Mirage

by Somaiya Daud

  “Kneel,” the minister called out. “In the name of the queen.”

  The sound of a hundred thousand people kneeling at once echoed through the air.

  “In the name of the queen!”

  The ceremony was over. All that was left was for me to rise to my feet and sit on the throne at Mathis’s side. If the assassin was going to strike, it would be now, while I was in full view of the Andalaan public. My hands were surprisingly still despite my fear as I rose to my feet and turned to face the crowd.

  Then there was a scream.

  I flinched at the sound, though I could not tell from where it came, and watched the crowd shift like a roiling sea. There was another scream, and the crowd surged forward, toward the balcony—toward me.

  Though I’d known this moment was coming, I froze in fear as they swarmed in all directions, knocking over the barricades that separated them from their Vathek spectators, and the ropes meant to keep them in line.

  One of the Garda moved forward and slammed his baton into the face of a terrified Andalaan man. And then another, and another—chaos erupted, and yells sounded over the pounding of fleeing feet.

  One of the Garda collapsed in front of me. I stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, and watched a red stain spread across his chest. When I looked up I saw a boy, several feet in front of me, pointing a shaking blaster at me. His face was clear of any daan, his eyes bright and fierce as they looked at me.

  Dihya, I thought. It was the boy from the Reach.

  I threw myself to the ground as he fired twice, and something exploded behind me. He’d hit the throne where I was meant to sit. Where there had been a gold curlicue of design there was now a crater. The king had already been ushered away by Garda and droids.

  I looked up at the boy advancing toward me. I hadn’t even learned his name. Our words had all been business. He was a rebel forged in fire—what in the worlds would make him stop?

  “Siha, yakhoya,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear.

  Health, brother.

  He froze, his eyes widening in surprise, his gun still aimed at my chest. He was close enough to touch me. It was all the time the Garda needed. A squadron swept in and slammed him into the ground.

  No, I thought, but it was too late. I’d stopped him, but now—

  “We need to go,” Nadine said, appearing behind me, and I turned to see her racing up the stairway. “Now.” She jerked me away from the shooter and I tried to remember why I was doing this: for Maram. To save her life and mine. I couldn’t throw it all away right now, but I was not just her body double; it wasn’t even the thing I cared about the most. I was a rebel, and I’d condemned one of my own to prison or worse. A third shot rang out, and rock and dust sprayed down around us as a corner of Maram’s throne blew apart. I flinched away and into Nadine’s grip and at last allowed her to lead me away.

  I turned at the sound of a scream just behind me, animal and in pain. The Garda were dragging the gunman up onto the platform against his will. He struggled, kicking his legs out and twisting his body this way and that.

  He could not have been more than fourteen. He reminded me too much of the boys in my village, of my brothers when we were young, face dirt-smudged, cheeks hollowed from hunger. He didn’t even have his daan, I thought again. If it had been Maram, would he have gotten away and back to his family? Did it matter? I’d had a choice between him and Maram. His life or hers, and I’d chosen hers.

  I’d chosen her.

  “Maram,” Nadine said, and urged me toward the steps, but I resisted.

  The Garda forced the boy to his knees, and I realized what they meant to do. His hands were behind his back, his face hard as he stared at the ground. The Garda pulled out a sidearm and aimed for the back of his head. I’d known and I’d done this and still alarm roared through me, as loud as the gunfire still ringing in my ears. I twisted in Nadine’s arms before I could think better of it, my heart beating so hard I could feel the blood drumming in my veins, and came between the boy and the Garda.

  I knew no one saw me, whoever I was now, they saw Maram. And they couldn’t harm her. She’d been named inheritor of the realm, future queen. They’d all kneeled and witnessed it.

  “Your—Your Highness,” the Garda stammered. “What are you doing?”

  “You can’t kill him,” I said.

