The walk back to Akhtar’s palace was tense.
“Come with us,” one widow said gently. She steered Arwa toward the wing for elders, and away from Jihan’s closest women, who were whispering to one another urgently.
The elders settled on the floor. To Arwa’s surprise, she saw Gulshera standing by the lattice, her back to all of them. Every line of her body screamed her desire to be left alone. Arwa, for all her propensity toward foolishness, knew better than to disturb her. Instead, Arwa sat on the floor cushions with the other women. From here, she could see Gulshera’s profile. Gulshera’s jaw was tight, her pale eyes flint.
She looked like a soldier preparing for battle.
A maidservant brought in refreshments. The cups and pastries went notably untouched. Lady Bega drummed her fingers against her knee, the clink of her jeweled rings the only noise to break the weight of silence.
“Heads staked upon walls,” she said finally. “It’s been years.”
“Oh, don’t speak of it,” said another. She drew her shawl around her face.
“And what shall we speak of, then?” Bega rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath. “Soft woman, you are. If Parviz pours more honeyed apologies into his father’s ears, there may be many more heads upon walls, you mark me.”
“Bega.”
“The commoners will love it at least,” said Bega, clearly relishing the drama. “They love a spectacle.”
“Some of them found solace in charlatans, Lady Bega.” Gulshera’s voice was leaden. “I would be surprised if the people of Jah Ambha are entirely celebratory.”
There was knowing in Gulshera’s voice.
Arwa thought of the days Gulshera had spent at Jihan’s side. Jihan, who saw and heard everything, who had far-flung eyes, who received regular missives from across the Empire and consumed knowledge with the same ease and intensity that Zahir sought to consume ash.
Oh, Gulshera knew something of the fractures in the Empire’s faith. Of that, Arwa was certain. Even Arwa, tucked in the shell of her own grief and circumstance, knew the people sought to fill the void left by the Maha’s death in any way they could. Executing mystics and heretics would not heal the wound in the Empire. The rift left in the Empire’s faith, in its hope, was not one that could be healed by force of arms alone.
A guardswoman entered. Heads turned as she crossed the room, as she kneeled down by Arwa’s side, and in a soft voice said, “Lady, you are wanted. The princess has called for you.”
Gulshera had turned. Gaze sharp. But there was no opportunity to speak to her now, if indeed she wanted to speak. The elders were staring at Arwa. The guardswoman was waiting. All she could do was swallow, and straighten, and nod in acknowledgment.
The guardswoman led her out into the corridor, then said, “Lady, you will need to lower your veil.”
“What need is there for that?”
“We are attending the prince,” the guardswoman said. Her gaze flickered to Arwa, then back again.
No more needed to be said. Arwa hastily lowered her veil, as instructed.
They walked through the pale corridors of the women’s quarters, to doors Arwa had never acknowledged, and had never seen unbarred. The doors were drawn open. Arwa walked through them, and entered the halls of Akhtar’s palace that lay beyond the women’s quarters. The world of men.
It was the past that haunted Arwa, as she walked toward Prince Akhtar’s study, hands clasped demurely in front of her, face veiled, hair shorn, a widow in all the ways she could muster. Beneath the mask of her widowhood, though, the memory of her marriage rose up. Haunting her.
Kamran’s study. She thought of it, even as the guardswoman announced her, even as she crossed the threshold into a space where she did not belong. The inescapable, sticky heat of Chand; how his ledgers and his maps, the tools of his command, grew mold when the rains came, a fact that had driven him mad. He’d had officials to help him manage his papers, but often when he’d worked through the midday heat, Arwa had sat with him as he worked, and sifted carefully through his letters, adding to his ledgers, listening when he paced and worked his way through one thorny knot of imperial administration after another. She remembered the feel of his eyes on her. The sound of his soldiers in the courtyard below.
“You are a great help to me,” he’d told her, once. And Arwa had felt relieved. She was a thing that was useful after all. A thing she had worked very hard to be. She had not failed her family after all.
She bowed low as she entered the study. Jihan stood before her, her veil thrown back. Prince Akhtar was facing his sister, his head tilted down to meet her eyes. His mouth was thin.
And there, standing by the far wall, arms clasped behind him, was Zahir.
