Hours and hours.
Hours and hours and hours.
No one was going to come for her. There would be no physician. No food. No water.
She heard the men and women in armor. The stamp and cry of elephants. Music.
The Emperor is here, then, she thought. She thought of Zahir and felt helpless, helpless.
She could not save him. She couldn’t even save herself.
“Can’t you?” A man’s voice. Gentle. Patient. “Come now, Iria. Remember.”
With difficulty she raised her head. Through the flicker of ash and glass, as the world wavered, she saw figures of ash kneeling around her. No longer nothing but broken limbs, they were whole people, staring at her eyes like the palest clouds.
“You can’t be here,” she said, uncomprehending. “I am still Arwa. Still myself.”
“Your mind is full of ash,” Iria said. She was no child any longer. She was a woman grown, with keen dark eyes and a braid of curling hair thrown over her shoulder. Her face was a thing carved of dust. “We are with you. Within you. And you haven’t the sense to keep us distant.”
Were those Iria’s words or Arwa’s own? Now that she was paying attention, forcing herself to think through the pain, she could taste the ash through the iron of blood in her mouth. She could feel the tug of the ash clouding her mind, the way the memories of her long dead were unfurling within her.
“I suppose,” Arwa gritted out, “that dying has made a fool of me.”
“No,” said Nazrin. Her ash was missing a great gout at the neck, leaving nothing but a void where her dagger had sliced her own artery through. “You simply don’t want to die alone. There is nothing foolish about that.”
Arwa swallowed. But she was alone. That was the truth.
“I don’t want to be in pain anymore,” whispered Arwa. “I don’t.”
The ash moved in her head. A great whirl of it.
“Then you know what to do,” Nazrin said gently.
Yes. Arwa knew.
She needed to go to a place where she was not flesh. Where the pain would be a distant thing—bound to her only by thin roots of blood. She closed her eyes. Breathed deep and slow. She did not need anything but her own will.
She sank back into the realm of ash.
The tent still surrounded her. Her body lay still upon the floor. When she had entered the realm of ash in Zahir’s tomb, she had entered another world entirely. But this was Irinah, where all realms met. The world of flesh lay against the realm of ash, one breathing with the lungs of the other.
She kneeled, free of her flesh. The pain was blessedly far away.
She could remain where she was and take comfort in the peace the realm had offered. She could wait, now, quietly for death. But when she’d entered the realm with Zahir in Irinah’s desert, she’d felt as if she could walk forever. She felt the same now. Two worlds lay spread about before her. Her feet of mirror and memory could carry her.
She thought of remaining here, dying, inch by slow inch.
She thought instead of throwing herself into the abyss before her.
Always, when she had a choice, it was the danger she chose. She looked back at her body, at its bloody wound, at the way her chest rattled from the pain of it. She looked about—at the walls of the tent, at the ghosts around her—and took a step forward.
She walked through the canvas wall into the open. She saw the elephants, the soldiers, the glaring blankness of the sky. The realm of ash echoed with things still living. There was a tent in the distance, far vaster in size than the one she’d been contained in. Its surface glittered in the light, richly embroidered with either silver or gold.
So the Emperor was here, after all. She had not been wrong to think so.
Zahir, she thought. Walked on.
The realm unfurled a storm beneath her feet, carried her forward as if on a wave. She could feel Zahir’s blood roots, still. His soul had walked with her own. Just as he’d found her in the realm of ash when she’d left him behind in the House of Tears, she found him now.
The large tent had a sumptuous carpet spread across the entirety of its floor. Great lanterns hung on stakes set in the ground. A select group of nobles lined the walls, their expressions blank, bodies tense. Behind a screen of fine netting were Gulshera and Jihan, the two of them seated.
Before them all, sat the Emperor. Parviz was cross-legged upon his throne, hands upon his knees, back ramrod straight. There was nothing opulent about his garb. He wore plain clothing once more, an unadorned turban and a tunic and trousers of plainest mourning white. There was something fierce and cruel about his plainness: about his military posture and the flint of his eyes as he stared down at the ground before him.