  “But Your Highness—”

  “Are you trying to start a riot?” I asked. My voice didn’t shake, and I managed, somehow, to channel the strongest part of Maram inside me. Aloof and haughty, with a lifted chin and a calm demeanor. I remembered all too clearly the cost of interfering with the Vath and their business. But I was one of them, today. I ruled over them. “He’s just a boy. Think of what will happen if you kill him here.”

  He hesitated, but then to my relief he tucked away his firearm and gestured to two of the other Garda.

  “Take him in,” he said just as Nadine caught me by the arm and pulled me off the stage. The last thing I saw was Maram’s future throne, shattered to pieces, its beauty riddled by holes standing a strange sort of witness as the Garda shoved the boy toward a prison transport.

  35

  A droid brought me to the glass-domed aviary where I had taken some of my first lessons in the Ziyaana. Roosting in the trees above was the roc, feathers fluffed up, warbling to itself softly. I was led beyond the places I was familiar with, to an alcove thick with vegetation. There Maram stood, alone, cloaked in a severe black qaftan, without ornament except for the royal seal she’d asked me to decipher hanging from her neck.

  She didn’t look up when I arrived, nor when I sank to my knees. For long moments, we remained still, master and servant, future queen and current subject.

  “Tell me,” she said at last, her voice even, “that it was simply bad luck on your part that had you standing in for me today. Tell me you had no prior knowledge of the attempt on my life.”

  I lifted my eyes from the floor just as she looked away from the fountain. I knew what she would see in my face—grief, loss, but most importantly, the truth. I could deny it all I wanted, but Maram wouldn’t believe me. She’d lived her life in fear of her sister usurping her and now I had done—or seemed to do—just the same.

  I rose to my feet slowly. “I never meant…” I began.

  “To hurt me?” She scoffed. “Don’t lie. It’s beneath you. It’s all anyone has ever done, my whole life. Lied to me, used me for their own aims. Until…” She stopped and looked at me, furious at herself for letting the word slip. Her hands shook, bunched up in the folds of her gown, white knuckled with rage.

  She was not angry that someone had tried to kill her, I realized with a start. She was angry that I’d known, that I hadn’t confided in her, that I’d manipulated her. She was angry at everything it implied. I had secured her trust, I had befriended her and joked with her and cooked for her. I had offered to take her place in engagements and advice when she was sad and confused.

  But it was all a lie. In her eyes, I was a serpent who’d stolen into her heart and then attacked when her defenses were lowest.

  “I—” she began, her voice breaking on the word. She shook her head and stiffened her jaw, as if that would rid her of her hesitance.

  “Please, let me explain,” I tried again.

  “Nothing you say will fix this,” she said. “Nothing. You have shown yourself to be like everyone else around me.”

  I flinched as she spoke. I’d plotted against her in the beginning, knowing that any success I had—the rebels had—would end in her failure. Our aim from the beginning had been to disinherit her, to dismantle the Vath, to run them out of our system. Did it matter if my opinions had changed, even if only about Maram? That I truly cared for her, that I saw her as a sister? That I’d risked my life for hers? Would any of that matter to her?

  It had to. Didn’t it?

  I reached out to her, and watched her flinch from me as I had from her.

  “Whatever you might think,
” I said at last, “I was sincere.”

  “A viper is never sincere,” she spat.

  Anguish caught fire in me, and I stepped back, nearly a perfect mirror of her, my hands fisted in my skirt.

  “Please, Maram,” I tried again. “I took your place and risked my life for you. You know that.”

  I watched her turn that over in her mind. She knew I was right—that whatever else she might think of me, that whatever had come before it, I had protected her today as sisters did. I was her friend and I knew she wanted that to be true. She didn’t want to go back to the way things were any more than I did, and if I could just make her see—

  “I told you not to converse with her without a guard present, Your Highness,” Nadine said, sweeping into the garden. She laid a pale, ringed hand on Maram’s shoulder. “She saved a rebel, a person hired to kill you. Andalaans—and this one in particular—are untrustworthy to the core—what might have happened if she attacked you?”