It was a cold-water shock, seeing him here. She had never seen Zahir in daylight before. He was still oddly unreal, still sharp-boned and pale from lack of sunlight. But he also looked… different. Somehow, in the light of day, he loomed larger. His sharp bones were somehow more severe, his gaze more cutting. Although his hands were clasped behind his back, there was something unnerving about him—something that drew the eye and held it, pinned like a moth by lantern light.
In that moment, he reminded her of Parviz. His presence drew the air from the room, molded the world to his will. Then he looked at her, one flicker of his gaze, a darkening of his eyes, and he was only Zahir again.
Arwa felt a shiver of dread run through her. Why had they both been brought here?
Jihan and Akhtar did not seem to have yet noticed Arwa’s arrival.
“He’s met with Father’s favorite courtiers,” Akhtar was saying to Jihan, face mottled tight with fury and feeling. “After all my years of slowly winning their favor and hoarding their secrets, they’re going to fall for his propaganda. The military already love him. They like his brute idiocy—strength they call it, as if hacking off heads is a virtue he’s cultivated—”
“He’s impetuous.” Jihan’s voice was soft, soothing. “He’s always been one for grand gestures. But you are better than that, brother. Better than his base actions.”
“His base actions are working.”
“Parviz has always been able to sway Father,” Jihan responded levelly. “But court? No. I think not. Court requires different tools than war, and more subtlety than that demanded by a loving parent. Father’s favorites will see through him.”
“He mocked my efforts to protect the Empire in front of them. They will remember that,” Akhtar said tersely. “And believe me, he says a great deal more when he’s not under Father’s eye. He’s been claiming there is no curse on the Empire at all, and nothing to be cleansed. No curse. The bald idiocy of it, Jihan!”
“I’m aware,” Jihan said, with exaggerated patience. “He hasn’t yet managed to explain away the shadow spirits, though. Or the massacres—”
“He does not have to. He believes order and iron rule will save us all, that Father is just too weak to maintain our true glory, and he is not alone in that belief. And he quelled Durevi, Jihan—people think that’s proof enough.”
Jihan snorted.
“Killing the local populace isn’t quelling. It’s a famine for the future; when we have none of Durevi’s fruits and crops, after the lack of rainfall in Chand—”
Akhtar waved her off with a look of vibrant irritation on his face.
“Logistics don’t matter to the people of this court, and the views of court are the ones we must consider right now. What if the nobility sway our father’s choice of heir, Jihan? What then?”
“The logistics of food production are all that matter,” Jihan snapped. You fool seemed to be heavily implied. “The court need full bellies and loyal citizens, and they know it. If we can’t ensure that our trade routes function as they should…”
“Be that as it may, sister, that is not what is in question right now,” Akhtar said sharply. “Your experiment is. Playing into your schemes is beginning to actively hinder me. Parviz is taking a clear stand against heresy, and when he reveals Zahir’s presence in my household, he will damage my reputation at court. I cannot afford to lose any of my reputation. It’s the only true weapon I have.”
“He knows how I love Zahir,” Jihan said calmly. “He won’t want to hurt me.”
“Love won’t hold him forever, Jihan. Or me.” Bite to his voice. “Have you accomplished anything you hoped for? At all? Has your pet bastard managed to find the Maha yet? Solve all our problems with a sweep of magic?”
Jihan turned then, gaze sweeping over Arwa, before settling on Zahir. A look passed between the two of them.
“Prince Akhtar.” Zahir’s voice was soft. Cool. “When you were a small boy your grandmother doted upon you. She would let you sit with her when she entertained visitors. She fed you grapes from a silver bowl.”
Spasmodic twist of Akhtar’s mouth.
“Anyone could have told you that, boy.”
“They can’t tell you what she taught you,” Zahir said, voice silken and cold and eerily reminiscent of the Emperor’s own. “She taught you how to recognize poisons. Salt, bitter, sweet. The women of the imperial family have always known such things. But learning about death made you afraid. You couldn’t sleep. You had nightmares, brother, you—”
Akhtar took Zahir by the throat.
“You don’t call me brother. And you certainly don’t demean my grandmother, when you’re no more than a whore’s son. Don’t try to anger me, bastard. I’ll be sorry later when Jihan cries over you—but not that sorry.”
