by Somaiya Daud
Maram’s hands shook.
The tour wouldn’t start for another week. The gathering was Amani’s idea—to invite members of the local college for a feast and celebrate culture and historical preservation in the place many people thought the world had started. A first of many college visits, or so the makhzen hoped. The professors and their students had come to the palace for a small feast where Maram believed Amani would have done better. They bantered and laughed about poetry and history, and though Maram had read extensively, she was not a poet, and she did not speak Kushaila.
She left the dinner feeling lost and confused and had returned to her quarters listless and worried. A month of such things—traveling from city to city, speaking to Kushaila and Tashfin and Zidane, balancing all the cultures of the world and their conquerors. She knew at the end, as Amani said, that she would be forced to make a choice. The tightrope she walked now would snap and the world—her world—would come tumbling down. She’d sat down at her writing desk for the fourth time in as many days, trying to write a letter—a request, a plea—and failed. And that failure had seemed to highlight what a dangerous road she walked, how quickly it would crumble under her feet at any moment. All of this, she might have withstood if the eldest professor had not requested a private audience. He was old enough to be her grandfather, though his beard was shorn quite close, as was his hair. He wore a thawb in dove gray, its edges hemmed in gold, which seemed to be the mark of a scholar at the college. His hands, she remembered, had been wrinkled and spotted with age.
“We have kept this in trust for many years,” he said, and his voice shook. “But they belong to you.”
A sheaf of holosheets sat on the low table between them, along with an old wooden box.
Maram was not predisposed to seem happy or delighted at any occasion, and now particularly, all she could feel was dread.
“Letters penned by your mother. Do…” And at last he seemed to wonder if he had made a mistake. “Do you not wish to have them?”
“I didn’t know my mother’s correspondence had survived,” she managed, and then remembered how she had even wound up in this situation. Diplomacy. A public show of faith. She forced a smile. “I’m sorry, sayidi. My mother—”
“Lost parents are hard for all children,” he said gently, and she hated him for his sympathy. “By your leave?”
She nodded and he came to his feet. She worried that he would impart some last piece of advice, or that he would try to comfort her. But it seemed that with age had come wisdom, and he bowed deeply and respectfully, then left.
When she was eleven, she’d stood on a cliff in the mountains on Luna-Vaxor. The air so far up was thin and there were moments when she felt as if gravity’s hold on her was so little she might jump and simply not come down. That was how she felt now—dizzy, weightless, waiting for the rest of the room to lift off with her.
Her mother’s likeness lay in the box on a bed of old frayed velvet, secure in a gilded wooden frame. Not a holofilm, or projection, or even photograph. Someone had painted her mother painstakingly in her youth. It was the smile Maram recognized, sidelong, as if she had a secret and you might know it. You certainly desperately wished to when she looked at you so.
Most of the data in the holosheets was degraded, but enough of it wasn’t. Enough to tell they were love letters written by her mother. Enough to see the dates on them—Maram had been five when they were written. Enough to see that her mother had written back, and this person, whoever he was, had kept them.
She braced her hand against the desk. A filial daughter would feel rage on behalf of her father. A dutiful daughter would wipe these holosheets clean and erase any evidence of her mother’s affair. But more and more recently she had realized she was neither. The chains of duty and honor tightened momentarily around her heart, then fell away. The weightlessness returned, as if the chains had held weights and now with them gone, her body might float away.
The state does not own my heart, her mother wrote. This I swore to you in Khenitra, and I renew that oath now.
The world swam around her. The state. The Vath. Contracts and vows.
“Maram?”
Aghraas stood in the doorway to the receiving chamber. Her braids were bound at the back of her head with her customary silver clip. And hanging from her shoulders was the velvet mantle she always wore. The wind was blowing in through the windows from the ocean, and as the fabric rippled Maram saw the indent of feathers, their edges touched with gold.
“What’s wrong?”
What do you want?
She didn’t cry often—a sign of weakness that could not be ignored would have served her poorly in all her years at court. But she felt them rise now and one roll down her cheek. Aghraas’s eyes widened in alarm and she started forward. Her fingertips were soft as they swept beneath her eye, wiping away tears.
You must decide which hands you prefer around your throat.
“What is it?”
She wanted both. The state and her heart. And if her mother had found it in her to honor both, couldn’t she as well?
The control she’d exerted in the last few months over her hands meant that she’d rarely touched Aghraas. She touched no one, and when Aghraas touched her it felt as if every nerve path in her body sparked with lightning. But she stood so close to her now, close enough to see the gold flecks in her eyes, the dark daan inked into her skin clearly, the flutter of her pulse in her throat. Her hands came to rest on Aghraas’s face, and she saw the slight widening of her eyes.
“I—” The single word sounded like a croak. How many times had she found herself staring at Aghraas only for her to stare back? How often had Aghraas leaned her forehead against hers and said nothing and waited? How often had she sat beside her and wondered, aching, what it would be like to touch her without worry?
There were days when she was haunted by the little of Idris and Amani she’d glimpsed. Hands linked easily, shoulders bumping, his lips pressed to her forehead. Ease and love—two things Maram had never known.
