Mirage (Mirage #1)(26)

“I like you better when your tongue is sharp, village girl,” she said, a smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth.

I had the sense to not say “today,” and kept my eyes on her hands, instead of meeting her gaze.

“The assignment, Your Highness?” I said.

Her laughter had not transformed the tension in the room, at least not for me. I knew by now how mercurial her moods were, how quickly a smile or the appearance of friendship could turn. She would remember something, or I would move in a particular way, or she would simply change her mind about the way she wanted to be.

So I waited, and I watched.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and pulled her braid over her shoulder. “My grandmother, the Dowager Sultana—in exchange for remaining off-world, I must visit her. It’s meant to demonstrate”—she waved her hand dismissively—“something. Continued good will between savages and conquerors. You are being sent in my place this year.”

There was no way to hide my confusion. I was meant to be a standin when there was trouble. What harm could there possibly be in going to her grandmother’s estate? Too late, I noticed the clench in her jaw. For once it was not me she was looking at, but a tapestry hung on the far wall in the room. I watched her, hands clenched in my lap, as she made her way around the divan and onto the balcony.

She didn’t brace her hands on the railing as I would have. Instead, again, she stood perfectly still, one hand twisted easily in the folds of her gown, the other idle. She looked picturesque—a vision of Andalaan royalty, burning in red.

“There are rebels on the moon where she resides,” she said at last, her voice dangerously flat. “Some suspect they have flourished because of her idleness.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Maram was universally reviled by Andalaans—there was no way around that. But her grandmother, no matter how much a patriot, could not condone a rebel plot to assassinate her only grandchild.

Maram flicked her gaze to me, and then back to the garden below, uncaring. “You needn’t look so shocked. It’s your way, isn’t it—tribal infighting?” she sighed. “Go. I tire of you. Nadine will tell you the rest.”

I forced myself to speak as I stood, the words tight with fury. “It’s in our blood, I suppose,” I said, and left.





14

The day of my departure dawned early. I sat at the vanity while Tala moved between the wardrobe to the many open chests spread around the room.

“What are the Gates?” Tala said. She was quizzing me as she worked.

“The Gates of Ouzdad are the unassailable walls of the Dowager’s estate, brought from an ancient temple on Andala to the moon Gibra at the time of its terraformation. It predates the space age.”

“Name the Dowager’s living relatives,” Tala said, with a brisk nod.

“She had two younger sisters and a younger brother before the invasion,” I said. “The brother rebelled in the twelfth year of her reign, sparking the civil war. He was banished to Cadiz and was among the dead in the first wave.”

“And her sisters?”

“Died in the third wave of the invasion,” I said.

“The populations on Gibra,” she prompted.

“Largely Kushaila,” I replied. “Though a coterie of the Tazalghit settled there some two hundred years ago.”

Tala made a soft noise of approval, her quizzing over.

I stared at myself, hair twisted like Maram’s, a circlet wrapped around my forehead, the dark green of the qaftan gleaming in the soft light of a lantern.

I set the stick of kohl down and stood, finished with my preparations. Small earrings, two rings, instead of Maram’s customary four or five, and a single bracelet. I’d forgone even a necklace in light of the Dowager Sultana’s tastes.

A droid waited for me in the courtyard, one of Maram’s cloaks draped over an arm. It was not alone.

Maram stood beside the droid, uncharacteristically quiet and patient. She was dressed as I normally dressed—an austere dark blue qaftan, with little embroidery, no jewelry, and a cloak with its hood raised over her hair. A veil hung limp from one of her hands, waiting to go back over her face.

She cracked a smile when she saw me. “Oh, don’t look so stoic,” she said, coming forward. She reached over and pulled the loose braid from over my left shoulder to my right. “You’ll have a great deal of fun on Gibra and then you’ll come back, and that’ll be that.”

She seemed in a great mood, her smile wide enough that her left cheek dimpled. There was no edge to her today, no anger or sarcasm in reserve. I didn’t trust it for a second.

“Where will you go?” I said, rather than poke at her mood.

She beamed at me. “Somewhere far. I don’t mean to be a caged bird while you go traipsing through my grandmother’s catacombs.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t thought about that, really. I was certainly caged in when she was cavorting through the Ziyaana or traveling the system. Still, I was not a princess. There was no reason allowances should have been made for me.

“Somewhere cooler, then?” I asked.

She hummed, lifting a shoulder, and plucked at my gown. “Perhaps. It’s not for you to know.”

The droid beside her lifted my cloak, a signal to prepare to leave. I draped it over my shoulders, slid my arms through the small openings in its fabric, and raised the hood.