The room divided silently, girls in the age range specified to the left, and everyone else to the right. The smoke had taken an oppressive turn, so that it was no longer the dream-like fog. Something thicker, like a funeral shroud.
Two of the droids came toward us and split us, one to the front of the line and another to the back. Khadija stood beside me, and we held hands, our fingers crushing each other’s.
Her newly inked daan glistened on her cheeks and forehead in the firelight—she looked, I thought, more beautiful than she ever had before. After sharing so much of our lives together, it was right that we’d had our majority night at the same time. She gave my hand another squeeze, her face as clear of emotion as mine was. There was no training for how to face Vathek droids, but we all knew. No fear, no emotion, nothing that would focus their gaze on you.
Every few seconds there was a louder whir from both droids, and then a sharp beep before they moved on to the next girl. It was only when they were a few girls away from us that I realized what they were doing—a wide, green beam scanned a girl’s face, and then the beep cleared her. They were trying to identify someone.
I heard Aziz’s voice, warning me about the search for rebels, about appearing to aid those suspected. There were no rebels here—just a farming village that would starve in the coming months with our livelihood now smoldering. My gaze scanned the room. There was Adil the perfume maker with his lame foot. Ibn Hazm, the last member of a family prosperous before the war. Khadija’s parents, farmers and fruit pickers. Everyone here knew the cost of sedition. No one here would risk it.
I remained still, my eyes fixed on a flickering torch as a droid stepped in front of me, leaned forward, and scanned my face.
The noise it made after was not the sharp beep, but a clang, like an alarm. It remained bent in front of me, frozen as if in confusion.
My heart raced—difference was never good. Different meant the Vath knocking down your door in the middle of the night.
I eyed the door they had come through, and then the back exit. I wouldn’t make it if I ran, and likely I would cost friends their lives as they came after me.
“Take her,” one of the droids said.
“No!” Husnain pushed his way through the crowd and came to stand beside me. “You can’t have her.”
Without warning, the droid raised a phaser from its hip and aimed it at his forehead. Droids never set their phasers to stun. It would have been easy to be frozen, to scream, to give in. But though Husnain was older than me, I had always taken care of him.
“Stop,” I said, my voice firm, and stepped in front of him. “There is no cause for violence.”
“You will come with us,” the droid said, not lowering the phaser.
I buried shaking hands in the folds of my skirt and shook my head. “Tell me what you want with me. I have rights.” Even as I spoke them, the words rang hollow. I didn’t have rights, of course. I was a poor girl, from an oft-forgotten moon. And I was young, without any of the marks on my record that would have signaled me as loyal to the Vath.
“You will come with us willingly or by force,” it said.
“I will not,” I repeated. Too late I realized my foolishness. You did not stand up to the Vath, and you certainly didn’t stand up to their droids, who would not be swayed by pleas or displays of emotion. I could feel the blood beat at the tips of my fingers, could almost hear the gears turning inside the droid as it turned its attention from me to Khadija.
There was no sound as the phaser went off, only the sudden weakening of Khadija’s grip around my hand. Her fingers slipped from mine, and her body fell forward. Her knees hit the ground, and then she fell sideways, eyes open in shock.
She’d worn a white gown embroidered in green to the ceremony. Red bloomed on her shoulder like a flower, staining the green lines crisscrossing her arms. Her arms splayed out, crooked and doll-like, in a pose I’d never seen before. Her black hair was loose tonight and it fanned around her head, dark as midnight, complete as a death shroud in hiding her from me.
Now, I could not breathe. Now, my heart pounded too fast and my lungs shrunk and my body went numb.
The blood from her arm pooled beneath her.
Her mother screamed first and then chaos broke. I couldn’t think, and I only moved because Husnain tugged me back and forced me into a run. He wasn’t fast enough—no one had ever outrun the Vath.
A metal hand wrapped around my left arm, and I came to a jarring stop.
“No!” I screamed, but it was too late. The droid took hold of my brother’s shoulder, and then threw him back nearly halfway across the courtyard. He landed against the fountain with a bloodcurdling sound, then fell to the floor, unmoving.
“Let me go!” I struggled against my captor, trying to make it to my brother as everyone else ran screaming, gathering children, trying to escape. I couldn’t see the rest of my family. Only Husnain, lying motionless on his front, ignored by everyone else.
I screamed again, but the droids dragged me away even as I struggled, kicking and screaming, crying out my brother’s name.
“Husnain!” My throat felt raw from screaming, but he didn’t get up, and no one stopped to help him.
I was dragged up a ramp to a Vathek cruiser, and my last sight of home was the kasbah, lit by the spark of fire a droid had set just as the doors shut.
the ziyaana, andala
4
I’d dreamed forever of leaving Cadiz, of visiting other star systems in our galaxy. But I’d never thought I would be taken against my will. I was dragged through the building, pulled onto a ship, silent and numb, then finally deposited in a holding cell.
My whole body hurt, and my vision was blurry with unshed tears. Below me was a glass floor, clouded and turning gray. But I could see where I was—and where I was going.
Cadiz was gone and left behind and Andala, our mother planet, grew minute by minute in my view. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to contain the panic inside me. I prayed fervently that my family had survived the burning of the kasbah. I didn’t understand—couldn’t understand why they had taken me, or to what end.
I could not escape the image of Husnain lying motionless in the stampede, nor the sound his body made when it hit stone. Was he alright? Were my parents? Had Aziz gotten them out? And what of Khadija? The phaser’s blast was aimed at her arm, not her chest; meant to threaten, not kill. But she had lost a lot of blood … My mind went round and round, from one thought to the next, trying to make sense of it, hoping for the best.
The Vath had gotten me, for whatever reason. My family and the village were safe.
They were safe.
At least, that was what I repeated to myself. I didn’t know if I believed it.
Hours passed as I stared at the steadily approaching planet. At last, the ship slowed, and streams of cloud and mist engulfed my view. The floor melted back to its imposing steel gray color as the door hissed open. I stiffened, waiting for the Imperial droid to step through. Instead, an Andalaan girl waited in the doorway. She was dressed as I was, in a long qaftan, its sleeves tightened at the wrist, with a short sleeveless jacket. She drew a veil down from her red hair and freckled, brown face.
“Amani?”
I said nothing.
“I am Tala,” she said. “You should follow me.”