Mirage

by Somaiya Daud

  “Why?”

  “Before Najat died—Idris’s and my—our mothers led the loyalists in a coup hoping to depose Mathis and put my brother on the throne.”

  The beginning of the Purge, I thought.

  “It failed,” I said, as though it needed clarification.

  “It failed,” she repeated. “The entire Wattasi branch was snuffed out. Except for me, to remind everyone else what was at stake when you lost against the Vath.”

  “That doesn’t explain why Maram hates you,” I said, frowning. “Or why Idris is engaged to her and you were exiled.”

  “Maram—she is incapable of viewing this half of her family rationally. Her father sent her to Luna-Vaxor after the coup, and I think it only made her more paranoid. The Vath have no love for her, you know. She is a half-breed, so far as they are concerned, and those who do not outright hate her for her heritage resent her for being the presumed heir to the imperial throne. But they bred a deep mistrust of us in her—she believes if I am allowed freedom I will take up arms against her.”

  “Idris won’t?”

  “We are two sides of the same coin,” she said softly. “Mercy and ruthlessness. We have been raised to pray for Vathek mercy and to do anything to keep it.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Maram to grow up in such a way, reviled for the circumstances of her birth, hunted by one half of her family, targeted by her blood. What kind of person emerged from such a childhood? What sort of woman would that create? Constantly afraid and hateful and cruel, all in the name of self-preservation.

  Nor could I imagine growing up as Idris and Furat had, terrified that whatever stability they’d managed would be snatched away from them in an instant. Their poise despite that astonished me.

  “Is she wrong?” I asked her carefully. “About you?”

  She took her time answering. “If I believed I could—that anyone could—turn her against the Vath, I would not be so afraid of her coming reign. I would try to befriend her, to help. I would even swear fealty to her. But she’s turned the whole planet against herself. Hope that patience will win us the day has waned.”

  I turned my gaze to the sky. We were coming dangerously close to treason. There would be no new regime, King Mathis made sure of that every day. And Furat’s peers among the makhzen would not support her, no matter the state of the world.

  She rested a hand on my arm. “Do you know what my grandmother said to me before I went to the Ziyaana?”

  I shook my head.

  “She told me, everyone in the Ziyaana will tell you to resign yourself to being crushed,” she said. “Do not. Even your happiness is rebellion.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from speaking. “Happiness may be rebellion, but it won’t win the war.”

  Furat eyed me, still considering. “No, it won’t,” she said at last.

  The wind blew through the courtyard.

  “But there is another way.” Furat squeezed my arm. The bells heralding the opening of the outer gates rang, followed by the sound of hooves beating against the ground. “Come. There is someone I’d like you to meet.”

  21

  Riding through the gates were three Tazalghit women, robed and veiled, dressed in dark blue. Two rode on black horses, but the rider in the front, the one climbing off her horse, rode a white stallion. She tugged the veil from her face and pulled the turban from her head as she walked toward us. She made no sound, and unlike the two women who remained astride their horses, bore no sword at her waist, nor any charms.

  I struggled to control my expression when I saw her face.

  This young woman looked exactly like Massinia.

  She couldn’t have been much older than me, though she was significantly taller. Sunlight reflected off her dark skin, and caught on the silver coins hanging from her ears. Her mass of tightly curled hair was tied down to a single braid that ran from the crown of her forehead and in a thick rope down her back. She bore two black daan, one on each cheek, though her forehead was clear of the crown of Dihya. There was a scar that ran from the corner of her ear and disappeared beneath her jaw.

  I could not dismiss her resemblance to Massinia any more than I could dismiss my own resemblance to Maram. She was younger than most depictions of her, but the fierceness of her features, the hard line of her mouth, her face—the resemblance was not uncanny, it was exact.

  Furat lowered her mouth to my ear. “They are not here to hurt you,” she murmured, then walked away.

