by Somaiya Daud
There was a bower of incense on a table, newly lit, and its smoke rose into the air, curling lazily, its path lit by late-morning sunlight.
“Tala?”
She hummed.
“What happened to Idris’s parents?”
She paused in her braiding, and met my eyes in the mirror again. “You don’t know?” Her fingers began to move again.
“A farmer’s daughter from a backwater moon, remember?”
Her smile faded quickly. “You remember the second siege of Walili?” I nodded. “The Salihis—Idris’s family—led it. There were others, of course, but before the occupation they were the great military strength of the world. When they took a stand, it meant something.”
“They died during the siege?”
Tala shook her head. “They surrendered after Queen Najat died, to honor her last wishes. But we all knew that Mathis wouldn’t pardon them. He’d never exercised mercy, and it was early yet in the regime. It couldn’t stand.”
I nodded again, understanding, as dread welled up inside me. Whoever survived the siege would have inked the khitaam into Idris’s skin, knowing that a worse storm was on the horizon. That the Imperial Garda might come, that another war could break out, that Mathis would enact an irreversible cruelty.
“There was no trial. No warning. A year passed. And then one night Vathek forces stormed the strongholds of all the dissident families, pulled them from their beds, and shot them.”
My heart gave a single, painful thud. The Purge.
“Idris survived?”
“Idris was allowed to live,” Tala corrected. “Anyone who survived the Purge did so to serve as a reminder to everyone else.”
“He couldn’t have been more than—”
“He was ten,” Tala interrupted, tying a bright red ribbon at the end of a braid. Old enough to remember. Not the haze of knowing you’ve experienced something, but memory, bright and sharp in his mind. And in my ignorance I’d stirred up those memories. I’d given him a bittersweet taste of what he’d lost. His heritage, yes, but his heritage bound up in blood and misery.
It felt as though I’d discovered a bruise over my own ribs, new and tender, soft and waiting for blood to break through.
“Amani?”
I blinked, and focused, looking at Tala in the mirror. My bottom lip was caught between my teeth, red from worrying. She watched me with concern and a measure of her usual censure. The final braid was tied off, and she twisted the collection together into a bun low at the back of my head. Red ribbons fluttered and wove through it, and over it she draped a silver net hung with small coins. She rose from behind me and came to sit beside me.
“You cannot fix this,” she said, taking hold of my chin. “Do you understand? He is not yours to help—he belongs to another.”
“I know,” I said, rising from the vanity. How much was writ on my face for her to see? I supposed it was not a difficult guess to make.
Tala was silent as I dressed. It was only when I stood in front of the mirror and caught my expression that I understood her concern. I looked dazed, my kohl-lined eyes wide, my bottom lip red from worrying. I didn’t recognize the girl, as near to love struck as I’d ever been, staring back at me. When I looked at Tala she shook her head.
“Amani,” Tala called as I began to make my way down to the Dowager’s. She looked truly worried. “Stop. While you can.”
I thought of Idris’s hand over mine and felt something tighten painfully in my chest. Even if I could, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
Tala’s gaze didn’t leave my face, so at last I nodded and continued on.
19
I paced in front of the entrance to the Dowager’s wing of the palace. The Dowager’s quarters were in the far end of Ouzdad, their back walls flush against the canyon wall. To enter them, a person had to pass through an enormous pair of doors that sealed the entire wing off from the rest of the palace. Like much of the palace, they were beautiful, but they stood out for the paintings framing the doors. A pair of tesleet, each with a single wing extended, stood guard. The feathers in their wings glimmered, shining in jeweled tones: green, red, blue, purple, and their heads were crowned with white feathers.
Idris appeared behind me, silent as a shadow, and caught my wrist. I’d twisted my fingers into the chain of my necklace without realizing it, but even that couldn’t distract me. We were both quiet as he untangled the chain from around my fingers.
His voice was low as he said, “Thank you for doing this. I know you’re risking a lot. But I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
I nodded without looking up. “I know. It’s not any less—I still worry.”
The Dowager didn’t rise when we entered, but Furat did. I eased myself onto a floor cushion, and a moment later Idris and Furat followed suit. The Dowager didn’t shift her gaze from the open window or greet either of us.
Itou bint Ziyad’s resemblance to her granddaughter, to me, had shocked me into silence. The angular sweep of her chin, the wide mouth, the eyes framed by wrinkles. She could have been my grandmother, we resembled one another so.
I was still staring at her when she looked up and caught my eye. It was difficult not to flinch away from the look on her face—age and grief weighed heavily on her and I couldn’t tell if she always looked this way, or if she only ever seemed so when Maram was around. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like for either Maram or the Dowager. One to be confronted with proof of her failure to defend her people, and the other with how much her grandmother must see her as a representation of that failure.
“Ya’bnati,” she said in Kushaila. Child.
I wasn’t sure what inspired me to say the words in Kushaila, but I did. “Dowager Sultana,” I said. “I’m not Maram.”
Furat jerked back as though she’d been struck. I imagined she’d never heard Maram speak in Kushaila. The Dowager for her part leaned back, her face calm and grave, the grief and fatigue wiped away.
