by Somaiya Daud
“That is a horrible translation,” I said flatly.
He turned to look at me a second before I realized my mistake.
Maram didn’t speak Kushaila—and even if she did, she would not have known the poem he’d tried—and failed—to translate.
“You are almost as easy to bait as Maram,” he said at last. He wasn’t smiling.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Maram. The name hung in the air.
I’d been caught.
16
I stood in the gloom of the catacombs, head spinning.
“When—?”
“When did I know?” he asked. “I suspected at the ball, when you asked that servant if she was all right. Maram doesn’t see servants, as a rule. But a million little things have told me since. Your face is far too open—Maram is never so unguarded. You look at people when you talk to them, instead of through them, as is her practice. You listen—everything I said elicited a reaction from you, no matter how small or benign. You seemed awed when we landed in Gibra, though Maram has never spared it a glance. Perhaps most telling of all is you listened and catalogued my mistakes during my … uninspired … telling of Massinia’s stories. I could see it in your face, even if you had the grace not to share your true feelings with me.”
Horror crept up my spine. Had I been so transparent? Were my mistakes so easily pinpointed and catalogued? A small part of me was impressed—I knew Idris had to be clever to have survived in the Ziyaana all these years, but this … How closely did he watch everyone around him to spot a difference even Maram’s father had missed?
“If you were so sure,” I said angrily, “why bait me at all?”
“Because you never would have admitted to being other than Maram if I’d asked nicely.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “So, then. Who are you? And why are you here instead of Maram?”
I clenched my jaw. All my work, all I’d suffered, had come to nothing in a single moment. And Idris hadn’t proven himself trustworthy, only clever. “And if I refuse to tell you?”
For the first time he looked surprised, and took a step forward.
I quickly stepped back.
“You’re frightened,” he said, eyes widening.
“Of course I’m frightened,” I said, my voice breaking. “You live in the Ziyaana! You know the cost—”
“Of failure,” he finished. “I didn’t think—”
“Of course you didn’t. This was just a game to you. A puzzle to decipher.” I drew in a trembling breath. “This is no game to me. My life depends on my success.”
He nodded, eyes searching me, missing nothing. “I understand. But I can’t help you unless—”
I scoffed before I could think better of it. “Help? You can’t help. My old life is over. There is no escape, no respite from that truth. This is my life now. If this is a life at all.”
He stared and I raised my chin, daring him to disagree with me.
“You speak like one of us,” he said instead.
My jaw clenched harder in anger. “Thank you, sayidi,” I said, the highborn Kushaila title a pointed reminder that I was not one of them. “A high compliment.”
“That isn’t—”
I held up a hand. I was so angry—at myself for being caught in this trap, at him for not understanding what it meant to be caught, at fate for landing me in the Ziyaana all those months ago.
The fountain further into the gloom turned on and the sudden flow of water disturbed a small bird, no larger than the palm of my hand. She chirped, offended, then winged her way past us and up the stairs toward the sun. The light flashed off her jewel-toned wings and then she was gone. I sympathized with her, disturbed after finally finding a place to rest. And I envied her for her quick and easy escape.
“You look so much like her,” he said. “Did you always?”
I fixed my eyes on a flower just over his left shoulder.
“I had daan,” I replied. Had I ever spoken—thought—about them in the past tense? “They were taken from me.”
He had nothing to say to that.
In the quiet I felt my anger rise up again, resisted the urge to touch my cheeks and my forehead. There was no phantom pain where the ink once was, no lingering feeling. They had simply been a part of me, and now they weren’t. I had reconciled myself to that.
His voice was softer when he spoke. He understood, then, the high price I’d paid. “How did you end up here?”
“How does anyone end up in the Ziyaana?” I asked, folding my arms over my stomach.
“You were kidnapped,” he said. I remained silent. “We will be here, together, for some time. It may be to your benefit to trust me, sayidati.”
The Kushaila word wasn’t nearly as clumsy in his mouth as I’d expected.
I shook my head. “You should know better than me how difficult trust is in the Ziyaana.”
He approached me as if I were a frightened animal. “You can trust me—it is not to my benefit to reveal your secret.”
I forced myself to look at him.
“If I meant to use my knowledge against you,” he said quietly, “I would have done so already.”
I paused, considering. He was right. If he’d known the night of the ball, or on the flight from Andala to Gibra—he’d had opportunities to turn me in, to make use of the knowledge. To ruin me. He had not. That, at least, counted for something.
“They stole me on my majority night,” I whispered, looking sightlessly into the dark water. “While my friends and family watched. While my brother watched. I didn’t know why they wanted me until I saw her.”
“Maram,” he said.
I nodded. “My life has been defined by her since I’ve come to the Ziyaana.” Once the words were out of my mouth it seemed they couldn’t stop. They poured out of me—coming to the Ziyaana, being sealed away as if I were a girl in a tomb. Part of me felt like a girl detached describing everything I’d experienced—the isolation, the loss of my daan, living under Maram’s and Nadine’s eyes. But the girl who’d wept on her first night alone still lived in me, and I felt my voice waver and break.
