Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  “Now that is a lie,” Gulshera said.

  “Then I apologize,” said Arwa. “I know you don’t have to tell me anything. I know I have no power. I could have been patient. I could have waited for you to reveal what you truly require, in the fullness of time. But I am tired of games, Lady Gulshera. If you do truly care for my welfare, then do me a kindness: Tell me what you want, then leave me alone to mourn.”

  “If you have a choice between being blunt or being patient in the future, then choose patient,” Gulshera said. But there was a thoughtful light in her eyes. “Come back here tomorrow morning, after breakfast. We’ll take a walk together.”

  Arwa let out a slow exhale. This, after she’d asked for no more games…

  “We’ll go down to the valley,” Gulshera said. “Just the two of us, where we can’t be overheard. And there, you can tell me about Darez Fort.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The widows ate their evening meal together. Asima had called them prattling owls, and she hadn’t been entirely wrong. Gossip flowed between them ceaselessly, its rhythm broken only by the clatter of plates as they passed dishes of sweet melon and lentil broth and large, soft flatbreads between them. The widows spoke largely of their distant families: of sons struggling to hold tenuous command in their posts, as unrest swelled in famine-stricken provinces, and sharp bouts of unnatural terror flared to life in scattered villages and outposts; of granddaughters primping for court, in the hope of earning a powerful husband or a place in the household of one of the imperial women; of friends or siblings who complained of the tedious duties of household management in provinces where food and fuel were in short supply, as the trade routes crumbled and crops rotted in distant fields.

  The widows were not as remote from the politics of the Empire as Arwa had first suspected. Far, far from it. They were noblewomen, after all. She should have known their personal concerns would be rich with veins of political significance, that if they maintained any link with their families, however tenuous, they would know something of how the world continued to fracture far beyond the hermitage’s walls.

  From the sound of their gossip, the Empire’s suffering was growing worse with greater speed. Arwa knew she should listen with care, search within their words for seeds of knowledge of use to her. But she could not. She could think only of Darez Fort, and the interrogation that awaited her. She tried not to think of tomorrow, tried not to think of the questions Gulshera was going to ask her. She tried not to feel.

  She failed miserably.

  She was tired of questions about Darez Fort. Even before the bodies had been buried, when she’d still been raw with shock and weeping, a high-ranking noblewoman had sat with her and cajoled answers out of her with cold-blooded patience. What did you see, Lady Arwa? How did the men die? And your husband—were you there when he passed? Did he fight the terror bravely? Cry, my dear. Cry, if you must. Just answer me. Good girl.

  A male courtier, sent by the Governor of Chand, had spoken to Arwa the evening after the formal funeral. Her mother had been with her then, holding her wrists with firm hands. The man had sat on the other side of a partition wall, clearly uncomfortable with the task he’d been set. Arwa had answered all his question in whispers, as her mother had stared into the middle distance with burning eyes, hot with shame and fury. Another nobleman had come immediately after him—this time a courtier from Ambha itself, sent by the imperial record keepers—and asked nearly the same questions. It was only then that Arwa had finally felt her own outrage spark to life.

  Gods curse the lot of them. Couldn’t they have left her to mourn, even that day, of all days? Why had they insisted on interrogating her over and over again, when she clearly had nothing she was willing to offer them? Wasn’t her grief—the terrible, trembling weight of it—enough?

  She had hoped the hermitage would offer her safety from the curiosity of the world, a place where her secrets would lie undisturbed. She’d been a fool, of course. Her first moments in the hermitage, when the widows had come to stare at her en masse, had shattered that particular delusion. And Gulshera…

  Gulshera had letters from a noble family and a priceless bow lacquered in mother-of-pearl hung on her wall. Gulshera wanted answers from Arwa. You can tell me about Darez Fort, she’d said, as if Arwa would not tell her the same thing she’d told all the people who had interrogated her in the past: The same truths. The same necessary handful of lies.

  She’d asked for this, she reminded herself. She’d asked Gulshera not to play games. It was better like this, to speak to her now, to not wait for the inevitable interrogation. She would speak to Gulshera tomorrow, and then she would refuse to answer anyone else. Let the women like Rabia look at her and wonder what had happened to her. Let them pity her. She’d earned the right to silence.

