Mirage (Mirage #1)(47)

“You surprise me, village girl. I would have thought a provincial sort would have been all for love.”

I shook my head. “My parents were a love match,” I said. I had countless memories stored away of the small things they did for one another that spoke more loudly than the declarations many spouses made during our festivals. His hand on the small of her back, the soft look in her eyes sometimes as she watched him move around the house. I’d always felt lucky to grow up in a house with such love, even knowing that it was likely not in my future. “But I knew I wouldn’t have that luxury. That I’d likely have to pick someone who wouldn’t impoverish me further over someone who loved me.”

“That’s quite mercenary,” she said. She sounded delighted.

I shrugged. “An empty belly makes one mercenary, I suppose.”

The board went ignored between us while she stared at me as though I were an interesting puzzle. “We are not in love,” she said at last, matter-of-factly. “The marriage is a stipulation in the peace treaty that granted my father stewardship of this planet.” A pause. “What a strange puzzle you are,” she said and returned to the board.

I laughed. “Are your companions so uninteresting, Your Highness?”

She grimaced and leaned away from the table. “You have no idea.” I must have looked skeptical, because she continued. “All they can talk about is my upcoming eighteenth birthday.”

“I imagine they are excited,” I said and watched her reset the board. “Certainly such chatter is more interesting than me.”

A corner of her mouth lifted, an echo of Idris’s own self-satisfied smile. “It would be if they didn’t spend half their time giving me sideways glances they thought were discreet.”

“Oh?”

She finished setting the board, and tilted her head at me. “Stupidity is a poor look on you—or me, I suppose. On us. My inheritance of this planet and its ancillaries has not been confirmed. It needs to be by the time I turn eighteen or it will pass to my elder half sister, Galene.”

“Oh.” I tried to wrap my mind around what she’d told me. That she might not actually inherit Andala. That someone worse could rule over us. I wanted to ask why she would be passed over, but held my tongue. My curiosity would be a strange thing to her, and I didn’t need her prying into the new secrets I had to keep.

Maram’s shatranj set was done up in sapphire blue and white. She set the blue pieces on my half of the board, and the white on hers. Where Idris’s set had elephants, hers had birds. I lifted one into my hand to examine it more closely.

“Why birds?”

She shrugged. “The set came with the apartments,” she said. “Whoever lived here before must have liked birds.”

I rubbed a thumb over the beak, and then the crown and froze. There was a spring of feathers swooping back over its head, smoothed out and nearly disappeared with time.

“What?” she said, then plucked the piece from my fingers. She frowned again. “What is this?”

“I think it was a tesleet bird,” I said, then drew a finger up over the center of my forehead. “It’s nearly gone, but…”

“Why should that matter?”

“It doesn’t, I suppose.”

It was the royal bird—or had been before the Vath. How strange that Maram had kept these pieces—kept all the old trappings of the Ziyadi order.

Maram set the piece back on the board. “White always has first move.”

We were quiet after. It seemed she truly had been bored, and didn’t want to play against an AI or a courtier that would have to let her win. We were evenly matched, which was to say neither of us was particularly good. Like me, Maram never thought more than a few moves ahead and eventually we found ourselves locked into an unsolvable board.

She huffed a laugh. “Reset?”

I shrugged.

“How was Ouzdad?” she asked. “How was my grandmother?”

I should have been prepared for such a question, but I wasn’t. I’d assumed she wanted to avoid all mention of it, of ever having to go. Another lesson, then. Always be prepared to report to Maram.

“Old,” I managed, tamping down the image of Idris, just before our first game.

She hummed. “Yes, well.”

Her hum turned to a noise of surprise when I captured one of her birds.

“And Furat? She returned there just before you set out.”

I remembered the last time Maram and I discussed Furat. “Briefly,” was all I said.

“And?” Maram asked, impatient.

I pulled away from the board. “Perhaps if you were more specific with your questions, Your Highness.”

She looked away from me, and for a moment I had an image of her as a small child, short arms folded across her chest. I imagined she had been used to getting anything she wanted. At least for a short time. Had Najat doted on Maram, despite who her father was? Would she have been able to resist a child made in her image, unaware of all the horrors that surrounded her conception?

Perhaps not. Perhaps Najat had been a woman who could forgive her daughter the sins of her father.

“How did Furat seem?” Maram asked finally.

I thought of my walk with Furat, and our shared conspiracy. We were allies now, tied in our rebellion against the crown. Against Maram. “She wanted to play shatranj with me. With you. I declined. I imagine you would have done the same.”