I imagined that after the war very little could shock her, or move her to reveal her shock.
“Then who,” she replied in Kushaila, “are you?”
“I am your granddaughter’s body double.”
Her eyes remained on my face. She looked at me contemplatively, as if appraising every one of my features.
“Name?”
“Amani, sayidati.”
“Qadissiya?” she asked at last. Cadissian?
I nodded hesitantly.
Her mouth quirked in a smile. “My brother was fostered on Cadiz,” she said, still speaking in Kushaila. “They drop letters in their Kushaila frequently; it took him years to lose the habit. Aji.”
Come here.
She waved me over. After darting a glance at Idris, who smiled at me encouragingly, I rose to my feet and came to sit beside her. Her hands were dry on my face, and the rings she wore were cool against my skin.
“How strange,” she said when she let go. “How did you come to be in my granddaughter’s place?”
Furat watched the two of us curiously. She couldn’t understand what we were saying, I realized, and I switched to Vathekaar.
“Imperial droids stormed my majority night,” I started. The words came easier now that I’d said them before. “My face was scanned and I was kidnapped and taken to the Ziyaana. I—I was trained to be Maram so that I could take her place.”
The Dowager raised her eyebrows. “Her place?”
I cast my eyes down. I didn’t want to offend the Dowager, though she likely knew the violent responses Maram elicited in the general public. “It’s not safe for her to go outside,” I said.
“The people hate her,” the Dowager said wearily. “Since she has done little to earn their love.”
“Yes, sayidati.”
“The Vath are not good at inspiring love,” she said. “Or receiving it, I gather.”
“Sayidati?”
“Coyness is not our way,” she said and I heard a little of Maram’s brusqueness in her ton
e. “My granddaughter and I are estranged. Which I imagine is why she sent you in her place—it is difficult for us both. That and the rebels.”
“Sayidati?” I prompted again.
“The rebels her father believes I have something to do with.” The weariness had crept back into her voice. I could hear what she didn’t say. The rebels I don’t consort with. She’d fought her own brother in a civil war, but looking at her now, I didn’t think she had the stomach to hunt down all that was left of her family.
I bowed my head. What could I say? There were no reassurances I could offer. Maram had demonstrated all the things the Dowager knew to me repeatedly.
“Well,” she said. “Tell me about yourself. Your family?”
“Still in Cadiz,” I said. She tilted her head, waiting for me to continue. “My mother and father run a farm there, with my brothers.”
“More than one?”
My burgeoning smile wavered. “Two,” I continued, more somber. I missed them every moment of every day—how could I not? I prayed for the millionth time that Husnain was unharmed from the night in the kasbah. That they all were. “I am the youngest.”
“Ah,” she said. “The apple of your father’s eye, then?”
For the first time in a long time, I grinned. “Maybe,” I said. “He favored me. We had much in common.”
“Oh?”
“He was a botanist before the occupation—he was teaching me before— Well, before.” Idris squeezed my hand under the table and I found myself smiling a little. “He liked poetry as much as I did and taught me that, too, when my mother wasn’t looking.”
Furat made a small noise under her breath, but shook her head when I looked at her.
“I was the same,” the Dowager told me. “My brother took after my mother, and I after my father. We hunted together often.”
My cheeks ached from smiling so. “We don’t have that sort of thing on Cadiz. At least not now.”
“No. I suppose not. We used to be able to hunt here, but my comings and goings are restricted now. I’m—the Vath refuse me the right to journey to my old estates in the south.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have accepted anyone’s refusal. When I would have gone anywhere in the stars that I wished.”
“I’m sorry, sayidati.”
She smiled. “Save your pity for the young and the dead, girl,” she said. “It won’t help me.”
The minutes ticked by as we spoke. I thought I’d said all I had to say to Idris, but the more questions the Dowager asked of my life and my family, the more I had to say. In kind, I learned about her childhood and upbringing. I could see it pained her, to speak of her life before the Vath, a bittersweet joy to remember the good times knowing they would never come again.
It felt—I couldn’t express how it felt to sit with her and speak in Kushaila. Like slipping back into my old skin. I knew this girl who smiled and talked of her family without bitterness. Who canted her head when the music started in the courtyard and recognized the tune. Who laughed when a boy made a joke for her benefit.
Idris was more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. His shoulders were loose and he kept smiling at the Dowager, refilling her tea glass without being asked. Had he been denied this during his visits with Maram?
“I haven’t seen you smile so in a long time, cousin,” Furat said.
He made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I smile all the time.”
“There is smiling,” the Dowager said, lifting her tea glass. “And then there is smiling.”
He lifted a shoulder but ducked his head.
“You are called Amani, yes?” Furat said. I nodded. “Was it you or my cousin I met at the Terminus ball?”
“Me.”
She leaned back, her eyes a little wide. “Consider me suitably impressed,” she said with a laugh. “You were every inch Her Royal Highness.”
I grinned. “Your cousin disagrees.”
She waved a hand. “We are not all looking for the next trap in a waltz.”