  Gooseflesh pimpled up and down my arms as a revelation shot through me. The whispers about the rebels on Cadiz came hurtling back to me in flashes: Massinia reborn, and rallying the rebels. It couldn’t be true—could it? And yet … I was looking at living proof of it. Here she was, the rebel leader. The blood never dies wasn’t a figure of speech. It was the reality.

  I almost spun around as a second wave of shock hit me. Furat. Her determination to return to the Ziyaana was suddenly made clear. Duty, she’d said. A different sort of duty than I’d imagined. She was spying. She was spying for Massinia. My head spun thinking about it.

  But why had she brought me here?

  The girl made a sharp movement with her hand and her party turned their horses, including the white stallion, and rode away. A smile spread across her face, as though she found something in my appearance amusing.

  “Join me,” she said in Kushaila. It was clear she was used to being obeyed.

  There was a table further in the garden bearing a metal chest and two small goblets. She took a seat on one side, folding her legs beneath her, and I took the other. The chest held shaved ice; she filled the goblets and set them between us so the ice could melt, then set her hands flat on the table deliberately, as if to do otherwise would invite the loss of control.

  “Were you born with your face?” she asked. Her Kushaila sounded different from mine, sharper, slicker.

  “Yes.” My voice was thick with shock.

  Like everything about her, the gaze she directed at me was sharp and critical. Perhaps it was her way, the Tazalghit way, to search out weaknesses in everyone she met. Or perhaps, like me, she could not believe I was a double.

  She huffed a laugh when I lifted my chin. “You must feel quite lucky, then, to have been raised out of poverty.”

  I could not contain my derision. “Only a fool would hope to be raised to the Ziyaana. A cage is a cage even if gilded. Even if it softens my hands.”

  She smiled and her face transformed—younger, more radiant, the daan in her left cheek creased inside a dimple. “You are not stupid, then,” she said, and pulled one of the goblets to herself. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “And your given name?”

  I was wary of her. “Amani.”

  “Pretty,” she replied. “My mother named me Arinaas, though few people use that name anymore. I was nine when my mother realized the rebels were tracking our camp through the plains. You can guess what they wanted.”

  “Massinia reborn.”

  She lifted the goblet in confirmation. “They’d seen the mark on my shoulder, and took it as a sign from Dihya.”

  My eyes widened. Surely she didn’t mean—? “The mark?”

  She set the goblet down and pulled at the collar of her robe until she’d revealed most of her collarbone and shoulder. Warmth drained out of my face. The scar started just below her throat, a starburst of white, and stretched out across her shoulder in a dozen thin lines. It looked as if a company of flares had erupted from the scar, searing her flesh. And woven through all of it was gold. Not paler flesh or inked lines, but gold, shining and glittering in her skin.

  “And did the rebels get what they wanted?”

  She lifted an eyebrow, her mouth curling in amusement. “My mother was not a fool. She knew what would happen—I would survive perhaps a year as they paraded me around. Then the Vath would find me and execute me.”

  “But now—”

  “She told them if sh
e found them following our camp again, she would kill them. And then she went to Andala just after the Purge to see what had driven desperate men to this moon looking for a savior.”

  It was not hard to imagine what she found. Even if I did not remember the Purge, I remembered that year. It felt as if the mothers in our village would never stop crying. As if the Garda would never leave. As if there was never enough food or water or money. My mother’s last living brother and his family disappeared that year.

  “What happened when she came back?”

  “She called the other queens of the Tazalghit,” Arinaas said, meeting my eyes. “And they planned. The rest of my life, the future of our world, the destiny of billions.”

  The newly emerged softness on her face turned hard. Her anger was likely a constant thing, always banked just below the surface, fighting for air against all the demands her body represented. I knew, Dihya I knew, what that felt like. Neither of us asked for such faces, for marks, for fate, and they’d been thrust on us anyway.

  “Tell me,” she began. “Do you believe in Dihya?”

  “I do,” I responded.

