Mirage (Mirage #1)(24)

A manufactured closeness, but an effective one.

“How … quaint.”

The gown she wore made it seem as though she poured herself onto the divan, as if she were a flood, when she sat down.

“The king?”

“Could not tell the difference,” I said quickly. “It was a complete success.”

I hated that she flinched. “Come here,” she said, and patted a spot on the divan.

I watched her as I would watch a viper, but did as I was commanded. In the moonlight she looked soft and young and vulnerable. She was young, I remembered. Seventeen, nearly the same age as me. I wondered how often Idris saw her like this. Did this make it easier to be kind to her? Was this the girl he remembered when he told her stories?

“You do look very much like me,” she said, and tilted her head. “One could almost forget you were a farmer’s daughter.”

“Am I meant to be flattered?” I asked.

She laughed, loud and bright. “You’re developing a sharp tongue,” she said. “Tell me, at least. Did he speak to you?”

For a moment, I blinked, confused. “Ah—His Eminence. No, not more than a few words. He asked about your plan for your inheritance, but—he seemed quite busy.”

“Yes,” she said, her smile slipping. “Though not too busy to remind me I still haven’t secured my own inheritance from my half sister.”

My eyes widened. “You have a half sister?”

Maram nodded, her gaze far-off. “Galene, from my father’s first marriage. His only Vathek marriage, as everyone is kind enough to point out whenever given half a chance. We were brought to Andala at the same time, though she’s been relegated to its northern climes. Technically she doesn’t qualify for the line of inheritance—a stipulation of the peace treaty is that only my mother’s children can. But it doesn’t keep her from trying to supplant me.”

“But—” I started.

“But Mathis, Conqueror of Stars, has never been held back by the laws of others.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Do you know the story of how my father came to power?”

I shook my head; I’d never heard it before.

“He was a second son,” she began. “His father expected him to be a second general as befitting his order of birth. My father refused—he killed his father and took control of both the planet and its military. Mathis stops at nothing to secure his power and rule. He will disinherit me if he believes it suits his aims better.”

I stared at her, unable to comprehend such ruthlessness.

“I imagine a farmer is not so merciless or single-minded, hm?” Maram asked, apparently done with her story.

“My father…” I’d seen my father often, but that happened when you lived in a small house and worked a small farm in a small village. Still, I knew what Maram meant. Some fathers, like Mathis, did not have time for their children. Baba had always been present, had encouraged the dreamer in me despite my mother’s insistence that he not. I never doubted that he loved me, and I never felt as though I’d disappointed him.

“He loved poetry,” I said without meaning to and turned to look out the window. “He wrote poetry for my mother before they were married. It was a necessary skill in courting—and he taught me.” I smiled.

My parents were not a showy couple. Some of my friends’ parents brought one another flowers or re-declared their love every festival. My parents on the outside were very close friends, though the heat and passion that characterized most love poetry was absent. When I was young, I’d wondered sometimes if theirs had been a marriage of convenience or of love. But then when I was eleven or twelve I’d returned from the orchards earlier than either of my parents expected me. I’d found them sitting quietly in the living room, my father’s head in my mother’s lap as he slept. When he opened his eyes to look up at her he smiled and she’d leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. My father was gentle by nature—my mother was not. But in that moment I’d seen what she might have been like when she was young, and what she was like when she was with my father.

Maram raised an eyebrow. “What need does a farmer have for poetry?”

“Every Kushaila is a poet,” I said. “Poetry is our way. It’s how we court, how we tease, how we—”

She raised a hand. “Enough,” she said, voice threaded with laughter. “Don’t break into vapors. My, my—you look pleased at such a heritage.”

“Aren’t you pleased with yours?”

I’d said the wrong thing. Her smile turned hard and brittle, and her warmth evaporated. She stood up as if to remind me that I was the lesser of the two of us.

“Well,” she said, and her smile made me shrink back. “Congratulations on your success. You needn’t look so suspicious.”

She made her way to the door. For a moment she stood in the entryway, framed by the faint light coming from the courtyard. What a lonely figure she struck, I thought. Without family or friends.

And then she lifted the hood of her cloak over her head and was gone.





13

A few weeks after my return from Atalasia, I watched Tala’s fingers in my hair as she wove in semiprecious stones polished down into beads. The first time she’d shown me what she meant to put into my hair, I’d gaped in astonishment. But time had done its work and now the fineries afforded to a body double no longer shocked me.