  After the meal ended, and the women began to disperse, Arwa returned to her room. She lit her lantern and refreshed the blood on her window. Despite the worry gnawing at her, despite the fact she curled up on the bed with her dagger beside her in her usual vigil, she fell swiftly into sleep, and woke the next morning with a sore neck and her lantern guttered.

  She’d had a nightmare. The details had already left her—all she had was the dull echo of terror thrumming in her blood—but it didn’t matter. She knew what she’d dreamed.

  Today Gulshera was going to ask her about Darez Fort.

  Instead of joining the other women for breakfast, Arwa bathed. She dressed. She touched the ends of her hair. It was growing long enough to curl faintly at the ends. Soon it would need to be cut again.

  She headed to Gulshera’s room and found the older woman waiting for her, a light bow on her shoulder, a quiver at her back, and another bow on the ground at her side.

  “You didn’t eat again,” said Gulshera.

  “I wasn’t hungry.”

  This time, Gulshera did not ply her with fritters and tea. Instead she nodded and handed her one of the bows. It was light and elegant, lacquered in a dark varnish. The wood was perfectly smooth beneath her hands; it near gleamed in the light. Although it was not covered in mother-of-pearl, Arwa was sure it was costly.

  “I thought we were going for a walk,” said Arwa.

  “We are,” Gulshera replied. “But I’m also going to teach you how to shoot.”

  They left the hermitage together and walked out toward the valley. They were still near the perimeter of the hermitage, still within earshot of other widows who were sitting comfortably under the cover of the hermitage’s veranda, when Gulshera spoke.

  “Have you ever used a bow before?”

  “No, Aunt.”

  Gulshera shook her head, world weary.

  “If I had my way,” said Gulshera, “all noblewomen would learn to use a bow and arrow. It’s our birthright, though most seem determined not to recall our Empire’s history. Hunting was once a noblewoman’s art. Empress Suheila was even famed for killing a dozen deer and a tiger in one single hunt with arrows she fired from within the cover of her palanquin. Did you know that?” When Arwa shook her head, Gulshera gave an exasperated huff. “Of course you didn’t. Women don’t teach their daughters anything important anymore.”

  She sounded so much like Asima had when she’d learned Arwa couldn’t weave that Arwa almost smiled. Almost. She didn’t have the strength for it. Her stomach was in knots. Stop lecturing and just ask your questions, she wanted to demand.

  “It’s a fine story,” said Arwa.

  Gulshera gave her a thoughtful, sidelong look.

  “Go on,” said Gulshera. “Speak honestly.”

  “I have nothing more to say, Aunt.”

  “Somehow I find I don’t believe you, Arwa.”

  Arwa lowered her head. The walk down the valley was steep, and the grass crunched softly beneath her feet. She thought about how sensible it would be to say nothing, or offer Gulshera only soft words. She thought about how important it had always seemed to smooth away her sharp edges, how long her mother had worked to shape
her into something worthy of being loved. But Arwa did not care if Gulshera liked her, never mind loved her. She’d had enough of being mothered and molded. She opened her mouth.

  “The story of Empress Suheila—it doesn’t sound like a true tale. And what does it matter to me, if it is? I’m no empress, to hunt tigers and be praised for it. I don’t care about bows and arrows and archery. I am just a widow.”

  “Just a widow,” repeated Gulshera.

  “You said so yourself, Aunt. I’m no better than a ghost now.” If the words came out of her barbed, well. She had a right to her bitterness. “Stories of the distant past aren’t my business. Mourning is.”

  “Ah,” said Gulshera, eyebrow raised. “And yet you stared at my husband’s court bow with such yearning. I don’t think my eyes fooled me. Your hands hunger for a weapon, just as much as your heart hungers for a chance to mourn.”

  “Ask me about Darez Fort,” Arwa said sharply. “And leave my hunger alone.”

  “Archery lesson first,” Gulshera said, unperturbed.

