The elders settled on the floor. To Arwa’s surprise, she saw Gulshera standing by the lattice, her back to all of them. Every line of her body screamed her desire to be left alone. Arwa, for all her propensity toward foolishness, knew better than to disturb her. Instead, Arwa sat on the floor cushions with the other women. From here, she could see Gulshera’s profile. Gulshera’s jaw was tight, her pale eyes flint.
She looked like a soldier preparing for battle.
A maidservant brought in refreshments. The cups and pastries went notably untouched. Lady Bega drummed her fingers against her knee, the clink of her jeweled rings the only noise to break the weight of silence.
“Heads staked upon walls,” she said finally. “It’s been years.”
“Oh, don’t speak of it,” said another. She drew her shawl around her face.
“And what shall we speak of, then?” Bega rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath. “Soft woman, you are. If Parviz pours more honeyed apologies into his father’s ears, there may be many more heads upon walls, you mark me.”
“Bega.”
“The commoners will love it at least,” said Bega, clearly relishing the drama. “They love a spectacle.”
“Some of them found solace in charlatans, Lady Bega.” Gulshera’s voice was leaden. “I would be surprised if the people of Jah Ambha are entirely celebratory.”
There was knowing in Gulshera’s voice.
Arwa thought of the days Gulshera had spent at Jihan’s side. Jihan, who saw and heard everything, who had far-flung eyes, who received regular missives from across the Empire and consumed knowledge with the same ease and intensity that Zahir sought to consume ash.
Oh, Gulshera knew something of the fractures in the Empire’s faith. Of that, Arwa was certain. Even Arwa, tucked in the shell of her own grief and circumstance, knew the people sought to fill the void left by the Maha’s death in any way they could. Executing mystics and heretics would not heal the wound in the Empire. The rift left in the Empire’s faith, in its hope, was not one that could be healed by force of arms alone.
A guardswoman entered. Heads turned as she crossed the room, as she kneeled down by Arwa’s side, and in a soft voice said, “Lady, you are wanted. The princess has called for you.”
Gulshera had turned. Gaze sharp. But there was no opportunity to speak to her now, if indeed she wanted to speak. The elders were staring at Arwa. The guardswoman was waiting. All she could do was swallow, and straighten, and nod in acknowledgment.
The guardswoman led her out into the corridor, then said, “Lady, you will need to lower your veil.”
“What need is there for that?”
“We are attending the prince,” the guardswoman said. Her gaze flickered to Arwa, then back again.
No more needed to be said. Arwa hastily lowered her veil, as instructed.
They walked through the pale corridors of the women’s quarters, to doors Arwa had never acknowledged, and had never seen unbarred. The doors were drawn open. Arwa walked through them, and entered the halls of Akhtar’s palace that lay beyond the women’s quarters. The world of men.
It was the past that haunted Arwa, as she walked toward Prince Akhtar’s study, hands clasped demurely in front of her, face veiled, hair shorn, a widow in all the ways she could muster. Beneath the mask of her widowhood, though, the memory of her marriage rose up. Haunting her.
Kamran’s study. She thought of it, even as the guardswoman announced her, even as she crossed the threshold into a space where she did not belong. The inescapable, sticky heat of Chand; how his ledgers and his maps, the tools of his command, grew mold when the rains came, a fact that had driven him mad. He’d had officials to help him manage his papers, but often when he’d worked through the midday heat, Arwa had sat with him as he worked, and sifted carefully through his letters, adding to his ledgers, listening when he paced and worked his way through one thorny knot of imperial administration after another. She remembered the feel of his eyes on her. The sound of his soldiers in the courtyard below.
“You are a great help to me,” he’d told her, once. And Arwa had felt relieved. She was a thing that was useful after all. A thing she had worked very hard to be. She had not failed her family after all.
She bowed low as she entered the study. Jihan stood before her, her veil thrown back. Prince Akhtar was facing his sister, his head tilted down to meet her eyes. His mouth was thin.
And there, standing by the far wall, arms clasped behind him, was Zahir.
It was a cold-water shock, seeing him here. She had never seen Zahir in daylight before. He was still oddly unreal, still sharp-boned and pale from lack of sunlight. But he also looked… different. Somehow, in the light of day, he loomed larger. His sharp bones were somehow more severe, his gaze more cutting. Although his hands were clasped behind his back, there was something unnerving about him—something that drew the eye and held it, pinned like a moth by lantern light.
In that moment, he reminded her of Parviz. His presence drew the air from the room, molded the world to his will. Then he looked at her, one flicker of his gaze, a darkening of his eyes, and he was only Zahir again.
Arwa felt a shiver of dread run through her. Why had they both been brought here?
Jihan and Akhtar did not seem to have yet noticed Arwa’s arrival.
“He’s met with Father’s favorite courtiers,” Akhtar was saying to Jihan, face mottled tight with fury and feeling. “After all my years of slowly winning their favor and hoarding their secrets, they’re going to fall for his propaganda. The military already love him. They like his brute idiocy—strength they call it, as if hacking off heads is a virtue he’s cultivated—”
“He’s impetuous.” Jihan’s voice was soft, soothing. “He’s always been one for grand gestures. But you are better than that, brother. Better than his base actions.”
“His base actions are working.”
“Parviz has always been able to sway Father,” Jihan responded levelly. “But court? No. I think not. Court requires different tools than war, and more subtlety than that demanded by a loving parent. Father’s favorites will see through him.”
“He mocked my efforts to protect the Empire in front of them. They will remember that,” Akhtar said tersely. “And believe me, he says a great deal more when he’s not under Father’s eye. He’s been claiming there is no curse on the Empire at all, and nothing to be cleansed. No curse. The bald idiocy of it, Jihan!”
“I’m aware,” Jihan said, with exaggerated patience. “He hasn’t yet managed to explain away the shadow spirits, though. Or the massacres—”
“He does not have to. He believes order and iron rule will save us all, that Father is just too weak to maintain our true glory, and he is not alone in that belief. And he quelled Durevi, Jihan—people think that’s proof enough.”
Jihan snorted.
“Killing the local populace isn’t quelling. It’s a famine for the future; when we have none of Durevi’s fruits and crops, after the lack of rainfall in Chand—”
Akhtar waved her off with a look of vibrant irritation on his face.
“Logistics don’t matter to the people of this court, and the views of court are the ones we must consider right now. What if the nobility sway our father’s choice of heir, Jihan? What then?”