Mirage (Mirage #1)(32)

For a moment I worried what would happen if my trust were misplaced. Could I take such a risk? But it didn’t matter, I reminded myself—I didn’t have a choice.

I rose from bed and found a mantle to wrap myself in against the morning chill. The serving girls paused and lowered their heads as I passed through the main rooms and out of the garden. My feet carried me out of the garden suite and down halls painted in cheery colors, with high ceilings hung with lanterns.

Maram and Idris’s suites were closer to the center of the palace, but it was an airy place filled with open courtyards and walkways everywhere. I plucked one of the many books off a shelf in my room and ventured outside. After some direction from a serving girl, I made my way to one of the few swimming areas in Ouzdad. The catacombs didn’t always empty out into hidden rooms and temples. This passage opened up into a grotto carved out from the canyon wall. The walls had been smoothed, and the bottom of the pool was paved with bright orange and green stones. Someone had pruned the ground around it, clearing paths and setting up pavilions. I could see Idris’s shape on the far end of the pool, near its entrance, twisting lazily beneath the water.

Neither I nor Maram could swim, so I settled into the cushioned seat and stretched along its length, the book in my lap. I’d pulled it off the shelf without looking at it, but now I realized it was a child’s book, written completely in Kushaila. It was a collection of folk and fairy tales, the pages’ edges gilt, with a hundred fanciful illustrations of mythological creatures.

I lost myself in the stories. I’d not read Kushaila script since my arrival in the Ziyaana, and like so much else at Ouzdad the experience was part grief, part elation. Part of me felt transported back to the marketplace in Cadiz. Old khaltous had sat in its center, telling old tales, harmless as far as the Vath were concerned. Khadija and I snuck away from our chores regularly to sit at the feet of one storyteller or another and listen to stories about tesleet and ‘afareet come to our world to carry one person or another away. Khadija always liked the most romantic tales; her favorite was the story of Badr, who found his way to the gate-city of the tesleet and married one of its princesses.

The sound of water sloshing over the edges of the pool and a grunt broke my reverie. Idris had pulled himself out of the water, and now stood at the edge of the pool facing me, combing his dark hair out of his face. I was used to the broad-shouldered build of farmers in my village. My friends and I had spied on them, harvesting in the fields, reclining shirtless in the sun, beautiful and brown and perhaps one day husbands. Khadija had flirted with propriety the closer our majority night came. First bringing them food or water, and then later bringing nothing but herself. She’d been braver than me and more willing to grab what—and who—she wanted without ever looking back.

I’d never been such a girl—the arguments with my brothers had always loomed large in my mind. And besides, I’d never wanted any of them. Not truly. I’d flirted, to be sure, but fled anything serious. I was content with my parents’ farm and my poetry.

But today my cheeks warmed and I could not pull my eyes away from the spread of Idris’s back as he turned away from me, or the water trailing from his hair and over his shoulders. I’d never realized how long it was, it curled so at his ears and chin, but wet it clung to the back of his neck, and nearly reached past his shoulders. Idris’s skin was a warm, dark gold, but already the few hours on Gibra had warmed it closer to bronze. Drenched in water and struck by sunlight, he seemed to glow as if he’d emerged out of another realm entirely. The spirits—‘afareet—that stole spouses into their realm were normally women, but today I could believe it of Idris, come to Ouzdad to find a bride.

He turned to pick up a towel, still unaware that I sat on the pavilion behind him. There was a black circle about the size of the palm of my hand inked on his upper arm. I frowned, trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t keep the noise of surprise inside when I realized what it was.

Idris jerked up in shock, and his eyes locked with mine. I felt like a child with her hand caught in the pantry. The heat in my cheeks spread, and no matter how much I willed myself to I couldn’t break the stare. For his part, he seemed to fare just as poorly. His eyes were wide, his mouth slack with surprise. A bird cried out overhead, and just like that we both jerked our eyes away from the other. I pulled my knees up, as though they might shield me from him, and turned my eyes to my book, hoping that he would return to the water or to the palace.

The sound of bare feet slapping against stone moved away from me and toward the palace, and after a moment I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to return to my book. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t follow the words on the page.

I knew that I had to have imagined the mark on his arm, or at the very least misunderstood what it was. It looked like a khitaam, a royal seal. Before the occupation, the members of the royal families bore them just below the neck. They were normally twice the size of the mark on Idris’s arm, and like the daan they denoted family, faith, and ancestry. But the khitaam were more than that. When a member of a royal family came of age their family inked their hopes for them into their skin. May you be just, may you be kind, may you be strong, and on and on. When Mathis outlawed the daan among the nobility, he outlawed khitaams right along with them. The old families would not be recognized except through him, ancestral ties would not be recognized except through him.

The appearance of Idris’s khitaam distracted me enough that I did not realize he’d returned until his shadow fell across my lap. He’d changed from his swimming shorts to a pair of trousers, and a white shirt that still stuck to his skin. His hair was bound away from his face, still wet, the shorter strands clinging and curling against his cheeks. There was a wooden board under his arm, and a velvet bag in his hand.