I smiled. “You will not like the next bit, then.”

She waved a hand. “Proceed.”

“It is tradition for them to walk from the palace to the zaouia to make a donation.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Maram—”

“Let’s compromise,” she said. “I will hold the feast. I will even be present. I will not traverse the city on foot.”

Perhaps the zaouia was too much. Especially in light of her worries about how the Vath would perceive her. She needed to appear to still belong to them for as long as possible. I nodded.

“If you’d told me last year that I would … be arguing with my double about what political risks I would take,” she drawled, and shook her head.

I smiled. “It is normal to argue with an older sister.”

She hadn’t sat up from her earlier sprawl and contorted her neck so that she could look at me while remaining on her back. “Do you want to be queen?”

I blinked at her, startled. “What?”

“Do you ever want to be queen?” she repeated.

“No,” I said, laughing. “The very idea fills me with dread.”

That made her sit up. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was not born to this life. If not—if I were not here, I would be … well. I might be married by now. I would certainly not be doing this.”

She propped her chin on the heel of her hand and watched me. “But you are here, helping me when you don’t have to. When … in truth, you have every right to let me sink or swim. If not for power, then for what?”

“I love my planet. It has been mistreated in the last decade—” It was Maram’s turn to snort and my turn to ignore her. “But I think— No, I know that you will be a great queen. That you have the compassion and capability to do better than those who have come before you.”

It seemed she did not expect me to say such a thing. She blinked rapidly and looked away.

“What makes you think so, given how I’ve treated you?”

“Because those who are unfit to rule do not worry about the sins committed by their masters,” I replied. “And they make no effort to repair the harm done by them.”

She did not look at me when she spoke. “Is it enough to worry when your hands are tied as mine are? I have noticed the ways in which my father’s laws chain the people of this planet. I have little recourse against them. And every time I sit at the diwan I notice the silence between words—the hunger that is never spoken of openly. The missing children. What am I to do? What … what would you do?”

I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “What would I do?”

“If you were queen. Or going to be queen as I am.”