Court of Lions

by Somaiya Daud

  “Are you telling me a farmer’s daughter doesn’t know how to hunt mice and fowl?” Aghraas asked, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Mice and fowl are a far sight from droids and men,” I replied.

  “Pretend,” she replied, with a grim smile.

  Aghraas and Maram moved as if they’d been in battle together before. I could imagine that I had stepped out of reality any time I watched them and into an old story about a queen and her knight. Aghraas wore black, with a gold-and-green band on her left arm, signifying her allegiance.

  “Jam the doors,” I heard Maram yell, and looked out to see that Mathis was making his way across the room with a squad of guards. I knew that when this was all over—assuming we survived—I wouldn’t be able to stand on my own. The loss of adrenaline would render me inert. But for now, I hefted the rifle Aghraas had given me, braced it against my shoulder, and sighted down its length. The double doors were still open, but there was a blast door mechanism meant to protect royalty in crisis. It could also just as easily trap someone inside.

  The recoil of the rifle was gentler than I was used to, but the panel went up in sparks and a great iron grid slammed down between Mathis and his exit. I turned to grin at Maram and found that she’d stood up. My mind seemed to understand what was happening before I did—Aghraas stood beside her, a larger and taller shadow. They were twins in stance, feet braced against the ground, rifles braced against their shoulders, eyes sighting for the same target. They shot at the same time, and the sound seemed to echo through the room, silencing all in its wake. The guards in front of and behind Mathis stiffened, then dropped to either side. Mathis seemed suspended in midair for a long, agonizing moment, then fell to his knees. A moment later, he toppled forward.

  Maram lowered her weapon, her eyes hard. “Your king is dead.” Her voice rang out, clear as a bell in the ensuing silence. “Lay down your arms and I may show you mercy.”

  * * *

  The droids were destroyed, though their mistress—Nadine—had survived with a shot to her shoulder. The Vath had lost two directors and a general, as well as most of Mathis’s personal guard. Rabi’a had survived with a shot to the arm and leg, and the rest of the makhzen, who had no combat training, had remained behind the barricades as best they could. Arinaas had lost a handful of women too, and her gaze was somber as she tallied them and made preparations to have their bodies moved.

  Maram and Aghraas stood over a gurney that bore Mathis. It floated at hip level, its white medi-light illuminating his features. He seemed as if he were sleeping—gentler than I’d ever had the chance to see him. Maram’s face was blank as she looked down at her father.

  “I suppose it is only right,” she said, voice distant.

  “Your Grace?” I prompted.

  “He killed his father to secure his throne,” she said. “And his daughter has killed him for the same reason.”

  I thought for a moment she would reach out and touch him. Instead, her hand curled into a fist, and she looked up at the attendants who had born him to her.

  “Take him to the crypt below. We’ll burn him at sunrise. He deserves that last Vathek rite, at least.”

  I watched her as his body was borne away. I couldn’t imagine what she was experiencing. Her father, dead. Herself now queen. The world waiting for her.

  “Your Grace,” I said again, and removed her crown from my head and waited. The room stilled. The makhzen who’d been pulled into our uprising without knowing about me had watched me curiously, but not approached. Now they watched us very closely.

  Maram sank to her knees, the picture of Kushaila regality, the gold-stitched edges of her robe spread out behind her, her jewel-encrusted braid hanging over her right shoulder. It felt as if every person in the room held their breath as I settled the crown on her head. And then our positions were reversed, and Maram stood over me as I sank to my knees. Aghraas and Idris followed, and then every occupant in the room was on their knees.

  “All hail the queen!” Idris cried.

  “Hail!” Aghraas said.

  “Hail the queen!” we replied.

  30

  The main court room Maram had chosen to stage her control of the palace from was wholly Andalaan. Its floors were tiled in green, orange, and blue, its walls covered in beautiful mosaics. The council seating was a ring of low chairs, with engraved wooden backs depicting lions and tesleet alternately. Her throne, a backless divan covered in green-and-gold brocade, sat framed by a wide open window so that she was haloed by light and bracketed by the mesas. She made an impressive figure, regal and crowned.

  An Andalaan queen.

  Sitting in the council chairs was her court. Not just the makhzen we had recruited, but their own banner houses, the wizaraa’ who had joined us on the tour. Nadine was the only Vathek person in the room and she was on her knees, with two of Rabi’a’s men bracketing her.

  Aghraas stood behind Maram’s throne and to the left, and I stood to her right. The makhzen, especially the makhzen I’d befriended on Maram’s behalf, continued to watch me closely, but said nothing. It seemed, at least, they knew to show a united front in front of all and any of the Vath. Even one in chains.

  “You worked so hard to achieve control over me,” Maram said, looking at Nadine. Someone had bandaged the wound Idris inflicted on her. She was pale, with dark circles under her eyes. I imagined that the high stewardess had not conceived of a world within which Mathis lost and she was reduced to this. “Did you imagine I would welcome you back if I had failed? Or that my father would not give me the choice?”

  She raised her eyes to look up at her. “I have always been loyal to you, Your Highness.”

