“And here is my favorite part of the estate,” Fatiha said, her voice laced with warmth. “The Ziyadi triptych—the artist did it in the classical style.”
Maram’s breath punched out of her on a quiet gasp as she looked up. The image was threefold: her grandmother, her mother, and Maram herself. Her grandmother was resplendent in a Kushaila hunting outfit, astride a horse, with a great golden eagle on her fist. The Golden Punishment—the eagle was legend for having taken down a deer on its own and lifting it into the air for several minutes. On the right was a good likeness of Maram herself, turned away from the viewer, bow in one hand, arrow in the other. Hovering over her head was a small falcon, a freedom falcon, its wings outstretched as if it were ready to pierce the vault of heaven at any moment. Like her grandmother, she wore a green Kushaila hunting jacket, but she’d explicitly asked the artist to have her turn away so that the absence of daan on her face would not be so clear to the viewer.
Maram almost walked away before looking at her mother’s image. But there was an inexorable pull to her, as in life so too in death. This was the greatest departure of the painting—elsewhere in the palace generations of Ziyadi women hunted on horseback and with falcons and spears, but here Najat bint al-Ziyad stood in ivory and black, with a tesleet on her fist, its crown of feathers a brilliant white. Though Mathis had scoured Najat’s Kushaila daan from her face as a stipulation of the peace and marriage treaties, here they were depicted on her brow and cheeks, and clutched in her left fist were gold-tipped arrows.
This version of her mother was one Maram seldom saw—when she was a child, Najat had only ever looked so when they’d emerged out of the shadow of her father. In holos she caught glimpses of her—the vibrant woman who’d inherited a kingdom recovering from civil war, who’d been equal to the task of its many problems. People in the Ziyaana remembered Najat’s last days, bedridden, hollowed out by sickness and disease.
Maram remembered the woman in front of her, back straight, gaze fierce. Forged in fire and made of steel.
“Your Highness.” Fatiha’s voice held a faint note of doubt, as if she worried she’d made a mistake in showing the triptych to Maram. The princess schooled her features and tried to return herself to the present. Fatiha stood beside her, gesturing to a pathway leading further into the palace.
“We have set out a light repast for you, if you wish to rest before touring the rest of the grounds.”
She bodily turned herself away from the painting. Her stomach turned with unease—this was a bad idea. There was no escaping the past in a place meant to replicate it. There was no holding on to her Vathek roots in a place where she pretended they didn’t exist.
“Yes,” she said, her voice even. “Let’s.”
* * *
The palace, aviary, and surrounding lands all made up a large estate for Ziyadi heirs called Dar al-Zahra’, the house of flowers. Maram had wanted, more than anything, when she began this project, to have a place without worry. A place she could go outside without needing guards or droids. She didn’t trust the locals any more than she trusted the people who lived in the imperial palace—the estate borders had an airtight security grid that prevented anyone from passing through. Those who wanted to leave had to go through a complicated exit process, and security codes were changed every four hours. It was expensive and far-reaching and complicated, but it meant that Maram could mount a horse and ride out onto the grounds on her own, without escort or worry.
But now, as she rode out into the late-afternoon air, wrapped in a heavy velvet mantle, she shivered. There were times when all she could hear was the first shot, when all she could see was sunlight glinting off the metal of the blaster. This place was safe, she’d made it so, and she would not let some nameless, faceless boy take it from her.
Maram was good at not thinking, at ignoring the great things that her conscience required her to see. And so it was with practiced ease that she turned away from the facts: she had not stood on that stage, she was not the one who’d faced a child turned killer. Amani, her body double, had. It was easy to settle into the selfish fear and anger that cared only about herself—the child had been trying to kill Maram, not Amani, after all. And so it was easy to shed the difficult feelings of being afraid for another person, of fearing for them, of caring about them. She did not think about the risk Amani took for her, or the complicated situation they now found themselves in. She did not think about how desperately she missed Amani’s friendship or the gulf that now stood between them because of her betrayal.
She thought of the horse beneath her, and the sky above, and the cry of a ghazal falcon. Nothing else.
* * *
Maram’s heart beat a staccato rhythm behind her ribs. The woman stood in the open field between four hills. She was well into the estate, but she didn’t creep the way Maram expected someone who had trespassed on royal property to creep. She stood tall, her broad shoulders straight. She was beautiful, her skin a dark copper, her black hair bound into hundreds of braids and held in place with a silver clip. Her cheekbones were sharp, her mouth wide, her face stoic. On each arm was a silver vambrace nearly the length of her forearm; she held her left arm aloft, and as Maram watched, a small young falcon alit on her wrist.
Maram’s grip tightened on her horse’s reins as she realized the impossible: it was a wild falcon, without bells or leash or hood. It had come to the woman of its own volition and settled on her wrist without bait or prompt. It remained there, its wings outstretched for balance, and when she lifted a hand and stroked its breast, it cooed, as if it were a tame nestling.
Wild falcons had no tolerance for people, less tolerance for being treated like pets. Maram’s grip tightened on the reins further, sure the falcon would attack the woman at any moment, and the horse neighed and shook its head in protest. The falcon startled—it gave out an angry, sharp cry, and launched itself into the air in a flurry of wings and talons. The woman watched it climb in the sky, her expression bemused, seemingly unharmed. In truth, the woman’s encounter with the falcon should have left her with several large wounds, and perhaps even a missing eye or finger.
For long moments Maram stared at her as if what she was—who she was—might resolve itself in her mind. She’d never seen her before on the estate. Certainly, she’d never seen someone at such ease and in such harmony with a wild hawk. Part of her wondered if she’d wandered into a dream.
At last the woman turned her gaze from the sky to Maram, and the princess flinched at the directness of her stare. Her eyes were so dark they were nearly black, and Maram felt them cut through her like a scythe through wheat. When the woman bowed she didn’t lower her eyes, and the bemused, half-cocked smile did not leave her features.
“Your Highness,” she said, then straightened.
Something like lightning rushed up Maram’s spine and she didn’t know if it was fear. She was on her estate alone, with nothing but a horse for protection, with a stranger who should not have been able to make it onto the grounds.
“Who are you?” she said at last. “And what are you doing on my estate?”
“I am Aghraas, a master falconer.”