The Grand Caravanserai resembled a military fort.
Long before they reached it—when it was only a miniature in the distance, an image wavering in the heat—she saw great watchtowers and high walls, clearly built to mimic the shape of a great Chand fort. If her blood had not already been frozen by the carnage in the forest, it would have grown cold at that sight.
She stopped for a moment, sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth, then continued to stride forward. She’d seen real horrors that night. She would not be shattered by a memory. Not today.
As they grew closer, she was comforted to see that the walls were simple mud and far lower and simpler than a fort’s, the watchtowers unmanned. There were only surly guards at the caravanserai’s entrance, collecting toll—for the Governor, they claimed—who waved them in once Eshara had pressed a suitable bribe into their hands.
A courtyard vaster than any belonging to caravanserais they had passed through before greeted them. There were stalls for tea sellers and food sellers; shrieking children and men and women shoving their way past one another. Newly constructed buildings were set back against the walls. Within those buildings—or so their banners and shouting voices of their owners suggested—were prophets and mystics, and pilgrims returned from Irinah’s sands with precious relics, for sale at the right price. Scraps of genuine Saltborn mystic robes. The hem of the Maha’s robe, preserved beneath glass.
Arwa stopped dead. “Did that man say he has the Maha’s shin bone?” she said, incredulous.
“What?” Zahir stopped too. He craned his neck, turning. “Where?”
“I swear,” Eshara said, aggrieved, “I am sick of both of you. Sick. And I am going to get some rest if it kills us all.”
Limited though their coin now was, they found a place to sleep for the night. It was no more than an old storeroom divided into separate rooms by curtains affixed to the ceiling on hooks. Arwa could hear voices, someone snoring loudly. It was the cheapest accommodation available to travelers, but it was a blessing after their night of horror.
Eshara curled up almost immediately on the ground, cushioning her head on her arm. She looked shaken, face gray with exhaustion. She might have claimed she was sick of the both of them, but she leaned against Zahir easily enough when he kneeled down on the ground beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder, concern furrowing his brow.
“Eshara,” he said. “You must rest.”
“We need food,” Eshara said tiredly. “We have only a little left, we’ll need the bread for the desert, we’re going to need something else for tonight.”
Zahir raised his head, meeting Arwa’s eyes.
“Let me go and buy a meal,” Arwa said. “It’s a simple enough task,” she added, when she saw doubt cloud Eshara’s eyes. “You can trust me with this.”
“I’ll stay with you and keep watch,” Zahir said to Eshara, his eyes still on Arwa’s.
Eshara visibly hesitated for a moment. Then exhaustion won out.
“There’s coin in my pack.”
It was a peace offering of a kind, so Arwa took it, curling her fingers around the coins, rising to her feet. She did not want to care for Eshara’s well-being and yet…
Eshara was curled up fully, long braid of her hair drawn over her face. Zahir met Arwa’s eyes. They shared another look, long and unspoken, and she thought of his fever-bright eyes when they jumped from the dovecote tower. The feel of him watching her, in the dark of the tomb.
“You both rest,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”
A woman ladled rice onto banana leaves and began to fold them shut for neater transport. As she worked, Arwa looked around idly, across the stalls, until her gaze was caught by a building in the distance, set back against the walls of the caravanserai.
The building should not have caught her attention. It was no brighter than the ones that surrounded it, but it was large, and upon its surface was a large painting in rich greens and browns. A tree with a vast canopy and great snarled roots, that curled in streaks of paint across the ground beneath the building’s wall.
Arwa thought of the hermitage. Thought, too, of Aliye’s tale, of a doe that was a woman, who died so Ambha could live. A story that lived in the blood, the air, the bones of the Empire.
“What is that place?” Arwa asked the woman. “With the tree.”
“The House of Tears,” the woman said. Her gaze flickered to Arwa’s shorn hair. “They give widows a home there,” she added. “Not a bad place to be, if you have no family to care for you.”
The House of Tears.
With a murmur of thanks, Arwa paid her coin and tucked the parcels into a sling made of her shawl. She turned to return to their makeshift room. Then stopped.
She could not pretend that she didn’t know how to resist her impulses. She’d learned to be whatever was required of her. But she did not want to resist this impulse. Her heart was singing in her chest. She turned on her heel and walked—slowly, deliberately—toward the House of Tears.
There was a pool of silence around it. The only person she could see was a short-haired widow in a pale Chand sari, cross-legged in the shade of the roof, filling small clay lamps with clarified butter. The widow did not look up as Arwa crossed the building’s threshold, stepping into the cool dark of the interior.
She walked forward. Unexpectedly there were steps leading down to a room below the ground. She thought of Zahir’s tomb enclosure, and kept on walking. Heavy doors at the base of the stairs were open. She passed through them, and the sight that greeted her stole her breath.
