Sabra had been trying to do better all evening; she hid with Lin in the mothers’ room so as not to spoil Hadhi’s chances with Azize...and a bit to protect herself, she supposed. But she’d emerged in time to watch Jauhar chastise Hadhi, her eyes tore into her daughter, so Hadhi looked smaller for every word she spoke. Sabra pressed her son softly to her shoulder and kissed his head, vowing silently to always show him her love. He would be so much happier than the rest of Zuberi’s children. So much safer, and more loved.
Sabra wanted to allow Hadhi the pretense of privacy, she owed her that much after their less than friendly history, but she was sure Hadhi knew she was being observed. Oni, one of their neighbors, was whispering to her daughters in Maltuban about how lucky they were to have her for a mother; imagine being Jauhar’s daughters. Sabra turned to face them fully and let Oni see her raised brow of challenge. At once, the woman rushed her daughters away.
Sabra made a point of not allowing anyone to speak ill of Jauhar or her daughters in front of her. She did not like Jauhar, but she understood her like no one else could. There was no joy to be had from being one of Zuberi’s wives.
After Hadhi moved off stiffly through the crowd, Sabra shuddered and walked forward, poor girl. Sabra nearly laughed at herself: girl. Hadhi was three years older than Sabra, and she could not recall that she had ever seemed like a mere girl. But that didn’t excuse the way Sabra and Asha had treated her.
Jauhar looked down her shoulder at Sabra, her brow went up and a small sly smile tilted her lips. “There was no need to hide from your boy love; despite his adventures, you are far worldlier.”
Sabra felt her cheeks heating and looked away. She hadn’t realized Jauhar knew Sabra had liked Azize before he ran away. She looked back on those light fluttery feelings and was embarrassed with herself for ever thinking it was something special. Yet still, when she knew she might see him in person, that she might speak to him, she had grown so shy and embarrassed that she hid with her son. How could she possibly face him? She had kissed him once, just once, but it was the sweetest memory her mind could conjure.
When Zuberi had claimed her as his wife, Sabra had hidden inside that memory until it was so worn and familiar that it seemed a fantasy of her mind’s invention. She didn’t want it spoiled.
“I was not hiding,” Sabra said, with her eyes on the ground.
“Oooo. How is our sweet boy?” Jauhar said. Ignoring Sabra’s words, she leaned in close and ran a gentle hand over Lin’s head.
Sabra had worried when Lin was first born that Jauhar would resent him. As Zuberi’s only male child, he could eventually inherit all of his father’s possessions. But Jauhar had been nothing but gentle and loving with him. She was far kinder to Lin than she was to her own daughters. She was kinder to Sabra than she was to her own daughters. Jauhar should resent her husband’s third wife. She should resent the child that would surely have been his favorite had he lived to meet him. But nothing could be further from the truth. She treated Sabra kindly, maternally. And she treated Lin as though he brought the sun to the sky.
“Would you like to hold him?” Sabra offered.
Jauhar’s eyes lifted from Lin’s soft head to meet Sabra’s gaze. Jauhar smiled gently; it was an expression Sabra was near-certain her own daughters had never seen. It made Jauhar look like her true self, her aged beyond her years, broken and hungry, angry self. Sabra imagined most people, well familiar with Hadhi’s dark expressions and quiet nature, would think she was the angriest woman in Maltuba. She never did seem to find anything but her sister Nuru to take joy in. But Sabra knew well the angriest woman in Maltuba: it was Jauhar. Hadhi was quickly catching up to her mother in inner rage, but she had a chance still to escape the fires of hatred that lived in Jauhar. The rage that ate away at her when she looked on anyone but Lin.
“You are a good girl, Sabra.”
“He...enjoys being with his Mzaa Jauhar,” Sabra said softly. “And I thought I might,” she nodded across the room, “give Hadhi a bit of help.”
“You might want to help yourself,” Jauhar said, easily lifting Lin away and bouncing him across the air.
“No!” Sabra shook her head.
“It was not a criticism. I was never angry with you for how you were with Hadhi. I was a girl once. And Hadhi never has been easy to love,” Jauhar said so casually, likely unaware that Nuru had been approaching from behind. At her mother’s words, she stopped dead and glared fire into Sabra. Sabra never knew how to intervene in this family. But she knew she owed Hadhi a great debt of apology for the way she had treated her as a girl.
Sour face!
