The itch of fear at the back of her skull. The tension in her chest, a band steadily pressing the air from her lungs. These were signs and omens, of a kind. She should have recognized them. She should have known.
She had felt this before, in Darez Fort, on the day of the massacre. Felt it as she’d touched her fingers to the window lattice and watched the soldier throw back his prisoner’s hood.
Fear. Unnatural fear.
It can’t be happening again. It just can’t.
There were differences. She looked at them for comfort. In Darez Fort it had risen with awful swiftness. Here, in the caravanserai it moved slowly, building within her. Within all of them.
She thought back to Eshara’s fear that the crowds upon the pilgrimage route were dangerous—the keen edge of her fear, too sharp by far. She thought of the way they had all stumbled and trembled, huddled together like children, after finding the bodies of the dead. She understood now: There had been a ghost of unnatural madness, crouched in the dust of the pilgrimage route. There had been one among the trees. There was one here now too.
The madness was an invasive crop, a blight that had taken root and spread across the Empire. Darez Fort—and the sheer, bloody scale of its savagery—had only been the start. The death Zahir had predicted, the price of the Maha’s ill magic, was now suffused in the Empire’s soil, and here in the Grand Caravanserai it was near full bloom.
When it flowered, they would all die.
The knowledge filled her with a feeling of suffocation. Screaming babies. Wide-eyed children. Groups of men hunched together, and women curled against walls, already staring at nothing. Market stalls with cooking fires and sharp knives and vats of hot oil. Pilgrims with daggers and bows and scimitars at their hips. Sharp fingers for gouging. Teeth for biting. Bodies, vulnerable and vicious by turns. Their lodging was full of the presence of people. As Arwa passed through the curtains, she felt as if she were slipping between a dozen shrouds, waiting to be laid.
The fear in the Grand Caravanserai was like rainfall on bitter earth, seeping into the soil, rising out of it so insidiously that a person would only realize too late that a flood had come, and they were caught within it. No escape.
There were so many people here, and so many weapons they could turn on one another.
Part of her—the part that had splintered from her the night of the Emperor’s death and remained still in the realm of ash—had known the curse was here. She’d fallen into the realm. Half dreamed, half walked. She’d seen that familiar face of bones. The realm had warned her.
Diya had felt the fear too. Eshara had trembled, unwilling to be alone. Someone had died beyond the caravanserai’s walls, left to rot. All these were entangled together, a great skein of terror.
They needed to get out, no matter what it took.
“Talking to the soldiers,” Zahir said flatly. They were sitting across from one another, face-to-face in their makeshift room, and his displeasure was impossible to miss. “That’s what you’ve decided is best?”
“What else can we do?”
“I understand taking risks. Reasonable, measured, calculated risks. This is not one of them, and you know it. What do you think you’ll accomplish?”
“The widow told me who to speak to,” Arwa said determinedly. “I’ll find the two soldiers she suggested—I’ll plead with them, convince them. I have to try.”
“Don’t you think your widow friend would have spoken to them herself, if she thought they could help her escape?” Zahir asked.
“Perhaps Arwa does stand a chance,” Eshara interjected.
She was sitting with her back to the curtain, slowly sharpening the edge of her scimitar. The hiss of steel on stone cut through the air. She had begun sharpening the blade the very minute Arwa had warned her of what the widow had said about the captain, as if a blade would be anything but a detriment, as if the hiss of metal didn’t sharpen the edge of leashed violence in the air to a terrible point. “Their ilk listen to well-bred women, sometimes. Something about treasuring them.” She shrugged. “She’s a noble and pretty. She might be able to sway them.”
“Or their captain may cut off her head and place it on a stake outside the caravanserai’s walls,” said Zahir. His eyes were keen blades, his voice equally sharp. Everything was sharp now. Even the thud of Arwa’s own heart in her chest. Even the breath in her lungs. “Isn’t that what your widow friend said he does to heretics?”
“He may also cut out my tongue,” said Arwa. “You forgot that.”
Zahir swore an oath.
“Arwa, you’re cleverer than this.”
“And what do you think we should do instead?” she threw back. “This captain cannot be bribed, and we have little coin left anyway. We can wait here until we’re freed—but when will that be? Will we be freed at all?” Arwa threw her hands wide, all feeling. “There are no clever options available to us. There’s only this.”
“There’s no reason it has to be you,” Zahir said. “I could speak to them.”
“You’re mildly less pretty,” Eshara said, squinting down at her blade. Zahir gave her an irritated look and Eshara added, “And I’ve never cajoled anyone. It isn’t my nature.”