He held Zahir for one beat, two. Jihan did not cry out. Did not defend him. She was very still, staring into the distance, her expression remote.
Arwa trembled. Hands in fists.
Do something, she wanted to cry out. Jihan, have you brought me here simply to watch Zahir suffer? What test is this?
Very carefully, Jihan tilted her head toward Arwa. She looked at her, dark eyes fixed and intent.
Finally, Arwa understood why she had been summoned here. Not simply to witness an argument between siblings, a political tussle in which she had no place—but for this.
She stepped forward.
“Stars,” she blurted out.
Akhtar turned. Blinked at her, as if he had not even thought of her, until that moment. She had faded into the background, as all guards and maidservants faded, as all insignificant women faded, to people of his stature.
Stars. Arwa breathed deep. Spoke once more.
“You did not like the dark as a child. And your gracious grandmother told you she could arrange for the stars to remain with you always. She stitched them in gold thread on gauze, and placed them upon the ceiling of your chambers. Sometimes she would watch you sleep, and she would see you clutching for them with your hand, as if in a dream…”
Arwa felt the ash like a physical thing: a memory coiling up from the base of her skull, unfurling across her mind’s eye. For a moment something of the Emperor’s own mother lived within her, breathed within her, then faded to sudden dust. Lost.
She had no more. Paused. Glad for her veil, she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and breathed, and breathed.
“And who,” said Akhtar, face gray, “is this witch you have dredged up?”
“This honorable widow,” Jihan said coolly, “studies with Zahir. She has been here a mere handful of weeks. And no one told her about your childhood bedroom, I can assure you. I had hoped to have her demonstrate for you how far my experiment has come, brother. But not like this. I thought you would be more—civilized.”
Akhtar released Zahir with a curse. Zahir doubled over, coughing, heaving for breath.
“We found—all. Memory of her soul,” Zahir forced out, voice raw. “In the realm of ash.” He coughed again, massaging his throat a little. “I will learn what the Maha knew. I will give you his knowledge, so that you may save us from the curse, when you are Emperor.”
Akhtar’s eyes narrowed. Calculating.
“He can do this,” Jihan said, “because I procured him Lady Arwa’s assistance.”
“Is she a witch, then, sister?” Akhtar asked. “A heretic in widow’s clothing?”
“She has Amrithi blood,” said Jihan. “It makes her useful. And she dearly wants to be of use. Don’t you, Lady Arwa?”
“Yes, my lady,” said Arwa. “Anything for the sake of the Empire.”
“Barbarian blood. Wonderful. My brother spills it, and I bring it into my household.” For all the harshness of his words, Akhtar’s tone had finally softened. “You think you can find the Maha’s knowledge, Zahir? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Zahir raised his head. His eyes were red, his skin flushed, but he looked at Akhtar with a stare that was quietly, clinically eviscerating. It was a look that could flay a man’s soul from his skin and study it, with terrible, dispassionate care.
“Yes,” he said. “My lord.”
Akhtar’s hand made a fist.
“You are still a dog that should have been drowned with its mother,” he said softly. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Zahir. “I know.”
“No matter what Parviz believes, the spirits, the unnatural ill luck—they remain a threat to all we have,” Jihan said, forcibly drawing Akhtar’s attention back to her. “One Zahir’s work can put right.”
“I know,” Akhtar said. An exhalation. “I know. So get on with it. Fix it.”
“As my brother wills.” She bowed her head. Turned to go. “Come, Arwa.”
Arwa turned and followed her, looking back once at Zahir. His own hand was still around his reddened throat, as if he held his own death and life both in the palm of his hand.
She had thought, once, that he had a nature like a keen blade. She had not considered that he lived his entire life on a knife edge. It would take so little to see him dead: a shift in the familial balance of power; failure in his work; an expression on his face that foolishly revealed the glittering sharpness of his mind.
She touched her own fingers to her throat. Her pulse was river-fast; she could not hold it.
His eyes met her own.
Go, his gaze said. Go now.
She did not want to leave him.
But she turned away from him regardless, doing as she had been bid, the image of him imprinted on her eyelids.