The roc was silent as its claws slammed and then dug into my shoulders. They clenched, digging into flesh and bone, before it lifted me off my feet and dragged me back several feet. It was not large enough to lift me more than few inches off the ground, but when the earth disappeared from beneath my feet I screamed louder than before.
What little composure I’d had broke when it dropped me on my knees. My majority night gown was soaked through with blood already, and I felt the thick, slow crawl of blood coming out of the wounds. I hunched over on the ground, sobbing.
You learned a different sort of fear when you grew up in a village like mine. Fear of hunger. Fear of Imperial droids. Fear of the low hum that came with Imperial probes. But that fear taught you endurance—you could let its unwavering presence wear you down, or you could learn to stand up despite it.
But there was nothing like this. I’d never experienced the bone-shaking terror that a roc might wing around for a second chance at my flesh. Nor the fear associated with the soft click of slippers on a courtyard floor.
I forced myself to meet her gaze when Maram came to stand over me. This time I could not understand her expression. It was disorienting to look up at her, at myself, and not understand what the different tells I understood on my own face so well meant on hers.
“What a dark, pathetic creature you are,” she said at last.
Despite my wounds, I smiled. “Do you look in a mirror, Your Highness?”
She struck me again and before I could fall over caught me by the shoulder and squeezed. I cried out in pain and she squeezed tighter, looming over me, her face grim.
“You will not laugh in the days to come,” she promised. I said nothing, but I hoped she saw my determination.
She released me and shoved me away with a sound of disgust. She made a gruesome picture now, with her blood-covered fingers and gown.
“The king,” Nadine began, unconcerned with the pair of us, “values his daughter’s life. And too often, of late, she has come under threat. She can rarely leave the Ziyaana for fear of rebel attacks.” I held my tongue, though it seemed little wonder to me that she’d inspired such ire. “The advent of her eighteenth birthday and the confirmation of her inheritance will necessitate more public appearances. Our king has commanded that you will risk your life where she cannot. You will train, and you will become Her Royal Highness. You will speak like her, walk like her. You will even breathe as she does.”
“If I do not?” I asked, trying to keep hold of my disgust.
“You will,” Nadine said.
“Your very life depends on it,” Maram added with a chilling smile.
* * *
I concentrated on walking, on placing one foot in front of the other, as a droid led me from the courtyard back to the side of the palace where I’d first arrived. We crossed no one, not even other droids. No one to see me, I realized. No one to see my resemblance to Her Highness.
Just when I felt I would collapse, the droid ushered me into a set of chambers where Tala waited, a small table in front of her and a cushioned bed just behind. She shot to her feet, her face ashy and colorless. Her eyes were wide, and her hands shook.
“Dihya,” she breathed, and caught me around the waist as I swayed.
I cried out, pain radiating through my body. When she pulled her hand away, it was covered in blood.
She whispered a rapid prayer in Kushaila, and then helped me down to the bed.
“Thank you, Unit 62,” she said to the droid.
“Yes, citizen.” It whirred, and then strode away.
She worked slowly and meticulously, as I stared out at nothing. I had been bleeding for so long that the fabric stuck tight to my wounds. She sponged my shoulder carefully, until finally the dress could be pulled away so she could clean the wounds and wrap them with a glowing white cloth. The cloth was warm and stung, briefly, before sinking into the wounds as though it had never been there at all.
I knew it was not a kindness she did me. She was fixing me so that I could perform my duties, to return to Maram and be punished again. I flinched when her cool fingers touched my chin, and turned my face toward her. Our eyes met.
“It will take some time for the wounds to close,” she said after washing my face. “You may bathe. The bandages will hold. But it would do you good to sleep on your stomach.”
Her hands were covered in my blood. I watched her dip them into a bowl of murky water, watched the bowl grow darker. How many others had she ministered to in this way, I wondered. How many had it taken for her to learn to effect the cool, blank stare? The distance? Would I end up the same way?
“These are your quarters. You have full use of this suite and the courtyard beyond. But you are not to venture past the west gate, understand?”
Our eyes met for the second time. Some emotion slipped across her face and was gone.
“It is a hard lesson,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But it is best learned early. There is no escape from what they want. Only survival.”
6
Morning came to me in starts and whispers. I could hear a soft breeze weave its way through curtains, a door shaking, thin chains trembling. I did not hear the crows or roosters call at dawn, or the pawing of our old goat in her paddock. Nor could I hear my parents moving around downstairs, or my father give the soft call to prayer, a tradition he insisted we maintain despite the danger.
I couldn’t bear to open my eyes or move. My whole body ached, and I was slow to rise out of the nightmare I’d experienced. But if I didn’t rise soon, my mother would come and scold me and remind me that I had agreed to milk the cantankerous goat when we’d bought her. Worse, it was my duty to catch her when she escaped, which seemed likely given her silence so early in the morning.
“Momma,” I groaned. My bed felt like air, and my whole body felt flushed from the warmth trapped beneath the covers.
“Momma,” I said again and forced myself upright, then froze.
It had been no nightmare.
The droid, my wounds, the princess—all real. I was in the capital city, Walili, within the royal palace, the Ziyaana.
My mind went blank with terror. I’d barely survived my first night. How would I fare the next night and the next and the next, never mind what would happen when I took my place as Maram’s body double? I hunched over in my bed, fighting tears.
Someone had already been in my rooms and laid out tea and bread. Hanging on a hook by the entrance to the chambers was a cream-ivory qaftan. I imagined for the wealthy ladies of the Ziyaana it must have seemed plain—what little beadwork there was was constrained around the neck and the edges of the jacket’s sleeves. But it was ornate and detailed, the beads flecked in gold and silver, and the cloth was light and rippled beneath my fingers like water. It was worth more than my family’s farm, I was sure.
I washed and dressed, carefully avoiding my wounds, just in time for Tala to appear, silent as a ghost.
She was dressed in a qaftan similar to mine, though hers was black, the sleeves and lapels of her jacket embroidered in white. She wore a stiff velvet belt in the old style, over gown and jacket both.
“Come,” she said, and gestured to a vanity and a set of cushions. “We have little time, and I must make you presentable.”
I sat warily, and watched as she worked on my hair. She must have been a lady’s maid to a daughter of one of the makhzen who worked in the lower echelons of the new government. Her fingers worked deftly as she oiled and parted my thick, tightly wound curls. I expected her to simply comb out the knots, but instead she wound gold and silver thread into the braids, before tying off the bulk of it into a long braid.