by Somaiya Daud
I paused in front of Idris’s door. The giddiness from this afternoon hadn’t passed. I pressed a hand against my ribs as another flutter of joy washed over me. What would he think if he knew where I was going tonight? Would he be angry? Would he understand?
It was, I told myself, a problem for another time.
The halls were just as quiet as the rest of the palace, and the light sconces were turned down to half light. I moved as quietly and quickly as I could, and kept my eyes turned to the ground. Arinaas’s agent dared not breach the walls of the palace, especially when it was believed Maram was in residence. I would have to make my way through to the lowest levels of the palace and out through the tunnels that led to drinking wells. Arinaas’s agent would be waiting at the very end of the westernmost tunnel.
The tunnels were less quiet than the palace proper, filled with the sound of rushing water and the hollow knock-knock as water buckets bumped against one another in the wind.
The moon was full tonight and the sky clear. Its light cut a clear path, illuminating the tunnel’s entrance, and framed the waiting agent. He cut a stark figure, dressed all in black, his turban and face veil covered in a thin layer of desert sand.
“You will return, oh mourner,” he said in Kushaila.
“Set your feet toward the citadel,” I replied.
The tight lines of his shoulders relaxed and he drew down his veil. Dihya, he was young. Too young to have received his daan, too young to have started to grow a beard. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. But his face was hard and lean—he’d suffered. Suffered enough to take the risk of becoming a rebel before reaching his majority. Suffered enough that no one had stopped him.
“Well,” he said, “your face. Let’s see it.”
The words were fast and harsh—regional. He was from the Eastern Reach.
I stepped out of the shadow of the tunnel and pulled down my veil. His face whitened and his mouth thinned in shock.
“I thought she was joking,” he said hoarsely. “Dihya. You’re the spitting image.”
I didn’t smile when I said, “That’s the point.” My fingers folded over the small data packet and pulled it out of my gown. “This is what you came for. It’s a list of all the Vathek munition depots in the Eastern Reach, as well as base locations and strike units.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “And no one knows you’ve taken this?”
“I’m good at being her,” I said. “So, no. No one knows.”
I dropped the data packet into his open palm. It was such a small thing, but meant so much, would do so much, to defend the rebels and civilians here. More than Idris’s presence, more than anything any of us could do in the present moment. The war wouldn’t be won by thwarting a single bombing campaign, but lives would be saved and hope secured. It was a step, and one we desperately needed.
“Siha, yakhoya,” I said as he folded his hands over the packet. Health, brother.
“Baraka, yakhti,” he replied. Blessings, sister.
the ziyaana, andala
33
“So,” Maram said, “was I right?”
I looked up from fiddling with my skirts. I’d returned to the Ziyaana nearly a week ago and Maram had wasted no time summoning me to her chambers.
While I’d been gone, Mathis had at last named her sole Imperial Inheritor of the Ouamalich System and its ancillaries. She seemed happy—she’d gotten what she wanted. But there were moments when I caught her looking less so, as if the responsibility weighed too heavily on her mind, her gaze distant, her fingers twisted in the chain of her mother’s pendant. Perhaps I gave her too much credit, but part of me wondered if the flippancy with which she addressed her ascension to the throne was borne out of something deeper than what she showed the world. If she truly was more her mother’s daughter than her father’s, but couldn’t afford to show it.
The confirmation ceremony was tomorrow—sped up, I suspected, because the king wanted to distract from the progress the rebels had made in the Eastern Reach, where the Vath’s munitions depots were being raided and destroyed. Maram had come to my chambers with three chests full of gowns ostensibly to help her choose one for the ceremony. “Right about what?” I asked.
“About the Banu Salih?”
“It will shock you when I say no, Your Highness, you were wrong.”
She laughed. “Do tell.”
“Some of them are frightened of you—the ones your age. But the elders … they all mourn you.”
“I had not realized I was dead,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“You—” I began, and then stopped. Too often I forgot that there were lines I could not cross. Too often I fell into the trap of imagining Maram and I as equals.
“I love it when you realize you are about to be incredibly presumptuous,” she drawled. “Few people have such a skill. Please, go on.”
“You look like your mother. I think they’re sad that you don’t value them. Family is important, especially to a dying tribe like theirs.”
She wasn’t looking at me. “They might have thought of that before trying to usurp me when I was a child.” Despite her harsh tone, her fingers were now white knuckled around the charm.
I wanted to tell her no one held her responsible for the occupation, or the Purge, or any of her father’s evils. No one saw Mathis when they looked at her—until she acted like him. But there was no way to do it, no way to be sure. And likely, above all, she would not take the word of a village girl from an isolated moon. Even one that was her double.
Maram was watching me with interest and some confusion.
“You make me think I might have liked a twin sister,” she said as she pulled her hair into a tie. “A real sister; a friend instead of a competitor.”
I felt myself smile a little at the thought. “You would have done better with an elder sister, I think.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say so?”
“Elder siblings protect their younger siblings. Or the good ones do, at least.”