The ground where Zahir kneeled. Hands chained, his head tipped forward, as if he could not hold the weight of it up. Perhaps he could not.
“Zahir,” said Parviz. “You will look at me.”
Arwa wondered how many times Parviz had asked. He was thin-lipped with fury, his hands curling into the threat of fists.
“Zahir,” she whispered. “Look up.”
“Zahir,” the ash echoed around her. All her dead, speaking with her voice. “Look up.”
With great difficulty, he raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheek bruised.
“Zahir.” Parviz’s voice was iron. Unyielding, and deadly for it. “Son of Bahar. Did you falsely call yourself the Maha’s heir? Did you lead men and women of the Empire to heresy using my ancestor’s name?”
“You’ll give me the illusion of a trial, then?” Zahir asked. His voice was broken glass. His lip, too, she thought, was swollen. How long had he been gone from her? She didn’t know. “I know—I know my fate. Already. There’s no need for this.”
“Did you use heretical arts,” Parviz pressed on, “occult and barbaric, to speak with the dead, and to flee the palace and imperial justice?”
“Imperial justice?” Zahir echoed. A smile tugged his mouth. He was still drugged, she thought, although his eyes were bright, his words clipped and fierce. “Imperial justice… No. It was not that I fled from. And I used no heretical arts. The Maha’s own heir surely cannot defy the faith he dictates.”
“You admit your lies, then.”
“I admit what our father and Emperor named me, upon his deathbed. Who am I to deny his will?”
“He was not your father.” Parviz’s voice was rumbling, deadly and soft. “Know your place. You are a traitorous whore’s son. A bastard. And your actions have proved you barbaric as any black-blooded Amrithi heathen. My father never named you Maha’s heir.”
“You are Emperor now. If you say it, then it must be so.” Zahir’s head jerked, his gaze tracing the circle of noblemen around them. “Even if your court heard the truth from our father’s own lips.”
Arwa saw two of the departed Emperor’s old council of advisers exchange glances, their faces carefully blank of feeling. The rest stood frozen and silent.
“The ravings of a dying man,” Parviz said coldly, “who did not know what he was saying. He was not himself.”
“Not himself, when he named me Maha’s heir, and Akhtar his own,” Zahir said. “I see.”
“I saved the Empire from a dying man’s feverish error.” Parviz’s voice was iron, a great weight forcibly reshaping the world to fit his vision of it. “The only worthy heir to the Empire is a powerful one. A strong one. And that,” Parviz said levelly, “you are not. But I am.”
There was a noise from beyond the partition veil, quickly hushed. Parviz did not move, but his expression seemed to darken.
“My sister’s soft womanly yielding to your monstrous occult acts is done. You will plead for your false soul, heretic, and then you will be put to death. If you do not confess your crimes, your fingers will be cut from your hands. Your eyes will be gouged. Your teeth will be pried from your mouth. Your skin will be burned. These are the punishments the worst heretics suffered, when I quelled Durevi beneath my boot.” He leaned forward. “Jihan pleaded for death by swift poison. I am inclined to indulge her soft nature, if you confess now, and beg me to be kind.”
“Bastard, heretic, son of a traitor whore—you do not think much of me, brother.” Head raised, eyes bright as new coins, mouth twisting into a smile. “And yet, that makes me no less the Maha’s heir. It was those you call bastards who the Maha raised up and proclaimed as his mystics. The fatherless, the unloved, the children of traitors—he loved them. Who else would he choose for his successor, but a bastard of his own blood? The Maha’s own spirit dictated our father’s choice. I know it.”
He spoke the lie with utter conviction. It lit him from the inside, and she saw his words fall on the nobles’ ears like a blow.
They would remember this. When Zahir was dead, they would remember this. And they would doubt Parviz a little more, as each day passed, as the curse on the Empire sank its claws deeper and deeper into the bitter earth.
