Mirage (Mirage #1)(28)

His smile deepened. I’d amused him. Lovely.

“Did I not measure up?”

I looked away. I wouldn’t take the bait. I’d amused myself in the quiet hours by cataloguing his mistakes, both in the story and in its telling. Poor diction, no sentence variance, no interest—Idris didn’t care about the story of Massinia. Why should anyone care about her when her story was a series of dates and historical moments, devoid of passion or care?

“Silence is the most damning criticism,” he said with a laugh.

We were approaching the moon now, and I watched its rusty red resolve into something more complex. The surface was a shifting tapestry of orange, yellows, and reds, pushed this way and that by the currents of the wind. Sand everywhere, with few breaks in its surface for anything else.

A strange place, but home for the next three weeks.





the ouzdad estate

GIBRA,

A MOON OF ANDALA





15

It wasn’t long before we made the descent to Gibra’s surface. The blurry tapestry of sand didn’t resolve itself into anything as we approached our landing port. There were a few buildings, some lampposts, and the tarmac.

The cruiser hissed and bumped as it touched ground. For miles outside our window all I could see was desert, sand dunes, and an impossibly pale blue sky, unbroken by clouds.

There was a greeting party on the tarmac. I held back, still close to the ramp, as Maram would have, and watched as Idris grinned, and grabbed the leader of our greeting party in a hug.

“What’s happened to your face?” the man said, clapping Idris on the shoulder. It took me a moment to recognize him from the holoreader—Nabil, a lesser illegitimate son. Maram hated him, as she did Furat. Despite the status of their birth, they were favored by the Dowager and allowed to live with her.

“It’s what always happens,” Idris said, grinning. “I shaved.”

Nabil snorted in disbelief and shook his head. “One day, we’re going to get you to keep the beard, friend.”

For a moment I felt as if I were back on Cadiz listening to my brothers. Husnain had only just been able to grow a beard in recent months, and to call it that was to be generous. Aziz had teased him mercilessly over it. I’d not expected to find the same sort of ribbing here, and had to fight down a smile. Maram seldom found Nabil amusing on these visits.

His eyes drifted over Idris’s shoulder and settled on me. The smile broadened, though I had the sense he’d reminded himself where he was and what he was meant to do.

“Your Highness,” he said, polite and easy. “As always, we are delighted to welcome you back to Gibra.”

I said nothing, but held my hand out for Idris.

There was a slender transport, similar to the street carriages I’d seen on Andala, with an open hood. The rest of the party was seated on horses instead of the desert bikes I would have expected.

For a long while there were only the sounds of the carriage cutting through the sand, and the soft thud of hooves cantering along beside us. The landscape was unchanging, and it was a wonder to me that our drivers knew where they were going. They seemed determined, even without landmarks or compasses.

And then the ground changed. The carriage jolted, and the soft thuds turned to clops. The land dipped smooth and easy, and led us down, away from the sand and its moveable mountains. Rock walls rose up on either side of us, impossibly high, peach colored and shadowed. From the entrance to the canyon, it looked as if some great hand had shoved itself into the ground and split the earth in two.

We rolled over the smooth path quickly, and it seemed that after no time at all, the scenery—and the air—changed yet again. I could feel water in the air, cool, thin, but there. It carried with it the smell of lemons and oranges, and the sound of a hundred trees, waving gently in the wind.

I did not gasp, because Maram had seen this before, but my body stiffened in wonder and awe all the same.

The Gates of Ouzdad were the stuff of legend. As high as the canyon walls were tall, made of bricks as tall and wide as men, its doors studded with gleaming silver pikes, they had withstood a hundred thousand assaults. No one had ever been able to tear them away from the canyon walls, nor breach the doors. Like the spikes on the door, the tiles overlaying the walls gleamed—orange, green, blue, and white, they were arranged to look like flowers with sharp petals. The Dowager Sultana’s flag flew from the top, merry in the weak breeze, and her soldiers marched along the walkway, keeping watch over those inside and out.

I followed its edge along the canyon wall, seamless, all the way to the top. It stopped several dozen meters shy of the ledge, but my eyes continued to climb. There was nothing like this in Walili, the capital city where the Ziyaana sat, or on Cadiz.

A dozen mounted horsewomen lined the left edge, robed in black. They were stark figures in a barren landscape, outlined against the blue of the sky. Several of the horses shook their heads, and the light bent off the silver on their bridles. The Tazalghit. The tribes of the Tazalghit were Massinia’s people, united under her mother, and powerful horsewomen who’d ruled the desert before the rise of the Ziyadis.

They looked as fierce and fearless as the stories made them sound. I knew it was still the custom of villages and cities alike in their lands to pay tithe to them. I tried not to stare too much—they couldn’t see me, but our escort could, and Maram had made clear nearly everything on Gibra bored her.