I expected Maram to scoff, but she just stared at our reflection, wondering.
“Maybe,” she said at last.
The pendant came out, clasped against her palm. “Sometimes … sometimes I think about my mother. I know people think—well, I don’t know what they think. But I loved her, and her dying … I never forgave her for it. There are days where I think—” She closed her eyes. “There are days where I think she won’t forgive me for what I’ve done. For what I’ve watched other people do.”
She opened her eyes again, and shook her head as if coming out of a dream.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
I gave her a weak smile. “Nor do I.”
She stared at me as though there were a secret she might divine just by looking. “Tell me what to do,” she whispered.
My jaw went slack. “What?”
“Tell me,” she said, her eyes wide, “how do I … how can I…? How do I rule over people who hate me? How—how can I be the queen my father wants when I know it turns my mother in her grave when I consider it?”
“We are not responsible for what cruel masters enact in our name.”
“I’m a little responsible.”
“But what can you do about it now?”
She looked away from me, her jaw tense with grief and rage. I hesitated before taking her hand in mine. “You must think of the days and years to come as a shatranj board. If you wish to help—it will not happen any other way.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“For … for the beginning. Nothing I do will change what I did. But—”
“Sisters fight, sometimes.”
She coughed out a laugh. “Sisters do not have one another mauled half to death by hunting birds.”
“You have not read enough Kushaila folktales if you believe that.”
A weak but real smile emerged on her face.
“Do you … really see me th
at way? As your sister?”
She wasn’t looking at me, and instead focused on her hand clenching and unclenching around her mother’s pendant.
“I am the youngest of my siblings,” I said at last. “My elder brothers always watched over me. And now—now I will try to watch over you.”
Her eyes widened just a little. She leaned in and pressed her lips against my cheeks, furtive and quick, before she pulled her hood over her hair and secured the veil over her face.
I watched her go, wondering, all too aware the next time I saw her she would be that much closer to being queen.
* * *
I spent the rest of the evening deep in thought, curled up by my window. I’d been right about Maram, about what she wanted and was afraid of. She wanted to be a good queen, but the Vath had done their work, and she was too frightened to take the right steps. She only needed help.
The communicator pressed against my charm gave one sharp beep, blisteringly loud in the quiet of my room. I startled, confused for a moment before realizing the noise came from my charm. My fingers shook as I peeled the communicator gel and put it against the spot behind my ear. We had a rule—only I ever reached out, never the other way around. If I beeped randomly I would be quickly found out.
“Yes?” I said hoarsely.
A sharp breath, almost like relief, sounded through the communicator. “Thank Dihya,” Arinaas said. “I was worried we wouldn’t get to you in time.”
Unease pricked at my neck. “In time for what?”
“We’ve sent an agent to Walili, to attend the inheritance ceremony,” she said. “He’s our best shooter and his job is to kill Maram. Mathis is likely to be present and he’s been instructed to kill him first, of course, if he has the chance.”
Unease turned into panic. My fingers numbed and my breath went short. Kill Maram? No—not when it seemed, at last, that she could be persuaded into being a truly Andalaan queen. Not when we could save lives and avoid bloodshed.
“You can’t!”
“This is war, Amani,” she said, voice hard. “We can and we will.”
“No,” I said, thinking quickly. “It won’t be Maram at the ceremony tomorrow. It will be me.”
Arinaas sucked in a breath. “Get out of it, Amani. Do you understand?”
“Call the assassin off!”
“You are not a princess to command me,” she snapped. “And I may not be able to. He is traveling from the Eastern Reach. The message may not reach him in time.”
“Please, Arinaas,” I said softly.
I heard her take in a breath. “Dihya help us all.”
34
I greeted the next morning with a single thought—I couldn’t live with myself if Maram’s blood were on my hands. She was a cruel girl who had been raised among crueler relatives, but she wanted to do the right thing. She was capable of it, more so than any of the Vath. And if the rebels succeeded in killing her—even if they killed Mathis as well—they would have to contend with Galene, a girl who did hate Andalaans as baselessly as Mathis did.
I dressed quickly, thoughts racing, desperate to find a way around this. The only way, I knew, was to do as I’d told Arinaas I would do. I’d been bluffing, but the possibility that Arinaas wouldn’t be able to call the assassin off ate at me. I would have to take Maram’s place and hope I could get a signal to the assassin in time. And I could only do that by convincing Maram to let me. I summoned a droid to take me to her.
Maram was alone in her room, standing in her wardrobe and examining herself. Her hands twitched over the folds of her skirt nervously, then flattened as if she were willing herself to be still. When she saw my reflection in the mirror her eyes widened in surprise.
“What are you doing here?”
I forced myself to smile. “You aren’t the only person who gets bored,” I said. “And I thought you might want help getting dressed.”
She looked relieved at the idea. “Yes, please,” she said. “I can’t decide between three gowns.”
