And if you are a rose, I am rose-shadow—Rumi.

After two hours of companionless rolling dunes, Reyhanna pulled her cantering mare to halt at the blue tribe of Al Zain.

Asking where she could replenish her water and purchase hay for her mount, Reyhanna was directed to a small tent roofed with shiny, dangling bauble. She chanced a foot inside.

The saleswoman was luxuriating in a litter of beaded pillows while she imbibed her tea, the skirt of her light blue dress brushing down her tucked legs and spilling onto the died carpets elevating her from the golden sand. In the corner, a filigreed copper lamp enclosed the tent walls in arabesques of flickering candlelight.

No sooner had Reyhanna stepped in than kohl-lined green eyes flew up at her, and a voluptuous mouth curled up in pleasure.

'And here I was growing bored stiff today. Ya marhaba. Welcome, welcome, how good of you to visit. I have grains and fruits and clothing of all sorts. Whatever strikes your fancy.'

'I need to fill my pouch with water for travel, some hay for my horse and dried fruit for me.' Reyhanna said.

'Are you going far, child?' The woman pried sweetly. 'Don't let the desert catch you unaccommodated tonight, a strong icy wind blows from the mountain to the north. But you're not going there, I hope.'

'I am.' Reyhanna replied unceremoniously, watching the woman weigh her dried figs and raisins on an aged scale, jewelry chiming at her ankles and wrists. 'Half a coin's worth is enough.' She specified.

The shopkeeper looked up at Reyhanna, arching one blond eyebrow.

'Curious. How about a warm fur? I can sell you a good one for half-price.' She smiled. 'If you tell me where you're going, that is, and why. I am an incurable busybody, my dear, and I lower my fares for no less than the enrichment of my personal grapevine.'

Reyhanna had not calculated this. To be fair, in her haste to depart, she had calculated nothing. Of course it would get colder near the mountain as autumn was drawing to an end. She risked a glance at her coins. She had far too little. No matter, she could still outrace the night if she rushed—her sheer determination had been known to see her through, with Allah's grace.

'You're not going where I presume you're going?' The woman crooned. 'After all, there is only one tribe estranging itself to the mountain border.'

'I am headed there.' Reyhanna said, but quickly regretted when the shopkeeper's eyes visibly burned with nosiness. 'But the reason is confidential—'

'Oh come now, nothing is confidential.' The woman dismissed with a bejeweled hand, as though she was swatting a fly, 'I've never had a client from there before, but I know a thing or two about the tribe. My friend knows someone who married one of their knights, a pleasant dear, she says, Mahra is her name—I never forget names, you know—except when I do. But it's rather tragic. I heard her husband recently passed away, the poor girl. Killed in Al Ramad, he was. She was so terribly shocked she ended up losing her unborn baby—my friend was just telling me about it the other day after receiving a letter from this Mahra. Isn't it unfortunate?' The woman sighed with thespian regret, her rouged lips pressed in a commiserating pout.

Reyhanna lowered her eyes, sudden anger flowing white-hot in her veins. Rashed, she thought viciously, had done well to disappear, otherwise she would have had to banish him herself.

'If my husband were to die,' The saleswoman continued. 'I should at least like to have his child—that is, if I loved him. Are you married?'

'N-no.' Reyhanna said, her voice cracking over the one syllable.

'Hmm I see. And you are journeying to Al Sawad to find a husband?' Reyhanna blanched and gaped at her. 'You wouldn't be the first.' She continued easily. 'It is a militarized tribe where men are strictly disciplined, I hear—they do all their chores and don't need to be diverted by their wives with all the work they have cut out for them. If you love them, I suppose their absence will grow your desire for them when they return to you in the night, and if you dislike them, then their absence will be good riddance.'

Reyhanna launched into a coughing fit.

'What is with you?' The woman gasped worriedly.

'Mote of dust got through my throat.' Reyhanna squawked in her fist.

'Did it?' The saleswoman asked with a mirthful glint in her eyes. 'Odd, and here I am, keeping my tent dustless, while you are covering your face with that riding shemagh of yours.'

Reyhanna flushed in embarrassment.

