Chapter 1 #2
“I desire consistency,” Aicha retorted, pulling the door shut behind her. The metal clang echoed as she locked it. “Also, he deserved it.”
Samira tutted, shaking her head as she headed for the back room.
Her dark leathers weighed heavy on her shoulders, the protective layers helped when she was outside, in the dead of night, smuggling.
Risking her life. But in the light of day, it was far too warm to wear, and Aicha was always taken back by Samira’s ability to go so long without water.
Though that habit had been instilled into both sisters from birth, as a result of being denied simple necessities from the King’s guard, it was one Aicha had defied.
Her sister called her gluttonous. Aicha called it common sense.
Samira peeled off her tunic, throwing it into a pile of clothing on the floor.
Her layers were abundant, and dark in colour.
She had been gone since yesterday evening, and the black and navy clothing was necessary for slipping through the walls and remaining in the shadows when smuggling cargo and messages out of the city.
Her role within the rebellion was an important one, something she had volunteered for with Rachid despite her father’s protests.
Being caught transporting weapons and secrets to the Sultan’s men outside of the city walls meant certain execution, but Samira was the best at it. And Rachid a close second.
“Please, add to my chores,” Aicha drawled, motioning to the growing pile of clothes her sister had made. “I enjoy washing your clothes.”
Samira met her with a glare, though little else. Rarely could one arouse annoyance from Samira, whereas Aicha had always had a shorter temper.
Like Aicha, dark green markings lined Samira’s chin, cheeks and between her brows.
Aicha had received her first, the siyala, on her fourteenth birthday.
A symbol of reaching womanhood. It was a line that began beneath her lip and extended to the tip of her chin, with a row of dots either side.
Incredibly painful when she sat through it.
She’d almost wanted to punch her baba while he’d marked her.
Granted, he had done so only once before—for Samira—and so wasn’t as gentle as he claimed people from her mother’s tribe would have been.
Still, a punch would have felt good.
The second had been given when she’d won her first sparring battle, a talisman for protection that Fouad had called ghemaza and placed between her brows.
Two and a half diamonds stacked atop one another.
These were the markings their mother once received, and Fouad had been desperate for his daughters to retain some essence of her, to feel connected to her.
She pushed down the feeling of emptiness that always surfaced when she thought of her mama. It existed instead of longing, or grief, because Aicha never knew her mother. She would always feel like she’d simply had something taken from her.
Samira moved to lift the water jug by both handles, careful not to spill, and poured herself a bowl of lukewarm water.
“Do not use too much,” Aicha warned. “They have halved our daily supply.”
“Why?” Samira said, a frown etched into her brows. “I thought you collected ours before dawn.”
“I did, but the blockade and the drought mean they will ration our supply before they ration theirs.” Irritation seeped into Aicha’s tone.
The reminder of her heated discussion with a soldier when he had failed to fill her waterskins fully—and their disregard for her enquiry as to when more would be available—reinvigorated her annoyance.
For well over a month, a blockade had been enforced by the Maghrebi armies that patrolled the seas.
Halting almost all of the invaders’ imports of goods into the citadel.
When rumours of an attack had reached the Portuguese, they had had no choice but to close the gates.
Aicha would have said they were all trapped, but it wasn’t true.
Portuguese villagers fled almost daily—if they had the coin to buy passage.
Returning to the land they should have never left, Aicha thought bitterly.
The general, however, was almost petulantly stubborn.
So, soldiers were forced to stay, to defend walls they had no right to build and to let the Maghrebi starve first. Aicha hoped their ships sank before reaching their shores.
“Fish was all gone, too,” Aicha muttered. “They won’t let anyone go beyond the bay any more. Hamad said they barely caught a full net.”
Samira bristled, then rubbed at her face.
She was able to cool her frustration much more easily than Aicha.
Her grip was gentle as she focused on her task.
Aicha had already smashed four of the ceramic jugs by holding them too carelessly, and Fouad had made both sisters pay for the last, because—as Aicha distinctly remembered—it was the “elder’s responsibility to make sure the youngest sibling behaved.
