In mere weeks, they would reach Irinah. But Arwa could not imagine it. Irinah felt like a place that lived in her childhood memories alone. Irinah was the Governor’s palace: great marble corridors, and the flickering candlelight on the pillows in her own nursery; her father’s footsteps, firm and sure, and the whisper of her sister’s voice, murmuring stories in her ear. It was like the realm of ash, gossamer and strange but not a thing of the world.
Appropriate, then, that their journey was a tough and slow thing, a true test of her will. Arwa had traveled long distances before. She’d had to, as a commander’s bride. But she had traveled in the relative, if nauseating, comfort of a palanquin. She’d been tended to and guarded. Now she was a pilgrim, unveiled, her shawl knotted over her hair, walking. And walking. And walking.
Every painful step—beat of the sun on her forehead, sweat sticky at her neck and her back, her leg muscles aching—felt as if it were building the realness of Irinah. The desert was the thump of her heart and her parched throat and the hungry twist of her belly. It was a place that demanded body and bone to be reached, no different than traveling to the realm of ash.
Zahir—still recovering from his wound—could only walk slowly. Eshara was solicitous of him. She slowed her pace so she could remain at his side, talking about life beyond the palace, about Aliye and her pleasure house, about Hidden Ones whose names Arwa had never heard before but clearly meant something to Zahir, who lit up at their mention. Arwa walked a little behind them on aching feet, and tried not to think too much on the way Eshara carefully avoided looking at her, her shoulders always turned, her back a forbidding line.
It was easy enough to do so. The journey was a new world, one very unlike any realm Arwa had walked in before. The pilgrimage route was well-established, the earth shaped by thousands of footsteps, which had killed the vegetation and worn the way smooth. The pilgrims traveled largely on foot, but there were a few notable wealthy travelers, in bullock-drawn carts or on horseback, their women concealed in swaying veiled side-saddles or separate palanquins. The sheer press of people made Arwa feel like a speck of dust, insignificant, carried on a strange wind quite beyond her control.
They stopped, now and again, at the roadside stalls that had been established to cater for the wave of travelers. They drank tea, rich in mint and cardamom, heaped with honey. At night they tried to sleep far from the other travelers, beneath the vague cover of sparse trees, a small fire lit for warmth. Sometimes, Arwa would wrap herself in a thick over-shawl and sit and stare out at the dark, seeking daiva in the shadowy flicker of their camp’s flames. But she saw nothing. They were alone.
She woke early one morning, dawn barely breaking the sky. Zahir was asleep propped against a tree, his robe wrapped tight around him. But Eshara was awake, tending to the fire, warming flatbreads over the flames so that their doughy surface blistered with heat. She raised her eyes and gave Arwa a flat, unfeeling look.
“Ah. You’re awake.”
“Yes.” Arwa watched Eshara lower her eyes, saw the tic in Eshara’s jaw, as she ground her teeth. “Can I help?”
“Can you cook?”
“I’m teachable.”
Eshara plucked the bread from the flames. Neatly flicked it onto a cloth.
“No, then,” she said. “Quicker for me to do the job myself.”
Eshara kept on working, as Arwa straightened, rolling her shoulders to erase the stiffness of a night’s rest. She couldn’t look away from Eshara. The woman’s shoulders were hunched, her jaw still tight with feeling.
A voice, very like her mother’s, whispered a warning in her skull.
Don’t say a word. You don’t need any more trouble than you’ve already earned.
“You do not like me very much, I think.”
Eshara’s jaw only seemed to tighten an increment further. Then she huffed out a sigh, and visibly forced herself to relax.
“I am not required to like you. You are not my mistress. Nor are you a sister in my order. You are just… a set of characteristics that have utility. To Zahir. To the cause.”
“A tool, you mean.”
“I have seen you, Arwa,” Eshara said. “Servants see a great deal more than people think we do. Yes, you are a tool, shuttled about for the purposes of people greater than you.” A beat. “No offense meant, of course.”
“And how exactly,” Arwa said, “am I not meant to take offense at that?”
“Oh, Princess Jihan said worse to you, I’m sure,” Eshara said. “And no doubt you smiled and accepted her words without argument. But when I speak—well. I was just a function in your life, and my opinion is accordingly worth little.”