  “I wasn’t so sure I believed in Dihya when I was your age,” she said. “I couldn’t understand why I’d been given Massinia’s face and her mark and nothing else. I don’t wake up from dreams of a past life. I have none of her patience, nor her sight. The Book doesn’t reveal hidden meanings. I have only her face, and most days it felt as if I were being punished. People came to my mother’s camp once word spread, looking for faith or relief or reassurance, and I had none of that.” She was staring into her cup, gaze unfocused, as though she could see the girl she’d been, young and bitter and alone. “Do you know what I realized?”

  I shook my head.

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m really Massinia, any more than it matters if you are the Imperial Princess.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A princess and a prophetess can do incredible things. We can bring justice to millions. We can do what ordinary people cannot.”

  And what was it that ordinary people couldn’t do? My heart pounded out a fast rhythm as my mind raced, trying to pin down all of the things she thought we—I—could do.

  “What is it you want of me?”

  “We need a spy in the Ziyaana.”

  “You have Furat,” I said suspiciously.

  “Furat is a lesser cousin in disgrace,” Arinaas said. “You are a body double. You have access to places and information she does not.”

  I said nothing. There was no need for me to speak—she knew the risk she was asking me to take. She set a small black box on the table between us.

  “Inside the box is a communicator—undetectable by the Ziyaana’s security system. All we want now is information. Watch, listen, report anything of interest.”

  “All you want now,” I repeated, staring at the box. The idea thrilled and frightened me at the same time. Spying was not a game—I knew what would happen if I were discovered. I couldn’t be rash or foolish and throw myself into something without considering the consequences.

  “We may call on you,” she replied. “It is the nature of our work.”

  “Rebellion,” I clarified.

  “Freedom,” she countered.

  “So.” She gazed at me. “Will you do it?”

  As childish as it might have been, I wished for my mother. I wanted her advice, but more than that I wanted her shoulder to lay my head against. I could almost see her, smell the rose water she put in her hair some days, see the firm line of her mouth. I wanted her hand on my shoulder as it had been countless times, wanted the squeeze of reassurance.

  Arinaas’s face looked as though it was carved from stone. She wouldn’t have room for softness—not if she had stayed alive for as long as she had. Not if she had spent her life evading the whispers and rumors that led the Vath to her. She had a fire in her, an unquenchable flame that would devour all that stood in her path. This, I thought, had to be what kept people at her side. Once they found out she had none of Massinia’s memories and only her appearance, it would have inspired those around her. This was what made me lean forward, as if I were helpless to resist the flame of hope that burned in her.

  Whatever people might have expected her to be, Arinaas had forged herself out of that fire. She’d become someone worth rallying around.

  Hope. Hard won, soaked in blood, a hope that burned as much as it lit her way. The opposite of what I’d nurtured while still on Cadiz. That had been a bright, gleaming thing, reflective like a moon in the sky. Harmless, but without its own warmth. Could I live my life knowing I’d never stepped close to such a flame? Could I exist in the Ziyaana knowing I had chosen my shadowed half life, had accepted a horrible changing in my soul, instead of reaching out with both hands with something that might remake me? Arinaas’s flame might char my skin and break my bones, but in the end I would emerge remade, newer and stronger and a version of myself no one could snuff out.

  I’d prayed for a sign, for hope, for a purpose in being sent to the Ziyaana. I’d been answered with something I hadn’t even imagined.

  “I will do as you ask.”

  “Good,” she said, as if she’d expected it. She held out a hand, palm turned upward, and after a moment I realized what she wanted. I’d only ever seen soldiers greet or depart in this way. I reached across the space between us, laid my arm over hers and grasped her elbow, and she did the same to mine.