“We can go together, then,” Zahir said. “All three of us, if need be. Arwa. Please. See reason.”
She shook her head wordlessly, and Zahir leaned forward, clear light blazing in his eyes.
“You can’t truly think they’re going to let us go,” he said. “You can’t. Please. Be honest with me?”
It was hard to be barbed or secretive in the face of that naked want—that hunger for knowledge and truth that blazed in him always, like a great light.
She looked away.
“No,” Arwa admitted. “But I…”
Truth. Give them truth.
What else could she do, after all?
“I had a dream,” she said.
“Oh, a dream,” Eshara said flatly. “Wonderful.”
“You don’t understand. The realm of ash, I…” She curled her hands, tight, tighter. “I have entered it. In my dreams. And sometimes—when I’m awake. When we fell from the dovecote tower, it wasn’t my ash that made me forget myself, alone. Reaching for the ash made me fall into the realm.”
Silence. Then Zahir’s voice, tightly controlled:
“You should use ritual to enter the realm of ash. Opium. Blood.”
“I can’t entirely control it,” admitted Arwa.
“You told me you were well, in Jah Ambha. And I…” He exhaled. Squeezed his eyes shut. “I should have questioned you more. I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
Arwa wanted to recoil, at those words. Something dark squirmed at the back of her skull.
“Because of my ability to slip into the realm,” she said slowly, forcing herself to go on, “I think I was able to feel the danger here, in a way I could not if I walked only in one world. I saw something that I’ve seen before, at Darez Fort. Something that filled me with unnatural fear then and fills us all with it now. A nightmare, Zahir. I saw a nightmare. And I am more afraid of it than any soldier. Because… because I know what it can make a soldier do.”
“I should have known,” he said to himself. “I should have guessed.”
“Are you listening to me at all? Eshara—”
“Don’t involve me,” Eshara said. She wasn’t sharpening her scimitar anymore, but she was staring down at it with great single-minded intensity, as if the sight of the blade could keep the fear at bay.
“Zahir, then,” said Arwa, turning her attention back to him. “There is no soldier in the Empire who doesn’t fear being at the heart of the next Darez Fort. Perhaps if I warn the soldiers, they will release us, before the nightmare can consume us all.” Even to her own ears, it sounded like a weak possibility. “We can hope.”
“You and your foolish hopes,” he said.
“They haven’t failed us yet,” she replied.
“What a fine time for them to do so, then,” he said grimly.
“I need to see if the nightmare is in their eyes,” she said, pressing onward. “I need to see it, because I will recognize it. I know the nightmare in all its forms. It haunts me. And I hope—my truest, strongest hope—that if I stare the nightmare in the face, the ash will show me a way to dispel it. And if it does not, and if the soldiers do not let us run for our lives… well.” She swallowed. “We’re all going to die anyway.”
He leaned forward. Touched the ground before her hand, as if he wanted to grasp her but wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
“Don’t do this,” he said. “Stay here. Think. If the answer lies in the realm of ash, then Eshara and I are well placed to help. We can study, we can enter the realm more safely, together—”
“How long until the captain takes another head, kills another heretic?” snapped Arwa. “How long until the nightmares make us turn on one another in a blood frenzy?” Neither of them looked at Eshara, though it was a near thing. “And where will we perform a ritual, in this place? I won’t live through a Darez Fort again, Zahir. I won’t. I can’t.”
She was the one who breached the gap between them, who grasped his wrist, holding him fast. She felt the beat of his pulse against her fingers and saw something in his face—something strange and raw and lost.
“Arwa,” he said.
“I saved our lives, Zahir. And all we had then was foolish hope. I think…” An exhalation. “There is more in me than either of us knows. There is more in me than me. My ancestor’s ash may give me the answer to save this place. It may not. But when the nightmare came to Darez Fort, I hid and wept as my husband and his men died. Now the nightmare is here, now I know what it is and what it can do, now I have a second chance to be strong, how can I not try to save us?”
“She’s already speaking like a thing cursed by fear,” muttered Eshara.
“This isn’t right,” Zahir said. “You can’t do this.”
“I will. I can.”
“It places you in terrible danger, you know that.”
“We’re already in terrible danger. Just this once—”
“The risks, Arwa—”
“We have a mission, Zahir. And the safety of these people—”
“It is not your responsibility to die as your husband died,” he said sharply. “You lived through Darez Fort once, you owe no one anything—”
“Don’t you care?” she asked, knowing even as she spoke that her words were unfair, untrue. “Do you truly want the nightmare to take us, without hope, without a fight?” She swallowed. Tried to soften her voice, feeling the trembling heat of his hand in her own. “I am sorry, Zahir. But if you’re afraid, I—”
“I am afraid for you!” His voice was vicious. His pulse burned beneath her hand. “If anything happens to you here and I live, I will read every book, every tome, I will trick death itself to bring you back. I will become something terrible, not for your sake, but mine, because I cannot live in a world without you in it.”
