She had not left the Ziyaana in the weeks following the attempt on her life. She’d made appearances among the makhzen and Vathek courtiers, smiled as if nothing were wrong, and expected a knife in the dark every moment. Eventually, she’d had enough and, without warning or permission, packed her bags.

The cruiser shuddered again, but for once this shudder was welcome. Outside she saw the ground rushing up to meet them. She came to her feet, smoothed her hands down the folds of her qaftan, and took a deep breath.

This place, this estate, was safe. It was well guarded, and no one made it past its boundaries without passing through a bioscan. The wall to her left hissed and detached, then lowered into a ramp.

Waiting for her beneath a linen canopy were twelve servants all dressed in green and white, the Ziyadi crest embroidered on their right sleeves. Heading them up was an elderly Kushaila woman.

As a group they knelt. Maram made a quick motion with her hand and the woman—Fatiha—stood.

“Welcome, Your Highness, to Dar at-Tuyyur.”

“The last stone was set almost a month ago,” Fatiha said as they strolled down the path. The cruiser had landed in one of the flower meadows east of the main estate. “All the flowers you requested have been imported, and half the fields have been planted.”

“The orchards?”

“Coming along,” Fatiha replied.

“It looks so different,” Maram breathed.

Twenty years ago, the estate and the surrounding lands had been rubble. Bombed out of existence by air raids during the Vathek conquest of Andala, almost nothing had survived. But Maram had pictures—holos of her mother’s visitation to the falconing retreat, recordings of hunts from the years before the Vath ever darkened Andalaan skies. And in the six months since Maram had decided to rehabilitate it and rebuild, it was transformed into something close to what it might have been in antiquity.

The first time she’d set foot here there’d been green, but it’d been the wild untamed greenery that sprung up after wildfire. Now, in the distance, she could see the aviary tower, gleaming in the early-morning sunlight, and the flags with her mother’s crest, whipping in the wind.

“Yes,” Fatiha said with a smile. “We have come a long way toward your vision. And we are all quite proud of the result, Your Highness.”

“What remains to be done?”

“The aviary is empty,” she said, her voice clipped and efficient. “We’ll need to hire a falconer, which I’m working on, and implement a breeding program.”