Sabra flinched at the sound of her own voice in her memory. She couldn’t believe she’d ever been so cruel, but she had. And what was more, it hadn’t felt cruel then. She’d seen Hadhi, watching with her dark glower, judging them, getting Sabra and Asha into trouble. She always found some way to spoil their adventures just when they were at their most exciting—and dangerous. But Sabra and Asha had never noticed the danger Hadhi kept them from. They only noticed the fun she prevented. Sabra had never understood why one as wealthy and important as Hadhi could possibly be so angry. Until Zuberi claimed her, a girl the age of his own children, for his bride, and Sabra saw inside the family she’d thought she knew for years. There had never been anything for Hadhi to smile about. Sabra realized now that Hadhi had been trying to reach out to them, in her own way, and had always been rebuffed.
She owed her a great deal. But...Jauhar was the only reason that Sabra had not killed herself in the first year of her marriage. So she did not know how to intervene. This whole family was tattered and scarred, even if only Hadhi wore those scars visibly.
Nuru, equally unable to speak to Jauhar’s comments, spun about and stomped off through the crowd.
“What I meant is that this evening might be beneficial for all the young ladies of my house. Find a man.”
“I...that is done for me.” Sabra fumbled.
“Zuberi is gone,” Jauhar said with a little soft hum between her words, as she rocked the baby back and forth. “I loved my husband, so to take another is abhorrent to me. But we both know you had no love for Zuberi, and he likewise had use for you, but no love. You owe nothing to him. Nor can any man fault you, for you were a dutiful wife and are an excellent mother.”
Lin fell softly to sleep against Jauhar’s shoulder and she led Sabra away from the crowd of the room towards the walls.
“You are a child still, my dear. Love and desire are far from over for you. Go, see for yourself.”
Sabra was shaking her head still, and her cheeks were aflame with embarrassment, but she left her son in Jauhar’s arms and crossed the room towards Hadhi all the same. Not that she intended to...flirt, or try to win Azize, or any man. She wanted to help Hadhi. So despite how angry and saddened Sabra had been when Jauhar prevented Asha from coming tonight, she was pleased for Hadhi. Hadhi could never see her value with Asha near, and she needed to see it tonight. Because this was Hadhi’s chance to get away from all the pain her father had wrought. This was her chance to reach out to someone and have them pull her near.
As Asha was crossing the room, Sabra walked by. Asha’s best friend but she barely saw her. Like always now.
Before she’d married Baba Sabra’s eyes had lit up when she saw Asha. And her breath would hang on Asha’s every story. Where had that girl gone? Asha’s pulse raced as it used to when they ran laughing through the tall grasses, and magic bubbled up inside her. She didn’t properly see the room before her, only her ethus havio.
Asha reached out and grabbed ahold of her greatest friend’s arm. She stared into Sabra’s eyes, willing her to see Asha as she would have in the past. Even in a skin of magic Sabra would have known her—before.
“Can I assist you somehow?” Sabra asked softly.
Asha didn’t answer, waiting. Longing. They’d loved each other once, spent all their time together, Asha dragging Sabra on adventures. Sneaking into the capitol palace. Running away to the mountains, with sacks of clothes and food enough for a week. They would have made it too, if sour-face hadn’t tattled on them. Hadhi hated anyone having fun. But Asha and Sabra used to have such marvelous adventures.
Maybe that would fill Asha up, an adventure with someone she loved. Asha ached from the absence of love in her life. It felt so empty. So pointless.
“Yes.” Asha smiled provocatively, begging silently for Sabra to know her, to feel her reaching out. “You’ve been here longer than I, which of the foreigners seems the most...well-traveled?”
Sabra smiled genuinely, looking like her younger, lovelier self. Asha hadn’t realized before now that her friend had been looking older. They were near the same age, had done everything together when they were young. But now Sabra was old before her time. Did marriage change one so much? Asha wasn’t sure she wanted to be married if it stole one’s youth and one’s adventurous spirit and one’s smile. The only time Sabra really smiled anymore was when she was holding her son.
“I’ve barely exchanged words with more than two of them. But...that gentleman has a pleasant spirit,” Sabra suggested
Asha ignored her words and just watched her old friend. Was it marriage that had changed her? Or Baba’s death? Because she seemed most days like an entirely foreign person.
“I’ll try him out,” Asha said vaguely, not even really knowing who they spoke of.
