Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  “Come, Mehr,” he said, holding his hands out to her. She took them. “We can practice a little longer, then.”

  She didn’t tell Amun. Perhaps she should have. But when they returned to their room, he lit the oil lanterns except one, then turned to the divan and began determinedly tugging off the bedding. She watched him, silently bemused.

  “Amun,” she said slowly. “What are you doing?”

  “Could I have your shawl?”

  She handed it to him and watched as he used it to knot the blanket to the divan, hooking the other end to the edge of the unused lantern hook. “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said.

  He looked at her, his dark eyes still so very soft.

  “We’re building a tent,” he said.

  “No, you’re building a tent. I’m just watching.” A beat. “Why are you building a tent?”

  “For fun, Mehr.” Very seriously, he beckoned her closer. “Come in here. Bring the pillows in with you.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Mehr said. But she did as he asked.

  Inside the makeshift tent the light of the lanterns was softened to a glow. Mehr could see nothing but Amun’s silhouette. She curled up on the pillows next to him. “I did something like this with my sister once,” she said. “We pretended we were in our own little house. She played mother.”

  “And you?”

  “I was the baby, of course.” Mehr had done so many ridiculous things when Arwa was small, just to make her little sister laugh. “Children like to play pretend. I humored her.”

  “Just like you’re humoring me?”

  “Exactly like that.” She placed her fingers on Amun’s sleeve. “What are we doing, exactly?”

  “Playing pretend. Pretending we’re somewhere else.” He took her hand, threaded his fingers with her own. “Somewhere out in the desert, perhaps.”

  It was a nice idea. Mehr wanted to allow herself to believe the illusion, to think they were out under the cool star-flecked night sky, in a tent all their own. But she couldn’t.

  “We’re too old to be so foolish,” Mehr said sharply. “We are where we are. We can’t change that.”

  “We can’t,” he agreed. “But we can put aside the burden for a little while.”

  “I didn’t think you were the sort to lie to yourself.” The words were harsh, and Mehr regretted them as soon as she’d spoken.

  But Amun didn’t tense, didn’t grow defensive. Instead he made a soft hum of agreement. He released her hand and brushed a hand through her hair, traced the line of her jaw, until his thumb came to rest against the edge of her lips.

  “I never see you smile anymore,” Amun said.

  “I smiled earlier.”

  “I know what a real smile looks like, Mehr.”

  Mehr pursed her lips. “I never see you smile either.”

  “I’m solemn by nature,” Amun said, and oh, he was smiling now. She could hear it in his voice. “You are—”

  “What?”

  “Not,” Amun finished. “Not solemn.”

  Mehr said nothing. She could almost feel Amun’s smile fading away. His hand moved away from her jaw. “You don’t sleep well either. I know.”

  “I don’t have many reasons to smile anymore,” Mehr said softly. “You know that. I can’t help it.”

  “I know. But I’m asking you to try to put your burden down. Just for a little while.” He was warm and close. He took her hand again. “Mehr.”

  There was so much in his voice, in the gentle way he spoke her name, like the world was suspended inside it.

  “I suppose it feels like we’re somewhere else,” Mehr said grudgingly. “A little.”

  Amun laughed softly, and Mehr felt herself melt.

  Their mouths met, and Mehr felt that light inside herself again—that brightness that had built inside her when they’d kissed, on that awful night of blood and darkness. She felt the emptiness inside her ease, just slightly.

  She didn’t know how this light would survive their future. But for now she didn’t need to know. She just needed to feel the stubble on Amun’s cheek beneath her fingertips. She just needed this make-believe, this man, and the dream of somewhere else.

  The storm was coming, and there was training to be done. Training that was made infinitely more difficult by the constant presence of a rotating selection of mystics on watch duty, marking their every mistake or success for the Maha’s attention. Mehr was grateful for the reprieve offered by a visit to the scholars’ tower.

