Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  She thought of her mother’s hands running through her own shorn hair. She thought of the way her mother had wept, as Arwa hadn’t: full-throated, as if her heart had utterly broken and couldn’t be mended.

  I had such hopes for you, Arwa. Her voice breaking. Such hopes. And now they’re all gone. As dead as your fool husband.

  She followed Rabia through the crowd into the silence of a dark, curving corridor.

  The widow Rabia was dying—nearly literally, it seemed, from the way she kept spasmodically pursing and loosening her lips—to ask Arwa questions that were no doubt completely inappropriate to put to a freshly grieving widow. Accordingly, Arwa kept dabbing her eyes and sniffling as they shuffled forward, mimicking tears. If the woman was going to ask her about her husband—or worse still, about what happened at Darez Fort—then by the Emperor’s grace, Arwa was damn well going to make her feel bad about it.

  “You mustn’t think badly of them all coming to look at you,” said Rabia. “They only wanted to see you are—normal. And you are. And so young.” A pause. “You must not mourn too greatly,” Rabia continued, apparently deciding to put her questions aside for now, and provide a stream of unsolicited advice instead. “Your husband died in service to the Empire. That is glorious, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes,” Arwa said, patting furiously at her eyes. “He was a brave, brave man.” She let her voice fade to a whisper. “But I can’t speak of him yet. It’s far too painful.”

  “Of course,” Rabia said hurriedly, guilt finally overcoming her. They fell into silence.

  Arwa’s patience—limited, at the best of times—was sorely tested when Rabia piped up again a moment later.

  “I know some people say the Empire is cursed and that—the fort, you know—that it’s proof. But I don’t think that. This is your room,” she added, pushing the door open. Nuri slipped inside, leaving Arwa to deal with Rabia alone. “I think we’re being tested.”

  “You think Darez Fort was a test,” Arwa said. She spoke slowly, tasting the words. They were metal on her tongue, bitter as blood.

  “Oh yes,” Rabia said eagerly. She leaned forward. “All of it is intended to test us—the unnatural madness, the sickness, the blight on Irinah’s desert. One day the Maha is going to return, if we prove our worth against evil forces, if we show we are strong and pious. And what happened to your husband, his bravery when the madness came, and your survival, it’s proof—”

  “Thank you,” Arwa said, cutting in. Her voice was sharp. She couldn’t soften the edge on it and had no desire to. Instead she bared her teeth at Rabia, smiling hard enough to make her face hurt.

  Rabia flinched back.

  “You’ve been very kind,” added Arwa.

  Rabia gave a weak smile in response and fled with a mumbled apology. Arwa didn’t think she’d be bothered by her again.

  It was a nice enough room, once Rabia had been encouraged to leave it. It had its own latticed window, and a bed covered in an embroidered blanket. There was a low writing desk, already equipped with paper, and a lit oil lantern ready for Arwa’s own use. One of the guardswomen must have brought in Arwa’s luggage via a servants’ entrance, because her trunk was on the floor.

  Nuri kneeled before it, quickly sorting through tunics and shawls and trousers, all in pale colors with light embellishment, suitable for Arwa’s new role as a widow. The ones that had grown dirty from use would be washed and aired to remove the musk from their long journey, then refolded and stored away again, packed with herbs to preserve their freshness.

  Arwa sat on the bed and watched Nuri work.

  Nuri was the perfect servant. Mild, discreet, attentive. Arwa had no idea what Nuri really thought or felt. It was no surprise, really: Nuri had been trained in her father’s household from childhood, under the keen eye of Arwa’s mother, who demanded only the best from her household staff, a clean veneer of loyal obedience, without flaw. She’d been sent by Arwa’s mother to accompany her on the journey from Chand to Numriha, as Arwa had not had a maidservant of her own any longer.

  “The guards,” said Arwa, “are they camping overnight?”

  “The hermitage provides accommodation not far from here,” Nuri said. “They’ll leave in the morning, I expect.”

  “Does the hermitage have servants’ quarters?”

  Nuri was momentarily silent. Arwa watched her smooth the creases from the tunic on her lap. “I thought I would sleep here,” Nuri said finally. “I have a bedroll. I would be able to care for you then, my lady.”

