“Lady Arwa,” he said softly.
“Do not ask me not to be angry,” she snapped. “Do not. And do not be kind to me. You don’t have the right, I do not give you the right.”
He pressed back against the wall, as if she had pinned him fast, as if her hands held him and choked the life from him, as Akhtar had done. He tilted his head back, his throat a dark bruise, his skin ivory-cold.
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t. But can you see another way? What is there but the Empire and the Maha’s path for all of us? Can you even dream another world, Lady Arwa?”
Arwa swallowed hard. Stood in frozen, wordless feeling, her limbs seized with it.
She could not.
Zahir drank the water. His hands shook.
“You should go. It is almost light.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Arwa did not go to Zahir the next night, or the night after that.
When she thought of returning to his side—to books and the realm and his face by firelight—she couldn’t bear it.
He had seen the history of her blood. And it had… hurt him. She was sure it had. She’d seen his face etched with tears, heard the roughness of his voice, as if horror had broken its edges and left it ragged.
But it had not hurt him as it had hurt her.
He would not stop searching for the Maha’s ash. He would not stop looking for answers within the faded memories of a man who had murdered the Amrithi and used them, blood and soul, to build the very Empire crumbling around them. To fix a broken tool, you must understand the intent of its maker.
She wanted to hate him. Hate would have been easy. Anger, too, would have been acceptable.
But instead, all she felt was despair.
Can you even dream another world, Lady Arwa?
She had not answered him.
The truth was that she couldn’t. The Ambhan Empire was all she had ever known. She had been born in it, raised within it. She had watched the edges of its glory peel and fade, revealing monsters and massacres. Oh, she’d yearned as a girl for an Amrithi life, but she knew nothing in truth of how to live in a world unshaped by the Empire. Its end was not a thing to be desired. What lay beyond its death could only be chaos. An Empire empty of the living.
And yet its faded glory sat upon broken backs. On broken limbs spread across a desert of ash, a desert of trauma and of memory.
Ah, but it was part of the insidious power of the great tool the Maha and Emperors then and now had built, was it not? A world where only their voices defined heresy and rightness, where there were no other ways of being, of living, than the one they offered.
There was nothing but this, because they had made it so.
She wanted to run from that knowledge. She wanted the hermitage, the valley, the bow and arrow in her hands. Sweat on her skin, tensile strength of the bow trembling in her grip. She wanted anything but the ugly weight of her own thoughts, and of knowing the vast shape of the horrors that had formed this very moment: her head in her hands, her mind turning over the same words constantly, soft as a noose.
I don’t know what to do.
She did not want the Empire to fall. She did not want it to survive either.
She did not want to help Zahir. But she did not want Akhtar’s hands upon his throat ever again. She did not want the people of the Empire dead.
The Hidden One claimed walking the path of one’s ash would lead a person to truth, to something good. They believed knowledge found and shared could be used to build a better world. But Arwa had only found another path, cloaked in utter darkness. And Zahir… Zahir had chosen to walk the same path he had walked all along. The Maha’s path.
She did not know where to go next.
She knew someone would demand she return to her work eventually. Of course Zahir did not seek her out. She had not expected him to, truly. He seemed to consider the exit of the tomb enclosure the limits of his world and acted accordingly. Besides, the women’s quarters were forbidden territory, and Arwa made a point of not walking in the gardens anywhere near his hidden home.
She was not ready yet to make a choice.
One day after the evening meal, she found Gulshera waiting for her in her room.
“If you’re going to tell me to return to him,” said Arwa haltingly, “I can only assure you that I will. When I am—ready.”
Gulshera shook her head. She did not remind Arwa that the topic of Zahir was a forbidden one. She only said, “Arwa.”
Her voice… the hairs rose on the back of Arwa’s neck.
“Aunt. What is it?”
“The Emperor is dying,” said Gulshera. Her voice was leaden. “He has days, perhaps. Hours.”
“He—no. He can’t be dying,” Arwa said.
“Of course he can,” said Gulshera. “You saw him. It is amazing how swiftly old age can become illness, and illness can become death. You are young, and perhaps will not be familiar with that reality.”
“You always think me a fool,” whispered Arwa. She did not have the energy to be hurt. She closed her eyes. Touched her fingertips to her eyelids. The soft pressure grounded her.
“Tomorrow at dawn he should hold his Beholding and audience,” said Gulshera. “He will not. Then everyone will know.”
“Jihan? Does she…?”
“Of course she knows. As do I. And now you.”
“Why have you told me?” Arwa whispered.
In the close-eyed dark, Gulshera said, “Because I want you to accompany me to his deathbed, Arwa. Jihan has asked for me, and I ask for you.”
Arwa stopped for a moment, stopped entirely, breath and body both. She swallowed. Spoke.
“I have no place there.”
“You do, because I have asked you.”
“Why?”
“Do not choose to remain in ignorance, Arwa.” Sharp words. “Come with me. The world is about to change; the battle you have chosen will alter. You told me you chose this path. Do not give me all the guilt of ensuring you survive it.”
“Do not pretend my fate concerns you that much, Aunt.”
“I accompanied you here,” said Gulshera levelly. “I have advised you as best as I can, despite the duties Jihan demands of me. Of course I care.” She shook her head. “I have grown somewhat fond of you, Arwa,” she said, in a voice that was softer than it had the right to be. They were no family to one another. No family. “Trust me or don’t, Arwa. But come with me now.”
Gulshera stared at her. Waiting.
In silence, Arwa nodded.
The Emperor, dying.
Ah, Gods.
The room where the Emperor lay dying was not a private space of sanctuary or intimacy. But then, an Emperor did not have the luxury of dying a private death. In a pale mimicry of the Hall of the World, scribes sat upon bolster cushions at the edge of the room. The council of his favorites kneeled. The Emperor’s closest advisers kneeled also. Men on all sides kneeled in silence, and watched, waiting for the Emperor to die.
They were separated from the sight of the Emperor’s dying form by a circle of gauze: great curtains unfurled from the ceiling, forming a perimeter vast enough to both encompass his bed and allow his women to hold vigil.
The women kneeled around his divan in a circle. When they entered, Jihan threw back her veil and kneeled at his side.