I’d chosen a simple blue qaftan made of velvet, with gold trim along the hem and sleeves. Pinned to my right shoulder was a fall of white chiffon that spilled down my back and trailed to the floor. My hair was slicked back, the excess braided and pinned to the back of my head, and in lieu of a coronet or crown I wore a gold filigree cap, shaped like a tesleet, its wings wrapped around either side of my head. The effect was simple, but striking.

Thus dressed, I was escorted by the serving girls from the dressing room to the main parlor, where Idris waited. The serving girls continued to the breakfast salon without me. He looked both better and worse—he hadn’t shaved this morning, which might have made another man look unkempt. But Idris simply looked more Kushaila, as if he belonged in a djellaba more than a Vathek military suit. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and when he looked at me he seemed tired, his shoulders stooped.

I reached for his hand when the last serving girl disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and wished I had something better. “How did you sleep?”

“Not well,” he admitted. “But better with you there. Thank you. With Maram especially.”

I raised my eyebrows, surprised. “I did nothing.”

“You do not give yourself due credit,” he said. “I was not inclined to be diplomatic or kind.”

“You are grieving—”

“There is no place for grief here,” he said softly. “I know that. We both do.”

I shook my head. “There is no thanks necessary for what is freely given.”

He did not smile, not exactly, but there was a sense of relief in him.

“Do you think it will work? The alliance—that it will protect us?”

“You are the master shatranj player,” I replied.

“We’ve tried before … it never works.”

“You’ve never had a queen on your side,” I said softly. Children could not plot together, could not stand together, without a protector. And though the hostages of the Vath were children no more, they were still distinctly at a disadvantage.

Idris watched my face closely, as though he could divine some secret without my knowing.

“Maram is too clever to entertain opposing the empire, even for a moment,” he said at last.

“She need not oppose an empire—just her father.”

I knew that neither Idris nor Maram would ever entertain rebellion, but the truth of the matter was that even if Maram took hold of the government prior to her father’s death, the presence of the Vathek imperial machine would make real change impossible. It was erected to mine our resources and steal our wealth—it had to be eradicated. We couldn’t wait for Mathis to die—the planet would not outlast him.

“Her father is the empire,” he replied.