  “I don’t want you to stay,” said Arwa. “Not here in my room tonight, or in the hermitage at all. You can accompany the guards back tomorrow. I’ll pay for your passage back to Hara.”

  “My lady,” Nuri said quietly. “Your mother bid me to stay with you.”

  “You can tell her I made you leave,” Arwa said. “Tell her I refuse to have a maidservant.” Blame my grief, Arwa thought. But Nuri would surely do that without being told. “Tell her I raged at you, that I wouldn’t be reasoned with. She’ll believe it.”

  “Lady Arwa,” Nuri said. There was a thread of fear in her voice. “You… you need someone to take care of you. To protect you. Lady Maryam, she…” Voice low. “I am not to speak of it. But I know.”

  Ah.

  Arwa swallowed, throat dry.

  “I will be safe here,” she said finally. “You’ve seen the hermitage now. You can tell her so. It’s nothing but broken roads and old women. There couldn’t be anywhere safer in the world for someone who is…” Arwa paused. She could not say it. “Someone who is—afflicted. As I am. No one will discover me here. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Lady Arwa. Your mother—Lady Maryam—she insisted—”

  “I can keep my own secrets safe,” Arwa cut in tiredly, ignoring Nuri’s words. “She’ll know it was my choice. She won’t cast you out for it. I expect she’ll be glad of your help with Father anyway.”

  Arwa reached into her sash and removed a purse. She held it out.

  “Take it,” she said. “Enough for your journey to Hara, and more for your kindness.”

  If her mother had trusted Nuri with the truth of Arwa’s nature, then Nuri had no doubt been paid handsomely to accompany Arwa. But more coin would not hurt her, and would perhaps soften her to Arwa’s will.

  At first, Nuri did not move.

  “Please,” said Arwa. Voice soft, now. Cajoling. “Is it so strange for me to want to be alone to mourn? To have no more eyes on me? Nuri, I am begging you—return to my mother. Allow me the dignity of a private grief.”

  Hesitantly, Nuri held out her hand. Arwa placed the purse on her palm, and watched Nuri’s fingers curl over it.

  “I should finish sorting your clothes,” said Nuri.

  “There’s no need,” said Arwa. “You should go and rest. You have a long journey tomorrow.”

  Nuri nodded and stood. “Please take care, Lady Arwa,” she said. Then she left.

  Arwa kneeled and sorted through her own clothes. She would have to arrange for one of the hermitage’s servants to have them washed in the morning. When the job of sorting through her clothing was done, Arwa latched the trunk shut and closed the door.

  She placed the oil lantern on the window ledge, sucked in a fortifying breath, and took her dagger from her sash.

  She held the blade over the heat of the oil lantern’s flame. Her hand rested comfortably on the hilt of the blade, where the great teary opal embedded within it fitted the shape of her palm in a manner that brought her undeniable comfort. She counted the seconds, waiting for the blade to warm, and stared out the window. The dark stared back at her, velvet, oppressively lightless. She couldn’t even see the stars.

  She lifted the blade up and waited for it to cool again.

  She’d been too afraid to use the dagger on the journey, with Nuri always near, with her guards ever vigilant. Her dagger was far too obviously not of Ambhan design. Where the finest Ambhan daggers were richly embossed, etched with graceful
birds and flowers and flecks of jewels, her own was austere and wickedly sharp, the opal in its hilt a glaring milky eye. It was an Amrithi blade, unlovely and uncivilized, and any soldier of the Empire—trained to seek and erase the presence of Amrithi barbarians, to banish them to the edges of the civilized world where they rightly belonged—would have recognized it on sight.

  She recalled the guardsman’s comment on blood-worshipping heathens with bitter humor.

  If only you knew, she thought, that you carried one on your shoulders all along. Oh, you would have tossed me over the cliff edge then, and you would have been proud of it.