“You don’t feel so much for me,” she whispered.
He blinked. Blinked again. It was as if clouds parted upon his face.
“No. I don’t. I.” He shook his head. “Something is wrong.”
He pulled away from her grip. He touched his fingers to the back of his neck. Shaken.
“Fear,” he said. “This is my fear. And yet it isn’t. We are—none of us—acting like ourselves.”
Eshara had lowered her blade to the ground. Her face was gray. Distantly, Arwa could hear someone weeping.
“No,” Arwa agreed. “We’re not. You called me your partner, Zahir. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“Then trust me,” she said softly. “Allow me to take a risk. At the very least, accept that I have the right to risk my life on my own terms, when death waits for us here, no matter what we do. Let me have that.”
Zahir closed his eyes. Opened them.
“Arwa. I can’t even think.”
“I know. I’m sorry for it, Zahir.”
“For what it’s worth, two women will be considered less threat than even one man,” said Eshara. “I’ll go with her.”
“You’ll have to leave your blade behind,” said Zahir.
“Ah.” Eshara looked down. “I’ll still go with her.”
“Fine,” said Zahir. “But if you don’t return I will follow you both. I hope you understand that.”
“Zahir.”
“I have a right to risk my own life.”
“It isn’t fair to throw my own words back at me.”
“Ah. Well.” He smiled tightly. There was still fear in his eyes, still something tight and dark and blood bitter. “When is life fair?”
Eshara and Arwa left their lodgings. They stepped into the light, into air that swarmed with fear and heat, that lay heavy on Arwa’s shoulders, and held her fast.
Eshara rolled her shoulders. Cracked her neck, and gave Arwa a level look.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s go to die.”
Together, they crossed the courtyard. The soldiers were encamped, largely, near the main gate. They’d commandeered some of the largest buildings and stalls, which had been stripped of their signs and wares. Despite the dangers—the man who had been struck down for confronting the guards, and the palmful of fools who had followed his example—there were people begging for escape. Many women, a number clutching small children, begging for mercy. Arwa’s heart twisted at the sight of them.
“I’m looking for someone in particular,” she murmured, searching the guards for the man Diya had described to her. “Do you see a soldier—bald, tall?”
“They’re wearing helms.”
“Not all of them,” said Arwa. “And… ah. There.”
Two soldiers were standing in the shade before an elegant storefront. They weren’t mobbed—the shade provided them cover, and their lack of helmets and lighter clothing made them resemble the pilgrims more closely than their fellow soldiers. Arwa, at least, recognized their clothing and knew their bare heads were a sign of their status. They were still green recruits, perhaps no more than a palmful of years in service, barely full-grown men with thin limbs and awkward faces that weren’t quite yet honed by time. One was bald, the other round-faced and softer looking for it.
She approached them, Eshara at her side. Stopped and waited, head lowered deferentially but eyes still fixed on them both, as they straightened up at the sight of her.
“I am sorry to disturb you, my lords,” she said. “But I am looking for Sohal.”
The bald one shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Uneasy.
“That’s me,” he said. “What do you want?”
“A friend gave me your name,” said Arwa. “I was hoping for your help.”
Sohal and his friend exchanged a look.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sohal said finally. “Go on now.”
“Lords,” Arwa murmured, tilting her head down demurely, drawing her veil carefully over her face, without concealing the short cut of her hair. “I was told that you’re… not unkind.”
“I’m sorry,” said the round-faced one, voice very soft, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “You—the other widows. We can’t help you. We have our orders. Our captain has been very clear. No one may leave.”
“He’s not—he. Wouldn’t respond well. If we were to help.” The bald one—Sohal’s—gaze flickered to the crowd of pleading people, then back to Arwa once more.
Arwa heard Eshara exhale, felt Eshara’s hand touch her arm.
“As you say, my lords,” said Eshara. “We’ll go.”
But of course, they couldn’t go. Not yet.
Arwa raised her head and looked at them properly, tracing their faces with her eyes.
There was no evil living in them, not that she could see. Nothing unnatural rooted inside them, nothing like what had haunted Darez Fort. Their eyes were clear, their faces burnished by the sun; Sohal’s nose was faintly peeling. They were just boys. No more.
But the nightmare was here.