'Rather than that,' The woman chirped. 'Why are you going there alone? You don't look like a tradeswoman to me. Or are you just shy to admit your intentions?'

'I have unfinished business there.' Reyhanna said squarely, wishing she could be done with this exchange quickly. 'With someone,' she added unnecessarily, as though the information would expedite the process of slipping away with the goods.

'Unfinished business with someone? Ah—how mysterious.' The woman drummed her fingers over her jaw as she leaned forward on a large jug of water. 'I see you do not wish to say more. Fine, keep your secrets. Hand me your pouch.' Reyhanna did, stifling a sigh of relief. The woman dipped a ladle to scoop the fresh water and funneled it inside the leather pouch. 'There, our water is the sweetest in the desert—I give you it free of charge, as I am generous in nature.'

'Jazaakilah—'

'Stay here, I have a stack of hay at the back. Is it a one-way journey?'

Reyhanna was momentarily puzzled by the question.

'No—' She frowned to herself. 'I—I don't think so.'

'Don't be nervous, habibti, I'm merely asking so as to pack the right amount. Merely that.' She winked.

The woman exited for a moment and came back with a small sack filled with hay.

'There. With the warm fur, that will be four coins.'

'I'll—I'll go without the fur. How much do I owe you for the rest?'

'One coin and a half—but give me only one, for the distraction of your visit in an otherwise awfully uneventful day. Care for a cup of tea before you leave?'

As thirsty as she was, prolonging this discussion was the last thing Reyhanna cared for in her situation.

'No thank you.' She declined.

'Strapped for time are we.' The woman tittered. 'Very well, good luck on your not-one-way journey to Al Sawad. If you marry someone there,' she touched her pointer to the slope of her nose. 'I will know.'

Reyhanna coughed again, drawing a peal of laughter from the saleswoman. She paid, thanked her, and all but leaped outside the tent.

'Ready to go, Baqqa.' Reyhanna sighed, patting her mare's snout before pulling herself onto her back with practiced fluidity. 'And remind me to avoid Al Zain for future purchases.'

In the following five hours, Reyhanna only stopped once to feed Baqqa and pray Asr, the afternoon prayer, shortened from four units to two as she was engaged in travel. Her meager water supply was evaporating quickly. She was not used to traveling this far—her policing rounds with the white knights had never surpassed the oasis of Karam to the north. The mountains looked grandiose as she rode toward them, seeing them from closer than ever before, and the sky veered to a blue-grey shade, as rare sight as she had ever seen. Soon, she no longer worried about her depleting water—the temperature gradually sank lower, and she hung on the hope of reaching her destination before the sun did his. In the long time given her in solitary voyage, her resolve had not faltered once—even though she was still unclear on how she would go about convincing the Sawadi to cease his boycott of her tribe. Should she threaten first, or plead? No, she would not plead.

Then she saw it. It first appeared like a mirage, a hazy melee of dark tent-tops and small clay houses dancing in the setting sun. Then, there was green. The closer she got, the greener it looked. Thatches of plants jutting forth, palms, and fruit trees that grew easily at the foot of the mountain. A far cry from the lugubrious picture she had dressed in her mind.

The call to sundown prayer, maghreb, punctuated her arrival to the deceptively open entrance of Al Sawad.

She dismounted, feeling tired and light on her feet.

'Here we are,' she caressed Baqqa's tawny mane. 'You did good. I'll take it from here.'

She took her horse to a drinking trough nearby and attached her to one of the metal hooks sticking out from the rim.

At a distance, she could see a flow of communal prayer-goers walking side by side. Moving discretely, she fell into step behind a group of chattering women, standing out in her white cape along their ruffle of black-and-silver shawled abayas. When she followed them inside a large prayer tent, they all turned to look at her with mild alarm.

She quickly uncovered her face.

'Asalamu aleykunna, ya niswan.' She greeted. 'I have just alighted from a long journey, and would like to pray amongst you.'

'Come, come, enter,' They beckoned to her without question. 'Stand next to me, there is space for one more woman in this row,' called someone at the front. 'Huddle close, ladies.' Called another woman. 'Don't let there be a breath of air between your shoulders, form a solid chain.'