  I knew it was my fatigue and lingering horror that made it seem as though the hand on Maram’s shoulder were threatening, as if at any moment she might wrap her fingers around Maram’s throat. Maram looked up at the stewardess, her eyes wide, nearly pleading.

  Please, I thought, understand who the viper is.

  The hesitation disappeared bit by bit from her face, the wide-eyed shock and horror was shuttered away. Nadine’s smile spread just a little, became just a bit sharper. I watched as Maram methodically closed her heart, as her face smoothed and turned to stone. When she looked at me, the girl I’d come to know and care for was gone. In her place was the Imperial Heir I’d met months ago, rigid, furious, and isolated.

  “She behaved in a manner I never would have,” Maram said, not looking at me as she spoke.

  I held my breath, terrified of what she would say next. So far, Nadine knew only what she’d seen at the coronation. Would Maram reveal what else she knew to Nadine? Would she tell her I was a rebel?

  “Confine her to her quarters. She is not to leave that wing. Ever,” she said, turning away from me. “And punish her as you see fit.”

  Nadine inclined her head. “I serve at the will and pleasure of Your Highness.”

  “Maram!” I cried out, but she was already walking away.

  Nadine’s smile bloomed into something fouler as she signaled to her droids. I was forced back down to my knees, with my hands behind my back. Maram had disappeared into the greenery of the aviary. I had neglected my duty to the rebels to save her—how could she not see that? Whatever other loyalties I had, I’d protected her.

  “Please,” I tried a second time. “Maram!”

  But my cries were swallowed up by the foliage and cut short by the angry shriek of the roc as it launched itself into flight.

  * * *

  Back in my rooms, I wore myself out pacing, waiting for Nadine to return and enact whatever punishment she saw fit. Fear at what would slow her approach preyed on my mind. Would she bring the roc into the courtyard again? Or was I to suffer some new Vathek form of punishment I hadn’t imagined? I had survived the fires of my first week in the Ziyaana. I knew I had the strength to survive nearly anything. And yet, I was afraid and could do nothing to quell that fear. I found the poetry Husnain had gifted to me on my majority night, but even its evocations of peace and endurance could not calm my heart. Every platitude sounded hollow.

  How had I failed so thoroughly? I’d condemned a rebel to death. I’d lost Maram’s trust. I had likely doomed the rebellion.

  Eventually I took a seat, where I fell asleep. The sitting room was dark when I jerked awake, and found Nadine standing over me. She looked like a phantom, with her silver hair gleaming in the dark, and her black gown melting into the shadow. She was as impassive as I’d ever seen her, and I could not fight the wave of fear that swept through me, hot and nauseating.

  “Get up, girl,” she said. Her voice cracked through the air like a whip. “What was the single command I gave you when you first arrived?”

  “To be Maram,” I said, my throat tight.

  “Is there something in your breeding that makes all you Andalaans so stupid?” she hissed at me.

  I couldn’t stop myself from shrinking from her.

  “You will look at me when I speak to you,” she said.

  When I looked up at her, her face was twisted into a sneer. But it was her eyes that terrified me, flinty and calculating, as hard as they’d been the night we met. I’d gotten used to seeing her approval, not the undiscriminating hate practiced by the Vath. She made a noise in her throat, as if disgusted, and threw a cloak at me.

  I had experienced Nadine’s hatred, which to me seemed a far worse thing. My kidnapping had been her doing. All her actions were borne not out of the circumstances of her birth and how she had been raised, like Maram, but simply because she believed she was better than me. She had no reason to hate me—I had done nothing to her. And yet, as I put the cloak on with shaking hands, I could feel her revulsion radiating off her in waves.

  “Put that on and follow me.”

  The halls were empty so late at night, lit by flickering sconces. Every shadow seemed to hide a ghost, and more than once I imagined an eerie, pale face disappearing around a corner just ahead of us. Nadine never reacted, but I clutched my cloak tighter around me, and my breath quickened behind my veil. The droids who lined the halls like so many corpses jerked awake at our footsteps. Their eyes spun, widening to take in the little light we provided, and their heads moved, following us as we passed them by.

