Mirage (Mirage #1)(22)

“Now you’re interested,” he said.

I held my tongue, though he deserved a tongue lashing. I was angry—at myself for being so easily baited with the mention of home, and at him for gaining this small victory.

“It’s about Massinia,” he continued. “And her marriage.”

I restrained myself from closing my eyes. I knew the story—most people knew the story. But I had memorized the poetic forms it had taken, the formalized prose by Ibn Saj’, the varying anecdotes in biographies. I didn’t want to hear the story. Not tonight. But if I stopped him, he’d grow suspicious.

He lowered his head to mine while we danced, his voice even and melodic.

“Massinia was of the Tazalghit, horse masters of the desert,” he began. “They were tribal, and all their tribes were ruled over by women.”

His voice was strong and even, though hearing the story in Vathekaar was not ideal. Kushaila had a rhythm to it, and the stories were told in verse, so by the end you felt you were hearing a song you’d heard all your life. Idris’s telling of the story brought me no comfort. Instead, nostalgia for home rose up in me, bitter and hard. I didn’t want to hear the story in this cold, alien tongue. I wanted Ibn Saj’s prose or the poetry I’d kept back in the Ziyaana.

“She fell in love with a shepherd,” he continued. “And for a time she was happy.”

“But?” I prompted.

His hand tightened on my waist. “But Massinia’s heart did not belong to her,” he said. “It belonged to her tribe and her family. And their discovery might spark a war.”

“Did it?” I asked. I knew the answer, but Maram likely didn’t.

“Her sisters discovered her and killed him,” he answered. “And a war with his family followed.”

I shut my eyes and allowed Idris to guide me through the last steps of the dance. Likely I would never find a love like Massinia’s. When I was younger I’d dreamed of such a thing—quiet moments that built on each other into something lasting. But I lived in the Ziyaana now. Though my heart belonged to me, my body no longer did. Finding such love would be impossible.

“What a sad story you’ve told me,” I said at last, looking up at him.

He grinned. “She gets a happy ending.”

“Oh?”

“Do you know what happened to her? At the end of her life?” he asked.

I did know, but by all accounts Maram was not religious, so I waited for him to continue.

“She disappeared,” he said.

I was hard put to not snort. She hadn’t disappeared, at least not in the way historians meant. The tesleet who’d first saved her, Azoul, returned to her—after the wars of unification, after the transcription of Dihya’s Book, after her love died—and offered her a feathered cloak.

Return, oh mourner, he said to her. Set your feet in our Citadel.

And she’d donned the cloak and slipped out of the hands of everyone who’d ever wanted to make use of her and her legacy.

I was pulled out of my reverie by Idris’s voice. “The Stewardess is here to escort you away.”

Idris and I finished our dance with one last twirl. Then without another word he escorted me across the floor to Nadine, who stood in her customary black, her ever-present droid at her side.

“The king requests an audience,” she said when I reached her.

I forced myself to stand tall and not waver. If I couldn’t pass muster with His Grace, then all was lost. I heard Maram’s voice again, her comment to me during our very first meeting: your very life depends on it. Yet she needn’t have said the words aloud for me to understand what was at stake. I knew how the Vath worked; we all did. Failure was not an option.

Idris brushed a kiss over my cheek, then let me go.

My heart beat erratically as I let her lead me away, toward the throne at the far end of the chamber—it had long been unoccupied as the night wore on, but now I saw that the king was indeed in his place. King Mathis, Maram’s father. King Mathis, Conqueror of the Stars.

I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone.

“You are in fine form tonight,” she said as we walked through the crowds, which parted as they saw us approach. “I hope you are enjoying the ball.”

“Thank you, my lady, I am.”

I had managed an entire room full of courtiers, I thought to myself. Even Idris, who seemed to know Maram best of all, didn’t appear to suspect I was a standin. Surely I could brave one more trial.

My breath did not come any easier, but I stiffened my spine despite that. I could go without breath if it meant I would live to see the next morning.

A man in a high-backed chair spoke urgently to the advisor next to him. At our approach, he turned and waved the advisor away.

Mathis, son of Hergof, High King of the Vath, Emperor of the Outer Ouamalich System, Protector and Inheritor of the Stars of the Inner Reach, sat before me.

I had seen his face before, of course. It was impossible to escape our king. His profile graced our new currency and most administrative buildings. He was taller than I expected, his chest and shoulders broad, hard beneath the black of his military jacket. His silver hair gleamed in the torchlight, cropped short and close to his skull. His eyes, blue, seemed to glow, and every story about the Vathek alienness rushed to the forefront of my mind.