“You say you are a Hidden One,” Arwa said tiredly one morning. The noise and ill dreams had left her restless.
She had asked after Zahir—as she often did—to no avail. He is also recovering, Aliye would tell her, as if that were answer enough. Better, Arwa had decided in the end, to ask different questions. Perhaps she’d eventually receive some helpful answers.
“I am.” Aliye was wetting a cloth for Arwa’s forehead. The coolness, she claimed, would fight the weight of the fever. Arwa accepted this, although she had always had fevers sweated out of her as a child, swaddled in blankets, banking the heat until the sickness passed.
“And you are a courtesan, too?”
“Courtesan, dancing girl, brothel madame,” said Aliye with a shrug. “Call it what you like. A woman must make a living. Well,” she amended. “Most women. I know ladies do not.” She gave Arwa a shrewd look. “But perhaps the world would be better if you ladies were allowed to give more to the Empire. And if we were also.”
Arwa did not know if the we Aliye spoke of were the Hidden Ones or courtesans, but she supposed it made little difference. All people in the Empire had their service. All had boundaries they could not cross, for fear of the punishment that would face them on the other side.
The thought quelled Arwa to silence. She looked past Aliye to the lattice window facing—she assumed—the household’s courtyard. Light was pouring through its roots and its leaves, casting winding shadows upon the floor.
“You like the decorations?” asked Aliye, clearly having followed the direction of Arwa’s gaze.
“I spent time in a hermitage,” Arwa said hoarsely. She needed more water. Her throat burned. “There was a similar lattice there. In the prayer room.”
She remembered the daiva rising on wings beyond it.
Tasted ash.
She heard the cool sound of water being wrung from cloth.
“Do you know the tale of the tree and the doe?”
Arwa mutely shook her head. Aliye smiled.
“It isn’t a tale commonly told anymore. But once it was a tale mothers granted their daughters.” She turned the cloth between her hands once, twice. The pause stretched between them. “I’ll tell it to you now,” she said eventually. “Perhaps it will entertain you while you recover.”
She placed the cool cloth against Arwa’s forehead, then returned with a pile of sewing, and sat cross-legged on the floor mat by Arwa’s bedding.
“There was a man, long ago,” she began. “A boy, but also a prince, who lost his first throne and sought another. He walked with his family and his soldiers across the world: from beyond even Kirat, which lies untouchable beyond the mountains. His family loved him dearly, and followed him uncomplaining, even as their hunger grew, and their old and their young perished. Still, they would have died, had the boy not met the woman.”
“You’re telling me a love story,” murmured Arwa.
“You are listening,” Aliye said, pleased. “Good. Well, you’re correct. He loved her. He came upon her when he reached a bitter mountain-ringed valley, arid and colorless. But she—ah—was beautiful beyond compare.”
They always were, in such tales.
“Skin like the heart of a tree, hair like black smoke,” Aliye went on. “Oh, it was clear she was no normal woman. The prince had gone hunting when he stumbled upon her instead of the prey he had hoped for. It was her beauty that felled him instead, struck him just like an arrow to the heart. He fell in love with her instantly, and she with him. They wed. It should have been a happy time, but alas—his family and his soldiers were dying. Hunger and sickness both had them in their grasp.”
Aliye drew the needle through cloth. Snapped the end of the thread, deft and neat, with her teeth. Then she continued.
“The woman, of course, was not a normal woman. She was something born from the earth. Not a God, or anything kin to one but—old. We have no names for her kind anymore. But she saw his despair, and she could not allow it. The next time he went hunting, she came to him in the form of a golden doe, so he would not recognize her. She told him if he took her life, her blood would shape the land. His land. It would give him trees and fruits and nourishment, for these are the things that build thrones. But she also warned him: ‘I am a living creature, ancient and powerful, and my death will have a price.’”
“He killed her, didn’t he?”
Aliye hummed noncommittally in response. Then: “He shot her, yes. And from her blood grew flowers and crops, rich vegetation where before the soil was arid. Where her body lay, a tree unfurled, rich with fruit. Then a forest. And the man who would be king of Ambha, long before our Empire was born, had a fertile land now and a future for his people. But he kneeled by his bride, dead in a pool of her own blood at his hand, and wept, knowing the price of power was his heart.”
“I can see why this story isn’t told,” murmured Arwa.
“Oh?”
“No one likes to think their world is—born out of spilled blood. It’s too sad. And it makes the Empire seem…”
Although she had no more words, Aliye was nodding, even as she stitched. “Just so,” she said. “And yet you widows build grave-tokens, don’t you? Where do you think those began?”
Arwa rolled fully onto her side. She looked through the weight of fever and sleep at the lattice once again.
“I’ve never heard that story,” Arwa said. “Not once. I would remember it.”
“And yet,” Aliye said, “it has not truly been forgotten. Its ghost squats within us. We place it in grief, our walls. We seed it in our women. There is nothing finer, after all, than being a sacrifice. Stories can have great power. Give a story blood, let its roots settle, and any tale can bear fruit. A story of a sacrificial love.” She paused, then said lightly, “The story of a Maha’s heir.”
“You’ve heard, then,” Arwa said, voice thin with exhaustion. “About Zahir.”
“Courtesans hear everything,” said Aliye.
What bargain did Zahir make with you? Arwa thought.
Aliye lowered her sewing, touching a hand to the cloth on Arwa’s forehead.
“You feel a little better,” she said, approving. “But you should rest now, dear. I’ve taxed you enough.”
When Arwa next woke, she knew three things: her fever had broken; she was painfully hungry; and Zahir was at her side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aunt Aliye told me you’re recovering.”
“I feel much better,” she said. “But where have you been? She wouldn’t tell me a thing.”
“You’re angry.”
“Oh no, my lord. Not at all.”
He was looking down at his hands, moving them restlessly upon something that gleamed silver. He looked suitably ashamed.
“Arwa,” he said. “Lady Arwa. I owe you an apology. I am sorry I have not visited. I have been unwell also, and…”
“Your wound,” she said. “Has it healed now?”
“Somewhat,” he said. “It still hurts. I gather that is to be expected, when you have been stabbed.”
Arwa rose up onto her elbows, then into a seated position. She leaned forward, clasping her hands, her head blessedly clear for the first time in… how long had she been here? Days?