Mirage (Mirage #1)(38)

“Ya’bnati,” she said in Kushaila. Child.

I wasn’t sure what inspired me to say the words in Kushaila, but I did. “Dowager Sultana,” I said. “I’m not Maram.”

Furat jerked back as though she’d been struck. I imagined she’d never heard Maram speak in Kushaila. The Dowager for her part leaned back, her face calm and grave, the grief and fatigue wiped away.

I imagined that after the war very little could shock her, or move her to reveal her shock.

“Then who,” she replied in Kushaila, “are you?”

“I am your granddaughter’s body double.”

Her eyes remained on my face. She looked at me contemplatively, as if appraising every one of my features.

“Name?”

“Amani, sayidati.”

“Qadissiya?” she asked at last. Cadissian?

I nodded hesitantly.

Her mouth quirked in a smile. “My brother was fostered on Cadiz,” she said, still speaking in Kushaila. “They drop letters in their Kushaila frequently; it took him years to lose the habit. Aji.”

Come here.

She waved me over. After darting a glance at Idris, who smiled at me encouragingly, I rose to my feet and came to sit beside her. Her hands were dry on my face, and the rings she wore were cool against my skin.

“How strange,” she said when she let go. “How did you come to be in my granddaughter’s place?”

Furat watched the two of us curiously. She couldn’t understand what we were saying, I realized, and I switched to Vathekaar.

“Imperial droids stormed my majority night,” I started. The words came easier now that I’d said them before. “My face was scanned and I was kidnapped and taken to the Ziyaana. I—I was trained to be Maram so that I could take her place.”

The Dowager raised her eyebrows. “Her place?”

I cast my eyes down. I didn’t want to offend the Dowager, though she likely knew the violent responses Maram elicited in the general public. “It’s not safe for her to go outside,” I said.

“The people hate her,” the Dowager said wearily. “Since she has done little to earn their love.”

“Yes, sayidati.”

“The Vath are not good at inspiring love,” she said. “Or receiving it, I gather.”

“Sayidati?”

“Coyness is not our way,” she said and I heard a little of Maram’s brusqueness in her tone. “My granddaughter and I are estranged. Which I imagine is why she sent you in her place—it is difficult for us both. That and the rebels.”

“Sayidati?” I prompted again.

“The rebels her father believes I have something to do with.” The weariness had crept back into her voice. I could hear what she didn’t say. The rebels I don’t consort with. She’d fought her own brother in a civil war, but looking at her now, I didn’t think she had the stomach to hunt down all that was left of her family.

I bowed my head. What could I say? There were no reassurances I could offer. Maram had demonstrated all the things the Dowager knew to me repeatedly.

“Well,” she said. “Tell me about yourself. Your family?”

“Still in Cadiz,” I said. She tilted her head, waiting for me to continue. “My mother and father run a farm there, with my brothers.”

“More than one?”

My burgeoning smile wavered. “Two,” I continued, more somber. I missed them every moment of every day—how could I not? I prayed for the millionth time that Husnain was unharmed from the night in the kasbah. That they all were. “I am the youngest.”

“Ah,” she said. “The apple of your father’s eye, then?”

For the first time in a long time, I grinned. “Maybe,” I said. “He favored me. We had much in common.”

“Oh?”

“He was a botanist before the occupation—he was teaching me before— Well, before.” Idris squeezed my hand under the table and I found myself smiling a little. “He liked poetry as much as I did and taught me that, too, when my mother wasn’t looking.”

Furat made a small noise under her breath, but shook her head when I looked at her.

“I was the same,” the Dowager told me. “My brother took after my mother, and I after my father. We hunted together often.”

My cheeks ached from smiling so. “We don’t have that sort of thing on Cadiz. At least not now.”

“No. I suppose not. We used to be able to hunt here, but my comings and goings are restricted now. I’m—the Vath refuse me the right to journey to my old estates in the south.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have accepted anyone’s refusal. When I would have gone anywhere in the stars that I wished.”

“I’m sorry, sayidati.”

She smiled. “Save your pity for the young and the dead, girl,” she said. “It won’t help me.”

The minutes ticked by as we spoke. I thought I’d said all I had to say to Idris, but the more questions the Dowager asked of my life and my family, the more I had to say. In kind, I learned about her childhood and upbringing. I could see it pained her, to speak of her life before the Vath, a bittersweet joy to remember the good times knowing they would never come again.