There was a trick to this: to being soft enough to arouse sympathy, sweet enough to reel them in. But Arwa used none of it, only stared at them, demureness forgotten, and said, “Darez Fort.”
Eshara hissed through gritted teeth.
The men stared at her with wide eyes. She’d spoken the name of a tragedy and pinned them with it. Good.
“My lords, in Darez Fort a commander serving the Governor of Chand and all his men and all their servants perished. Behind barred doors a curse consumed them, and they died, to the last man.” A slow inhalation. The two men waited, silent before her. “Some say the Empire is cursed. That our crops die and our people sicken. But in Darez Fort, the curse wore a face. It made them murder one another. Every one.”
She took a step closer.
“I am afraid something similar will happen here. Don’t you feel it? The fear? Don’t you feel something terrible growing within your skull with no way to leave it?”
She drew the memory of the dream close around her. The storm. The face of white bone. Kamran’s dust—and all the memories his death brought with it—hovering half-formed in the air before her.
“I know you do,” she said, letting her voice soften not with the gentleness expected of a noblewoman, but with the rasp Zahir’s voice sometimes held when he showed the sharp edge of his curiosity. “Please, my lords, you must help us.”
Sohal leaned forward. Like a tree swayed by a great wind.
“Your eyes,” he whispered.
Her eyes. Panic clamored up within her. Had she reached for the ash? Were her eyes full of gray-white light? She blinked, breathed, hoping it would fade away.
Sohal cleared his throat, and turned away. “By the Maha’s blessing,” he said, “you believe we need to warn our captain? That everyone will die?”
“I know it.”
“You can’t,” said the soft-faced guard. He lowered his voice. “That’s heresy.”
“I’m no heretic,” Arwa said, even though it was a lie. She stared at him full in the face, holding her knowledge around herself like a fierce armor all of her own. “I know it.”
Sohal shook his head. Took a step back. The spell was shattered.
“Go,” Sohal said abruptly. “Go now, lady. And keep your foolish thoughts to yourself.”
“Come on, sister. Let’s obey,” Eshara said tightly. Arwa could hear the fear tucked in her voice.
She felt Eshara grip her tight and knew her time had run out.
“Sohal.” A voice, deep from within the storefront. “He heard voices. He’s asked for you to bring him the women at the door.”
Sohal closed his eyes. Opened them. There was sweat on his forehead.
“My apologies, young widow,” he said. “You have your wish after all.”
They stepped into the store. Arwa assumed it must have been used for selling medicine, once. The air smelled of spices and herbs; jars of turmeric and honey and stoppered clay containers lined the walls, on cramped shelves. Some of the jars were broken, their contents spilled across the floor. Seated slumped against the wall, surrounded by shattered jars, a carafe of wine before him, sat the captain.
His helm was on the floor, but he wore his status in the fine fabric of his tunic, visible through his half-assembled armor, and the bands of decorated metal encircling his wrists. He had a cluster of men with him. One, old and grizzled, helm still on his head, was kneeling and speaking to the captain in a low voice. The older soldier rose when Eshara and Arwa entered, gave them a grim look, and stepped back into the shadows, where the captain’s other palmful of men stood in uneasy silence.
Captain Argeb raised his head. He gave them a smile that was unexpected in its openness: mouth curling, teeth faintly bared, eyes crinkling with joy.
“So much useless chattering,” he said by way of greeting. There was a faint slur to his voice. “Ladies, come and sit.”
Arwa and Eshara kneeled down across from him.
He placed his own cup on the ground.
“Wine,” he said, pushing it toward Arwa, keen light in his eyes. “Drink.”
“I am a widow,” Arwa said softly, scrabbling for decorum in the face of the captain’s drunken joy, the nervous and fearful silence of the soldiers. “My lord, I will not imbibe with men.”
“Your honor, is it?” Lips peeling back from his teeth. “As I see it, a respectable widow wouldn’t be flirting about with my men at all. A respectable widow would trust the Governor’s men to protect the caravanserai as they see fit. She would have faith.”
He turned his gaze onto Eshara.
“And you, I think, are not a widow. Too much hair, for one.”
“No,” Eshara said shortly.
“Then you can drink for the both of you,” he said.
“I think we’d best leave,” said Eshara.
“No,” said the captain. “We haven’t talked yet. Drink.”
Eshara took the cup. Drank a sip. Lowered it. Satisfied, Argeb picked up the cup, placed his mouth pointedly where hers had rested on the rim, and drank deep and fast. When he’d finished he lowered the cup. Poured again.