“You will be executed for your heresy,” Parviz said. “And it will not be quick. I promise you that.”
Beyond the screen, Arwa saw Jihan lower her head.
Arwa kneeled down beside Zahir. The world rippled around her.
He turned to her.
Looked at her.
“Arwa,” he breathed.
“You fool,” she whispered. “You utter fool. We’re not dying like this, Zahir. Not like this.”
She touched her glass fingers to his face. Drew back. The ash whirled through her, around her, so close.
She stepped back. Back.
“I need knowledge,” she said. The grand tent around her wavered. Even Zahir was a smear of faint light.
“We are knowledge,” the ash said.
“No,” said Arwa. She felt her distant flesh—fading, suffering. And she was alight, furious. If she’d had blood in her, it would have burned. “I need all your rites. All your sigils. All your lost knowledge. I need to save us both. And for that, I need everything. Can it be done?”
“Perhaps,” said Nazrin.
“Perhaps,” said Iria.
“It will come at a cost,” Ushan said. “You will go far deeper than any mortal woman should.”
“You could lose yourself,” said Nazrin. “The ash could carry away your name. Your nature. The weft of your soul.”
“You could become trapped here, never able to return home,” said Iria.
“Or worse, both,” said Nazrin. “You could become lost, forgotten even to yourself. A ghost within a land of ghosts.”
“I know,” Arwa whispered. But of course she did. They were part of her. “And yet, I would rather lose myself than let them take me.”
She turned to face her ghosts.
“Did you walk the world in the end, Iria? Did you save people from ill-starred daiva?”
Iria’s ash turned to her. The answer rose to the lips of her ash, from deep within Arwa’s own skull. From the wealth of memories she’d consumed.
“I did, for a time. But no one can protect others forever.”
“No.” Arwa said. “I suppose not. But I would have… I would have liked the chance to try.”
Arwa gripped her courage—and her roots—tight. She turned from Zahir and began to walk her path of ash.
Deeper and deeper she went. Ink-black trees that had once been Zahir’s surrounded her. The sand glowed, as rich and wild as the Haran sea. She was unraveling from her own flesh, step by step. The pain faded. She looked up at the sky, which was a lidless eye, blazing with fury and storm light.
She had walked Zahir’s path. She had stumbled through her own out of desperation. But she had never walked it deliberately. The realm raged around her, sweetly familiar, a thing born from her own soul, and terrifying for it. Irinah unfurled itself beneath her feet, real and mortal and yet so far away. It shifted about her like a dream.
On her path loomed her past. Doors opening to opulent rooms. An overgrown garden. Blades and—
She stopped. Froze.
Around her loomed Darez Fort.
Before her were Darez Fort’s great gates. And before them lay Kamran, all riven ash, slumped, a knife through his gut.
“You are not my blood,” she whispered, gazing at him. “You should not be here.”
But he had been her husband. She’d wed him in the Ambhan way: placed her marriage seal around his throat. Worn his, until his death. Vowed that her soul was bound to his, all through her mortal lifetime.
She walked toward him. Kneeled by him. His face was a void. His head thrown back, hand reaching for nothing.
“I wish you were here,” she said. “And yet I don’t. We should never have wed, husband. We were so ill-suited to one another. And yet I so desperately wanted to be the wife you needed. Did you know it, Kamran?”
He could not answer her. He was a shadow. If she touched his ash, breathed it…
“I do not want to keep you. I want to let you go.” She would have wept, if she could have. “That is wrong, and I know it. But I do not want to mourn you forever. I do not want to be the silent widow you deserve.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and pressed her hand to the gates. And pushed.
They were ash. No more than ash. They fell to dust around the press of her hand.
His dust crumbled behind her. She kept on walking.
A moon bloomed in the sky above her, opening like a flower.
The trees were melting around her, collapsing into reams of words, which spread their limbs across the sand. Poetry. A piece of the Hidden Ones lived in her too.
Her soul had traveled the breadth of Irinah. Her soul had traveled the breadth of the realm of ash.