  Once in her palanquin, despite the risks, she’d made a small cut to her thumb, and daubed blood behind her ear, in the manner mothers daubed kohl behind children’s ears to keep the evil eye at bay. She’d hoped it would be enough, and perhaps it had been. She’d seen no shadows. Felt no evil descend, winged and silent. But every night she had lain awake, listening and waiting like a prey animal braced for the flash of a predator’s wings in the dark. She had imagined in great, lurid detail all the things that would happen if her meager scrape of spilled blood was not enough: Nuri’s body cut open from neck to groin, her insides splayed out around her body; the guards turning on one another, their scimitars red and silver and white as bone in the bloody dark.

  Darez Fort, all over again.

  And all that time, Nuri had known what Arwa was. All that time. If Arwa had only known—if she had been able to employ Nuri to distract the guards, so that she could reach her blade…

  Well. No matter now. The journey was done, and soon Nuri would be gone. Useful though Nuri perhaps would have been, Arwa was grateful for that. She did not want someone to fuss over her with worried eyes. She wanted no spy from her mother, sent to ensure that she was suitably quiet and secretive and safe. The thought of Nuri remaining here made her feel suffocated.

  Her mother—Emperor’s grace upon her—could not shield her. Nuri could not shield her.

  Only Arwa could do that.

  Once the blade had cooled, she placed its sharp edge to a finger, and watched the blood well up. The cut was shallow, the pain negligible. She placed her finger against the window ledge and drew a line across its surface.

  The lantern flame flickered, caught by a faint breeze. Arwa watched it move. She thought of her husband. Of Kamran. Of a circle of blood, and a hand on her sleeve, and eyes that gleamed like gold. Her stomach felt uneasy again, roiling inside her. Her mouth was full of the taste of old iron.

  Curious, how even when the heart was silent and the mind declined to recall suffering, the body still remembered.

  She wiped the dagger clean on an old cloth and pressed the material to her finger finally to stem the last of the bleeding. She looked at the window. The blood was still there, illuminated by her lantern, a firm line demarcating the dark and the light, the safety of the room, and what lay beyond it.

  She sat on the bed, curling up her knees. She placed the dagger by her feet, and watched the flame move. Waiting.

  The night remained silent.

  Nuri’s voice rose up in her. You… you need someone to take care of you. To protect you.

  And who, Arwa thought, not for the first time, as sleep began to creep over her, will protect everyone from me?

  If there was an answer to that question, she had not found it yet. But she would. She had to.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A noise woke her in the night, hours before dawn. She opened her eyes. Held her breath. Her heart was a pulsing fist in her chest. There was a call, hollow and cold, beyond the window. The flutter of wings.

  It was just birdsong. There was nothing here. She could smell no incense in the air. See no eyes in the dark.

  Feel nothing burrowing into her skull, cold-fingered and deathless.

  Still, she rose to her feet. Her legs felt like water. She stared through the light of the candle. On the walls and beneath her feet the shadows flickered like beasts, unfurling with the bristle of blades and broken limbs.

  It was not here. It was not here.

  By the Emperor’s grace, let it not be here.

  It cannot cross the blood. You’re safe, she told herself. Safe.

  The air was ice around her, as she knelt on the ground, beneath the pooled light of the lantern.

  “It is not here,” she whispered to herself. Out loud this time, as if her voice would cut through her own terror. It did, a little. “Not here. Not here. And it—you cannot hurt me.” She raised her head to the light. “If you are here, you cannot cross my blood. I know what you are.”

  She held on to the words—and the dagger—until the sky bled pale rose with dawn.

  The walls of the hermitage were thinner than they first appeared. She could hear women chattering as they headed to breakfast. The widows, it seemed, were early risers. Once the corridors were quiet again, Arwa dressed and left her room. The night’s bitter chill had softened, and now the indoor air of the hermitage felt no more than pleasantly cool on her skin. She drew her shawl loosely around her head and her shoulders, her bare feet moving soundless across the stone floor.

  She found the prayer room much more quickly than she’d expected to. It was set farther down the corridor from where she’d slept, the scent of incense wafting from its open doors inviting her in. She had hoped it would be quiet, now that many of the women were breaking their fast, and it was. Two very elderly ladies were asleep against one wall, leaning against each other with their shawls tucked up to their chins. Apart from them—and their gentle snores—the room was empty and silent.