There was no spite in Eshara’s voice, which was somehow worse than if there had been. Instead her tone was weary and matter-of-fact. She dampened the fire, movements pointed but not hurried, then folded the cloth around the bread to keep it warm.
“I understand the need for you, and I appreciate you being here,” Eshara added, in a tone that suggested she did not in fact appreciate Arwa being here at all, “but I trust in Zahir’s dedication, and my own. Yours?” She shook her head. “You were not born to the Hidden Ones. You never earned our secrets. You haven’t proved your worth.”
Arwa clasped her hands tight, nails digging into her own skin. In a controlled voice, she said, “I’ve walked the realm of ash. I have chosen this path.”
“You’ve walked the realm only because of your blood,” Eshara said dismissively. “But for all your blood, Lady Arwa, you’re no different from the rest of them.”
“Them?”
“The noblewomen. The widows. The ones who smoke their pipes and drink their wine and lament their fate, even though they have nothing to lament. No hunger, no strife, no real suffering to speak of.” Eshara shrugged then. “You’ve lived an easy life, Lady Arwa. You have no place on a journey this vital. And yet—here you are.”
Her words were a knife twist, turning in Arwa’s chest. Arwa sucked in a sharp breath, straightened her spine, and did not respond.
They sat for a long moment in silence. Then Zahir murmured and turned in his sleep. Arwa rose to her feet.
“May I borrow your bow?”
“If you like,” Eshara said, not looking up. So Arwa took it from where it rested against their packs and walked away.
Ah. Truth was a sharp knife, wasn’t it?
Eshara had a neat, serviceable bow and a handful of arrows. They were tools—as I am a tool, thought Arwa bitterly—and not a frivolous way to release her rage. So she made a focused effort to hunt for an addition to their morning meal, and didn’t solely waste her arrows on venting her feelings, as she sorely wished to. But there were no animals in sight, no birds, no deer, only one hare that darted swiftly away from her, leaving her arrow to thud in the dirt. With nothing worth killing in sight, she allowed herself the indulgence of taking the used arrow and nocking it once more. She could already feel the soreness of her fingers, without a thumb ring to hand to hold the string steady, the tension of the bow mirroring the tension in her arm.
She heard footsteps behind her.
“Are you truly hunting this early?” Zahir asked.
“Leave me be,” she said.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“I was hunting,” she acknowledged, through gritted teeth. “But as I’m clearly having no luck, I’m hunting my rage instead and—skewering it through.”
“Ah.”
“It is a thing that Gulshera taught me.”
The thought of Gulshera—maybe dead, maybe gone, Arwa did not know—only wound her feelings tighter.
She let the arrow loose. It buried itself in the bark of the tree. She released a breath.
“Do you know what Eshara said to me?” said Arwa.
“No.” Crunch of his boots. He stood beside her. “Did she say something that made you angry, by any chance?”
“I’m not angry with her,” Arwa said. “I am just—angry.”
Angry with her own choices and her own nature. Angry with a world that had told her that to be worthy she had to be a proper noblewoman, no more and no less; angry with herself for believing it. Angry that she had not been better, more, with what she’d been given.
Eshara had not been wrong. That stung.
When you strip everything away, Arwa thought, there is nothing in me but raw feeling: rage pulsing free like the blood of a thing unskinned.
I have to be more than this.
Zahir walked past her. He wrenched the arrow free; he touched a finger to the wound in the bark.
“A hare,” he said regretfully, “would be more edible.”
“Any more comments like that and you’ll be the one on the end of my arrow,” Arwa said. But there was no real ire in her voice, and Zahir smiled—a pale half smile—in response.
“I can still run if I must,” he said. “I expect I’d survive.”
She thought of how Gulshera had named archery a kind of alchemy for her grief: a way to give her hungry grief direction and discipline. She thought of the ache of her limbs, the way the journey was tiring and strengthening her, and the taste of ash.
Something alchemical was happening to her too. For good or ill.
She licked the salt of sweat from her lips. Shook her head.
“I suppose we should go back.”
“Is your rage suitably quenched?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But it matters little. The bow would be of better use in Eshara’s hands anyway.”
