He climbed onto the seat beside Idris and pressed close to get a better look at the horses on the holo they were watching. A less kind cousin might have wrinkled his nose or demand he wash, but Idris lifted his arm and drew him close, then angled the holo to make sure he could see. Idris hadn’t raised him, but it was easy to see how he would have looked after him at home. He had no fear that the prince of Andalaa would turn him away or scold him. ‘Adil talked quite quickly, and more than once I heard his voice flow from Vathekaar into Kushaila. He spoke too quickly for any of the others to follow what he said, but I understood and was hard put not to smile or laugh at his excitement. More than once he looked over Idris’s arm at me, his eyes shrewd but joyful still.

Eventually, I tired of feigning interest in horses and wandered off to one of the large glassless windows that overlooked the orchard. Though I might have been a farm girl, we’d never had enough money to afford horses, and those who did used them as beasts of burden, not for racing as the makhzen did. Husnain, I thought with a pang, would have enjoyed the conversation.

“Your Highness?”

I’timad had come away from her brother and Idris to join me. She was dressed in a dove-gray qaftan that crept toward silver. There was something almost military about the high collar of her qaftan and the mantle falling from her shoulders. But the effect was wholly Kushaila—there was nothing Vathek about her, which was perhaps why she and her brother had been chosen as hostages.

“Did we bore you?” she said, and gave me a bright smile. I couldn’t tell if it was sincere.

“I find myself less riveted by horseflesh than my husband,” I replied, softening Maram’s customary tart tone.

She joined me at the window and eyed me sidelong for a moment. “You know, you are not what I expected.”

Maram had never met I’timad, I knew; though she and ‘Imad had been raised in the Ziyaana, Maram had not returned until she was older, and by then they would have traveled back and forth between their stronghold and the capital. Maram had always kept her circle small, and there were enough young Vathek courtiers that she would not have consorted with many of the makhzen families outside of Idris.

I raised an eyebrow. “What did you picture?”

She grinned. “I don’t know. For you to look less like one of us?”

My eyes widened in surprise. I hadn’t expected that much honesty from her.

“Have I given offense?”