Arwa did not go to Zahir the next night, or the night after that.
When she thought of returning to his side—to books and the realm and his face by firelight—she couldn’t bear it.
He had seen the history of her blood. And it had… hurt him. She was sure it had. She’d seen his face etched with tears, heard the roughness of his voice, as if horror had broken its edges and left it ragged.
But it had not hurt him as it had hurt her.
He would not stop searching for the Maha’s ash. He would not stop looking for answers within the faded memories of a man who had murdered the Amrithi and used them, blood and soul, to build the very Empire crumbling around them. To fix a broken tool, you must understand the intent of its maker.
She wanted to hate him. Hate would have been easy. Anger, too, would have been acceptable.
But instead, all she felt was despair.
Can you even dream another world, Lady Arwa?
She had not answered him.
The truth was that she couldn’t. The Ambhan Empire was all she had ever known. She had been born in it, raised within it. She had watched the edges of its glory peel and fade, revealing monsters and massacres. Oh, she’d yearned as a girl for an Amrithi life, but she knew nothing in truth of how to live in a world unshaped by the Empire. Its end was not a thing to be desired. What lay beyond its death could only be chaos. An Empire empty of the living.
And yet its faded glory sat upon broken backs. On broken limbs spread across a desert of ash, a desert of trauma and of memory.
Ah, but it was part of the insidious power of the great tool the Maha and Emperors then and now had built, was it not? A world where only their voices defined heresy and rightness, where there were no other ways of being, of living, than the one they offered.
There was nothing but this, because they had made it so.
She wanted to run from that knowledge. She wanted the hermitage, the valley, the bow and arrow in her hands. Sweat on her skin, tensile strength of the bow trembling in her grip. She wanted anything but the ugly weight of her own thoughts, and of knowing the vast shape of the horrors that had formed this very moment: her head in her hands, her mind turning over the same words constantly, soft as a noose.
I don’t know what to do.
She did not want the Empire to fall. She did not want it to survive either.
She did not want to help Zahir. But she did not want Akhtar’s hands upon his throat ever again. She did not want the people of the Empire dead.
The Hidden One claimed walking the path of one’s ash would lead a person to truth, to something good. They believed knowledge found and shared could be used to build a better world. But Arwa had only found another path, cloaked in utter darkness. And Zahir… Zahir had chosen to walk the same path he had walked all along. The Maha’s path.
She did not know where to go next.
She knew someone would demand she return to her work eventually. Of course Zahir did not seek her out. She had not expected him to, truly. He seemed to consider the exit of the tomb enclosure the limits of his world and acted accordingly. Besides, the women’s quarters were forbidden territory, and Arwa made a point of not walking in the gardens anywhere near his hidden home.
She was not ready yet to make a choice.
One day after the evening meal, she found Gulshera waiting for her in her room.
“If you’re going to tell me to return to him,” said Arwa haltingly, “I can only assure you that I will. When I am—ready.”
Gulshera shook her head. She did not remind Arwa that the topic of Zahir was a forbidden one. She only said, “Arwa.”
Her voice… the hairs rose on the back of Arwa’s neck.
“Aunt. What is it?”
“The Emperor is dying,” said Gulshera. Her voice was leaden. “He has days, perhaps. Hours.”
“He—no. He can’t be dying,” Arwa said.
“Of course he can,” said Gulshera. “You saw him. It is amazing how swiftly old age can become illness, and illness can become death. You are young, and perhaps will not be familiar with that reality.”
“You always think me a fool,” whispered Arwa. She did not have the energy to be hurt. She closed her eyes. Touched her fingertips to her eyelids. The soft pressure grounded her.
“Tomorrow at dawn he should hold his Beholding and audience,” said Gulshera. “He will not. Then everyone will know.”
“Jihan? Does she…?”
“Of course she knows. As do I. And now you.”
“Why have you told me?” Arwa whispered.
In the close-eyed dark, Gulshera said, “Because I want you to accompany me to his deathbed, Arwa. Jihan has asked for me, and I ask for you.”
Arwa stopped for a moment, stopped entirely, breath and body both. She swallowed. Spoke.
“I have no place there.”
“You do, because I have asked you.”
“Why?”
“Do not choose to remain in ignorance, Arwa.” Sharp words. “Come with me. The world is about to change; the battle you have chosen will alter. You told me you chose this path. Do not give me all the guilt of ensuring you survive it.”
“Do not pretend my fate concerns you that much, Aunt.”