  We descended into the underground rotunda together and then emerged into a dark, empty room with an enormous screen at the far end. For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My mother looked out at me, her face blown up over a holoscreen, larger than life—but they were the same eyes, the same wrinkles, the hard mouth. I hadn’t seen her face in months, and the sight of her nearly made me burst into tears.

  My heart jumped, and I walked forward, one hand outstretched.

  “This,” Nadine said, “is a live feed.”

  And then the image pulled out.

  My mother and father and two brothers.

  Husnain, I thought. Alive and unharmed from the night in the kasbah. My joy died as quickly as it came.

  All four of them were on their knees, with the Imperial Garda behind them. Both of my brothers had taken beatings to their faces—Aziz with a split lip, and Husnain with a cut over his brow and an eye that was swollen shut.

  My throat closed up. I’d wondered what new form of punishment Nadine would devise for me. But there was no need to devise a new method when a tried one would do just as well. Take the family of a dissident and hurt them until the dissident broke or the family died. Whichever came first. I couldn’t move from where I stood.

  “I am loathe to strike you. I fear I would not stop and then your injuries would be beyond repair.” Nadine said from behind me. “But I have no need of a family from a backwater moon that can barely farm enough to keep themselves alive. A family that you, however, love and cherish.”

  I couldn’t look away from the image on the screen. I’d dreamt of them, prayed for them—but I’d never imagined that this would be how I saw them again.

  There was a beat of silence, then Nadine said, “The woman.”

  One of the Garda moved on screen, and slammed the butt of his gun against the back of her head. My mother was silent, though her face contorted into a grimace. I cried out, and rushed forward, one hand outstretched, as though I could catch her.

  “The younger boy,” Nadine said.

  I had forgotten the most important lesson I’d learned in the Ziyaana: there was no end to fear. You could not become hard enough to escape it. Terror swept through me as one of the Garda pulled out a knife. The ground seemed to tilt underneath me. It was an image straight from my nightmares, so much worse than anything that had come before. Husnain.

  “Please!” I said.

  I hated myself in that moment. Hated my voice, hated
my shaking, hated that I could still be victim to Nadine’s cruelty, even after everything I’d survived. “Whatever you want—”

  Her lip curled. “You know what I want, girl.”

  The knife pressed against my brother’s throat.

  “I will never do anything like that again,” I said, frantic as the knife pressed and a drop of blood welled up. “I know—I know the cost. Never. I swear it.”

  The knife continued to press and my heart beat frantically, choking up my lungs. “Please! I swear on my brother’s life.”

  “Release him,” she said derisively, and the knife left my brother’s throat.

  I collapsed to my knees, breathing hard. My brother couldn’t see me. None of my family could. But my mother made a choked sound when the Garda moved away, a sound I echoed. I reached out for the screen. My hands were shaking.

  Nadine walked around me, and caught me by the chin.

  “Remember,” she said, voice harsh, “what it is I hold over you. You have many family members and there are many, many ways to inflict pain. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I choked out. “Yes, my lady.”

  She released me with a snarl of disgust.

  “You may remain here until I feel like looking at you again,” she said.

  After a moment, I heard the door groan shut.

  There was no window in the room, nowhere to look but at the screen before me. Just as I grew used to the horror of that last frozen image of my family, it all started again—they’d recorded it, I realized. They were playing it back for me to watch, again and again. I measured the time by the start of the recording—my family, sitting down to dinner. The door being kicked down. Aziz and then my mother being hit. I could not forget the sounds. I could not breathe through the sounds. Over and over, there was the sound of flesh being struck and then a voice crying out. It all blurred together.

  At the end, they were alive. At the end, the Garda marched out, and my mother rose, swaying, to her feet, and cried out.

  “Where is she?” she said, and took hold of a Garda’s arm. “Where is my daughter?”