MIRAGE

By Dayle A. Dermatis

Palatial Estates

City of Shervanis, Shervanis Caliphate

Astrokaszy

The Periphery

1 May 3066

She was being followed.

Shareeza glided through the palace on slippered feet. The ladders of golden bracelets up her arms barely clinked; she was so skilled in movement that she could make them jingle in time to the beating of doumbeks or keep them perfectly silent if stealth was paramount.

Skilled as a dancer. Skilled as a spy.

She didn’t bother being silent now. She already knew someone trailed her, and rather than losing her pursuer, she wanted to learn who he was.

Smoke curling from braziers by the door filled her senses with the scent of frankincense. Before she stepped out, she shrugged a burnoose of unbleached raw silk over her shoulders, drawing the hood up to ward against the hot desert sun and the stares of men. The personal dancing girl of the Caliph’s favorite nephew should never be exposed to the gaze of common men.

Seven years she had been on Astrokaszy, long enough to almost forget her real name; much of her former life seemed like a hazy, cheolant-induced dream.

Seven years of dry sand, of shimmering oases, of dark-skinned men in flowing white who rode sleek horses over the rolling dunes. That they were sometimes accompanied by rogue ’Mechs made them no less exotic.

Seven years of mastering the dance, of isolating one hip and lifting one shoulder and framing her torso with arched, poised hands, of perfecting the shimmy and the seduction. Mastering the art of deception, the skill of blending. Working her way up through the palace to become the beloved of Badr, nephew to the Caliph.

She’d fallen into the role more easily than she’d expected. She knew that was in part to Badr’s influence. Coming from a female-dominated society, she expected to constantly repress the revulsion of being what amounted to a slave.

But Badr never treated her that way. Although she held no official rank or station in his family, he spoke to her as an equal. He shared with her his innermost thoughts—and the Caliphate secrets that she dutifully reported back to the Magistracy of Canopus on a regular basis.

Falling helplessly, hopelessly, in love with him went against years of training.

In the palace, the air was still, but the corridors were shadowy and cool, and there were serving boys with woven fans as big as their bodies, and cups of beaten metal filled with tart fruit juice. As she stepped outside now, the unshaded, glittering sun and dry air hit her like a physical blow.

Still, she was grateful for the hint of a breeze as she made her way through the maze of tan sandstone walls to the bazaar. She was also grateful for the maze, with its hidden alcoves and secret, silent corners where you could meet with an informant, a lover, a spy…or an attacker.

She paused in such a place, where a fountain’s burble would hide a conversation. She left a scarf on the mosaic tile; it fluttered in the faint breeze, implying that she rested there at the edge of the water.

Thus her follower never expected her to slip behind him when he turned the corner into the alcove.

He froze as her small, razor-sharp knife (a lady’s knife, with a sapphire at the tip of the rosewood hilt) pressed against his side, angled expertly to slip between his ribs.

“Who sent you?” Her words whispered across his ear like a lover’s breath.

Sweat stained his armpits, the smell of his fear evident. He was barely older than the serving boys with their giant fans. His employer apparently underestimated her. Or he hadn’t known who she really was.

“I—” He swallowed, his mouth no doubt dry. “I am sworn not to say.”

She pressed the knifepoint until it just broke his flesh.

“N-Najiyah.” She almost couldn’t hear his faint admission.

So.

Badr’s uncle sought a treaty with the Caliphate of Rajirr. The negotiations would be solidified by Badr’s marriage to the Rajirran Caliph’s daughter. Najiyah.

It was said that she was beautiful, with a river of blue-black hair and eyes like oases at midnight.

Shareeza eased the knife from the boy’s side. “Tell your mistress I am no threat.”

The urgent danger past, he squared his shoulders in a fight to regain his courage. “I was sent to follow you, and I will not shirk my duties.”

She knew instinctively that his stubbornness and sense of duty would win over any threat or bribe she could attempt. There was only one solution.

The knife pierced his heart.

She cleaned her knife on his shirt, took his pouch so the killing looked like a robbery, and dumped his body into the jube, the narrow, stinking sewer that ran along the edge of the street. She didn’t bother settling the grate back on exactly so; his body would be found soon enough, with no trace back to her.

It had been the most humane thing she could do. If she left the boy to his own devices, the palace guards would have intervened, and it would have taken a long, painful time for him to die.

It was also part of her job.

She continued on.

The moon had not yet set, a faint sliver-crescent in a sky so pale that it seemed the blue had been bleached out of it. Shareeza had grown used to the contrast here between the faded, tired colors outside and the bright jewel-tones inside.

She rounded a corner and the tight street spilled open into the sprawling plaza that housed the bazaar. A sudden wall of sound: laughter, merchant cries, the startling shriek of monkeys and caged birds, babies’ wails, and the constant stream of haggling.

No one thought twice about her going shopping. No one suspected a thing.

The silk merchant broke into a smile when he saw her, teeth bright in his darkly bearded face. The edge of his turban had turned brown, dyed by a mixture of sweat and dust. He liked Shareeza because she always bought something, and negotiated only as long as was polite, rather than truly fighting for a better price. She fingered a new bolt of silk, emerald green and cobweb fine. (She remembered cobwebs from home. Here the hairy desert spiders preferred direct attack over sticky trap to catch their prey.)

The silk would be perfect as a new dance scarf. She bought more meters than necessary, and some sequined tassels. The merchant wrapped the packages with extra care. The palace would send the money before the day was out.

Although she had a greater purpose for being there, she thought of nothing but shopping. It was that easy to slide deep into the persona of Shareeza and stay.