The realm of ash wasn’t always straightforward. It could be made of tales and of the dead. It could lead to your childhood. It would always pass through your greatest griefs. Arwa was beginning to understand the poetry of the Hidden Ones, all those many tracts of longing and loss, as she never had before.
The realm of ash contracted around her. She knew, then, that she had come near to the end of her journey.
Mehr waited, ahead of her.
Her sister was seated, cross-legged on the sand, with her back to Arwa. Her hair was loose, curling over one shoulder. Arwa could see the curve of her neck. Whorl of her ear. She was entirely still. It was as if she had been in the sand all this time, waiting for Arwa’s end. Waiting for Arwa to find her way home.
Arwa took a step forward. Another.
There was a shout, and a screech of laughter and—a child. It ran up to her sister, flinging itself into her sister’s arms. Mehr murmured something, and the child laughed again. It was a chubby thing, with big curls, babbling volubly away. But Arwa could not listen to it. She could only walk forward and stare at her sister, who was brown-skinned and smiling and moved as a living woman moved, lifted and lowered her shoulders, tilted her head to hear the child speak.
All the times she had seen Mehr in the realm of ash—in fragments, between the smoke of the storm, or standing lamp bright before the bodies of the Amrithi dead—Mehr had been too far to see clearly. But Arwa saw her now. This was not her sister as Arwa remembered her, with guarded smiles and wary eyes. This woman was older, softer in the face with skin darkened by sunlight, a grown woman with a fall of loose curls and a face that smiled easily.
This woman was alive.
Arwa felt as if she would shatter. As if she were truly a thing of glass, fragile enough to fragment. She could not hope. She could not hope.
And yet—
“Mehr.” Her voice came out of her without her bidding. Thin as a reed. “Sister. It’s me.”
Mehr turned. Froze.
Arwa did not know what Mehr saw, what strange thing peered at her through the worlds, fleshless and terrible. But Mehr looked at her and looked at her, and began to shake.
“Arwa.” She rose to her feet. “Arwa?”
The child murmured something in a small voice. But Mehr said nothing. She stared at Arwa with wide, stricken eyes.
“It can’t be,” Mehr whispered. “Little sister. What has become of you? Where are you?”
“I’m here,” Arwa said. “I’m—home.”
“I’m dreaming,” Mehr said numbly. And yet she took a step forward, grief and yearning written into her wide eyes. “I’m dreaming you again.”
“I’m the one dreaming,” said Arwa. “You’re dead and gone and yet I want you alive so much I sicken with it. But how can you be alive, when I’ve grieved you so long, and I stand in the land of the dead?”
Mehr made a sound—a wordless gasp, as if the air had been stolen from her lungs. She took a step forward, her hand before her, and Arwa stumbled back. Back.
“I can’t,” Arwa said. “I can’t lose you again. I can’t watch what will become of you, don’t you see? I can’t watch you leave me.”
“Don’t go. Arwa. My dear one. Don’t go. Stay with me.” Mehr’s hand was still before her. Held out like a hope. “Stay, my dear one. Please.”
Arwa stopped. The ash was quiet around her.
She held out her own hand.
Arwa braced herself for Mehr to turn to dust before her: for all Mehr’s strange, bright ash to shatter and leave Arwa with nothing but grief and memory and the cruelly stolen promise of her sister, returned to her, whole and safe and alive.
Their hands touched.
Skin. Warm, callused. Grip of Mehr’s fingers, reaching between two worlds.
Mehr met her eyes.
“I’ll find you,” she said. “Wherever you may be, Arwa. I will.”
The worlds shifted. The wheel turned. She fell back into the cold of the realm.
She clutched her hand tight.
She could not think of whether her sister lived after all. She could not think of her parents, and the cruelty those who loved you could inflict, for the sake of that same love. She could not think of what she’d seen: the hope of it, too rich to be borne. She could not think of anything but reaching her ash.
She forced herself to keep on walking.
Finally, she came to it. Her sea of dead.