  “I am queen, Nadine,” Maram said softly. “You will address me as such.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” she said. “Please, Your Grace. None of these people can be relied on for advice. I am the only one—”

  Maram tilted her head to the left, much as I had when speaking with her father. “How would you advise me? In this moment?” She turned to face me, and circled me slowly. “Should I kill my body double, as you wished to?” She moved to Idris and laid a hand on his arm. “Or should I threaten the scion of the largest tribe on the planet?”

  “Your Grace—” Nadine stammered.

  “Should I kneel at the feet of your ambition,” Maram asked, coming to stand before her, “while sacrificing my own safety and the prosperity of this planet?”

  The room was silent.

  “Or,” Maram continued sweetly. “Will you advise me to let you live so that you may continue to undermine me under the illusion of motherly love while turning my people against me?”

  I watched as Nadine began to understand what she had believed to be impossible. To her mind, securing Vathek approval, rising in their ranks—it was all she’d ever wanted. It had not occurred to her that one might turn from that legacy. That Maram, who stood to inherit the highest standing in the empire, might instead choose to side with her mother’s people.

  “You,” she breathed. “You can’t.”

  Maram tilted her head to the side. “What can’t I do?”

  “I raised you, Your Grace,” she insisted, frantic. “Loved you as my own. Please.”

  The memories of all the things I had suffered under Nadine, that my family had suffered under her, surged to the forefront of my mind. I never thought to see her like this—frightened, pale, on the verge of shaking.

  Maram gestured to one of the guards, and he stood back then drew his sidearm.

  “You Grace, I beg of you—”

  I remembered another girl, a different girl, on her knees, begging to keep her heritage. And the advice someone had given her.

  “Oh,” I breathed out. “You should never beg.”

  Look away, a voice said inside me. But I could not show weakness before the makhzen.

  The shot cracked through the air like thunder. Blood pooled down from a hole in the center of her forehead between her eyes and over the bridge of h
er nose. She was perfectly still, her mouth still open, for a heartbeat, before her body fell backward.

  The guard returned his sidearm to its holster and stood at attention once more.

  “How long?”

  “How long?” Maram echoed.

  “Has your body double been among us?” Khulood clarified.

  “Amani has been with me for a year,” she said. “She has stood in my place when it was too dangerous, or I was—when I believed I was unequal to the task before me.”

  Her eyes roved across the room, and she laid a hand on my arm.

  “Understand this,” she said. “I have welcomed Amani into my family as a Ziyadi. She is, as far as I’m concerned, as a cousin to me. You will treat her as you would treat me.”

  The makhzen and wizaraa’ murmured their ascent.

  “You owe her a great debt,” Maram said, softening her tone. “Without her we wouldn’t be here, together.”

  My head jerked up and I caught Maram’s eye, and her small smile.

  “To the future,” she cried.

  “To the future!”

  “Now,” Maram continued. “The work begins. Have Nadine’s body burned. I want reports from every province and the generals as well. Bring the holocasts in here.”

  The quiet tension fell away as work was taken up and cities began to check in. I watched as a wall was overtaken by screens, and each screen in turn focused on a city. One by one across the planet, the Vathek flag was cast down and the Andalaan flag raised. There were places, I knew, where the rebels had found more resistance than they’d counted on. And there was the Vathek aristocracy to contend with besides. But Maram was not heir only to Andalaa, but the Vathek empire, and control of the armada was in her hands.

  The new world had begun.

  * * *

  It was long into the night before we retired. Rabi’a caught me as my escort of guards prepared to take me to new quarters. She hugged me without warning, startling a laugh out of me.

  “This is because of you,” she said into my ear. “We are free because of you.”

  My eyes filled with tears. The exhaustion and emotional roller coaster of the day had finally caught up with me.

  “No,” I said, hugging her back. “A rebellion is the work of many.”

  She kissed my cheek. “Go rest. I will see you tomorrow.”

  Maram had assigned guards to me in the uproar as well as Tala and a coterie of handmaidens. They all followed me as I made my way through the palace and to a new set of quarters. I was no longer a body double in secret. I was, by Maram’s royal decree, a Ziyadi. My mind whirled. Did she plan on making that official? Did I want her to?

  I entered the private sitting room of my new quarters and from there went through the main courtyard. Everywhere serving girls and boys, handmaidens and valets, stepped out of my path and bowed their heads in respect. Dihya. Was this my new reality?

  A pair of attendants pulled open the door to the main sitting room.

  It was a wide-open area, with high ceilings, and an open vista of the hills beyond the mesa. There was a raised platform before the balcony, and it was there that Idris stood. Our eyes met and an electric shock went through me. There was no one in the room save the two of us, and I forgot sense and decorum and rushed to him. He pulled me into his arms and I felt as if a key turned in its lock and all my fear and terror spilled out. I pressed my face against his shoulder and wept. The euphoria of the day followed by the horror after swept through me and wrung me dry. To be so close to victory and then so close to death and then back to victory again—I could not make sense of it.

  “You’re alright,” he whispered into my hair. “You’re here with me.”