She tasted figs. She bought some of Badr’s favorite offworld spiced rum in a green glass bottle shaped like a lily, pleased with herself for being able to surprise him with it. She breathed in the bouquets of perfumes and indulged herself in a vial of cinnamon-scented oil. For one of the other dancers, she selected a delicate blown-glass bauble, only a breath more substantial than a soap bubble and just as iridescent.

Despite the striped awnings shading her from the sun, the heat took its toll. Her skin was too fair, her constitution still able to take the Astrokaszeen climate only in small doses.

She slipped into a café and sat in a dim corner, nursing an iced coffee. Fishing out chips of ice, she sucked on them slowly, allowing the nausea to fade.

Najiyah hadn’t sent the boy to kill her, just to observe. To determine, no doubt, if she would be a threat. The irony was, in truth, that she wasn’t a threat to the marriage at all.

Shareeza was under no romantic illusion about her relationship with Badr. She was a servant, a dancing girl, not a marriage candidate. He had told her of the nuptial treaty, of course. Assured her, unnecessarily, that she would never be cast aside. He would do his marital duty and give Najiyah children, to cement the political pact and the union between the Caliphates.

They both understood, and accepted, duty.

She picked up the bottle of rum, admiring the craftsmanship. Her fingers stroked the cool glass and she turned it in her hands.

On the bottom, pressed into the indentation and indistinguishable from the glassblower’s punty mark, was a message chip no larger than the nail on her littlest finger.

She pried the chip out and slipped it into her handheld reader. She had time to scan the message once and commit it to memory before the chip automatically erased itself, leaving no trace on the reader.

The heat fled her body. She was encased in ice, down to her very soul.

Her instructions were clear: stop the treaty negotiations between Shervanis and Rajirr by eliminating the groom.

Assassinate Badr.

Shareeza danced.

Her audience was small, private. She was no common dancer.

There was Badr, of course. His uncle, the Caliph. A few other relatives—she knew their tangled lineage by heart, and even knew a few secret illegitimacies. (Women talked far more than men ever dreamed they did.) A few other dancing girls, although they danced during the meal. Shareeza was kept until last, a real show as opposed to a diversion between mouthfuls of couscous and lamb in yogurt sauce laced with mint, washed down with honeyed wine.

She had sat on a cushion next to Badr as they ate. She said nothing, smiling prettily and laughing when the joke was made obvious for her benefit. No one knew how intently she listened, how carefully she filed information away, how astutely she pieced together random facts.

As the others sampled brandy and coffee and a pastry stuffed with sweet dates and dusted with powdery sugar, Shareeza danced.

She doubted if even the other girls saw the anguish in every step she took.

She whirled beneath shimmering silk scarves of sapphire, amethyst, amber gold. Her long, long hair brushed down her back, tossed in controlled but casual waves.

Badr was fascinated by her hair, the color of harvested wheat flecked with strands of spun gold like the thread couched in designs at the edges of her skirts. It was so unlike the rich brown-black hair of those born on Astrokaszy. To him, it smelled mysterious, felt exotic.

He knew she had been brought as a slave from offworld. She never volunteered more details about her past than necessary, and a fair amount of what she told him involved dissembling and distraction. It hurt her to outright lie to him. Even if it was her job.

Never form an emotional attachment.

Never fall in love.

Shazeera danced, her despair laid bare in her movements.

Badr sipped the brandy from a hammered gold cup, his gaze never leaving her.

The bracelets up and down her arms clinked, and the zills between her thumb and middle finger picked out a fast, complicated rhythm.

Woven invisibly into her beaded bra was a thin, strong wire. She could slip the garrotte around his neck and strangle him while he slept.

She shimmied towards the table, flicking a sheer veil over her face and then away to reveal a sly smile and heavy, kohl-lidded eyes.

One of her bracelets contained a razor-sharp blade. She could sever an artery with a flick of her wrist.

At the right moment, another dancer handed her a sword, just over a meter long and curved, growing wider towards a wedge-shaped tip. She tossed it and turned with it, more graceful than any warrior. Without pausing in her dance, her hips still rising and falling, she settled the sword on her head, balancing the inward curve against her scalp.

She could whirl, twirl, shimmy, lead forward and backward, and she never had to touch the blade with her hands again. It never wavered.

Her resolve must never waver.

The sword wasn’t sharp enough to kill.

She ended the dance on her knees, her back arched, her hair pooling on the floor around her feet. She had danced away her love, spinning it out into the air, releasing it like doves at a funeral.

Somewhere, buried deep inside, was the detachment she needed. In the course of the dance, it traded places with her emotions.

Her position as confidante and lover were over. Her duty, her loyalty, was to the Magistrate of Canopus.

In Badr’s private, lush rooms, they drank the rum, her final gift to him. They loved beneath the crescent moon and glittering stars, and lay afterwards listening to the plashing of the fountain in the courtyard as the sweat cooled on their bodies.

Badr’s eyelids fluttered shut. Unlike the palm fronds fluttering in the soft breeze outside the window, his eyes would never move again.

“Sleep well, my beloved,” she whispered. She cradled his dark head in her lap and listened as his breathing grew more shallow, and finally ceased.

She flicked open the bejeweled poison ring on her finger again. No trace of the poison remained.

Fleetingly, she wished there had been enough for her, too.

Before she stood and laid his head on the pillows, before she gathered her things and slipped away unseen into the night, she set a brass seal on his chest. A seal from Rajirr. The seal of Najiyah, Badr’s betrothed.

There would be no treaty, not even if other candidates for marriage were found.

There would, instead, be war.

Shareeza closed the poison ring and pressed her hand against the gentle curve of her lower belly.

There would be other assignments.

There would never be another Badr. But she would always have his child that she carried within her.