She kneeled upon the sand, between bones and limbs and shattered ghosts. The end of her path had come. Beyond it lay starry darkness, stricken with the shadow of dreamfire.
A world of the Gods, perhaps, or of the daiva. But Arwa would not walk there today.
Today, she pressed her forehead to the sand, a supplicant and a mourner. She could not weep here. Could not be as bodies were: soft and hurt and grieving.
She thought of how it had felt at the House of Tears, when she had opened the door to all the ash within her. How much it had hurt her and scared her.
She thought of the dovecote, where the fear had tasted sweet. Like fire.
At least we can choose the shape of our death, she’d told Zahir then. It was still true.
The choice of how she died—if that was all she had, then she would take it.
She parted her mouth. Breathed in.
She knew—everything.
A thousand voices whispered in her ears at once.
If we run fast they’ll notice, better to be slow—
The same shape of a rite, raise your hands, here, just so—
—Rukhsar, Rukhsar, your daughter is a lovestruck fool—
hetookthebladehetookthebladehetook
She focused on her blood roots. On her flesh. She struggled to keep the ash at bay.
She still knew herself. That, at least, was a blessing. But the pressure within her skull was growing and growing, and soon enough what defenses her mind had constructed would shatter.
She had very little time.
Body and soul. For this, she needed both. She stood in the realm of ash. She stood on the solid ground of the tent, on legs that did not want to obey her.
She moved her feet into the first stance of a rite.
She had nothing to venerate the daiva with, as they deserved.
She had never shown them the reverence they deserved. She had no kohl for her eyes or red to stain her hands. Her dagger was gone. She had only the will to perform a rite that would save her and Zahir both.
And an arrow in her shoulder.
At least the wound gave her the gift of blood.
She forced her arms to move. White-hot agony in her skull. She gave a choked sob. Gritted her teeth. Kept on going.
Sigils and stances. Her body moved without grace. Sigils fell from her fingers like splinters. Sigils for beckoning. Sigils for fear.
Come. Kin. Blood.
A careful turn on her heel. She did not fall. Did not fall. In the realm of ash, the ash beneath her rippled, hard as a drumbeat.
Death.
Mercy.
She knew, now. There were rites of worship. And there were rites that were furious prayers flung into the abyss. This was one of them.
She was broken. She could not move as the rite deserved. And yet, she tried. And tried.
The flutter of wings touched her ears. A dark bird flew in through the tent wall—turning to coils of smoke when it met canvas, then becoming whole once more. Another followed. Another.
She gazed at the bird-spirits. They gazed back.
“Ah, you,” Arwa whispered. Tears pricked her eyes. “It’s been so long.”
The bird-spirits fluttered around her head. They settled on the table. Melded into the shadows along the walls.
More shadows slithered toward her as she shaped sigils on her fingers. A new figure grew slowly from the ground beneath them.
It was… ancient, she thought. Knew. Her ash spoke to her, all its voices telling her this was an ancient daiva, its flesh almost mortal, its eyes keen and knowing.
The sigil for time. The sigil for silence.
Sigil for life.
Sigil for fire.
It had been so long since it had heard a voice calling in fury.
She clasped her hands together. Lowered her head. Gestures of respect and worship. Then with a rattling breath—with her blood roots wound about her soul self—she began to move.
Will you help me? she asked it, in the only way she could: a rite for mercy. A rite for justice. Her body was hollow agony. She stumbled. Pressed on. Will you?
The daiva’s hand moved. One smooth arc.
Yes.
Then all the shadows converged, surrounding her in a great ring. And swallowed her.
Outside, under the glaring sun, the Emperor’s retinue—his guardsmen, his attendants, his scribes, his soldiers—were calm.
At least until Arwa stepped out of the tent.
She flickered in and out of the realm of ash as she walked, as the daiva surrounded her like a skin. One of the guards tried to use his sword on her.
The daiva pointedly cleaved the blade in two.
