It was impossible not to converse, confined as they were with no other entertainment, on their interminable, lurching journey through the mountains. Gulshera had remained pointedly silent for a good day after Arwa first removed her dagger and made a small cut, daubing a crook of the palanquin wood with blood. But in the course of time, she had thawed to Arwa again. Perhaps she was even grateful.
“Tell me about your mistress,” Arwa requested, not particularly expecting a response. She was not surprised when Gulshera merely huffed, reclining back and closing her eyes.
Arwa was already lying on her side, her shawl drawn tight around her, as if the shell of it could keep the full weight of her nausea at bay.
“You will need to trust me eventually,” Arwa pointed out. “I am your gift to her, after all.”
“I suppose,” Gulshera said slowly, “you need to be prepared.”
That would be nice, Arwa thought, with instinctual acidity. She wisely maintained her own silence.
“My mistress,” said Gulshera, “is Princess Jihan, the Emperor’s only legitimate daughter. When I left for the hermitage, she had just risen to the head of her brother Prince Akhtar’s household. She is… was, very much like her mother once was. A clever woman. I have no doubt she has only grown in strength.”
There was something akin to affection in Gulshera’s voice.
“Were you a friend to the Empress?” Arwa asked, speaking of this Princess Jihan’s mother.
A real smile graced Gulshera’s face. She shook her head.
“Arwa,” she said. “The imperial family do not have friends. But I was one of her women, and Princess Jihan’s wet nurse. A great honor.” Gulshera leaned forward, palanquin jolting around them, and pressed her hands flat to the palanquin’s floor. “When you meet her, Arwa, remember: Show her the same respect you would show your father. Your departed husband. She is no green girl. She is the Emperor’s blood, his legitimate child. Do not forget that. She has more power than you can comprehend.”
Arwa shivered, not sure if Gulshera’s words or her own nausea had set her insides roiling.
“You keep warning me about my behavior.”
“Because I have to. You’re too blunt,” Gulshera told her. “You speak without thinking. You’re too direct. Your survival will rely on your behavior now, Arwa. You must not forget it. Think on that for a while. Prepare yourself.”
“What else,” Arwa said, “should I know about Princess Jihan?”
“I have told you all you need to know for now,” Gulshera said, clearly weighing up kindness against her iron-clad loyalty for her distant mistress.
“The more I know, Aunt, the more likely I am to survive,” Arwa argued.
Gulshera shook her head. She would not relent today. “Remember your status. Remember what is expected of you. That should be enough. I will be there to guide you anyway.”
Arwa was often a fool. She didn’t deny that, even to herself. She drew her knees up to her stomach, tucking her wounded hand protectively into the crook of her own body, and closed her eyes. She felt too ill to argue further. Perhaps when their retinue stopped to rest for the night, she would pepper Gulshera with questions again, and attempt to erode some of that reserve. But not now.
Gulshera had not been wrong to ask Arwa to think on her behavior. She could not be a flighty, mercurial, grief-stricken creature any longer. In her hermitage she had sloughed away her strongest defenses. Now she needed a new carapace. She had worn the armor of a wife: attentive to her husband, charming and soft, beautiful and ephemeral with it. Now she needed to wear the flesh and garb of a widow. Not yielding, but barely visible. A ghost. A shadow.
Numriha and Ambha were divided by a great swathe of mountains, jagged and near impassable. But in the years since the Empire was first formed, one great road had been carved into the mountainside, clearing a winding path between the Emperor’s own province, birthplace of the Empire, and Numriha, land of mines and artisans, and source of all the pale, flawless marble that now filled the imperial city of Jah Ambha. There was good reason for Numriha to be accessible.
Whenever Arwa peered through the curtain surrounding the palanquin—properly tied in place, because Gulshera had carefully impressed on her the importance of adhering to protocol—she sometimes caught sight of the outposts lining the road. Some were set high in the mountains; others were near the road itself. She saw small, distant figures move—the reflection of torchlight.
Ambha was well-protected. The closer they came to it, the greater the number of guards became, and the less Arwa was able to leave the security of the palanquin when sickness hit her. There were too many eyes.
Gulshera did her best to distract Arwa instead. She told her the road had not always been so forcefully protected. But the time since the Maha’s death had been one of a steadily swift descent into watchfulness, earned paranoia. Daiva had been seen, and bandits had roamed with greater and greater ease, even so close to the heart of the Empire. Somehow luck always seemed to be against the soldiers in their outposts. A man would fall asleep on watch at an inopportune moment; supplies sent to them would go missing, or be stolen, leaving soldiers hungry and inclined to desertion. The only solution had been to expand the number of outposts and increase their provisions at the expense of the local populace, who bore the brunt of the taxes necessary to put food in the soldiers’ mouths.
It was a familiar story. Arwa had heard similar things from her husband, on the evenings when he had returned to his chambers and asked for her presence. She’d listened to him attentively, making soothing noises when appropriate, softening the knots in the bruised muscle of his ego with gentle, tender words. It was novel to hear stories of strategy and taxation and hunger for her own benefit, for someone to attempt to soothe her.
There was nothing to mark the moment when Numriha became Ambha, but Gulshera knew. Like Arwa, she had begun peering through the gap between the curtain and the resinous palanquin wood. She turned to Arwa sharply.
“We’re almost at the palace,” she said, sudden urgency in her voice as she unknotted the curtain and gestured at one of the guardswomen with her arm.
This time, despite all her emphasis on protocol, it was Gulshera who demanded the palanquin be stopped and the men move to a respectable distance up the path. Veiled, she and Arwa left the palanquin and stood on the road, great gouts of dust staining the ends of their robes as they stepped out of the shadow of the palanquin.
“Follow me,” she said to Arwa, leading her to the curve of the road. Below it was a sheer drop. And below that—
“Ah,” Arwa breathed. She had no words. The sight before her had stolen her voice.
There was a great swathe of space between the arms of the mountains. At their heart lay a lake—a great sheet of silver, rich with the glittering reflection of sunlight. And upon it stood the Emperor’s palace.
The palace was not one single building, as the Governor’s palace in Irinah had been. Instead it was a complex of multiple constellation palaces, bound by bridges to the great palace at the center of the lake, its surface a clever, complex heart of sandstone and gemstones, a brilliance of white marble and gold. It burned as bright as the bloodied heart of the sun overhead. Around it, connected by bridges, stood four smaller palaces, each one a closed flower, rich in color and beauty. She barely noticed the surrounding, white-marbled city. The palace—the Emperor’s palace—had swallowed her attention whole.