Laila had brought her a giant plate of food, but there was little she could do for her.
“I would like a private space,” she told Aunt Bibi. “For computer use.”
“The library is best.” Aunt Bibi gestured in the direction of the library and returned to her conversation with the submarine’s doctor, Laila’s cousin Meri.
Laila rose and hurried out of the dining room. She knew the corridors of Aunt Bibi’s ship as well as she knew the Siren. A few minutes later, she turned on the light and closed the library door behind her. Aunt Bibi’s library was a thing of beauty. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered outboard walls curved to match the shape of the ship. Slender golden ropes strung across the middle of the shelves held the books in place during rough seas. One wall contained classics, another scientific and nautical books, another religion and philosophy, and the final wall held popular books augmented at every port. She hurried to the gleaming table, slipped into the chair, and opened the laptop.
The work of a few minutes showed that the prince was still alive.
Alive.
The man she’d killed had been his bodyguard. The entire trip had been for naught. The prince was still alive, so no one was safe.
She read more. The man in the other submarine had been Joe Tesla, a software CEO. Nahal had mentioned him in the past — she thought he was some kind of genius, but Laila hadn’t ever really listened when Nahal talked about him. She’d have to remedy that.
The websites didn’t mention the presence of the Siren at the crash. Tesla must have told someone, but the news hadn’t been published. Perhaps she could use that silence to deflect the prince’s suspicion from herself and the Siren. A long shot, but better than nothing.
She followed another set of protocols and entered the dark web. With Nahal’s recent instructions sounding in her ears, she was able to find the correct exchange, set up her deadly request with the right code words, and transfer bitcoins to an underground escrow account.
She had just paid for a hit on Joe Tesla. When Tesla turned up dead, Tesla himself might look like the target of the undersea attack, not the prince or his bodyguard. It was a desperate act, perhaps, but she could think of no better solution.
Then she ordered two oxygen generators for the Siren. She’d written down the information, but it took a while to find a source, even on the dark web where seemingly everything was for sale.
A quick rap on the library door caused her to jump.
“Come in,” she called.
Aunt Bibi entered. She looked tired and old, but her smile was still warm as ever.
“I know you must leave soon, but let’s stroll along the top deck before you go.” Aunt Bibi hooked her arm in Laila’s, and together they made their way to the topmost deck. The boat glowed in the soft golden light.
“It looks peaceful, does it not?” Aunt Bibi asked. “And safe.”
“You won’t sway me.”
For a moment, they walked together in silence, and she remembered the many times they had walked alone on the deck together, all the years of her childhood.
“Your mother was devastated by news of your death,” Aunt Bibi said quietly.
“I’m sorry.” Her mother had made her alliances clear long ago — to her husband, her sons, and then her daughters. Only when nothing else remained would it be her turn.
“I couldn’t ease her grief,” Aunt Bibi said. “Secrecy was my promise to you. But I wish you would tell her. She suffers.”
“Does she?” She didn’t think her mother could have let herself care about her worthless daughters.
“And.” Aunt Bibi chewed her lower lip as if to bite the words in half before she spoke them. “She has also lost your eldest brother.”
“Has she?” Laila tried to look surprised. Not a simple task, since she knew of her brother’s death because she’d shot him herself.
“A training incident,” Aunt Bibi said.
“Much for my mother to bear. But she has my father to hold her up.”
They both knew her father wouldn’t provide support to her grieving mother. He had other wives, other children.
Aunt Bibi squeezed her arm. “Someone tried to kill your future husband, Prince Timgad, but he was spared. It’s said a careless billionaire ran into his submarine while they vied for some worthless token in a submarine race.”
Suspicion had fallen on Tesla. Good. “He has nine lives, like a cat.”
Aunt Bibi stopped at the railing and looked across the starlit waves. “You could end it now. You could rejoin your family. You could send your crew home to theirs.”
“And marry Prince Timgad?” She looked down at the top of her submarine, where women in blue uniforms carried brown boxes across the deck and into the sail.
“It is said now he will be the next king, and you would become his queen.”
She’d known of Timgad’s favor with the current king. “I would become his slave, not his queen.”
“We all must serve a master.” Aunt Bibi shrugged. “We who were born to the House of Dakkar. This time shall pass, and we shall be rewarded ever after. It is our duty.”
“I serve a higher duty.” Laila had struggled against her duty all her life, but leaving it behind hadn’t made her happier.
“Is there a higher duty than the one we owe to our family? Our mothers? Our sisters? Our daughters? Our house?” Aunt Bibi took her hand. “I know it’s difficult to be a woman, but we can help each other to endure.”
“I don’t want to endure.” Anger rose in her, not only at Aunt Bibi, who had been spared a lifetime of servitude by her husband’s death, but at the world that had made her believe it was the fate of others to endure such things. “I don’t want those women down there to endure. They shouldn’t suffer because they were born women. Our house is built upon the suffering, the blood and bones of its women. I won’t let them endure it a moment longer.”
Aunt Bibi leaned away. “Then take them away. Abandon your family and your duty. But stop whatever it is you’re doing on this submarine.”
“If I run away and hide, take them away to hide, then I turn my back on the millions who are enduring unspeakable horrors in the name of the family. In my name. What of them?”
“You cannot change the ways of the world with only a submarine.” Aunt Bibi leaned closer, and the scent of her perfume mingled with the smell of the sea. “A single craft of steel and courage isn’t enough.”
“You’ve changed much with your single ship.” She smiled at her aunt. “You gave us a place of safety, a place of joy. A place where we could bloom in quiet and freedom, if only for a few weeks a year.”
“You can give the same to the women under your care, either on your submarine or with new identities on land,” Aunt Bibi said. “Your actions won’t change the world, but they will change the lives of all your crew. Such actions can be enough in a well-lived life.”
“Not for me.” She started back up the deck, ready to return to her tiny enclosed world and the women who would help her to carry out her mission. “Not anymore.”
Aunt Bibi said nothing for a long time.
“Where will the royal family vote on the succession?” Laila asked.
Aunt Bibi stared at the submarine bobbing behind her ship. “The celebration will be in New York City.”