Mirage (Mirage #1)(48)

She nodded after a moment and returned her eyes to the board between us. I couldn’t resist watching her, though I should have been watching her advance across the shatranj board. In this moment she seemed normal, though that felt like a weak word. She was only my age and worried about how her cousin and grandmother had received her, resentful of those her grandmother favored.

No one had given her a chance to be raised among them, and by the time she’d returned from the Vathek homeworld her mind had been poisoned against that part of her family. And I imagined that her cousins had not reached out to her when she returned. They all viewed her with fear and suspicion now, but her complete hatred might not have stood against kindness.

Or perhaps I was a fool who expected too much.

Maram caught me staring and narrowed her eyes. “What?”

I knew better, and yet … “I don’t think your grandmother is … is seeding a rebellion.”

“I told you stupidity was a bad look,” she said. “What would a village girl know about what the Dowager planned?”

“I speak Kushaila, remember? You do not. They didn’t say much around me.” I shrugged. “Her head of security is too cautious for that. But it did sound like they were trying to protect you.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. The Dowager missed her granddaughter; she missed what they could have been. She grieved their relationship. She would not have turned on her, not in such a violent way. And the longer I’d been there, the more I’d served as a holdover, a way to assuage all her grief at losing her only grandchild.

Maram balanced a chariot piece in one hand, weighing it. “You’re sure.”

“As sure as I can be.”

She smiled suddenly and set the piece back on the board.

I didn’t want to plumb Maram’s hidden depths. There was nothing that could change what she’d done to me when I first arrived, or the way she treated those around her. Despite that, I couldn’t forget how the Vath had shaped her. How early she’d lost her mother. How terrible such an upbringing would be. They’d shaped her into the cruel, hateful creature she was now. I imagined she didn’t believe she had a choice in how she behaved. Survival among the Vath would have ensured that.

She made a sound of triumph and my gaze returned to the board.

She’d won.

“I never beat Idris,” she said, grinning. “We will have to play again.”

I thought to bite my smile back too late. Our eyes met and I watched as she tried to remember herself, remember who we were. Not friends, not twins. Master and servant.

“A droid will escort you back,” she said, gesturing to the walkway from which I’d come.

I rose to my feet, bowed, and collected my cloak. I knew she would not invite me back. I’d seen her come back to herself, the strange flicker of anger in her eyes. But I couldn’t help wondering what life in the Ziyaana might have been like if she were always like this; what the future might be like if she softened just a little.





25

I sat on the cushion Maram offered me, hands folded in my lap, my eyes fixed on the ground.

It had been a week since Maram and I played shatranj. Maram and Nadine had not been in the same room with me for a long while, and I could not work the itch from my back. Whenever they’d been together, I’d paid for an offhand comment or a tantrum Nadine could not or would not control.

So I waited, hoping they’d forgotten Maram had invited me to her apartments. Praying that neither thought I had any opinion on their argument.

“She is not a doll,” Nadine said. “You may not dress her up and send her where you please. She is a shield.”

“Galene’s parties are dangerously dull, then,” Maram said.

I’d been summoned earlier without warning to prepare to take Maram’s place at her half sister’s ball. She’d tossed a holopad in my lap and commanded me to learn the names and faces of those who would be present, then settled herself on her divan.

Even Nadine’s arrival had not stirred her from it. How odd that she and I sat close, though I was at her feet, while Nadine stood. It did not escape my notice that Maram had not offered her a seat. In fact, any place where she might sit was conspicuously absent.

“And what will you do if the fool girl exposes herself?”

“She fooled my grandmother, Nadine,” Maram said. I didn’t have to raise my head to know the look she gave Nadine implied a measure of stupidity. “She is clearly quite adept at her job.”

“Your Highness—”

“Are you forbidding me?”

“Have a care, Your Highness. It would be to your detriment to lose her.”

I held my breath as Nadine spun away, the silver lining of her skirt flashing in the afternoon sunlight. Only when the door clicked shut did I release it and the tension in my shoulders.

“Now,” Maram said, swinging her feet to the floor. I looked up; she was smiling. “Shall we?”

*

Maram had a closet large enough to be its own room. Aside from the clothes hanging along the walls, there was a sitting area, a vanity, and a small alcove with a stand and a mirror. I hovered in the doorway while she dived in, flipping through qaftans and gowns.

“So,” I started. “A party?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, as if the very mention of it pained her. “Galene is throwing a party to celebrate her profitable year in the north. It’s a desperate, last-minute bid to be considered for inheritor of the realm. Vathek visitors only, barring spouses and fiancés.”