  Arwa did not know if the women had come to pray at dawn as the most pious did and fallen asleep shortly after, or if they’d come here to surreptitiously share the carafe of wine she could see tucked between them. Although her guess was firmly on the latter, Arwa was just grateful they were not awake to speak to her, to question her or pity her with soft eyes.

  Quietly, so as not to disturb the widows, she crossed the room. Behind a curtain, in a nook, lay a small library. Widows were dedicated to prayer and solitude, and were accordingly scholars of a kind. She had hoped there would be books. Books on faith and prayer; books by the Maha’s greatest mystics and the Emperor’s advisers, on the nature of the Empire’s strength and glory. Books that would show a wayward, cursed noblewoman a path out of the darkness she’d found herself in.

  But there was nothing. Not in the first book, or the second, or the third. They were nothing but staid religious tracts, the kind Arwa had learned by rote as a small girl, so old that they still spoke of the Maha as living and the Empire as timelessly glorious. Arwa did not curse, but she did bite down on her tongue and press her head to the spines, tears threatening sharply at her eyes. She would not weep. Not over something so trivial. But ah, she was so tired of her own secrets and her fear. She was tired of bracing for the return of the dangers of Darez Fort, with nothing to hold them at bay but the shaky defense of her own cursed blood. If faith could not help her, what could?

  She returned to the prayer room, looking around herself slowly as she breathed deep and slow to ease the furious beating of her own heart. One of the walls was a latticed screen, carved to resemble tree roots and great sprouting leaves. The light poured through it in honeycomb shadows. Before the screen stood a statue as tall as Arwa herself. She drew her shawl tighter around her and approached it.

  The statue was of a male figure, garbed in a turban and robes. Its upraised palm held the world inside it.

  It was a statue of the Emperor—of all Emperors, past and future—and their blessed bloodline. It was a statue of the Maha, the Great One and first Emperor, who built the Ambhan Empire and then raised a temple upon the sands of Irinah province, where his power and piety had ensured the blessings of the Gods would shower for centuries down upon the Empire and grant him a life span far beyond mortal reckoning.

  The sight of the effigy’s blank face—of the eternity of its varnished, bare surface—brought Arwa an immense sens
e of comfort that she couldn’t fully explain. Perhaps it reminded her of kinder times during her childhood, when she’d prayed at her mother’s side, for the sake of the Empire and for its future glory. Perhaps it merely helped her believe that all suffering was finite, and even the anger and grief coiled within her now would one day fade to the void.

  There was no one to see her, or to scold her. So Arwa took another step forward and placed her hands against the smooth face. The feel of it reminded her of the opal in her dagger hilt: smooth and somehow achingly familiar against her palms. It was absurd to find as much comfort in her heathen blade as in the Maha’s holy effigy, but that was the way of it, for Arwa. She could not change her nature. And ah, she had tried.

  She let out a slow breath. Some of that awful tension in her uncoiled. She stepped back and kneeled down before the altar.

  The ground was cold. She sang a prayer, soft under her breath so as not to disturb the sleepers behind her. At the feet of the effigy was incense, and a cluster of flowers, freshly picked. Tucked discreetly at the base of the statute were tiny baskets, woven of leaves and grass and filled with soil. Arwa paused in her prayer, thoughtful, and touched one with her fingertips.

  She knew what they were. She had seen them on dozens of roadside altars, on the journey through Chand to the hermitage.

  Grave-tokens.

  Tokens of grief. Symbolic burials, for the Maha, who had died when Arwa was only a girl. Four hundred years, he’d lived, some claimed. And then he had died, and the Empire had been falling to curse and ruin ever since.

  Since his death, mourning had been its own kind of prayer. Widows grieved him like a husband, for grieving was their holiest task. Pilgrims traveled across the provinces to the desert where he had died. The nobility wept for him. But all the while, they whispered too, planting the seeds of almost-heresies, unsanctioned by the Emperor, and dangerous for it.

  Perhaps, they whispered, he would one day return. Perhaps he had never died at all. Perhaps an heir would rise to take his place, a new Maha to lead the faith of the Empire and lift the Empire from the curse that his death had laid upon it. Politics and faith, tangled together as they were, were never far from the minds—or tongues—of the nobility.