“I accompanied you here,” said Gulshera levelly. “I have advised you as best as I can, despite the duties Jihan demands of me. Of course I care.” She shook her head. “I have grown somewhat fond of you, Arwa,” she said, in a voice that was softer than it had the right to be. They were no family to one another. No family. “Trust me or don’t, Arwa. But come with me now.”
Gulshera stared at her. Waiting.
In silence, Arwa nodded.
The Emperor, dying.
Ah, Gods.
The room where the Emperor lay dying was not a private space of sanctuary or intimacy. But then, an Emperor did not have the luxury of dying a private death. In a pale mimicry of the Hall of the World, scribes sat upon bolster cushions at the edge of the room. The council of his favorites kneeled. The Emperor’s closest advisers kneeled also. Men on all sides kneeled in silence, and watched, waiting for the Emperor to die.
They were separated from the sight of the Emperor’s dying form by a circle of gauze: great curtains unfurled from the ceiling, forming a perimeter vast enough to both encompass his bed and allow his women to hold vigil.
The women kneeled around his divan in a circle. When they entered, Jihan threw back her veil and kneeled at his side.
Physicians had cared for the Emperor. He wore poultices, to stimulate his blood. Someone had placed a cloth on his forehead, scented with attar and herbs, to soothe his head and cool his fever.
Medicine had done all it could for him. It was the women who comforted him now. A jug of wine laced with opium sat at his bedside.
A guardswoman came to the door.
“The princes come,” she said.
“Veil yourselves,” Masuma said woodenly, and her women covered their faces. Only Jihan and Masuma, and a scattering of blood cousins, remained bare-faced. The princes were, after all, their kin. The lax propriety of feasting had no place here.
Arwa lowered her own veil, and stared through the cloth at the princes as they entered the wall of gauze and bowed low.
Nasir had obviously been weeping, but Akhtar and Parviz both wore equally strange expressions—part grief and part hope.
No woman bowed. Their heads were turned to the Emperor.
When Parviz moved to speak, Masuma raised a hand to silence him.
“We must wait,” she said, “until your father wishes to speak, as is right. He is still Emperor, Parviz.”
She tilted her head. Raised her voice.
“Forgive this woman for speaking before you, lords,” Masuma said impassively.
A ripple of uneasy acquiescence ran through the courtiers beyond the curtain.
The doors opened. A guardswoman walked forward. Hesitated.
“I have brought him,” she said awkwardly. “As requested by the Emperor.” She bowed her head, and quickly departed.
Zahir entered.
The ripple, this time, among the courtiers, was far more pronounced.
He entered tentatively, calm-eyed but pale. Arwa looked at him, heart in her throat. She felt Gulshera’s fingers tighten, subtly, over her forearm.
“Enter, Zahir,” the Emperor said. His voice creaked like old wood.
Parviz made a noise of disgust. Akhtar’s jaw was tight enough to grind rocks.
“Father,” said Nasir, the youngest and the most doted on, eyes wide. “Why?”
“He is part of my household, is he not? My daughter has acknowledged him as brother, though I have not named him as son. Bow now, Bahar’s son.”
Zahir bowed, deeply, face to the floor. Then he stood to the side. His gaze was steady. He said nothing. He did not even tremble, which was astonishing. Arwa supposed she was trembling enough for the both of them.
Arwa thought of his order. His analytical nature. How he disliked situations without rules, situations that could end in hurt.
And yet he was here, unacknowledged, his sister’s hidden tool, before the dying Emperor.
How this could end well, she didn’t know.
“My sons,” the Emperor said. “I suppose it’s time to name one of you my heir. And for the rest of you to vow your loyalty.”
He coughed. Hacking. Laughed, showing strong white teeth, eyes crinkling in a way that revealed lost handsomeness.
“A difficult task, no? It was simpler in my youth. I had only one brother, and he was not my equal. We both knew it. I was born to be Emperor. I blazed. And I proved my worth. I conquered Durevi, crushed it beneath my boot. My Empire was vast and beautiful. But you… my sons.” He shook his head. “You inherit an Empire blighted by the Maha’s death. I will not prevaricate: His death has wounded our Empire. It will need strong hands to steer it. It will need you to be loyal to one another. You are all strong in different ways, my sons, and I have asked myself what the Empire requires from its new Emperor. I have asked myself what will preserve our glory. And I have made my choice.”
He looked at them with real affection. And real, clear-eyed knowledge.
“Akhtar,” he said.
“Father.”
“You will do, as Emperor. Keep good advisers around you, hm?”