Aghraas’s forehead pressed against hers, and her nose brushed hers, and for a long moment Maram closed her eyes and tried to breathe. But there was no center of contentment to be found in this moment, not with her throat in the grip of something, with her heart and body wound with heat and desire. Aghraas’s hands were on her, two firebrands, spread out between the lines of her ribs.
“Maram—” Her name sounded like a prayer, an exhalation. She didn’t often pray, but she knew the sounds and rhythms, and this—
Aghraas’s mouth was soft and still for less than half a heartbeat. Her fingers tightened around her waist, and Maram pressed back, the line of her shoulders, the length of her body. For half a heartbeat relief roared through Maram, and then a fire caught, as if it had waited all her life in the embers inside her. There was a soft cry—hers or Aghraas’s she didn’t know—and her hands clung to her shoulders as Aghraas lifted her up onto her lap.
Perhaps it is weakness or stupidity, her mother wrote. But I cannot sacrifice the needs of my heart for what people perceive to be the needs of the state. I will not.
The world disappeared and there was only the two of them, the sound of Aghraas’s cloak sliding to the floor, the soft chime of the gold pieces in her braids.
What do you want?
This, she thought. This.
three
FAKHR: SELF-EXALTATION
25
We had left M’Gaadir at last.
The caravan was enormous, comprised of two three-level luxury cruisers to house the makhzen and the attendant Vathek courtiers who would join us at various points in our journey, as well as handmaidens, valets, servants, and guards. They had open lawns, and various salons and ballrooms, and from their bellies and their roofs flew the sigils of all the houses on board. Highest and largest among the banners was the sigil for vak Mathis, but alongside it flew the Ziyadi flag. Maram and I had arrived at a way to take advantage of the stories from antiquity, even while making c
oncessions to the Vath: the cruisers would land a mile outside the city the caravan was visiting, and the parade of makhzen, Vathek courtiers, and so on would march into the city led by Maram, Idris, and her chosen court. There were always two Vathek members in the party, and one of them was always her cousin Ofal, who, of all Maram’s Vathek family, she loved best.
Our first stop was the city of the Banu Nasir, Khenitra. It was an ancient and imperial city, the gate between the ocean and the mountains. Rising up behind it like the craggy spine of some ancient beast were the Mountains of Ghufran. Khenitra was one of the few places that had emerged from the war unscathed. For a while, all the children of the makhzen had sheltered here, before it became apparent that we would lose the war. It was a good place, I thought, to test the appearance of the Vath alongside Maram.
I watched the procession into the city on a newsreel from within the palace of Khenitra itself. Maram was dressed in green and gold and astride a beautiful black mare. The new wardrobe had been an excellent decision—all the clothes she’d worn to date had either been wholly Kushaila or wholly Vathek, and the seamstress at M’Gaadir had married the two styles, as they’d done for the wedding. She’d kept the wide belts and flowing skirts, but lowered the necklines on some designs, and forsaken the wide flowing sleeves we favored for the cinched sleeves of the Vath.
She and Idris made quite the pair, she in mostly green and he in mostly black. He disembarked from his stallion first, and a moment later helped her down. She smiled and the corner of his mouth quirked up—the picture of married bliss. Khulood and Tariq waited on a dais at the gates and when they approached the siblings knelt before them. When they rose to their feet, Maram turned and introduced them to the rest of their party, as though they had not spent the last few weeks together. Ofal was the picture of decorum, all smiles and laughs.
Our sojourn in Khenitra lasted four days. During the day Tala and I played newsreels of Maram’s engagements. The Nasiris were spectacular hosts, and Khulood and Tariq played their parts well. They dazzled the Vathek courtiers, folded in smaller families who lived in and around the city into engagements, and did what was most important: cemented Maram’s ties to the people of the city.
On our final day, Maram visited the city college. The newsreel followed her passage through the impressive entryway, and into the main courtyard where a line of scholars waited to greet her.
“Dihya,” Tala said wonderingly, her eyebrows raised. “Never did I imagine you would convince her to interact with us as she is now.”
I smiled. “She just needed a push in the right direction.”
* * *
Though our entrance to Khenitra had been bombastic and loud, our entrance into Azaghar was less so. I’timad and ‘Imad had advised that it was better to leave the spectacle to the day of the Mawlid, and to not overshadow it.
I rose early on the second day of our stay, before the sun rose. In the time before the Vath, the Mawlid would have been heralded by the call to prayer from every temple in the city. Such things weren’t allowed anymore, and so the day began with the ringing of the bells. On Cadiz I would rise earlier to help my mother cook as we had on my majority night. Everyone wore gold and green, and at midday we would join the village square for an enormous feast.
Despite being unable to participate, I rose early and bathed and dressed well. Tala and I cooked and baked for hours before the sun rose, piling platters with esfenj and briouat, m’hencha, ka’ab ul-ghazaal, and baghrir. When the bells stopped ringing we brought the platters, along with a teapot and glasses, to the central courtyard and settled in around a small projector that would broadcast the festivities.