  They had reached a place deep in the valley, where the sun and wind alike felt distant. Arwa could see white-peaked mountains in the distance. Before them were a group of targets, set at intervals. The targets all looked rather worse for wear: Gulshera clearly dedicated a great deal of time to testing her skill with her bow and arrow.

  “We’ll start with the grip,” Gulshera said. She took her bow from her shoulder, an arrow from the quiver at her back, and demonstrated the proper way to nock the arrow. Arwa copied her. She showed Arwa how to hold the bow and how to steady the arrow with a grip that balanced the arrow shaft on her thumb, so that it would remain steady even if Arwa were in motion, on horseback like a soldier or veiled within her palanquin like Empress Suheila on her mythical hunt. Both options were laughably unlikely.

  “I wish,” Arwa said, “that you would just ask me your questions and be done with this farce.”

  “What farce?” Gulshera tapped Arwa’s back. “Straighten up. You’ll get nowhere slumping. I genuinely want to teach you.”

  “Why?” Arwa asked, frustrated.

  “Because I can’t teach you how to use a sword, or fight bare-handed,” said Gulshera. “Because you’re angry, and your anger is going to gut you if no one gets it out of you. You need a way to set it free, and this will do well enough.” A beat. “But ah, I forgot. You asked me not to mention your hunger.”

  Arwa closed her eyes tight. She could feel the terrible, tense strength of the bow in her hands. The arrow shaft, steady in her grip, against her thumb. One beat of her heart. Another.

  “I told you,” Arwa whispered. “I don’t want to play games.”

  “This is no game, Arwa. You frightened Rabia.” Gulshera’s voice filled up the darkness. “She came to me, after you scared her. I can’t have fear in this hermitage. I won’t allow it.”

  Your Rabia is as easily frightened as Roshana is worried. The spiteful words bloomed to life easily in her throat, ready to be spoken. Arwa swallowed them back and opened her eyes, meeting Gulshera’s own. So many poisons lived in her. She would pick the one that burned most sharply on her tongue, and leave the rest be.

  “Did she think me tainted by Darez Fort?” Arwa asked bitterly. “Did she claim that I had unnatural madness in me—something strange in my eyes, an evil pressed into me by the curse upon the Empire? I know people fear it’s within me. Rabia told me herself. She told me the widows all came to greet me to see if I was normal. Normal. Do she and her ilk fear I’ll suddenly turn and rip their throats out with my teeth? Or—no.” Arwa shook her head. “Perhaps she thinks I will infect you all and let you destroy each other. That is the way of the unnatural madness, after all.”

  “You have a normal enough anger in you,” Gulshera said evenly, which was no answer at all.

  “You thought giving an angry woman a weapon was the best thing to do?”

  “I thought teaching you how to direct your anger was the best thing to do,” said Gulshera. “Besides, you won’t have the skill to put that weapon to any good use for a long time yet. Perhaps by then you’ll be calmer and less likely to murder us all in a fit of unnatural rage.”

  “Funny,” Arwa said through gritted teeth.

  “I thought so,” said Gulshera. She gave Arwa a perfunctory smile. “Now,” she said. “I’ll demonstrate how to shoot. We’ll aim for the nearest target.”

  Gulshera had no trouble setting the arrow against its nocking point, or maintaining its position with the placement of her thumb and fingers. She drew the bowstring in one elegant motion and let the arrow fly. Her hand darted to her quiver; she nocked another arrow and sent it after its sibling.

  Both arrows hit their target.

  “Now,” Gulshera said. “It’s your turn.”

  Gulshera adjusted Arwa’s posture again, and also the angle of her arm and her grip on the bow. She guided Arwa on how to draw the bow, how to pinch the string with only her thumb and aim carefully for the target. After a few torturous minutes of adjustment, Arwa let her own arrow fly.

  There was some joy in seeing the arrow soar. There would have been more, if it had even remotely touched its target.

  “There,” said Arwa, staring at the arrow, where it had pitched itself into the grass. “I’ve done it.”

  “Try again,” Gulshera said, handing Arwa another arrow from her quiver. “This time try to put some of that anger into it.”