  He settled me against him on the couch and said little, though his hands ran up and down my back and every now and then he would press a kiss into my hair. I thought of the joy I’d felt holding his hand, making our way to the Salihi tent. So secure in my belief that victory was near at hand. Of the terror of realizing we had lost. A loss so cataclysmic it had nearly cost me my life.

  At last, it seemed, all emotion had been run from me. I rested my head against his shoulder, and wound my hand in his.

  “I will call for food—”

  “No,” I said, my voice rough, and tightened my grip on his hand. “I do not wish—I couldn’t keep it down. Just stay with me.”

  He settled back down beside me. “Amani.”

  “Hm?”

  “Maram has left me to you.”

  That made me smile. “Like a family heirloom I must inherit.”

  He smiled back. “Something like that. Will you have me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  31

  The next few days passed as if I were dreaming. Fighting continued in some places, but what I found most remarkable was walking through the palace side by side with Maram. On the third day we left the Court of Lions and returned to M’Gaadir. Kushaila custom dictated that Maram spend a month there before proceeding in a caravan to Walili for her coronation. It would be a hard road, I knew. The coronation was symbolic—a gesture to the galaxy that our planet was united behind her. But what had begun in the Court of Lions throne room would not end there. The reconstruction effort would be long and difficult.

  And yet, I was grateful to be back by the sea; it felt like a reprieve.

  Being back in the palace as myself was novel. I dressed how I wished, and after my long sojourn as Maram I found that my tastes had changed. I liked jewelry, when in my life before the Ziyaana such a thing would have been impractical. I liked my hair down, braided, threaded with jewels. Getting up in the morning to select my own clothes, my own rings, to sit patiently while Tala did my hair as I liked instead of in as close an approximation to Maram’s preferred hairstyles was strangely delightful. Maram had claimed me as her cousin to protect me from the ire of the makhzen; none of them had liked being tricked, and I didn’t like to think how they might have treated me without her protection. I’d understood on some level that it meant I was a Ziyadi, but with it came both responsibilities and freedom. It meant there were days that belonged to the state in its nascent form and days when I could do as I pleased.

  It also meant I needed to become used to having an escort wherever I went. I waited now in the courtyard of the palace, flanked by several guards who were assigned to me, and several more who were assigned to Buchra, who stood beside me. At last, I heard the sound of booted feet striking paved stone and a moment later Idris appeared. I groaned when two more guards appeared behind him.

  “We will disrupt the souk with so many,” I said. “We must be allowed to leave a few.”

  He smiled ruefully at me. “You are a symbol of the new revolution,” he replied. “I won’t risk your life so that you can buy spices, instead of having them ordered.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes at him and instead tucked my hand into his elbow.

  “I’ve never gone shopping in a souk,” Buchra said from my left.

  I smiled as we made our way down. “I miss going out,” I said. “I haven’t left the palace walls as myself since we’ve arrived, and I want to—” I cut myself off before forcing myself to continue. “Is it silly that I want to make sure I still know how to do it?”

  “Amani,” Idris said softly, and I shook my head.

  “Most of that girl is gone,” I said to Buchra with a half smile. “But hopefully enough of her remains that she can haggle with a spice seller.”

  Maram had publicly released Idris from his marriage to her before we’d arrived at M’Gaadir. I’d read the press release last week, still trying to digest that I’d had a hand in crafting so public a narrative.

  Under the tyrannical rule of my father, Amani was pressed into slavery and Idris and I shackled to an imperial machine we could not control. Despite that, Amani and Idris found happiness with one another, and it was against our will that Idris and I were wed.

  Our planet, she had written, is facing a new era. And I would s
hepherd that era into being with honesty, and so I give my full and complete blessing to my cousin to wed the prince of the Salihis, as she would have done in a fairer and more just world.

  When Idris and I walked together in public now we were the subject of curious stares and romantic sighs. We’d become symbolic of all that had been thwarted under Mathis’s rule, and all that was possible despite it. I wasn’t sure I enjoyed being part of something so public—my love for Idris had ever been both sacred and private. But we’d needed to usher in the dissolution of his marriage to Maram in a way that did not make her a villain or destabilize the support of the makhzen. As we walked through the marketplace I noted the young girls who watched us with wide eyes and the grandmothers who smiled, as if they were party to a secret about our romance that the very young couldn’t hope to comprehend.

  Buchra trailed after Idris and me, pausing to sample fruit and spices, drawn here and there by the sparkle of jewelry and brilliant scarves. The guards, I was relieved, were not as intrusive as I’d feared. They were all Zidane and Kushaila, and had, I was sure, grown up running in souks just like this. They remained a respectful distance away and blended into the crowd well. I’d feared they would keep the other souk-goers away, but the people continued to mill about, kept at arm’s length by their own awe.

  I plucked a jar of saffron threads from a vender shelf and held it up for Idris to sniff.

  “It smells … good?” he said, and I laughed. “You won’t mind it, will you?”

  “Mind what?” I asked as we moved to another seller.

  “Splitting our time between here, Walili, and Al Hoceima,” he clarified.

  I frowned. I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t thought about anything. Maram wanted our wedding to precede her coronation and I’d agreed, but I also wanted my family to be here and I didn’t know when that would be. It felt like betrayal to make plans for my married life without my mother’s advice.