On the newsreel the people of Azaghar had taken to the streets in the early morning, though they had clearly been hard at work the day before. The streets were decorated in green and white, everywhere a camera-droid flew, streamers waved in the wind. The sound of people was a dull roar of cries, laughter, and singing. The zaouia at the far end of the city was crowded with children as the malawi stood outside handing out sweets, alms, and small gifts.
The newsreel cut to the scene inside the temple beside the zaouia. It was packed with men and women sitting side by side from the minbar all the way to the enormous double doors. Atop the minbar a trio of men and two women recited Massinite poetry in harmony. It had been an age since I’d seen anything like this, since I’d heard Massinite poetry.
What would my family be doing today, I wondered. Away from home, from their friends and family as I was. The Tazalghit celebrated the Mawlid just as we did—Massinia had been one of them, after all. Maybe they would celebrate together.
‘Imad and I’timad stood on the steps of the zaouia along with the other malawi and handed out gifts—small velvet bags that I knew contained a few coins, some sweets, and a few tiny trinkets. They were clearly well loved in their city, as well loved as Idris was in Al Hoceima.
There was an air to the celebrations—hope. I hadn’t asked, but I wondered if last year’s Mawlid had been as vibrant, as full of cheer. The daughter of their late queen was in the city, preparing to host the feast beside her Kushaila husband. She had brought with her a coterie of important nobles, but it seemed even the presence of the Vath—who salted the fields and burned the farms outside the city during the war to starve them out—could not dampen their joy.
Tala and I worked our way through too much food while the recitations wound down and the crowds in the street thinned. At last the newsreels switched to the enormous receiving yard at the front of the Azaghari palace. It had been transformed overnight from a carriage and transport yard to a lush courtyard capable of hosting royalty. From the walls hung the banners of the Banu Mas’ud, the Banu Salih, and the Banu Ziyad: blue and gold, red, and green. Singers arrived first and set up in the center of the courtyard.
We didn’t have to wait long for the royal members of the household to fill the gallery around the courtyard. ‘Imad and I’timad led the procession, with Maram and her Vathek cousin Ofal beside her, and Idris, Tariq, and Khulood behind them.
I felt a swell of pride as Maram took her seat and gestured for the rest of the courtiers to do the same. Here was Maram’s court and her power and its love for her. There was the city, grateful for her patronage. There were the children of collaborators and royalists alike, secure in their position in relation to her. Proud and happy and full of hope.
* * *
The apartments in Azaghar were much like the apartments I’d been given in Khenitra—two levels facing an open courtyard and a glass ceiling, and from there we could hear the carousing that continued in the city.
Tala and I sat in the open salon facing the courtyard, more food between us.
“You know,” she began. “When I first met you, I could not have imagined you capable of all you’ve done.”
I smiled. “What did you think I was capable of?”
She let out a short laugh. “Truthfully? I thought the Ziyaana would break you before you had a chance to do anything at all. And now—”
I remembered the day we’d met—the day my life had changed irrevocably. How long ago was that?
“Truth be told—I didn’t think I would survive either,” I said softly. “I don’t think that girl would recognize herself in me.”
There was a certain tragedy in that, wasn’t there? If I couldn’t recognize myself, would my parents? Would my brothers? It wasn’t only that I looked different, I was a different person. What I was capable of enduring, what I was capable of committing to—Amani the farmer’s daughter had wondered what her trial by fire would be. She could not have imagined this.
“A shadow sovereign,” Tala said softly.
“Hardly that,” I replied uneasily. “I would need to be a much better shatranj player. And I haven’t the aspiration.”
Tala laughed again. “Aspiration or not, you are guiding us. Or at least you are guiding her.”
“Protecting her—it’s different.”
She hummed. “Per
haps. The question is: Can you protect yourself?”
“Myself?”
She gestured toward the courtyard. Idris stood by the pool, watching the two of us. He had changed out of festival dress—the feasting outside must have ended and the gates shut while Tala and I talked, though the city still celebrated.
“Did you invite him?” I hissed at her.
“You know I wouldn’t dare,” she whispered, coming to her feet. “Perhaps he comes to beg.”
“Princes do not beg,” I snapped.
“When they’re wrong, they do,” Idris cut in. He’d closed the space between us and now stood in the entryway to the salon.
Tala bowed to him, then squeezed my hand. “I will leave you two alone.”
She closed the salon doors behind her as she retreated to the courtyard. For a long time, there was only silence. I could feel Idris’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. How well he had done before the people—the doting husband, the beloved prince. A prince who would not commit to doing what was necessary to protect and emancipate his people.
I startled when he sank to his knees in front of me. “I have come to beg.”
I struggled against the urge to step away from him. I hadn’t been so close to him in a while, and part of me hated the effect he had on me. Nothing, I thought, would erase the memory of him. Nothing would erase the way my heartbeat quickened and my skin prickled when he was near. As if I had an internal sensor keyed to his proximity.
“There is nothing to beg for.”
“For your forgiveness.”
My eyes widened but I remained silent. My heart ached but my pride stung—and it was my pride that refused to make this easy for him. He had asked me not just to give up the rebellion. It was the implicit belief that I should be made to kneel before the Vath. That life, even in slavery, was better than struggling for something better.
“I was wrong,” he continued.