surviving becomes untenable.”
She poured tea in the following silence. I expected her to say something—a criticism or agreement. But nothing came. She uncovered the dishes and set the platter of bread between us, and we began to eat.
“What news, then?” she said a little while later.
I hadn’t breathed a word of my next assignment to anyone. I wrapped both hands around my tea glass and fixed my eyes on the way the light played on the tea’s gold surface.
“They’re going to kill the king,” I said, looking up.
She was a practiced courtier, so there was little change—a minute shift, barely noticeable, in the tightness around her mouth.
“You are frightened?” she asked.
“No. And yes. The stakes are high. The cost of failure…”
“Is incalculable. But the reward for success…” Her voice trailed off as she thought. “It is cleverer than open war.”
“Cleverer?”
“No one knows how many cavaliers the Tazalghit have—and with the armies of Tayfur, and the support of the Salihis and their sworn houses, the force would be quite formidable.”
“But?”
She sighed. “But we have no armada—the Vath fight among the stars. It is where they are at their strongest. And Mathis is the legal sovereign of this planet. His allies will come to fight for him. Winning a war against him is not impossible—but there is a reason we lost both the initial invasion and the siege of Walili.”
“How is it possible we don’t have an armada?” I had never thought of it—we were a spacefaring planet. We’d terraformed two moons.
“We were demilitarized after the conquest,” she said. “Technically a violation of galactic law, but there was no one to petition on our behalf, so—”
“Then this is our best chance at liberation.”
“Yes,” Rabi’a said thoughtfully. “Do you know how—”
“In transit to the Court of Lions. Nadine will have the itinerary.”
Rabi’a raised an eyebrow. “She is out of your favor.”
“But not the king’s,” I said. “She would have been recalled by now if she were. It’s why I continue to have to work around her presence.”
Rabi’a looked unconvinced. “And how do you plan to get the information from her? Befriend her?”
I scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. She will not believe any overture of friendship. But I don’t need her to hand me the itinerary. I just need a tablet plugged into her network. I can ask for such a thing under the guise of wanting to see a recording of my family. And I have a device that will extract the information we need.”
There would be no current recording, of course. But Nadine could not afford to lose face—not after everything she’d suffered at Maram’s hand. She would find an old recording to maintain power over a poor slave girl.
“You’re really a farmer’s daughter?” she asked.
“We know how to survive,” I replied.
“Why would she want to comfort you? She will laugh at your request, Amani.”
“You think highly of her,” I said with a hard smile. “She would have me beaten for insubordination. The gall of a slave asking for a favor. No—I’ll have to think like her.”
“Like her?”
I stood up and walked to the trellis. The two moons hung suspended in the sky, one orange, the other a pale green. The light they shed on the ocean water was strange and otherworldly.
“Nadine was a poor girl once, and she has risen high and will not want to lose power.” I turned around to face Rabi’a. “It isn’t about regaining her favor. Or even offering her Maram’s. It’s about giving her something that will allow her to reassert power over the royal household.”
“How terrifying you are,” she said with a laugh.
“But I don’t have anything to give her.” I sighed. “My position remains the same—I am a slave worth little beyond what I offer Maram. But I need access to that tablet.”
Rabi’a’s eyes lit up. “What if … we could take care of two problems at once?”
She came to her feet and walked to a side table. Her hand pressed against its glass surface and a rendering of the planet appeared in the air above it.
“The king has a complicated and global network of spies, a large part of which has cropped up in my province. Some have peeled away to deal with the problems in the east, but … It’s made up of Andalaans, the Vath, and off-worlders. Journalists, bakers, soldiers—all of them report what they see to the crown.”
A web of lines appeared on Andala, spanning the whole of the world, across cities and mountains and through deserts.
“It’s quite sophisticated,” Rabi’a said. “We have had a hard time tracking those in our province and a harder time still because we cannot kill those we identify. It would be seen as moving against the crown, even though technically and in the archives this network does not exist.”
“I don’t see how this solves our problem.”
“You will have to give her people.”
“What—” I began, breathless.
“We can doctor the information so that it looks like Mathis’s spies are working against the empire. You give the information to Nadine, and she will do the rest.” Rabi’a continued. “If you promise her information—spies she believes she can hand over to Mathis, endearing herself to him—she will likely give you anything you ask.”
“She dismantles your spy network and becomes convinced that she needs the information I have. Now who’s terrifying?” I grinned. “Where do we begin?”
* * *
Rabi’a’s message came at last, two days later. The spy we’d chosen—a minor Vathek lord named Marcus—had been a thorn in Rabi’a’s side for years. He paid no taxes to the province, and every year he petitioned to grow his borders. The evidence against him was in place. All I had to do was relay this bit of information to Nadine. Despite the confidence I’d displayed in Rabi’a’s parlor, my stomach churned. The last time Nadine and I were alone she’d struck and strangled me. I had no idea how she would react to being summoned, and as ever I was forced to gamble on what I believed would be the most reasonable expectation.
Powerless as she’d become around Maram, I had not forgotten what she did to my family. What she was capable of doing to me. I had not forgotten that she had the king’s ear. And what I’d learned of her past only supported what I knew of her—she was ruthless, vicious, and willing to do anything in order to ascend.
I sank to my knees just as the door slid open. Nadine wore her customary black dress with its stiff high collar and sleeves buttoned at the wrist. From her waist hung the silver chain of her office, and her bright silver hair was bound into a single braid that swung between her shoulders.
I chafed at being on my knees and fixing my eyes to the ground. It had been a long time since I’d knelt to anyone—Maram no longer required it, and there was no one outside of Maram who would demand such a thing of me, especially when I was her. I had not realized my pride had grown so until this moment. But on my knees I remained, waiting, stomach in knots.
“Have you risen in the household to summon me so?” she asked, her voice dangerously eve
n.
I did not look up. “No, my lady.”
“How dare you?” Her voice did not rise, but it took on a cruel edge and her fingers gripped my chin like claws, as if she meant to rip my jaw from my face. I tightened my hold on my skirts. If I took her wrist, if I fought back, I would have lost my chance.
“I had no choice, my lady,” I said softly. “I could not summon you as Maram.”
A poor choice to rib her so, though I kept myself from saying what it implied. Nor would she summon you herself. Her fingers tightened painfully on my face before she shoved me away.
“What do you want?” she snarled.
“I want to see my family,” I said, still on my knees. Her eyes were hard and flat as she looked down at me. “I am prepared to pay.”
“You have no money.”
“I did not think that was a currency you had much interest in, my lady,” I said. I cast my eyes down again. “I see how you are left behind. I would help you in exchange for this.”
“Why not ask Maram?” she said, coming closer.
“It is not Maram who controls the fate of my family.”
I hazarded a glance up at her. Nadine was difficult to read. She was perfectly still, her hands relaxed in her gown, her eyes fixed on me.
“What would you give me?” she said at last.
“Marcus vak Oron,” I replied. “He is stealing from the crown.”
“In Tayfur?” She looked thoughtful. “Well done.”
She stepped close to me and rested a hand on my hair. I resisted the instinct to shudder.
“Discover more information,” she murmured. “And you shall have your wish.”
06. Maram
M’GAADIR ROYAL PALACE, PRESENT DAY