How strange it must be, she thought distantly, to see a woman walk surrounded by darkness, her eyes gray as the pyre, her hair a widow’s shorn hair, a broken arrow in her shoulder.
No wonder they ran so swiftly.
They must feel as if the curse has come for them.
Good.
Parviz’s court did not expect her to rip through the canvas and cross the carpet. The nobles stumbled back, yelling in horror. The guards reached for their scimitars, terror in their eyes.
She raised a hand. The daiva flung them back.
Beyond the partition screen, Jihan and Gulshera were both standing, Gulshera’s hand tight upon Jihan’s arm.
On the ground, Zahir raised his head. He gazed at her not in horror but in heartbreak. He knew, as she knew, that she was already lost.
But he was alive, still alive, and she was glad of that.
“Zahir,” Arwa said, smiling. “An old daiva has granted me a kindness.”
“Arwa,” he said shakily. His expression was shattered. “No.”
She shook her head. Felt darkness waver about her. Then she raised her eyes, fixing the silver of her gaze upon Parviz, who stood now before his throne, his own dagger in hand.
As if he could fight her. Fool. She had worlds within her.
“You were wrong to take him from me, Parviz,” she said. She spoke in her own voice—soft and delicate, not a thing suited for instilling terror. And yet, Parviz recoiled as if she had struck him with it. “He is not yours to take. He is his own. And he is mine.”
She kneeled by Zahir. The lantern light wavered. Blotted by her darkness. The dark encircled his wrists. Broke his chains, and set him free.
“Monster,” said Parviz, in a voice that shook with rage and fear. “I will not be frightened and cowed by demons.”
“I am no demon,” Arwa said. “I am the consequence of your crimes.”
He had tried to take back control of the Empire’s faith by taking Zahir and the tale that surrounded him and putting them both to death. But he would not have Zahir’s death. He would not have his Empire’s heart.
Aliye had tried to ensure Parviz would sit uneasy on his throne. Zahir had done the same. But Arwa wanted more. He had killed his brothers. He had staked heads upon walls. He had tried to take Zahir, and take the world, and she was ash-fierce and hollow with the rage of the dead. She would allow him none of it. She was heir to an old injustice, and she would have her due.
“I speak for Prince Akhtar, the Emperor-who-should-have-been. I speak for the Maha’s heir, who is. I speak for heretics falsely accused. I speak for the Empire that dies under your rule. I am grief, and I speak for the dead.”
She looked at the terrified faces of the nobility. He would need them to rule—their loyalty, their obedience, their strength. And if they were not already lost to him, they would be now.
“I have a prophecy for you, not-Emperor,” she said. “You stole what was not yours. Your reign will be a blight. When the nightmares come, your people will pray and they will be saved, but they will know you did not save them. You will find no love and no peace. You will be called Emperor, but the name will be ash in the mouths of your people, because it belongs to one who is dead. You will sit upon a throne of dust, and when your end comes—and it will come, Parviz, in ruin and shame—your legacy will be nothing but dust also. That is my prophecy, Parviz. My prophecy. And your curse.”
The nobility recoiled. Parviz recoiled.
Her work was almost done.
Daiva birds flew in great circles overhead.
She took Zahir’s face in her hands. He did not flinch at the feel of a daiva’s sharp claws on his neck, or his brother’s blood. He looked at her with grief and with utter trust.
“Will you come with me?” she said.
“I told you long ago,” he said. “I go with you. Always.”
She drew back from him. Held her hands before her. With great care, she shaped a new sigil. It was all she had left within her.
The sigil for flight.
As she felt the darkness unfurl and change around her, she embraced Zahir. Held him tight.
She thought how it must look to the nobles: the ghostly widow embracing Zahir, the great dark wings around him. They would remember the tale of how he flew from his father’s palace. They would remember his power. And Parviz—cursed, weakened, sitting upon a dais in a shattered tent—would no longer have the power to see Zahir dead. She felt that in her bones. And she was glad.
“I love you,” she said. “I thought, maybe, that you should know.”
For the second time in their lives, they flew.