I looked away. Anything I said would be too close to rebellion, and I dared not even breathe it. Idris had no idea I’d ever spoken with the rebels, let alone worked alongside them, and I knew how he felt about dissidence entirely. It had cost him his family.

“Amani,” he said, softly, dangerously. “Those more powerful than you have suffered for thinking less.”

“I only want to protect us.”

“Who is us?”

The world, I wanted to say, but refrained.

“I have lost enough loved ones to the Vath, Amani,” he said instead of leaving. “I cannot bear to lose any more.”

“Your Highness?”

Tala stood in the doorway, a small smile on her face.

“I apologize for intruding, but breakfast is ready.”

Idris placed my hand in the crook of his elbow and together we entered the salon. The serving girls lined up against the wall as the two of us sat, and Tala poured tea and uncovered dishes. Idris was quiet as he tucked into his food, and as he ate I thought and watched. One of the girls watched the two of us closely, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. Did Maram always feel thus—as if someone in her house had, or would in the future, turn against her? If I lived under such suspicions all the time, Dihya only knew what sort of person I might have become. There were so many sides to the problem of Maram’s rule. Securing the government was one thing, but she would not be able to do it without securing her own house. ‘Adil had been taken without her knowing.

I wondered again if Nadine had hired these girls. How much control over her own house had Maram passed off to Mathis’s loyal servant without realizing? I’d not thought much of it, but now it seemed the easiest way for Nadine to watch and control Maram. I waved the serving girls out of the room but held back Tala.

Maram needed allies, and she needed a household that served her. She had no friends, no supporters. The women who did her hair and changed her clothes and laid out her jewelry—these were the core of a household. On Cadiz I would not have such luxuries, but I would have my mother and my friends—when I got married, when I bore my first child, in hardship and in doubt. These women would buoy me up through it all. And so, I had to make sure that such a network existed for Maram, even if I had to forge it from nothing.

“Who among the servants here do you like best, Tala?” I asked, picking up my tea glass.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“That bad?”

“They all gossip,” she said. “Nonstop. None of them take the work seriously.”

“So none of them are Nadine’s?”