Idris leaned against the wall beside me, quiet and observing, and let me talk, prompting me with questions, or giving me space to pause when I felt overcome. A strange lightness filled me as I spoke, as if I’d been waiting to unburden myself. I hadn’t spoken about what happened to me to anyone. Who was there to listen? Tala, who had shown me small kindnesses, but feared getting too close to me. The droids, who could show neither sympathy nor understanding.
“How long have you been a prisoner?” he asked as I finished.
I let out a broken laugh. “I don’t know. Weeks? Months? The ball was the first time I was allowed outside of the Ziyaana.”
“These weeks might be a respite for us both,” he said thoughtfully. “Without the Ziyaana to watch our every move.”
I didn’t smile, but the idea of it took hold of me. Time as myself, without a mask; without the threat of Nadine or Maram to darken my days.
“Yes,” I said softly. “It could be.”
The silence filled the space, more comfortable now, tempting me to accept his offer—of respite, of trust.
“What shall I call you?” he asked at last.
I raised my chin, making a decision. “You may call me by my name. Amani.”
17
I woke to the sound of a loutar. The strings hummed slowly, leisurely, as though whoever were playing had all the time in the world. No one sang, and there was no accompanying thump of a bendir. I lay in bed for long moments with my eyes closed, luxuriating in it, hearing old tunes give rise to newer innovations. There had been one loutar player in my entire village, an older grandfather who’d passed away two years before my majority night.
My room was full of shadows, the curtains drawn tightly shut. Two lanterns flickered weakly, and their lights cast strange starry shapes against the floor and walls. It was early yet in the morning. The night’s desert chill still l
ingered, and the birds were quiet. But I could hear serving girls moving quietly outside my room, their soft whispers, the sweep of a broom over the floor. Tala would not come to wake me while I was at Ouzdad; the royals could sleep as long as they liked.
The music faded and my mind turned to the night before, and my confession to Idris.
A small part of me whispered not to trust him. There was no trust in the Ziyaana—its inhabitants couldn’t afford it. But we weren’t in the Ziyaana. The proof of his trust was in my continued safety. For now, at least, my secret was safe, and so was I.
For a moment I worried what would happen if my trust were misplaced. Could I take such a risk? But it didn’t matter, I reminded myself—I didn’t have a choice.
I rose from bed and found a mantle to wrap myself in against the morning chill. The serving girls paused and lowered their heads as I passed through the main rooms and out of the garden. My feet carried me out of the garden suite and down halls painted in cheery colors, with high ceilings hung with lanterns.
Maram and Idris’s suites were closer to the center of the palace, but it was an airy place filled with open courtyards and walkways everywhere. I plucked one of the many books off a shelf in my room and ventured outside. After some direction from a serving girl, I made my way to one of the few swimming areas in Ouzdad. The catacombs didn’t always empty out into hidden rooms and temples. This passage opened up into a grotto carved out from the canyon wall. The walls had been smoothed, and the bottom of the pool was paved with bright orange and green stones. Someone had pruned the ground around it, clearing paths and setting up pavilions. I could see Idris’s shape on the far end of the pool, near its entrance, twisting lazily beneath the water.
Neither I nor Maram could swim, so I settled into the cushioned seat and stretched along its length, the book in my lap. I’d pulled it off the shelf without looking at it, but now I realized it was a child’s book, written completely in Kushaila. It was a collection of folk and fairy tales, the pages’ edges gilt, with a hundred fanciful illustrations of mythological creatures.
I lost myself in the stories. I’d not read Kushaila script since my arrival in the Ziyaana, and like so much else at Ouzdad the experience was part grief, part elation. Part of me felt transported back to the marketplace in Cadiz. Old khaltous had sat in its center, telling old tales, harmless as far as the Vath were concerned. Khadija and I snuck away from our chores regularly to sit at the feet of one storyteller or another and listen to stories about tesleet and ‘afareet come to our world to carry one person or another away. Khadija always liked the most romantic tales; her favorite was the story of Badr, who found his way to the gate-city of the tesleet and married one of its princesses.
The sound of water sloshing over the edges of the pool and a grunt broke my reverie. Idris had pulled himself out of the water, and now stood at the edge of the pool facing me, combing his dark hair out of his face. I was used to the broad-shouldered build of farmers in my village. My friends and I had spied on them, harvesting in the fields, reclining shirtless in the sun, beautiful and brown and perhaps one day husbands. Khadija had flirted with propriety the closer our majority night came. First bringing them food or water, and then later bringing nothing but herself. She’d been braver than me and more willing to grab what—and who—she wanted without ever looking back.
I’d never been such a girl—the arguments with my brothers had always loomed large in my mind. And besides, I’d never wanted any of them. Not truly. I’d flirted, to be sure, but fled anything serious. I was content with my parents’ farm and my poetry.