“We do not all have reason to be,” Idris chimed in. “But you were very good, Amani. I almost didn’t believe it until your incisive critique of my storytelling abilities.”
“Don’t be so excruciatingly boring, then,” I said, trying not to laugh.
If Husnain were with me he would be having a good time, I thought—he loved laughter and loved it more over tea and good food. He and Idris would get along. At the very least Husnain would enjoy making fun of him for his talentless translations and storytelling.
The Dowager watched us, at last relaxed into her seat, a soft smile on her face.
“You must miss your old life very much,” Furat said carefully. “Your old … self.”
“It has been difficult. More difficult than anything I thought to endure in my life,” I told her honestly. I had not been so relaxed, I realized, since my majority night. “Ouzdad has been a reprieve.”
“A deserved one,” Furat said. “We are happy to have you with us.”
The Dowager rose to her feet with a creak of old bones. Idris rose with her and reached for her cane. She waved him off.
“No,” she said. “The girl. Amani. It’s been some time since I’ve walked the garden.”
He held the cane out to me with a smile. I felt the corners of my mouth rising without my say-so in response. When I rose to my feet and took the cane, he squeezed my arm.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“No gratitude is required for what is freely given,” I said.
“It wasn’t free. I know that.”
For a moment we stared at each other, and I felt warmth flow through me, new and strong.
“Go,” he said at last. “The Dowager is waiting.”
20
I slept soundly that night. I could hear the whistle of wind through the canyon, and the babbling of our courtyard fountain, and a hundred other sounds of a large estate settling into sleep. Sounds largely absent from my wing of the Ziyaana. I woke refreshed before the sun had risen and the palace woke. I didn’t bother waking Tala, and dressed on my own. She would likely have a fit when she realized I’d gone out of my quarters in the simple steel-gray qaftan, with little jewelry, and my hair twisted into a simple braid.
I donned a cloak and made my way through the palace and toward the temple.
The Dihyaan temple was austere when compared to the rest of Ouzdad. Its entrance was an archway carved with script from the Book, borne up by two simple white pillars. The courtyard was laid with simple gray and green marble tiles, with a single stone fountain at its center, and ringed with benches and reed mats. It was lined on three sides by corridors, whose white columns were capped with dark wood. The roof tiles were a bright, cheery green and stood out even in the murky dawn light. It was a legendary structure. Half its walls had been hauled from the wreck of an ancient civil war and to the moon’s surface.
There were no icons here, no murals depicting our leaders or followers. The walls and pillars were carved with old script, verses from our Book, reminders of Dihya and peace and faith. I heard the patter of bare feet against stone, the whisper of robes, the rising murmur of people in prayer. On the other end of the courtyard stood a pair of dark wooden doors, carved with fruit bearing trees: the doors to the zaouia. On the other side of those doors anyone who needed shelter would find it, anyone who needed a place to rest or alms or help would be welcome.
I smelled incense, freshly burned, and the clear sharp scent of the temple itself that emerged from stone and people and worship. I couldn’t make myself enter the temple proper, so I took a seat in the courtyard beneath the awning, and breathed.
For the first time in months I felt something like peace settle over me. The tightness in my chest, in my muscles, unwound. When I exhaled it felt as though a hundred small pebbles fell away. For a sliver of a moment I wasn’t Maram or Amani. I was a girl in a temple, filled with nothing but want and ex
pectation. The sun was rising, and the light carved its way across the courtyard, splitting it between light and shadow. A bird perched on the curved edge of the fountain, warbling at the water as though it might warble back.
A ringed hand landed on my shoulder. I jerked to a stand in surprise and spun around to find Furat on the other side of the bench. Her hair curled loose over her shoulders, as plain as mine, and in the same simple cut of qaftan that I’d donned. I was not the only one who’d dodged her handmaiden this morning.
She smiled. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Amani,” she said. She was calm and collected, deeply at ease in this temple. There was a serenity to her, a deep composure that I knew I would never be able to unseat. I doubted very many people could.
We both took a seat on the bench, quiet as the morning light slowly brightened the courtyard.
“This is my favorite place in the whole world,” she said. “There is no other place that fills me with such stillness.”
“You seem to be at home here,” I noted. “I mean, in Ouzdad.”
“The truth is I never wanted to leave Ouzdad,” she said without looking at me. “I cried when my grandmother suggested it. My whole life I’d avoided the Vath and my cousin—they have no power here. And then all of a sudden…”
“Then why leave?” I couldn’t understand it. If given the chance I would remain at Ouzdad forever. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a haven away from Vathek politics and machinations.
Furat paused, considering me. I realized with a jolt that she was someone who wouldn’t be forced into doing anything—not unless it served her own ends.
“Duty. I have a duty to my family, to my grandmother, to Andala. I hate what our planet has become, and I can’t stay here and complain. I should have gone sooner, but…”
“Can I ask … why does Maram dislike you?”
Furat scoffed. “Your time in the Ziyaana is turning you into a diplomat,” she said. “Maram hates me. I’m fairly certain if she could she would have me executed.”