“I can forgive your behavior, widow. People are so desperate to leave that they’ll do anything, it seems. Why, a man tried to climb the walls an hour ago. He’s being made an example of; of course, we can’t treat men the way we do women. Has it been done, Giresh?”
“Sir, I, well…” The soft-faced soldier, Giresh, stopped and swallowed. Then he said, “I will check. My lord.”
“Do.”
Giresh vanished.
“I am not just rooting out bandits, you see,” the captain said. “I am rooting out all sorts of things.”
He leaned forward, conspiratorial, and she smelled his breath, sweet with wine, bitter with something that was not wine. Not just drunk, she thought.
How long had he been sitting here drinking, imbibing, even as his men stood apart from him in nervous, fearful silence? The oldest of them was watching the captain like a hawk. This was his patrol. No doubt they knew his moods well.
“I heard you speak, widow,” he said. “You spoke of Darez Fort. Said we could end up like that place. You verged on heresy.”
“Not heresy, my lord,” Arwa said, even as her heart pounded in her chest. “Only a mere woman’s fears.”
“I know, you said. I know.”
He leaned in even closer. Arwa felt the back of Eshara’s hand against her leg, grounding her, helping her avoid the desire to wrench herself away.
“I see it in your eyes,” he whispered. “Something… inhuman. Your eyes are not a natural color. They are like…”
Ash, Arwa thought.
But he did not finish his statement. Instead his smile twitched, spasmodic.
“You hear it too,” he said. “Don’t you?”
He did not say, the nightmare. But she understood. She knew.
She nodded. Careful. She had to be careful. The wrong words would see her and Eshara dead.
“It whispers to me,” she said.
“It whispers in my ears too,” he said. “Constantly. I hear it waking. I hear it in my sleep. I gave it so many gifts, and yet it follows me.”
“Gifts,” she echoed.
“You know how it hungers.”
She thought of the bodies on the road. Her stomach twisted.
Could the men around the captain hear him? Eshara certainly could. But they were silent, no words, barely breathing.
“I have studied Darez Fort. I have been to it, can you imagine that?”
“No, my lord. I can’t imagine such a place.”
“I made a special visit of it. The blood has never been cleared, you know. You can still see the shadow of death…” Argeb trailed off. Lifted his cup. Drank deep again. Refilled it. “The place was cursed, widow. Oh, that I don’t doubt. But the death!” He leaned forward. “The death,” he said, “cleansed it.”
Images flickered through Arwa’s mind’s eye. What she had seen at Darez Fort had not been cleansing. But she bit her tongue. Silent. For once, she would be silent.
“I’m no weak-willed creature,” he said. “Oh, it speaks, but I question it. It wants butchery, it knows killing can be sweet. But I speak to it in return. And I have come to understand it. It has taught me the truth. The Empire is cursed. Saving it demands a price. And the terror, its voice. I think…” Voice trembling with joy. “I think it is the Maha’s voice. The Maha’s will.
“Butchery is disrespectful,” he continued. “Untidy. What I do here will be a purification. Perfect. Precise. When I am done everything will be pure. The Governor is wroth with me now, but he won’t be. He won’t. The Emperor will be glad. Everyone says he desires above all things to blot out heresy. These caravanserais, these pilgrims, are a part of the Empire’s curse. They must be cut away, as infected flesh must be.”
One heartbeat. Two. Eshara’s hand on her leg now, gripping tight. Hold fast.
The ash had no answers for her. The nightmare was in him. The nightmare would see them all dead.
And she could not stop him.
“My lord is wise,” Arwa managed.
With a sense of dull dread, Arwa felt the inevitable occur: The captain’s hand gripped her shawl, drawing it away from her shorn hair, baring her. He gripped her face. Sweat-damp fingers, his hold too firm, his face far too close.
“Yes,” he said satisfied. “You hear it too.”
“Captain.” Sohal’s voice from the entrance. Shaking. “May I speak to you? Giresh has news of the latest heretic’s punishment.”
For a moment, the captain continued to hold Arwa’s face in his grasp. She waited, feeling Eshara’s nails against her knee, the sheer tension in the air. Then the captain exhaled, released her, and slumped back against the wall.
“Come in and speak,” he said.
“Let me refresh your carafe, Captain,” said the older soldier. He leaned down, blocking the captain’s view. He gave Eshara a look.
Eshara tightened her grip. Released it.
“We go,” she whispered. “We go now.”
Arwa fumbled to her feet. None of the soldiers stopped them as they stepped carefully away. At the door was Sohal, arms crossed, face gray. He stepped aside to let them pass, and then stepped into the interior.
“Walk faster,” Eshara said in a low voice, and Arwa obeyed.