And just like that, Reyhanna was slotted among the women at the front and offered a prayer mat. From the other side of what she imagined was the men's tent, the imam spoke.

Straighten your rows and bridge the gaps.

The women aligned their shoulders, and Reyhanna sighed, the sudden warmth making her drowsy. She had made it this far. All was good.

Allahu akbar. God is the Greatest.

The imam began with surah Al Fatiha—The Opener—

In the name of Allah, The Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful.

All praise is for Allah, Lord of all worlds.

The Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful.

Master of the day of judgment.

You (alone) do we worship and you (alone) do we ask for help.

Guide us to the straight path,

The path of those upon whom you have bestowed favor, not those who have earned (your) anger or of those who are astray.

Ameen.

Throughout the prayer's three units, Reyhanna drifted with the recitation, latching onto every word and inwardly praising the imam's gifted voice in recitation.

A few minutes later, after the closing tahiyah, Reyhanna looked at the woman she had prayed next to. The other women were now gathered around her like busy bees around a hive queen, buttonholing her about her health and discussing titles of exegesis and science books Reyhanna had only heard of but never read—Yaqqut was more interested in stocking its shelves of bows and arrows and training sabers than its library. She quickly understood, from the way the hive queen was replying and the noor on her face—god-given light—, that she was a scholar. If there was one thing Reyhanna admired more than knighthood, it was ilm—knowledge.

Her first teachers had praised her curiosity for the world, and it had been her proudest compliment growing up.

As though aware of Reyhanna's scrutiny, the noor-faced scholar turned toward her with a serene smile.

'So, ya binti. I see you are dressed in white. You come to us from Yaqqut?'

'Indeed.' Reyhanna nodded. Something about the woman's charisma rendered her oddly bashful.

'How far you have traveled. Alhamdulilah ala salamtek. Thank the one god for your safety.' Noor said. 'Did you need something from our tribe, or are you simply visiting your kin?'

'Neither—I must speak to your chieftain.'

'Now?'

'It is quite urgent,' Reyhanna said, hoping she did not sound as mollified as she felt. 'I am in a rush.'

'Come with me,' The woman said, rising slowly to her feet. Noor aside, she was old, possibly in her seventies. Reyhanna offered her arm for support. 'Shukran ya binti, but I prefer to power through. Follow me, I will lead you to Binyamin.'

Reyhanna's throat tightened. Hearing his name was unhelpfully unnerving—it made it real. She was really here, doing this—whatever it was she was doing. The scholar took her around the prayer tent where the men were marching out and dispersing back to their worldly concerns until the next prayer. In front of the tent stood a group of four men, their discussion about newcomers and training and irrigation reaching Reyhanna in a disjointed flow.

'Ya ibni.' The scholar called. 'Binyamin.'

Someone in a black gandura turned toward them. He was so tall Reyhanna found herself staring at the column of his throat, framed by long black hair, and she looked up past a close-trimmed beard at the line of his lips—firm and lax at once—then slackening as their eyes locked. Recognition fused between them, widening hers and narrowing his.

'Let your knights rest, my son,' the unsuspecting woman said. 'You have a visitor who seeks your council. She comes from far.'

'No rest.' Binyamin said, watching Reyhanna with inscrutable black eyes. 'Take charge, Hakem.'

'Will do.' A middle-aged man behind him said. 'Let's go ya shabab.'

The men looked between Reyhanna and Binyamin, lagging with blatant curiosity, before Hakem's large hands clamped on their shoulders and he steered them away.

Reyhanna looked to her side. The scholar had eclipsed too. She turned back to Binyamin, whose arms were now folded across his chest.

'Why does the daughter of a chieftain wander so far from her tribe?' He asked, his voice a neutral drawl, as quiet as she remembered.

'I have come to seek an audience with you.' Reyhanna intoned curtly.

'Alone? Where is your male guardian?' He challenged.

'I traveled alone.' Reyhanna hissed through her teeth.

'You traveled here unescorted—under nightfall.' He said slowly, his mouth curling slightly in distaste. Not that Reyhanna looked. 'You hail from a lawless people.'