  22

  Dawn hadn’t yet broken, but I stood staring into the fountain in our courtyard. My presence had triggered the water so that it flowed, lapping gently. I thought of Furat’s words to me from yesterday, Happiness is rebellion. Since arriving at Ouzdad I’d found both—happiness and an ease with Idris I hadn’t felt since the days before my majority night, and rebellion—the rebellion I’d heard about since I was small, but hadn’t believed in. I knew the possible cost. If I were caught I would find no mercy in the Ziyaana. But I also thought of the night I had been taken from my family; of the look on Husnain’s face as he cried out that the Vath could not have me.

  If he could see me now, I thought, he would be proud.

  In the lantern light my reflection peered back up at me, broken up by waves and ripples. I recognized this girl, with her round cheeks and round chin, her wide eyes, always lined with kohl now. She was not a farmer’s daughter, not with the gold chain hanging from her neck and bejeweled earrings. And she wasn’t Maram, either; she would never look so vulnerable as I did now.

  I realized, with surprise, that she was me.

  “Your Highness.”

  I was too tired to be shocked or frightened, though Idris’s feet had made no sound on the stone floor. He stood in the entry to the bower dressed as simply as I was, in a dark green jacket edged with white thread, and loose matching trousers. His hair was loose as it always seemed to be here, and his face was still shadowed with beginnings of a beard. One of my—Maram’s, I reminded myself—mantles hung over his arm.

  “Why are you awake?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why are you?”

  When I said nothing he came forward and settled the mantle over my shoulders. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it would keep the dissipating morning chill at bay. I clutched it around my shoulders and tried not to stare at him. I’d thought of him too often since the morning I’d sung for him. And as the realization that I could choose who I was grew in my mind, so had my feelings for him.

  He pulled my braid from under the mantle and settled it over my shoulder.

  “Idris—”

  “I want to show you something,” he said at last. “Will you come with me?”

  * * *

  He took me down into the catacombs. His hand, dry and cool, wrapped around mine and pulled me gently through the half dark. There were no lanterns, but when I looked up, there were small light orbs hovering close to the cavern ceiling. They hushed and whispered at us in rhythm, as if keeping time. The walkway extended well b
eyond the Massinite murals. He led me down a path that forked to the left, and then another. At last there was a doorway of light at the end of the tunnel.

  We emerged into an impossibly large cavern whose ceiling had caved in years ago. Just below the opening was a lake, its water dark and still. The air was heady, filled with the scent of flowers and greenery. Everywhere I looked, plants and trees grew, twining themselves around stalagmites, crawling up the walls.

  “What is this place?” I breathed.

  “The oasis Janat,” Idris said. “Furat and I discovered it when we were young. The moon is filled with such underground oases. It’s how the settlers terraformed it.”

  “Are—are we safe here? Alone?”

  He nodded and tugged on my hand. “The Tazalghit control nearly all the oases, but this one they ceded to the Ziyadis as a gift centuries ago. The Dowager’s men guard it well. We’ll be safe.”

  We followed a path that led us up a ledge and onto a cliff overlooking the entire cavern. For a while we stood there, watching sunlight fill the cavern, quiet as the sound of birdsong rose. When I wandered off, Idris let me be. I appreciated this—bringing me here, not asking questions—more than he would ever know. In the Ziyaana, no one wanted or tried to put me at ease. Even here at Ouzdad, the Dowager liked me because I spoke Kushaila, while Furat watched me because of how I could serve the rebellion, and Tala despaired constantly of my inability to follow rules.

  This was the first time anyone had offered me respite without asking for anything in return.

  Eventually I found a small pool, flush against the cavern wall. I slid off my slippers and with a grateful sigh, hung my feet over the edge of the rock and into the water. It was cold, but the air was heating quickly and it didn’t take long for me to shrug off the mantle I’d clung to earlier. Janat was hushed, as if waiting for something holy. There was birdsong and the sound of flowing water and the rushing of leaves, but there were no people here, or so it seemed. It was like being in a temple, waiting for the call to prayer, for the sun to rise, for the sound of worship. I closed my eyes, breathed, and felt the weight of the last week slip from my heart.