Too busy wondering what had changed in her friend. Sometimes she thought it was vanity. Sabra’s pride at being married when Asha was not, for surely she had changed. The day Baba brought her home as his new bride, Asha had been thrilled! They would be family in truth; they would be together always. And with Sabra as Baba’s new wife, even Hadhi wouldn’t be able to spoil their fun. Except Sabra barely spoke to her after that. She spoke to Mzaa Jauhar more than she did anyone else. She’d completely changed. But Sabra could change back, couldn’t she? Asha could reawaken her.
“But...save myself, you are the loveliest woman here.” Asha said brightly, trying to rouse her friend. “Why are you not having an adventure to last a lifetime? You should be flirting and discovering worlds beyond our own. Come with me.” Asha held out a hand. “We can see what he knows together. Let’s have an adventure.”
For only a moment, Asha thought she might accept. Sabra’s eyes looked as hungry as Asha’s insides. She looked deep into Asha’s eyes, and there was a spark of adventure in her that was so familiar from their childhood days. Asha forgot to breathe. Then Sabra shook her head, looking at the ground like the dutiful wife she’d been for years now. She glanced off across the room. Following her gaze Asha saw her half-sister Hadhi, stiff and smiling like a demented woman as she talked to a pair of foreigners.
“I must return to my family,” Sabra said. “But thank you.”
The answer made Asha’s blood boil with rage and magic, and a desire to bellow fire into the room. Hadhi! Hadhi was Sabra’s family. And what was Asha, the girl she’d laughed with and sang with and shared adventures with, the girl she’d slept with under the stars and dreamed of far off lands with? Nothing? A servant, as she was to the rest of the family? Family. Asha hated that word. It was a lie. Just like her friendship with Sabra had apparently been a lie.
Asha nearly hated her friend in that moment, but more even she hated Hadhi, and Jauhar, two of the ugliest, angriest women in Maltuba, likely the whole world, who’d stolen everything that should be Asha’s every joy, every memory perverted by their presence calling themselves family. Now they would pervert Sabra too. This wasn’t the real Sabra. Asha missed that girl with all her heart.
“Are you always only obedient and respectful? Because...a good family would want adventure for you. You deserve to be joyful again!”
Asha didn’t wait for an answer, her hours were dwindling. And Sabra’s rejection threatened to leave Asha heartsore and lonesome. Again. Why was she always alone? She offered her love time and again. She used to bring Jauhar flowers and beg her to dress her or teach her to cook. Used to ask Hadhi to come on adventures. Yet time and again, her offers of love were met with coldness and rejection. She couldn’t spend her magic this way. Couldn’t waste one moment being that same desperate soul.
Asha had been remade with magic. All too soon the bells would toll for midnight and the magic Zawadi had given her would be gone. Her magic skin would be gone. And her adventure would be over.
She deserved an adventure, a joy. She deserved the one night—and she wasn’t surrendering it.
Sabra felt electricity dancing under her skin from where the strange woman had touched her. Excitement like she hadn’t felt in years. She walked away, having refused the woman’s invitation with words, but inside she was...alive. Abuzz with that youthful tickled, hungry feeling she used to have whenever Asha was near. For a moment, that stranger had brought Sabra back to life as she hadn’t been in years, made her feel and want in ways she’d thought were entirely destroyed by her husband. But Sabra tried to shake those feelings off as she crossed to Hadhi.
Hadhi had surely never felt such feelings at all, and Sabra needed to make amends to her. The goddess Ether demanded one acknowledge their mistakes and try to heal them. That should be Sabra’s only focus tonight. Coming up alongside Hadhi, Sabra overheard bits of the conversation she was having with one of Azize’s friends.
“I’d no idea Azize’s kingdom was so small,” a man with the neatly trimmed beard and kind face said. “We toured the whole thing today alone.”
Hadhi raised a critical brow, which looked at odds with the smile she was forcing, making her appear just a bit unhinged. “Do you mean the capitol city? Jaccada. Where you are now?” She explained sharply.
The man gave an awkward little laugh. “Is this not the whole thing?”
Sabra slipped forward, taking up Hadhi’s arm, though she stiffened and moved to yank it back.
“This is merely the capitol,” Sabra said sweetly, smiling at the man. “One can follow the south road through to the outer provinces, and all the domains of the five tribes united under King Enzi’s rule. Jaccada was originally home to the Ga’ogo alone, but it is peopled now by members of every tribe.”
