The Farren Queens

Samir

"I'll take first watch." Kiari offered. "You should sleep."

"I'm not tired." Samir wanted to rest as well, but he didn't trust her to keep them safe. To his relief, Kiari laid down on a cot and closed her eyes. It took her a few minutes to fall asleep, but when she did, Samir could hear her snoring from across the room. He sat on a wooden table and watched the doorway. No one passed the room, even as it got later. After a few hours without incident, Samir's eyes started to droop. He tried to stay alert, but it was no use. Half-asleep, he shook Amara awake.

"What do you want?" She said, rubbing her eyes.

"I can't stay awake." he replied. "I need you to take watch."  Still groggy, Amara nodded her head and stood up. Samir collapsed against the mat and was asleep within minutes.

He dreamed that he was back in Basam, but his father was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Bahar sat on the throne, wearing the empress's crown on her head. When he walked in the throne room, his sister met his gaze. Her eyes were red, not the chocolate brown they had always been, and when she looked at him, a searing pain shot through his head. He crumpled to the ground in agony, and Bahar began to laugh.

"What are you doing?" he cried.

"I am only doing what I was taught."

"Father never taught this!"

Bahar scoffed. "Not by Father, he was an idiot. William Bates has been our mentor, and I have learned that your friend is our greatest threat."

"Bates isn't teaching you! He's controlling you!"

For a moment, Bahar's eyes flashed brown. Her expression softened, and Samir saw a glimpse of the girl she used to be.

But then the red came back, and her face flushed with new anger. "Send him to his death!" she commanded.

Samir woke up in a cold sweat. "It's Bates!" he said as he jolted up.

Amara looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was, but this wasn't the time to worry about sanity. "Of course Bates's trying to take Massaponai." she said.

"No, it's not that." he said, waving his hands in emphasis. "He's controlling Eira and Bahar."

Kiari's eyes widened in shock, and Amara asked, "Haven't my parents done anything?"

"Your father ran away with your youngest sister and your mother. They haven't been seen since." Kiari told her.

"So they're safe?"

"We don't know."

Amara nodded and handed him a tin filled with murky water. "Drink," she said, "and help us find some food."

Aren't you worried about your sister?

"There's not much we can do, is there?" she asked, "What Bates does can't be undone, right?"   

He looked at her and shook his head. Samir clung to the hope that his sister wasn't far gone. In his dream, Bahar's eyes had flashed as if she was still there, but he doubted she was. In a way, it was worse than if she had died. At least she would have been herself.

With a sigh, he stood up and began to search through the pantry. The servants' kitchen was small compared to the bakery, and they were done in a few minutes. Kiari had found half a loaf of stale rye bread, and Amara returned to the table with a wedge of cheese. Samir hadn't found anything, but he sat down anyway.  Even though the bread was stale and the cheese was old, it wasn't bad. It might have been that Samir felt as though he were starving, but it tasted better than he had expected.

They finished the meal, and cleaned up the crumbs left on the table.

"What now?" Amara asked.

"We need to go to the ballroom." Samir said, cutting Kiari off. "The guard said they were questioning the townspeople. If Bates is in charge of it, it can't be good."

"No." Kiari said in a firm voice. "We won't be taken seriously if you two are wearing old rags. Amara, show us to your room, or somewhere else that might have suitable clothes."

He followed them upstairs. The hallway of the castle was beautiful, but it wasn't anything new. Samir had been to countless castles over the years, though he hadn't been to Niran Palace until Amara's coronation. That night was a blur in his memory, and the castle itself had been the least of his worries. Now, as they tiptoed past guards and around corners, he was able to appreciate the paintings that covered every square inch of the walls. Some of them were traditional portraits, but others were painted from watercolors or pastels. Samir noticed ancient poetry written in calligraphy, and works of art that must have been made by small children.

Any of this art yours? he asked Amara.
   
"Get out of my head." he heard her sigh, and then she told him, "That one over there, with the garden."

Samir looked to his left, and saw what Amara had described. She must have been a young toddler when she created the painting because, to him, it looked like nothing more than green scribbles.

For your sake, I hope your artistic skills have improved.
   
"They haven't."

The trio reached two ornate double doors when Amara stopped them. In a hushed whisper she said, "This is the laundry room. You two go in first, the laundresses might recognize me."

"Get the clothes and get out?" Samir asked.

"If it's empty, come tell me so I can get my own clothes."

Samir followed Kiari into the room. Hot steam flew into his face, and the smell of soap drifted through the air. It was hard to see through the fog, but after listening for a few minutes, Kiari ran back to tell Amara no one was in there.

Meanwhile, Samir sifted through a stack of folded clothes that lay flat on a workbench. He found a white collar shirt and a pair of dress pants, then changed in the broom closet. When he came back to the main room, he heard Amara come in, and he pointed to a rack of dresses hanging from the shelf. She and Kiari nodded and each picked one out. They weren't ball gowns, but they were nice, and they were better than the dirty dress Amara had been wearing for the past few weeks.

The hot steam had begun to make Samir feel dizzy, and sweat began to form on his brow. He left the laundry room to wait in the hall, partially out of respect to Kiari and Amara, and partially because he couldn't stand to be in there a moment longer.

He sat outside for a little while, and tried to come up with some semblance of a plan. The problem was that he didn't know anything about Niran Palace, or the controlled Eira and Bahar. After what felt like forever, he was tempted to knock on the door and tell them to hurry up, but he didn't want to startle any guards.

Are you almost done? He asked, now grateful he used his kouzlo.

"Skies, just give me a minute."

Samir didn't know what to make of that. As promised, Amara emerged from the room a minute later. She was wearing a dark green dress with long sleeves, and Kiari followed in a deep blue nightgown.

"Where did you put your old clothes?"

With a dismissive wave, Amara answered, "We burned them, don't worry. No one will find them."

Samir nodded. Kiari waved for them to follow, and then disappeared around the corner. Amara and Samir went along with her into the hall, and they crawled through the corridors. Once or twice, they had to duck around a corner or into a closet to avoid guards, but no one saw them. Samir knew he wasn't quiet, and he wondered if all the guards were deaf, or just the ones he and Amara had encountered.