Mirage (Mirage #1)(40)

A ringed hand landed on my shoulder. I jerked to a stand in surprise and spun around to find Furat on the other side of the bench. Her hair curled loose over her shoulders, as plain as mine, and in the same simple cut of qaftan that I’d donned. I was not the only one who’d dodged her handmaiden this morning.

She smiled. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Amani,” she said. She was calm and collected, deeply at ease in this temple. There was a serenity to her, a deep composure that I knew I would never be able to unseat. I doubted very many people could.

We both took a seat on the bench, quiet as the morning light slowly brightened the courtyard.

“This is my favorite place in the whole world,” she said. “There is no other place that fills me with such stillness.”

“You seem to be at home here,” I noted. “I mean, in Ouzdad.”

“The truth is I never wanted to leave Ouzdad,” she said without looking at me. “I cried when my grandmother suggested it. My whole life I’d avoided the Vath and my cousin—they have no power here. And then all of a sudden…”

“Then why leave?” I couldn’t understand it. If given the chance I would remain at Ouzdad forever. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a haven away from Vathek politics and machinations.

Furat paused, considering me. I realized with a jolt that she was someone who wouldn’t be forced into doing anything—not unless it served her own ends.

“Duty. I have a duty to my family, to my grandmother, to Andala. I hate what our planet has become, and I can’t stay here and complain. I should have gone sooner, but…”

“Can I ask … why does Maram dislike you?”

Furat scoffed. “Your time in the Ziyaana is turning you into a diplomat,” she said. “Maram hates me. I’m fairly certain if she could she would have me executed.”

“Why?”

“Before Najat died—Idris’s and my—our mothers led the loyalists in a coup hoping to depose Mathis and put my brother on the throne.”

The beginning of the Purge, I thought.

“It failed,” I said, as though it needed clarification.

“It failed,” she repeated. “The entire Wattasi branch was snuffed out. Except for me, to remind everyone else what was at stake when you lost against the Vath.”

“That doesn’t explain why Maram hates you,” I said, frowning. “Or why Idris is engaged to her and you were exiled.”

“Maram—she is incapable of viewing this half of her family rationally. Her father sent her to Luna-Vaxor after the coup, and I think it only made her more paranoid. The Vath have no love for her, you know. She is a half-breed, so far as they are concerned, and those who do not outright hate her for her heritage resent her for being the presumed heir to the imperial throne. But they bred a deep mistrust of us in her—she believes if I am allowed freedom I will take up arms against her.”

“Idris won’t?”

“We are two sides of the same coin,” she said softly. “Mercy and ruthlessness. We have been raised to pray for Vathek mercy and to do anything to keep it.”

I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Maram to grow up in such a way, reviled for the circumstances of her birth, hunted by one half of her family, targeted by her blood. What kind of person emerged from such a childhood? What sort of woman would that create? Constantly afraid and hateful and cruel, all in the name of self-preservation.

Nor could I imagine growing up as Idris and Furat had, terrified that whatever stability they’d managed would be snatched away from them in an instant. Their poise despite that astonished me.

“Is she wrong?” I asked her carefully. “About you?”

She took her time answering. “If I believed I could—that anyone could—turn her against the Vath, I would not be so afraid of her coming reign. I would try to befriend her, to help. I would even swear fealty to her. But she’s turned the whole planet against herself. Hope that patience will win us the day has waned.”

I turned my gaze to the sky. We were coming dangerously close to treason. There would be no new regime, King Mathis made sure of that every day. And Furat’s peers among the makhzen would not support her, no matter the state of the world.

She rested a hand on my arm. “Do you know what my grandmother said to me before I went to the Ziyaana?”

I shook my head.

“She told me, everyone in the Ziyaana will tell you to resign yourself to being crushed,” she said. “Do not. Even your happiness is rebellion.”

I couldn’t stop myself from speaking. “Happiness may be rebellion, but it won’t win the war.”

Furat eyed me, still considering. “No, it won’t,” she said at last.

The wind blew through the courtyard.

“But there is another way.” Furat squeezed my arm. The bells heralding the opening of the outer gates rang, followed by the sound of hooves beating against the ground. “Come. There is someone I’d like you to meet.”





21

Riding through the gates were three Tazalghit women, robed and veiled, dressed in dark blue. Two rode on black horses, but the rider in the front, the one climbing off her horse, rode a white stallion. She tugged the veil from her face and pulled the turban from her head as she walked toward us. She made no sound, and unlike the two women who remained astride their horses, bore no sword at her waist, nor any charms.