  Arwa could have done the bare minimum Gulshera had asked of her, and simply shot the arrow at a target, as she had before. But there was iron on her tongue, and a knot of feeling in her stomach. She thought of Darez Fort. She drew the string taut, feeling its coiled strength in the lacquered wood of the bow. Her own arms trembled. She fired.

  “Once more.”

  “No.” Arwa lowered the bow, then lowered herself. She bent forward, strangely hot and breathless, as if all the feeling inside her had risen to the surface of her skin, drawn up by the feel of the arrow flying from her grip. She felt raw, tender as meat. “No more. I’ve had enough of a lesson. Now tell me what you want to know.”

  Gulshera was silent for a long moment. She took the bow from Arwa’s unresisting grip and kneeled down at Arwa’s side.

  “I already know, as everyone else does, that there was a massacre,” Gulshera said. Her voice was low, steady. “That the gates of the fort closed, and when they opened again, all of its inhabitants were dead. All, but you. They’d turned on one another. Hadn’t they?”

  Arwa swallowed, throat too dry for words. She nodded. Unnatural madness, unnatural rage, the Empire’s greatest and most feared curse. Yes. Yes, they had.

  “I know,” Gulshera continued, “that the woman who survived the massacre—you—claimed a dark spirit forced them to it. It crept into all our skulls, you said. It filled us with unnatural rage and turned us against one another. Your claim should have been laughable.” Gulshera smiled grimly. “But it was not. We all know what has become of the Empire, child. The strange horrors that roam it.”

  Arwa nodded again, wordlessly. Still, Gulshera continued.

  “People have begun to claim to see daiva across the Empire. By the Haran coast. In the forests of Durevi. And now, even in Ambha itself. There have been… instances. Of terror, unnatural and strange, consuming villages and travelers. Only briefly. Only rarely. Until now, of course,” Gulshera said, tilting her head toward Arwa in acknowledgment of the horrors of Darez Fort. “I know pilgrims who go to Irinah’s desert to mourn over the Maha’s resting place return with tales of gold-eyed demons, and palaces spun of glass and sand that vanish in the blink of an eye. I know not all pilgrims return. Arwa… You and I both know a curse sits on our Empire. But the curse is growing worse with terrible swiftness. Someone must find a way to put an end to it.”

  For a widow cloistered away in a hermitage deep in the Numrihan mountains, Gulshera knew a great deal about the darkness racing its way across the Empire, fracturing it better than any war of men and metal ever c
ould. Arwa thought of Gulshera’s letters. The family she communicated with had to be strong and old, with eyes and ears in every part of the Empire. Arwa thought of each of the old families in turn—even her mother’s own—and wondered which one Gulshera was loyal to, and what she had learned from the gossip of the widows, the secrets of their blood kin that they so carelessly shared between them, a currency between them that hardened to diamond, priceless in Gulshera’s knowing grip.

  “If you know so much,” Arwa said, “what do you want to learn from me now?”

  “Only what happened to you,” Gulshera said, as if that were not a great deal to ask for. “No more.”

  “I can only repeat what I have already told others before you,” said Arwa. “I don’t see what good that will do you.”

  “Knowledge gained secondhand, through gossip and whispers, is never entirely complete. No tale I have heard explains how you survived, when all others died. You were found surrounded by blood, in an unlocked room, but entirely unharmed. How did that come to pass, Arwa?”

  Arwa sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Luck,” Arwa lied. “It was luck. What else could it have been?”

  “Nonetheless, I’d like to hear what happened in your own words. Perhaps then I will come to understand how you survived.”

  Arwa hadn’t been unharmed, no matter what the older woman had heard. She’d made a cut to her arm, that day in Darez Fort—made it too long in her panic. It had bled hard, but it had been shallow and had healed to nothing but a faint silver scar in days. She could only see it now when she held her bare arm up to the candlelight just so.

  She didn’t tell that to Gulshera. For a long moment she said nothing at all.

  She thought of Kamran.

  “The family I am loyal to,” Gulshera said into the silence, “seek a cure to the curse upon the Empire. Your story may help them.”

  The hand on her sleeve. Those eyes—

  “I wish I knew why I survived,” she whispered.

  She scrubbed her eyes with her sleeve. She realized she was crying.