  Edhir was there in the tower, bent over one of his spheres covered in golden dials. Mehr watched him work, turning each dial in painful increments, comparing his movements to the near incomprehensible lines and numbers on the charts unfurled on the table in front of him. He looked tired and thin.

  Mehr knew that her and Amun’s failure in the last storm had had consequences for all of the Maha’s obedient servants.

  “Three days,” he said to Amun tersely. “Usually you’d get more notice, but this time things are moving—differently from usual.” He scowled at the sphere in front of him, as if its numbers and dials had betrayed him.

  “Not very accurately put,” one scholar mystic piped up, disapproving. “A day is hardly a precise measure.”

  “Accurate enough for them to understand, though,” Edhir said, annoyed. Disdain dripped from his voice. He hunched his shoulders and pointedly did not look at Mehr or Amun. “Can you leave me be, now? I’m busy.”

  Amun tilted his head in acknowledgment, then turned to leave. Mehr followed after him.

  She’d heard Edhir talk so to Amun before, but now she understood she too was included in that disdain. It stung, but only a little. It was not as if Mehr wanted to risk friendship any longer. She’d learned the consequences of that.

  It was no surprise when the Maha sent a messenger demanding their presence for dinner that evening. Amun had been tense before the summons but was even more so after it. He stalked around their room like a caged animal as Mehr went through the motions of getting dressed, brushing her hair back into a braid, tightening the sash of her tunic around her waist.

  “I won’t be able to manage him,” he said. “Not anymore. Mehr, you’ll have to be careful with him. He’s very—”

  “Angry,” Mehr cut in. “I know.” She tightened her sash an increment further. All her clothes were overlarge now. “We’ll be fine,” she said, trying to sound sure of herself. “Besides, I’m not afraid.”

  “You don’t need to lie to me, Mehr.”

  “But I’m not,” Mehr said. In fact, this at least was true: She felt nothing at all. She didn’t feel strong or brave either. Ever since receiving the summons, Mehr had felt numb, as if her emotions were a limb starved of blood. “Don’t worry for me, Amun. I’ll manage. Just make sure you don’t anger him. I don’t want to see you harmed either.”

  Amun looked into her eyes, a curious, searching look on his face. Mehr looked right back at him. I never see you smile, he’d said to her. He knew her face, read it just as easily as she was able to read the curl of his hands, the slump or rise of his shoulders. What did he see in her face now?

  Whatever he saw, he didn’t question her any further. He kept close to her side as they walked to the Maha’s chambers, his warm solidity a comfort Mehr hadn’t even realized she needed. It was only when they entered and kneeled on the floor in the Maha’s presence that he stepped away from her, leaving her to support her own weight.

  The meal was as sumptuous as ever. It was ashes in Mehr’s mouth. She kept her head lowered and picked at her food as the Maha stared down at her silently, a smile playing on his mouth. She could feel the Maha’s eyes on her, burning and constant. When Amun tried to speak and draw his attention away, the Maha made a dismissive noise and waved a hand in Amun’s direction.

  “There’s no need for you to speak,” he said, his voice all mild benevolence. “Sit quietly, Amun. Eat your food. There’s a good boy.”

  Amun didn’t say a word aft
er that, and Mehr did not raise her head. She thought of the sticky, sweet nuts and dates Hema had brought her to eat. She hoped the Maha would not force her to eat more than she had. She couldn’t stomach it.

  The Maha stood. Mehr didn’t have time to tense before she felt his hand winding the long weight of her braid into a leash and tugging her head back. She winced, clenched her teeth hard to hold all noise in.

  “You know I don’t like it when you avoid my eyes,” he said disapprovingly.

  She looked up at him. Was it her imagination, or had the fractures in his eyes deepened? “I am sorry, Maha,” she said.

  “You must learn to do better, my dear,” he said. “You will do better, won’t you? You won’t fail me this storm?”

  “No, Maha.”

  His grip tightened, one torturous increment. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I am bound.” She raised a hand slowly. Touched her fingertips to her chest, where her marriage seal sat over the sigil that bound her. “You trained me yourself, Maha. And I have learned my place.”