'It is you who has ruined Al Ramad with your ruthless boycott, you who made my tribe depend on someone to intercede in asking—.'

'And the sheikh sends his daughter alone for that?' He interrupted her invective. 'Was he afraid to send his son?'

'The sheikh is grievously wounded after a vile attempt to take his life and end his rule was foiled by the will of god, and Rashed is...unavailable. So it is me who shall speak to you, and I ask you to end your boycott.'

'I have no intention to do so.' Binyamin said.

'You ruthless man! Innocents are suffering because of you, you are heedless—'

'Hold your tongue and look around you, bint e'sheikh.' Binyamin said with his upsetting cool. 'What do you see?'

Reyhanna reluctantly threw a glance around her. There was greenery, and clean red mud-and-clay houses, and the air smelled fragrant with freshly irrigated plants.

'Everything you see has been achieved in complete self-sufficiency.' Binyamin said. 'We till our own land, we grow our own produce, we manufacture our own comforts. This tribe has been boycotted by the desert for as long as I have lived in it. All the bedouins give us is their refuse, wretches and thieves, so we line them up into reformatory training camps and teach them to contribute to Al Sawad.' He looked to his right, where the beginning of a patch of crops and wild flowers grew. 'Bedouins fear the mountain, but we thrive off its streams. They give us their criminals, but out of ugliness surges beauty. Your tribe's misery is its own doing.' Reyhanna blinked. He continued. 'I am not surprised that poverty festers in a tribe where wealth resides in the hands of the few.' He looked away from her. 'There is a communal majlis for women down the path behind you. Spend the night and never come here again.' He turned to walk off.

'Wait.' Reyhanna cried. He was in the wrong if he thought he could dissuade her at the end of a tirade, as harshly truthful as it may be—especially for someone who'd always watched Al Ramad from the lucid eye of a stranger. No, she was not done yet. 'I grant you, Al Ramad is at fault, and its poverty is the result of mismanagement of wealth, I will admit that too.' Reyhanna said. 'But in dearth, it is always women and children that are the first to suffer—'

'You speak as though you know of dearth. Yet you have been raised as a princess.'

Reyhanna bit her tongue hard not to deny his claim. Correcting the lie of her birth would only damn her tribe further still.

'I know...of dearth.' She said carefully. 'And I do not ask you to cease your boycott for nothing.'

'I have no intention to marry you, ya sheikha.'

'As if I wanted to do this!' She groused hotly. 'As if I had nothing better to do than ride for seven hours, no, for ten hours from Yaqqut, with minimal provisions and no mantle over my shoulders, just to come here and negotiate my people's fate with you while my teeth chatter in my mouth!'

Binyamin studied her with a look of surprise in his eyes—or was it indignation? Mercy. She could not tell.

'There is a fire in front of the women's tent.' He said detachedly, his nightly eyes blank of emotion once more. 'You will be warm inside.'

'I am not going anywhere until we reach an agreement. I know you are capable of changing your mind. You changed your mind about killing Rashed, and about letting me fight you. What's one more thing?'

Reyhanna regretted it as soon as it left her lips. What's one more thing? What kind slipshod argument was this?

'Your negotiation style is a wonder.' He hummed, and for a moment, Reyhanna believed she had hallucinated an upward stir in his mouth. 'I have not killed that boy for my own reasons, and I have not fought you—you would have known if I had.'

'Then hear what I have to offer!'

'What do you have to you offer, bint e' sheikh?'

'I...' she frowned, casting about for an idea, when a sudden memory dawned on her. She remembered what Masshay had told them about the evil tribes that lived beyond the mountain. One of them had gone down against Al Sawad, back when Al Sawad was just a name clouded with ill repute, and not where she currently stood, devising her own political marriage to its chieftain. 'I will train Al Sawad's women.' She declared. 'I know this tribe has been invaded by those living beyond these mountains not so long ago. Perhaps your knights had come to Al Ramad to purchase arms, as Al Ramad's are known to be sturdy.'

'That is true.' Binyamin said. 'But it is in our codes of honor to protect our women, ya sheikha. Not a single one was harmed. And the progress of the wretches was quickly stopped.'