Lanterns upon the walls. Flames in miniature clay lamps, set upon the floor. And before her: an effigy. Maha and Emperor both.
The statue of the Maha was carved from grief itself. Pale as ivory, pure and austere. The world in its palm was a liquid sheen of silver and gold in the flickering light.
Arwa took a step toward it.
The ground was covered, from end to end, with grave-tokens made of green and also of clay. The clay tokens glimmered in the faint light, dusted with paints and fragments of mirror, ceramic and silver.
The widow at the last caravanserai they’d visited had been right: She would have benefited from having a grave-token to hand. Her palms felt empty, graceless at the sight before her.
She was kneeling. She hadn’t intended to kneel.
All the Maha has done, she thought, and yet the awe and adoration wells up in me like blood still.
How terrible to have the Empire she’d lived in and loved be a thing born from such darkness. To be born from a person she had been inculcated to love, and couldn’t let go of, in her bones and heart.
She looked at the Maha’s statue, fear and grief buzzing at the back of her skull; then she stood and walked up the stairs, back into the blistering light.
The widow was no longer alone. She had a companion. The two of them looked at Arwa as she passed.
“Where are you going, sister?” one widow yelled. She rose to her feet, striding over to Arwa. “Where’s your offering? Don’t you know it’s bad luck not to make an offering at a grief-house?”
She took hold of Arwa’s arm. Turned her.
“Stop, stop,” said the other widow. “Look at her hair.”
The widow lifted Arwa’s face to the brash daylight with a wrench of her fingers against Arwa’s chin.
“Ah,” said the widow. Her eyes narrowed, calculating, thoughtful. “Are you here looking for a home, sister?”
For a moment, Arwa could not talk. The House of Tears had stoppered her throat.
The moment was enough.
“Come with me, then,” said the woman. She led Arwa around to the back of the House of Tears, despite Arwa’s ineffectual protests, where a large group of widows sat under an awning. One, older than the rest, was holding court, seated on her own chair and smoking a pipe.
“Aunt Madhu,” said the woman. “There’s a new widow.”
Madhu beckoned them closer. Puffed out smoke.
“She’s young,” Madhu said shortly. She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees. “There are worse places to stop than here,” she said to Arwa. “We’re established. Oh, there are plenty of charlatan visionaries here, but they keep the Governor’s soldiers distracted.”
“Do they,” Arwa said faintly.
“You’re young. Pretty. Can you cry on command? Never mind.” A waved hand. “You can learn. Show the pilgrims a sad face and they’ll give you any gift we ask for.”
“But you wouldn’t be expected to whore,” the first widow piped up.
“An added benefit,” agreed Madhu. “The House of Tears has a good reputation for a reason.”
“That is—I did not think—”
“You did not?” A grin. “My, you are a sheltered one.”
“I.” Arwa shook her head. “I am sorry, Aunt. I don’t think I should be here.”
Madhu pursed her lips. Sucked her teeth. Then she said, “Well, think on it. The world is becoming unsafe for women like us. We all feel the terror in the night. But widows have currency in such times. The world is mourning, and who knows better how to mourn than we do?”
Without conscious thought, Arwa removed one of her packages and placed it in the woman’s hands.
“This is all I have to offer as a pilgrim. I…” Words failed her. She did not know how she felt. “I am sorry, Aunt. I have to go.”
And she turned and fled.
Arwa returned to their makeshift room and handed out the food as Eshara dragged herself sluggishly to her elbows and began to eat. Zahir left his food untouched, a frown creasing his brow.
“You took a long time,” he said.
She didn’t want to explain where she had gone, or why she had given the widows her food. She didn’t want to explain how she had felt in the House of Tears: the way those bright candles had moved her heart like a star across the heavens. She did not want to tell them how the old widow had reminded her of Gulshera, and made her wonder what had become of Gulshera. Of Jihan. Of Bega. Of all the women, left in the massacre.
“I lost my way,” said Arwa. That at least was believable.
“You brought nothing for yourself?”
“I…” She shook her head, trying to clear the haze of grief and exhaustion. “I’m sorry. I am—tired, I think. That is for you.” She gestured at the parcel. “I misplaced my own food, not yours.”
“We can share, Arwa,” he said. His gaze was steady, assessing her. “There’s no need for sacrifice.”
She nodded, truly too tired to argue, and ate a little, chewing on spongy rice and gram flour, the sharp tang of chutney. Then she drank a little water and curled upon herself. Head on her arm. Comforted by the sound of humans—living, breathing humans—around her.
“We leave in the morning,” said Eshara. And Arwa, blackness already pulling her into sleep, did not respond.