We fell into our ritual quickly. She, sprawled over the divan, and I pulling one then another gown from the wardrobe and modeling it against myself. She calmed, but only a little. Despite her stillness on the couch, her frantic energy, her nervousness, bled through.
“Your Highness?”
“What?”
“Would you prefer I go in your place?”
Her eyes jerked up from the jewelry box she was sifting through. “What?”
“I could go in your place,” I repeated.
She shook her head. “No. It has to be me this time. It’s my inheritance ceremony.”
I didn’t sit beside her like I wanted to. Instead I inclined my head. “You just seem nervous. And I am here for a reason.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Are you offering to enter the crossfire for me again?”
I was, I marveled. How quickly our relationship had changed in the span of a few months. This time I did sit beside her. “Older sisters protect their younger siblings,” I said. “Remember?”
She bit the corner of her thumb, worried and deliberating. “Alright,” she said softly, then lay a hand over mine. “Thank you, Amani. I— Thank you.”
I inclined my head again and breathed a sigh of relief. One problem solved. Now I only had to figure out how to communicate to the assassin not to kill me.
* * *
I was used to the heavy weight of Maram’s gowns and jewelry, but this was the first time I’d ever worn her crown. I eyed it on the velvet cushion. What I was expected to wear today in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of Andalaans on the edge of riot was the old Andalaan crown, last worn by Maram’s mother, Najat.
It was beautiful—a golden tesleet with outspread wings looped around in a wide circle, its chest an enormous green jewel. It looked impossibly heavy. Most people now assumed the bird on the royal crown was the Vathek hunting bird, the roc. But the tesleet had been on the Ziyadi royal seal centuries before the Vath came to our world.
Maram said nothing to me. The two of us stood there quietly, the crown between us. I was silent as I knelt and waited for her to settle the crown on my head.
Dihya protect me, I thought.
* * *
Nadine led me to the north end of the palace. The air felt heavy, as though someone had lit too much incense to mask something far worse. There was a growing murmur the farther north we went, and I was reminded of the stories my mother had told me about the Ziyaana. Everyone spoke of it as if it were a living, hungry thing, waiting to devour those who passed beneath its shadow. In the old days, it must not have been so hungry for blood. But now it squeezed out every drop, ground down every bone. When the large double doors to the wings parted, the Ziyaana’s murmur transformed into a roar.
I didn’t know if this section of the Ziyaana predated our Vathek rulers. It was a wall of balconies, made so that we might look out at Walili, and so that they might look up at us. It was full to the brim, every courtier and servant milling around, pressed up against the railings. A hot, stifling wind blew in.
Thousands had gathered outside the Ziyaana. They were pressed up against the walls, fit into alleys, hanging off of roofs. Brought here by royal decree, they were restless, waiting for the ceremony to start, waiting to be freed to go home. A pair of overwrought thrones sat waiting for Mathis and Maram; they were made of dark wood and veined with black metal. The back of each was carved in the ornate Vathek style, baroque and floral, gilded and gleaming in the sunlight. A clarion call went out, as though they’d been waiting for us, and pulled my eyes away from the throne. The king was already seated, flanked by a pair of hovering droids. In the sunlight I could see the glimmer of the shield they’d erected around him. He’d survived in his court of vipers by being prepared, I supposed. I imagined it would serve him well here.
Did he care so little for Maram that I had none of the same protections—or did her body double not require them? I knew the sort of man Mathis was, and yet still I was shock
ed at his carelessness, his ruthlessness, with his own child and the people around her.
He met my eyes and didn’t smile. I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to smile at me—I remembered being on the receiving end of his approval in the council meeting and repressed a shudder. There seemed to be no pride in his daughter’s success or her ascendancy to the throne. Did Mathis not love Maram? Did he love any of his children, I wondered.
Hovering in the air were several screens, so that everyone would be sure to see the proceedings. A droid handed me a great, sheathed sword. It had belonged to Mathis’s father before he killed him, and was the symbol of his empire. I bore it aloft, its hilt in one hand, the flat of its sheathed blade balanced on the other.
“By the Will of Vathek House of Lords,” a minister recited in Vathekaar, his voice booming. I began to walk. “And the Rightful Will of the King, Lord Mathis, Conqueror of Stars…”
A shiver went up my spine. The ceremony would be broadcast not just around Andala but through all parts of the Vathek empire. The eyes of the whole world were on me, Andalaan and Vathek alike. And if Arinaas hadn’t been successful in reaching her agent, a pair of those eyes were an assassin’s eyes.
“In accordance with our High Laws, we hereby declare Maram vak Mathis Inheritor of the Realm, Sole Heir to the Ouamalich System and its ancillaries, future queen of Andala, Gibra, and Cadiz. Protector of Qilbir, Verdan, and Shelifa.”
I knelt at Mathis’s feet, the Vathek sword still held aloft, and cast my eyes down. The minister removed the Andalaan crown from my head. A moment later another crown, Vathek and made of excelsior, dotted with a hundred gems mined from Shelifa, settled on my hair.