  “And what is your place?”

  “I am a conduit to your will. A tool.” A beat. “I share my husband’s service, wholly and completely. Please believe me, Maha.”

  It was the pleading he had wanted, really. Satisfied, he finally released her.

  “Keep eating,” he ordered, offhandedly. “You’ll need your strength to perform for me later. I want to see how far you’ve both come.”

  Mehr returned to the task of picking at bread with one hand, her scalp stinging and sore.

  That night she dreamed of the desert. Not of a tent under the stars, not of Amun lying by her side with the warm glow of lantern light on them both, but of cold sand, sharp as glass, beneath her feet, and the moon fat and glaring in the black sky.

  There was a woman standing before her, with a long ragged veil concealing her face, its gnawed edges brushing the sand. There was a ring of spreading darkness around her. Mehr knew what that darkness was. She’d seen blood before.

  Kalini had said she’d pray for Hema to haunt Mehr, and for a long moment Mehr was sure she’d gained her wish. But when Mehr collapsed down on the sand, heavy with the weight of her own sadness, the blood bloomed into red flowers at her knees. She reached out her fingers—reached out all hesitant and wondrous and hoping for something beautiful—and the flowers reached back, twining around her wrists, lifting her hands a gentle increment higher.

  I remember this, Mehr thought. Not the flowers. But the feel of her wrists being taken in an inhuman grip, being raised, as the daiva that had cornered her so long ago in the desert had tried to shape her hands into words—

  She woke, sharp and sudden, breathing in air as sweet as incense. Amun’s hand was on her shoulder, his voice in her ear. He must have been trying to wake her.

  “I can smell it,” Mehr gasped out. “The storm.”

  “Yes,” Amun said. His hand was still on her shoulder, soft and steady. “Not long now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  There was very little time for the usual preparations. The mystics attended their fervent prayers, all other tasks forgotten. Bahren came for Mehr and Amun, a dagger at hand. It was time, again, to mark the temple windows and doorways with their blood. Mehr was obedient enough, but inside she was cold. She had no room for emotions, for the terror threatening to creep over her. She had to be strong. And for that, she had to avoid feeling anything at all. She couldn’t think of the nightmares uncurling beyond those blood-marked windows. She couldn’t think of the way they’d seeped into her own dreams, ragged veils and flowers and all.

  She moved through the day in a daze. Practiced when she was told to practice. Ate when she was told to eat. There was no cooking done, with the storm so close, as all the mystics were spared from their usual tasks for the vital service of prayer. Amun scavenged bread from the kitchen and urged her to share it with him. He broke everything in neat halves, placed bread and palmfuls of seeds into her hands. Mehr ate the food and tried not to think of how much she had hoped this storm would be the opportunity for her and Amun to break their bonds and escape the Maha’s service. All those hopes felt so far away now. She tried not to think about how she would make it through the storm at all.

  Last time, her weak bond with the Maha had allowed the nightmares of the sleeping Gods to break free, to resist the demands of the Maha for the Empire’s unnatural fortune and his own equally unnatural longevity, enacted through Mehr and Amun’s speaking flesh. But now she was vow-bound. She would allow the prayers of the mystics and the Maha’s will to bend those sleepers’ dreams. There would be no room for nightmares. And yet …

  Like always, like she had to, she folded the fear away, away, until she was entirely numb.

  Amun watched her with intent, careful eyes. But he said nothing about the state of her, and for that Mehr would be grateful later, she was sure.

  He wasn’t the only one watching. Even with the preparation for the storm at its peak, the Maha ensured that there were guards on both of them, watching them for disobedience or weakness.

  The day came as fast as expected. The mystics prayed and prayed, and Mehr and Amun did what they were expected to do. They went to prepare. She took out the wooden flowered beads to string through her hair. The fanned trousers, the tunic soft, color washed away by age. She laid them out on the divan and stared at them. She could be strong. She could—

  “Mehr.” There was a thread of worry in Amun’s voice that tugged at her like a physical thing wound up beneath her breastbone.