But today my cheeks warmed and I could not pull my eyes away from the spread of Idris’s back as he turned away from me, or the water trailing from his hair and over his shoulders. I’d never realized how long it was, it curled so at his ears and chin, but wet it clung to the back of his neck, and nearly reached past his shoulders. Idris’s skin was a warm, dark gold, but already the few hours on Gibra had warmed it closer to bronze. Drenched in water and struck by sunlight, he seemed to glow as if he’d emerged out of another realm entirely. The spirits—‘afareet—that stole spouses into their realm were normally women, but today I could believe it of Idris, come to Ouzdad to find a bride.
He turned to pick up a towel, still unaware that I sat on the pavilion behind him. There was a black circle about the size of the palm of my hand inked on his upper arm. I frowned, trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t keep the noise of surprise inside when I realized what it was.
Idris jerked up in shock, and his eyes locked with mine. I felt like a child with her hand caught in the pantry. The heat in my cheeks spread, and no matter how much I willed myself to I couldn’t break the stare. For his part, he seemed to fare just as poorly. His eyes were wide, his mouth slack with surprise. A bird cried out overhead, and just like that we both jerked our eyes away from the other. I pulled my knees up, as though they might shield me from him, and turned my eyes to my book, hoping that he would return to the water or to the palace.
The sound of bare feet slapping against stone moved away from me and toward the palace, and after a moment I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to return to my book. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t follow the words on the page.
I knew that I had to have imagined the mark on his arm, or at the very least misunderstood what it was. It looked like a khitaam, a royal seal. Before the occupation, the members of the royal families bore them just below the neck. They were normally twice the size of the mark on Idris’s arm, and like the daan they denoted family, faith, and ancestry. But the khitaam were more than that. When a member of a royal family came of age their family inked their hopes for them into their skin. May you be just, may you be kind, may you be strong, and on and on. When Mathis outlawed the daan among the nobility, he outlawed khitaams right along with them. The old families would not be recognized except through him, ancestral ties would not be recognized except through him.
The appearance of Idris’s khitaam distracted me enough that I did not realize he’d returned until his shadow fell across my lap. He’d changed from his swimming shorts to a pair of trousers, and a white shirt that still stuck to his skin. His hair was bound away from his face, still wet, the shorter strands clinging and curling against his cheeks. There was a wooden board under his arm, and a velvet bag in his hand.
“Do you mean to take the whole couch?” he asked, staring pointedly at my outstretched feet.
And just like that, the nervous flutter in my chest disappeared. I resisted the urge to sigh, and pulled my feet underneath me, rearranging myself so that there was room for him.
“Thank you,” he said. All traces of his earlier shock were gone, though when my gaze darted to where the shirt stuck to his chest he caught my eye and then looked away. He took the seat beside me, and without saying anything unfolded the board and set it on the table in front of us. From the bag, he pulled what looked like more than two dozen pieces split evenly between red and green.
“Have you played before?” he asked. I flushed again, caught staring a second time.
The board was set, but in mid-play. “Shatranj? Yes. It’s popular with children.”
He raised an eyebrow again. “The elder among us enjoy the game too.”
I picked up one of the red pieces, shaped like an old chariot. The piece was well worn, though I could still see gold flakes in the grooves. “Not,” I said, setting it down, “if they do not want to be accused of treason and sedition.”
Idris snorted, a half smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
“What do farmers need to understand strategy for, if not to revolt?” I leaned away from the board.
He pursed his mouth, as if resisting the urge to bite on his bottom lip. My skin prickled just looking at his mouth when it had no business doing so.
“Well,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “a princess needs to know strategy, and you more than most. When did you play last?”
I lifted a shoulder.
“Then it will be easy to beat you?” I didn’t rise to the bait. He sighed. “I really am trying to help you. You give away too much with your face, and so far you haven’t been faced with Maram’s peers alone. You will need to think strategically to survive.”
“Alright,” I said after a moment. I set my book aside and put my feet on the ground. “You will have to set the board from the beginning.”
He shook his head. “It’s a mansuba,” he explained. “A problem board. Your pieces are trapped like so. How do you get them out?”
I could not have been more than nine or ten the last time I played shatranj, but the rules and strategies I’d learned came back easily. Idris was an engaging player. I was not surprised to learn that he was just as good as masking his emotions while we played as he was everywhere else. He was clever and distracting, and more than once I lost track of the board laughing.
“You are not thinking more than two moves ahead,” he said when I reached for an elephant piece. “You need to be anticipating the end—you won’t solve the problem any other way.”
“I would have to know the other player extraordinarily well,” I pointed out, picking up the piece.
He grinned when I moved. “You could if you weren’t distracted. Like this.” It was a single move, but it landed him on my side of the board. I could see, clearly, how he would win in four or five more turns. And there was no move I could make to stop him.
“You cheated.” Even I could hear the undercurrent of whining in my voice.
“I used the skills available to me,” he said, and plucked one of my viziers from the board. “It isn’t my fault you enjoy laughing. Shall we try another?”
I nodded. The book of fairy tales lay on the table beside me, so I opened it while he cleared the board and rearranged the pieces into another mansuba.
“You can read?”
I stilled, and waited for him to repeat the question. When he didn’t, I lifted my eyes from the page, still silent. He frowned, obviously confused, and then at last his eyes widened.