“Ahh, that...makes far more sense.” The man laughed. “I am Daniel, your pardon ladies, if you thought I was slighting your home. It is lovely and very welcoming.” He said suggestively, lifting Sabra’s hand to kiss it.
Zagok, Sabra hadn’t meant to steal the man’s attention, only to make sure Hadhi saw how to keep it.
“When shall we have some dancing?” Daniel asked. “The introduction was lovely, but you are allowed to dance with men, aren’t you?”
“Ur uli?” Hadhi muttered under her breath in Maltuban: are you? Sabra snorted.
Another of Azize’s traveling companions who had been passing by them to the drinks table stopped and chuckled as well.
“Kane,” Daniel said in a slightly shy greeting. He glanced over at the man approaching. “What did that mean?”
“It meant she isn’t interested in dancing with you,” the new man said, throwing Hadhi a sharp smile.
He was quite lovely. Hadhi was not smiling back, and it took everything in Sabra not to do so for her. Could Hadhi not unbend at all? She looked on the man with rampant suspicion.
“That is not what it meant.” Hadhi examined the man the way Sabra imagined she would her quarry while hunting.
“But, am I wrong?” He taunted.
Sabra stiffened. She’d thought he was flirting, but...he was not flirting, was he? His eyes were as sharp as Hadhi’s. Sabra never used to be suspicious. She longed not to be so now, but being Zuberi’s wife had taught her not to freely trust men. A lesson it seemed Hadhi had learned far more effectively.
“You are from Maltuba?” Hadhi asked.
He shook his head. “Reethurn. I pick up languages quite well, and Azize shared a bit.”
Hadhi shook her head in slow disbelief. Sabra also doubted Azize had done enough speaking in Maltuban for his friends to learn it, but she seized on Daniel’s earlier question to redirect the conversation before Hadhi could offend them by insulting their friend.
“There will be dancing after dinner,” Sabra blurted out. “It is traditional for the Spirit Dancers to open any festivity so that each celebration begins by acknowledging the spirits that surround us. Then we greet one another, acknowledging the community. We dine, celebrating the bounty of our nation. And we dance, a celebration of life, under Gzifa’s watchful light. Though, tonight we shall be inside, displaying King Enzi’s impressive improvements to interior lighting. Azize must have wanted to...awe you with the process, if he did not tell you before you arrived.” Sabra said the last in a playful way, casting Hadhi a quick look so she could see; one could easily insult the prince, so long as it was done in jest.
Hadhi looked away, cold and stiff Sabra nearly sighed, but the men continued speaking, and she kept the conversation going. It was not Hadhi’s fault that she mistrusted men, nor that she had never taken to the Fairy tongue the way her other siblings had. She’d been far older than the others were when it was first adopted as a language of Maltuba, and she had never had as much education as the others, always busy helping the adults. Cleaning the thread clouds left by swirrle when she was young and hunting when she was older. Even after their family moved into the mansion, she worked. It was only since Zuberi’s death that she had stopped.
Daniel seemed to pick up on Sabra’s attempts to draw Hadhi out, and though he didn’t seem nearly as keen on the idea as Sabra, he made an effort.
“So, tell me, Hadhi, wasn’t it?” She nodded once. He raised a brow but went on. “I am a stranger here. If you were to tell me the one thing that makes your nation the most special, what would it be?”
Hadhi paused, considering. Although— Perhaps it was not a pause. She was often quiet. Perhaps she had no intention of answering. The silence was stretching on—
“I have seen no other lands,” she said at last.
Both the men laughed. Unaware that Hadhi was about to continue, they spoke right over her.
“Of course not,” Kane said. “But there must be something here you love, that you think everyone else must love as well.”
Hadhi’s mouth was open, but Daniel spoke up first. “What about its history? Its architecture? Its industry?” The man suggested he waved at the ceiling to indicate the bows of painted stone oil lanterns that dipped, weaved, and lit the room with the help of small mirrors strung between them and along the walls. The palace was lit better than any indoor structure. “I’ve never seen the like of this.”
“And I have never seen different,” Hadhi snapped. Though of course she had, no home was so fantastically lit. This seemed magical, but Hadhi couldn’t admit that, could she? She had been Zuberi’s daughter and he’d never once let her challenge him, yet somehow Hadhi had failed to realize you couldn’t challenge and glare and fight with men if you expected to gain their favor.
Sabra sighed and glanced away, was there no way to help her? Perhaps Hadhi was the angriest woman in Maltuba, but she didn’t have to be forever, did she?