  She didn’t want him to worry. So she smiled at him, even though she knew already that he would see right through her, that he knew her face as well as she knew the way he carried his emotions in his hands, his spine, the line of his shoulders. She smiled not to show him she was happy—he was no fool, her Amun—but to show him that she was still strong, still iron-willed, and the fear hadn’t broken her yet.

  “Hush, Amun. I’ll be well when this is all over.” She swallowed. “We’ll both be well when the storm is done.”

  Amun shook his head, and Mehr raised hers sharply. She looked at him, forcing herself to see through the haze of her own pain. She saw the shadows under his eyes, the furrowed line of worry between them. She walked over to him and reached up, rising a little onto her tiptoes so that she could smooth the crease away with the flat of her thumb.

  Amun’s mouth parted, just a little. They were so close to one another. She couldn’t help but feel the pull of his dark eyes, remember the softness of his mouth. Her thumb fell to touch his lower lip. She felt the warmth of his breath.

  A jolt of awareness ran through her.

  This man. This man is mine. And I am his.

  She dropped her arm to her side. “I need to bathe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “We’re running out of time.”

  She went to the bathing room, undressed, and kneeled down so she could pour clear, cold water over her hair. She had to let go of the jittery energy that hummed inside her. She needed the numbness back. Instead she was alive inside—as bright and fierce as the storm building and building beyond the temple walls. But the brightness had nothing to do with the dreamfire, and everything to do with the softness of Amun’s mouth.

  She heard a sound. Looked up.

  Amun was there.

  It was as if her thoughts had conjured him, with his soft mouth and his dark eyes, and his hair that curled just a little at the ends. He stood in the doorway, not moving. Just looking at her.

  “Mehr.” The way he whispered her name—oh.

  Mehr stood, and beckoned him in.

  There was no holy sweetness this time. It was hunger that brought their mouths and their bodies together. In the quiet of the bathing room, all Mehr could hear was his breath as he took her long dark hair into his hands, as she rose onto her tiptoes and fanned her fingers out against his shoulders to draw him closer.

  “Don’t slip,” he murmured against her lips. “The floor—”
/>   “I know you can hold me up,” Mehr murmured back.

  He could. He raised her up in his arms, and she held on to him, trusting him with her weight. It was a dance of a kind: her legs wrapping around his waist, his arms holding her steady against the wall, their bodies meeting. She remembered the weightlessness she’d experienced when she’d first learned the Rite of the Bound, the terror she’d felt. She felt no terror now. She trusted him too much for that.

  She felt like she was flying.

  After, they washed each other clean. She laughed a little when Amun poured water over her hair. “It’s cold,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  Amun worked the tangles from her hair, fingers ever so gentle.

  “I made vows to you, Mehr,” he said. “And you made vows to me.”

  “I did. You did.”

  He turned her and lifted her face to his, mouths almost touching. “I vowed to hold our vows above all others. To love you above all others. To belong to you, if I belong to anyone.” There was a curious urgency in his voice. “Remember that.”

  “I will,” she whispered, and kissed him. How could she possibly forget?

  They dressed in their Amrithi garb. Amun threaded wooden flowers through her braid. She smudged kohl around his eyes when he closed them and stayed still beneath her fingers, trusting her utterly.

  Mehr could hear the howling of the storm draw closer. Armed mystics met them at the bottom of the stairs. Even from here, even with the storm howling, Mehr could hear the thrum of their prayers. She heard them like they were drumming inside her skull.

  She was their vessel, after all. She was a tool for bringing those prayers to life, for enacting the Maha’s desires in the form of a rite, so that the dreams of the Gods would be compelled to obedience. It was heresy, but not one Mehr could avoid or resist.

  The Maha was with her. The mystics were with her. She couldn’t outrun them. But Amun was with her too. He took her hand and walked with her, strong and steady at her side. They would survive together. She had to believe that.