” As if accidentally dropping a jug was a behavioural issue.
Aicha watched as Samira splashed water on her face, and around her neck, ridding her skin of the dry sand and dirt from the tunnels she had passed through.
She drew a deep breath in then out, expelling a weight from herself as Aicha watched her finally relax in their home.
The only place she had ever felt safe enough to release the rigidity in her shoulders.
Placing the remaining weaponry she had sharpened that afternoon back into her baba’s trunk, Aicha locked it. She lifted it with both hands and grunted as it weighed down on her.
“Move,” she huffed at Samira, who crouched in the doorway between the front room and the back. “I need to put these away.”
The elder ignored Aicha’s barbed tone, all too used to her impatience. Aicha watched Samira pick up the bowl and jug of water, taking her spot at the workstation, and sitting on her unused stool.
Aicha moved into the hallway and towards their baba’s study, pushing past the curtain that partitioned his room from the hall.
She dropped the trunk to the ground and, manoeuvring his table, pulled away the rug that lay beneath it to reveal loose zellige.
She pulled off the tiles one by one, with delicacy so as not to chip any, before revealing the trapdoor below.
Aicha descended the wooden steps of the hidden entrance, which had been built long before her birth by her grandfather.
She was cloaked in darkness, with only a slither of sunlight from the window streaming into the small cellar.
Using what light she had, she plopped the trunk next to the dozens of others, all engraved to indicate the type of weaponry they contained.
Aicha headed back up the steps, the wood creaking loudly as she went. When she returned to the workroom, a slightly cleaner and less dishevelled Samira turned towards her.
“Where’s Baba?”
“At the port,” Aicha supplied, hoisting herself up to sit on the counter. “He had to make a delivery to the Filali family.”
Samira nodded, and rested her head on the counter, Aicha knew she liked to feel the coolness of the wood against her cheek.
As Aicha unsheathed her small dagger from her waist, and began to sharpen it, the two descended into a comfortable silence, both exhausted by the day and taking comfort in each other’s presence.
“I need help packing Baba’s newest arrows,” Samira mumbled. “They must go out by tomorrow evening.”
Aicha groaned, knowing that the task would extend well into the night, and that their father would offer no assistance.
Despite her constant moaning, and the petulant childishness she knew she was displaying, it was still a chore that had to be done.
One that was boring, filled with little excitement or actual adult responsibility.
This lack of responsibility was a grievance she constantly brought to her father, only to receive the same monotonous reply:
You’re not ready.
But Samira had been. Samira always had been. She shared a bond with their baba that Aicha had always been envious of, and she wasn’t proud of it, but Aicha wondered if Fouad favoured Samira because she had not caused their mother’s death.
“Fine,” she said to Samira, “but you have to do the cleaning.”
Her sister made a non-committal sound of acknowledgement, evidently too tired to argue. Aicha patted Samira on the head, both teasingly and affectionately, before she hopped off the workstation. She bent to pick up her sister’s clothing and moved into the next room, placing it in the wash basket.
“Get some rest, I have to go out,” Aicha called.
Samira released another inaudible sound, opening her eyes a fraction to give her sister a knowing look as she returned to the room.
“Tell Rachid he best not be awake throughout the night, we have to make another delivery. When he is tired, he is a liability.”
“Why would I be going to see Rachid?”
The speed with which Samira raised her head, delivering a look of both annoyance and scepticism, was almost comical.
“That big-eyed look of innocence works with Baba, but not me, little sister. I know where you sneak off to after hours.”
Aicha’s laugh was loud and jarring, a cackle that would be deemed unbecoming of a lady. It emerged as predictably as a flower in spring, a sign of nervousness when she attempted to deflect or lie.
Her denial over Rachid wasn’t convincing to her elder sister, and Samira’s scepticism showed in her eyes, a look identical to Aicha’s, one that they had inherited from Tadla.
It was an expression neither of them took offence at, because Fouad had always yielded in affection upon seeing it.
The ghost of their mother’s blazing defiance emanated from them both, and when it did, Fouad crumbled.
They were his girls.