As they traveled farther, the rest stops established for the pilgrims became more elaborate, and makeshift settlements began to crop up. Caravanserais, Eshara called them, these temporary towns of low mud walls that surrounded the tents and carts of travelers. Zahir found them fascinating. Whenever they reached one he would stare about them, clear-eyed and unblinking, taking in the sights around them with quiet hunger.
Arwa was not half as curious. But the widows and beggar women who congregated in the caravanserais drew her eyes, always. They crouched in shadows with their faceless effigies and piles of ornate grave-tokens for sale, sticks of incense clouding the air around them. On a day when they had stopped to rest in a particularly busy caravanserai—and Eshara had gone in search of supplies—Arwa walked away from Zahir and kneeled down by one of the widows.
The woman straightened, adjusting her shawl. Her eyes brightened at the possibility of a sale.
“Take one of these fine items with you as an offering,” she said quickly, “and the Maha’s spirit will bless you. I can promise it.”
It was a false promise, that Arwa didn’t doubt, but still her curiosity was piqued. She felt, rather than saw, Zahir step behind her, tilting his head in the inquisitive way he often did.
Close now, she could see that the grave-tokens were not made of grass and earth as she’d first thought, but were shaped from clay and decorated finely with paint and small, pale facets of glass. She touched a fingertip to one, admiring.
The woman peered at her more closely.
“A fellow widow,” she said knowingly. “Well, you’ll know the benefit of my wares. Why, when you reach the House of Tears—”
“Arwa.” A hand clamped on her arm. “We need to go now.”
Eshara’s voice. Arwa looked up.
“What is it?”
“Come with me now,” hissed Eshara, grip tightening. “Or I swear—”
“Eshara,” said Zahir sharply. “Let her go.”
Eshara froze. She was breathing hard. Zahir stared at her. Said, in a careful voice, “You’re hurting her. And you’re drawing attention.”
Eshara must have realized he was correct, because she released Arwa.
“Come on, then,” she said, and turned and strode away.
Zahir turned to look at Arwa.
“Did she—?”
“I think we should follow her now, Zahir,” Arwa said.
“Of course,” he said, but his mouth was still a thin line, his brow furrowed.
When all three of them were alone, far from the crowd of pilgrims, Eshara said, “Zahir. Your tale has spread. That—worries me.”
“Surely that was Aliye’s intent,” he said.
“It was a bad decision,” snapped Eshara. “And I hoped the tale would stick to the cities. But it’s worse than I thought. The story has changed. There are soothsayers and false mystics speaking of a blessed heir who rose from the dead, slithering out from between the corpses of his dead kin. A tea seller farther in the caravanserai told me that the Maha’s heir has come to cleanse the Empire of the worst of its heathens. Amrithi, adulterous women, thieves.” She paused, and said pointedly: “Kin killers.”
“That’s very—dramatic,” said Zahir.
“It’s all propaganda against the Emperor,” Eshara said, with emphasis. “The tale’s spun free of everyone’s control, and you are at the heart of it. Parviz has put his faith in might and his own righteousness, but he’s also placed himself squat in the center of a very ugly rise to power. People don’t like it. And I don’t like the danger swirling around your name. We need to travel more swiftly. Avoid the caravanserais, if we can. There is a Grand Caravanserai ahead of us, but if we travel a lesser-known road…”
“We’ll be more exposed on less traveled roads,” Arwa pointed out. She kept her voice even. Eshara was panicked, that was clear, wound tight with fear. Arwa had never seen her so. “At least here, we’re easy to miss among the crowds.”
“The crowds are the problem!” snapped Eshara. “So many eyes and so many whispers—I can’t keep us safe here. What if—”
“Eshara.” Zahir’s voice. “We trust your judgment. We’ll do as you suggest.”
Eshara stopped, falling silent. She nodded.
“Well.” A breath. “Well. Let’s go, then.”
Over the next few days they relied on Eshara to guide them as they walked through the rich vegetation of undisturbed green, far from the worn-smooth familiarity of the pilgrimage route. Arwa found she missed the noise and the throng of people. Eshara and Zahir were far too quiet. Arwa could not help but prod him with questions, uneasy with the weight of his silence and Eshara’s combined.
“Does it worry you?” Arwa asked him. “These tales?”
“What led you to that conclusion?” Zahir said tiredly. Eshara did not even look back. She was striding forward, utterly focused and determined.
“Zahir,” she said. “Please.”