“Father.” Akhtar was desperately trying to look solemn, even as joy blazed on his face. “Father. I will.”
“Parviz. Nasir.”
“Father,” said Parviz.
“You will respect my decision.”
“Of course, Father,” said Parviz. If anything, Nasir looked relieved.
“Let it be recorded, then,” the Emperor said. “When I pass, my son Prince Akhtar shall become Emperor, his old name struck from him, his body crowned to an everlasting throne.”
Ritual words. Strong words.
Jihan must be glad, thought Arwa. She had bound her loyalties to him, after all.
But Arwa could not yet be glad.
“Bahar’s son. Come here.”
Zahir came forward and bowed once more.
“Stand,” said the Emperor. He gave Zahir an assessing look, cold, clinical. “You look very like your mother. She was a beautiful woman. A shame you were not born a girl. You would have been easy to marry off, simpler to deal with.”
Zahir said nothing.
“She was a clever whore, your mother. Too clever. If she had invested less energy in heresy and more in being pleasing to me—well. I would not have had to put her to death, for one.”
The Emperor gestured, and a maidservant hurried over, offering him wine. He drank. Lowered the cup, which clattered in the tray.
“A shame that you are not simply like your mother in looks. In truth, Zahir, you are a problem,” the Emperor said bluntly, “that must be solved.”
He is going to die, Arwa thought. Her stomach was in knots.
“When your mother proved herself a heathen, you were spared by the soft-heartedness of women. But the imperial family do not acknowledge or keep bastard sons for a reason. I have enough sons. Strong sons. With good blood. And you make the case for your continued survival… difficult. You may speak,” the Emperor said, into the silence that swelled in response to his words.
“Everything I do, Emperor, I do for the sake of the Empire,” Zahir said.
“Yes. Bahar claimed something similar. But no one named her the Maha’s heir, for her work.”
Zahir’s head shot up. Eyes wide.
“Ah.” The Emperor’s voice was silken once more. “You did not know. I am relieved you did not encourage it.”
“I would never, Emperor. I know what I am.”
“And yet the rumors swell,” the Emperor said. “I am not the old fool my sons believe me to be, boy. Even now. When you were still young, your tutors boasted of your perception, your talent. Then one idiot claims you’d be fit for the next Maha. I dealt with him. But somehow the whispers spread. Servants have loose lips. Soon the common people are whispering about a Maha’s heir hidden away in my own palace. And my dear Parviz guts a fine throng of mystics who babble tales of a blessed boy who died with his whore mother and rose from the grave, the Maha’s spirit in him. Tale after tale, and you at the heart of all of them.”
That could not be true. Arwa knew it was not true. She had heard so many tales after the Maha’s death—tales claiming he still lived, or would return from the grave; tales hoping for a new Maha to be named from the royal sons, or to rise haloed from the masses. None had named Zahir.
But ah—she looked at Zahir’s blanched face, at the courtiers and guardsmen and servants listening intently beyond the gossamer walls surrounding the Emperor’s deathbed, and thought of the power of the Emperor’s words. All tales spoken from this moment onward would name Zahir. The Emperor had ensured it would be so.
Whether they named him a true heir or a false claimant awaited to be seen.
“Emperor,” said Zahir. “I am no heir to our illustrious Maha. I am sorry for this falsehood. It was not my doing.”
His voice was even, calm. His expression was resolute. Arwa saw the acceptance of death in it, the utter terror, and clenched her fingers so hard against her knees that her nails stung like dull blades.
The Emperor looked at him. “Bahar’s son. I find old age makes me soft. My daughter loves you. My wife thought fondly of you, in her time. You are a pretty thing. You inspire soft hearts. Therefore: Maha’s heir,” he said softly. “That is what I name you. Prove yourself fit for that title. Or my sons will do what I should have done many years ago, when my soft-hearted daughter begged for your life. Let it be recorded: Bahar’s son lives, and wears a new title. For now.”
A tide of noise moved through the room. Jihan made a choked sound, quickly cut off.
Parviz’s face was stone, his eyes murderous. A look of revulsion flickered across Akhtar’s face, for only a moment. Nasir merely looked between his brothers and Zahir in confusion. He had, perhaps, not known that Zahir existed at all.
The Emperor began coughing again and Masuma began speaking to him in the softest, most urgent voice. It was Akhtar who touched his hand to the end of his father’s bed, reverent, who then said, “Let us allow the Emperor to rest now. Father, with your leave…”
“Enough pronouncements,” the Emperor said tiredly. “I will rest now. No more.”