Mirage (Mirage #1)(16)

I shot a look at Tala, but her eyes were fixed on the scene in front of us. If Furat was of the Wattasis, then she was Maram’s cousin—a member of the former queen, Maram’s mother’s, extended family. They were Zidane, not Kushaila, and had held strongholds in Qarmuta, to the south. Their alliance with the Ziyadis and Salihis hundreds of years ago had brought stability in a time of civil war. Morbid fascination jogged my memory; Furat was the last of the Wattasis. The king had executed her parents, and her elder brother. Like Idris, she was their last surviving heir. What had made him spare one small child at the start of the occupation? And why would she ever willingly return to the Ziyaana?

“Isn’t—wasn’t she in exile?” I whispered.

“Look,” Tala replied. “Her daan are gone. Likely the price for being welcomed back.”

A chill came over me—she had bargained away what I would have given anything to keep.

“What brings you back to court, cousin?” Princess Maram said.

Furat sank to her knees elegantly. “I come to serve,” she said, her eyes on the ground. “As is my duty.”

Maram pressed her lips together, eyes flashing. “We shall see.”

*

After several days of such observation, I was called again by Nadine for testing. If I were to be successful, I would need to understand the complicated relationships Maram had formed with the rising makhzen—Andalaan nobility who were folded into the new world order—and High Vathek class. Maram stood with her in the courtyard today, her features hard.

On days like this it was easy to feel small. Maram’s hair was threaded with gold chain, her mouth rouged, and her bejeweled slippers dazzled in the light. She was rarely serene, but today there was a calm in her, a surety. I knew what it was she felt, could feel it in her gaze. Today she was sure she was my better, that despite our looks, she was the future queen, not I. It was easy to feel small when she felt this way, but it was also easy to feel safe. When Maram was sure, everyone was safer.

“Let us see what she has learned, then. Can she name the members of my circle?” Maram said, not looking away from me.

“Ask her,” Nadine said.

Maram said nothing, though she raised both her eyebrows as if to prompt me.

Her silence sparked annoyance in me, and I spoke almost before I thought. “Your Highness, there’s Furat of the Wattasi clan, heiress to the Dowager Sultana’s estate on the moon Gibra,” I began.

She moved so quickly, I didn’t see it coming. Today she’d worn no fewer than four rings, and they each made themselves known against my cheek as she backhanded me. Pain radiated through my face, and I tasted blood. My heart beat in my chest so fast I could scarcely draw breath.

Still, despite the pain, a grim satisfaction rose inside me at her response. I was the Andalaan, I was the Kushaila girl with Kushaila features. That she had been born with my face, my same brown skin and twisting dark hair and dark eyes—the same forehead and cheeks and mouth … It was the height of cruelty, remarkably unfair. If not for this link, I would never have been kidnapped out of my village. I might still be living with my family.

I didn’t break my gaze with Maram.

“Why,” Maram began, taking an angry hold of my face with one hand, “do you start with her?”

“I remembered her—” I started, and she struck me again on the other side of my face.

“Furat,” she spat at me, “is a disinherited lesser cousin, with no holdings and no prospects. There is nothing to remember.”

Her eyes were wide, her face flushed, and there was, I realized in a moment of disembodied horror, my blood on one of her rings. It was strange to feel calm flow over me like water. I was still frightened, I still understood that Maram could hurt me. But something inside of me had changed; I knew now that she could change my body but she had no power over my spirit. And more satisfying, I knew that she had a weakness—she was not so different than me. She was not untouchable.

“You should not let her bother you so,” Nadine said, her voice even and calm. She meant Furat, not me, I realized; my presence was too insignificant to register. “She is, as you said, a disinherited lesser cousin.”

“Why? Why does he allow her to live? Why does he allow her to live with my grandmother?” The weakness in her voice both satisfied and frightened me. I’d learned that it was in moments of weakness when Maram was her most cruel.

“There is misery for her in the absence of all she could have been and had,” Nadine said, as though she were reminding her. “You should pity her, not fear her.”

I realized, too late, that I would have been better served lowering my gaze. When Maram turned to look at me again, something still and eerie settled in her face.

“Are you enjoying this?” she asked me, her voice finally under control. “Do you like seeing the object of all your hate upset?”

She caught me by the throat, her rings pressing down so hard I could barely breathe. “Don’t worry,” she breathed into my ear. “You will understand soon enough.”

She pushed me away, hard enough that I stumbled back and fell. When I had gathered myself again, she was already making her way to the exit, the train of her gown billowing out behind her.





9

Every morning the dome over my courtyard brightened to mimic the light of the rising sun. Shut away as I was deep in the Ziyaana, there were no windows, no glimpse of a real sun or breeze. Only the dome and its hollow sun and the humming orbs that came to fill the courtyard at night. I sat in the gazebo, a mantle around my shoulders, and cradled a glass of tea in my hands. Across the way a droid hummed softly as it pruned a tree. It had neither flowered nor borne fruit, and I wondered if the droid would decide the tree wasn’t worth saving.