“Fine. Stories of the Maha’s heir? Of course they worry me. It means Parviz will look for us, whether he believes I live or not. It will be enough that others do.”
“You truly think he will care what ordinary people say?” Arwa asked.
“I think we both know that stories grow,” said Zahir. “They swell and they spread swiftly, like sickness. And this story…” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I can see the appeal of it. It offers… hope. An alternative. That is dangerous to him.”
Arwa thought of the story Aliye had told her, when Arwa had recovered in the safety of the pleasure house, under the shadow of the tree-carved lattice. There was a tale of sacrifice and love woven into the very fabric of Ambhan society: in its widows and their hermitages, its courtesans and their pleasure houses. A tale unspoken but known, in the bone and the blood. The Maha was a myth embedded in the skin of the Empire, deeper than any arrow. His death had left a void behind, waiting to be filled. All the Empire needed was the right tale. The right man.
Of course a legend was growing around Zahir. Not around Zahir himself, exactly—sharp-boned and exacting and hungry for knowledge as he was—but around what he represented. Emperor’s blood. Not-prince. Blessed. He was a symbol around which the growing fear and discontent of the people could focus, a shining light of possibility in a world that stumbled, stricken by ill luck.
He was the promise of a miracle.
But the miracle had been Arwa’s miracle, of course, a thing born of daiva and Amrithi blood.
What room did the Empire and its people have for that?
Arwa opened her mouth to speak, when Eshara stopped abruptly in front of them. In the blink of an eye she had her scimitar in her hand, free from its careful concealment under her robe.
“Eshara,” Zahir said. Soft.
“The cart ahead,” Eshara said. “Look.”
Through the shadows of trees, an overturned cart was just visible. One of its sides was splintered through. Now that Arwa was paying attention—as she should have been all along—she could hear the wet buzz of flies, and smell more than vegetation sweetness in the air.
She could smell rot.
There was a body there. She knew it. Her own body remembered the scent. She drew her shawl over her mouth and nose, straining to blot it out.
Bandits had attacked the cart, perhaps. Or animals.
Or something else.
“Someone,” Zahir said, “may still be alive.”
“No one is alive,” Arwa whispered. “You can be sure of it. Whoever died has been there for some time.”
“What do you know of death?” Eshara said. There was no sharpness in her voice; instead it trembled as if on a knife edge.
Arwa crumpled her hand tight into her shawl. Breathed deep and slow.
“I was at Darez Fort, Eshara,” she said. “You know that. Surely you guardswomen gossiped. But look, if you like.”
They all walked forward together, in the end.
Later, as Eshara retched against a tree, Arwa felt Zahir press his shoulder against her own. He did no more than that, but it comforted her more than she could say. She realized she was trembling, from her lips to her toes.
This was natural fear. Natural fear, only, and natural grief too, born from unnatural circumstances. She told herself that. Clung to the thought, as if releasing it would drown her.
Death. Everywhere she went, death seemed to follow her, and Arwa felt strangely exhausted, as if her heart had no more room for further mourning.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, what darkness lay over the Empire. She’d grown adept at folding away all her griefs. And then suddenly, such a moment came, and it was impossible not to remember.
Eshara walked back over to them. Refreshed her mouth with water.
“We need to return to the safety of the main path,” she said grimly. “Tales aren’t as great a risk as—this.”
They walked until it was deep night, until there was nothing to guide them but a sliver of the moon, and then they curled up together, all shame and animosity forgotten.
Arwa finally slept with her head against Eshara’s shoulder and Zahir’s back to her own, in brief snatches fractured by fear. She dreamed, over and over again, like the turn of an inexorable wheel of worlds, of daiva skin peeling back to reveal a nightmare’s terrible, chalky bones. She dreamed of her mother’s hands washing her own clean, scrubbing until all the lines and whorls and scars had smoothed away from Arwa’s flesh and she was marble pure. She dreamed of her father weeping. Dreamed that she walked across the floor to him, and pressed away his tears with her fingers. They burned her fingers blood red.
Why did you say Mehr is gone? she asked him. Why gone, and not dead? Why only gone, Father? Where has my sister gone?
She woke sharply, repeatedly, scent of incense in her nose, ash in her throat, and was grateful beyond words when dawn finally came.