'But can you be sure they won't try again? If they can get past you, they will come raiding down the entire desert—so it concerns me as it concerns you. Surely you can agree that a defenseless woman will be an easy prey to malevolent invaders. Al Ramad will provide you with all the arms you need, and I am offering to make an entire portion of your tribe stronger, so accept this alliance, that I may go rest, for I am exhausted!'

Reyhanna froze. She bit her bottom lip at her outburst and blushed.

Something flickered in Binyamin's eyes, as though they were dancing with...amusement? Or so she thought, for again, his face slipped back in its guarded neutrality before she could be sure she wasn't just delirious from travel.

'You would be willing to cut ties with Yaqqut and swear fealty to Al Sawad? If you think you can keep your white knight title and be my wife, you can turn away now.'

'Just—just say you agree.' She pressed her lips, newly realizing that she hadn't relieved her bladder all day. What a godawful time to remember, too. Her body seemed to have fallen into the pattern of conspiring against her in this man's presence. 'I do not want to think of the consequences of my actions, but I will obey your terms, whatever they are.'

'Strange,' he said. 'You do not strike me as the obedient type.' He paused, gauging her. 'Go rest, I do not wish to see you crumble before me once again.'

'I will not.' She said tightly, aware she was making a brittle case of her ability for 'obedience' but too angered that he would bring up her past failure to care. It couldn't be helped, she was still a novice in knighthood, and she had been bleeding then. For all his self-importance, she would like to see him bleed for seven days and not die. 'I am not resting until you say it.' She pointed at him accusatorially. 'Do you accept to form peaceful ties with my tribe?'

'By marrying you?'

'I—yes or no?'

'It depends.' He said. It was a small victory, Reyhanna thought—perhaps changing people's mind was her untapped talent in life. To go from a no to a maybe was—it mostly meant he had conditions, she thought ruefully. Oh, how she longed to relieve her bladder.

'Can you take it, ya sheikha? I treasure having no ties to bind me, so if you desire a doting husband with time to spare, you will be severely disappointed. I work all day and devote my night to worship, I have not the time to keep a spoiled child entertained. Here you will taste ascetic living. If you intend to grow temperamental and seek what I cannot give, this will be over before it begins.'

'I wouldn't need to be spoiled, nor was I, unlike you presume. I offered to work.' She snapped. 'As a trainer. For women. I said I would, god willing!'

'You will be put to the test and we shall see.'

'Fine. Test me. Do we have a deal?'

'A week from now.' He said. 'I will come to your tribe, god willing.'

'Do I have your word?'

'Do you doubt it?'

'You will be put to the test and we shall see.' Reyhanna huffed. Binyamin raised an incredulous eyebrow, and Reyhanna realized her impudence—why was she so loose-tongued? It wasn't like her, it was the fatigue, and she had better retrieve herself before she spoke herself into antagonizing him for good. She even found it odd that he hadn't gotten irredeemably irritated with her yet—

'Since you have agreed,' she nearly stammered, 'I will leave you to your...business.'

'How generous of you. The women's tent is over there,' he nodded at a canopy of trees through which soft light and a tent top could be seen. She looked where he had shown her.

'Meanwhile, don't make trouble smart-mouthing anyone else.' She heard him say behind her.

When she turned with a puzzled rictus to ask him what he meant, he had already walked away.

Where was he going? She wondered. And then she was suddenly wide awake and chafing her hands together, freezing and quick-pulsed.

Ya salaam. She had singlehandedly arranged her own marriage. The weight of the chess piece in her pocket multiplied a thousandfold, stilling her at a new realization.

She would now live her life as the false queen.

It was befitting, she thought, sniffling to herself, that the queen could replicate the moves of all the other chess pieces.

Except the knight.

Bint e' sheikh: Daughter of the chieftain

Ya niswan: o women

Ya ibni: o my son

Ya marhaba: o welcome

Ya salaam: o peace, is usually said to mean how great (often ironically)

Ya shabab: o boys/ young ones

I'm trying to make this as authentic as I know how to for better immersion. Hope you enjoyed! :)