Zahir—still recovering from his wound—could only walk slowly. Eshara was solicitous of him. She slowed her pace so she could remain at his side, talking about life beyond the palace, about Aliye and her pleasure house, about Hidden Ones whose names Arwa had never heard before but clearly meant something to Zahir, who lit up at their mention. Arwa walked a little behind them on aching feet, and tried not to think too much on the way Eshara carefully avoided looking at her, her shoulders always turned, her back a forbidding line.
It was easy enough to do so. The journey was a new world, one very unlike any realm Arwa had walked in before. The pilgrimage route was well-established, the earth shaped by thousands of footsteps, which had killed the vegetation and worn the way smooth. The pilgrims traveled largely on foot, but there were a few notable wealthy travelers, in bullock-drawn carts or on horseback, their women concealed in swaying veiled side-saddles or separate palanquins. The sheer press of people made Arwa feel like a speck of dust, insignificant, carried on a strange wind quite beyond her control.
They stopped, now and again, at the roadside stalls that had been established to cater for the wave of travelers. They drank tea, rich in mint and cardamom, heaped with honey. At night they tried to sleep far from the other travelers, beneath the vague cover of sparse trees, a small fire lit for warmth. Sometimes, Arwa would wrap herself in a thick over-shawl and sit and stare out at the dark, seeking daiva in the shadowy flicker of their camp’s flames. But she saw nothing. They were alone.
She woke early one morning, dawn barely breaking the sky. Zahir was asleep propped against a tree, his robe wrapped tight around him. But Eshara was awake, tending to the fire, warming flatbreads over the flames so that their doughy surface blistered with heat. She raised her eyes and gave Arwa a flat, unfeeling look.
“Ah. You’re awake.”
“Yes.” Arwa watched Eshara lower her eyes, saw the tic in Eshara’s jaw, as she ground her teeth. “Can I help?”
“Can you cook?”
“I’m teachable.”
Eshara plucked the bread from the flames. Neatly flicked it onto a cloth.
“No, then,” she said. “Quicker for me to do the job myself.”
Eshara kept on working, as Arwa straightened, rolling her shoulders to erase the stiffness of a night’s rest. She couldn’t look away from Eshara. The woman’s shoulders were hunched, her jaw still tight with feeling.
A voice, very like her mother’s, whispered a warning in her skull.
Don’t say a word. You don’t need any more trouble than you’ve already earned.
“You do not like me very much, I think.”
Eshara’s jaw only seemed to tighten an increment further. Then she huffed out a sigh, and visibly forced herself to relax.
“I am not required to like you. You are not my mistress. Nor are you a sister in my order. You are just… a set of characteristics that have utility. To Zahir. To the cause.”
“A tool, you mean.”
“I have seen you, Arwa,” Eshara said. “Servants see a great deal more than people think we do. Yes, you are a tool, shuttled about for the purposes of people greater than you.” A beat. “No offense meant, of course.”
“And how exactly,” Arwa said, “am I not meant to take offense at that?”
“Oh, Princess Jihan said worse to you, I’m sure,” Eshara said. “And no doubt you smiled and accepted her words without argument. But when I speak—well. I was just a function in your life, and my opinion is accordingly worth little.”
There was no spite in Eshara’s voice, which was somehow worse than if there had been. Instead her tone was weary and matter-of-fact. She dampened the fire, movements pointed but not hurried, then folded the cloth around the bread to keep it warm.
“I understand the need for you, and I appreciate you being here,” Eshara added, in a tone that suggested she did not in fact appreciate Arwa being here at all, “but I trust in Zahir’s dedication, and my own. Yours?” She shook her head. “You were not born to the Hidden Ones. You never earned our secrets. You haven’t proved your worth.”
Arwa clasped her hands tight, nails digging into her own skin. In a controlled voice, she said, “I’ve walked the realm of ash. I have chosen this path.”
“You’ve walked the realm only because of your blood,” Eshara said dismissively. “But for all your blood, Lady Arwa, you’re no different from the rest of them.”
“Them?”
“The noblewomen. The widows. The ones who smoke their pipes and drink their wine and lament their fate, even though they have nothing to lament. No hunger, no strife, no real suffering to speak of.” Eshara shrugged then. “You’ve lived an easy life, Lady Arwa. You have no place on a journey this vital. And yet—here you are.”
Her words were a knife twist, turning in Arwa’s chest. Arwa sucked in a sharp breath, straightened her spine, and did not respond.
They sat for a long moment in silence. Then Zahir murmured and turned in his sleep. Arwa rose to her feet.
“May I borrow your bow?”
“If you like,” Eshara said, not looking up. So Arwa took it from where it rested against their packs and walked away.
Ah. Truth was a sharp knife, wasn’t it?
Eshara had a neat, serviceable bow and a handful of arrows. They were tools—as I am a tool, thought Arwa bitterly—and not a frivolous way to release her rage. So she made a focused effort to hunt for an addition to their morning meal, and didn’t solely waste her arrows on venting her feelings, as she sorely wished to. But there were no animals in sight, no birds, no deer, only one hare that darted swiftly away from her, leaving her arrow to thud in the dirt. With nothing worth killing in sight, she allowed herself the indulgence of taking the used arrow and nocking it once more. She could already feel the soreness of her fingers, without a thumb ring to hand to hold the string steady, the tension of the bow mirroring the tension in her arm.
She heard footsteps behind her.
“Are you truly hunting this early?” Zahir asked.
“Leave me be,” she said.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“I was hunting,” she acknowledged, through gritted teeth. “But as I’m clearly having no luck, I’m hunting my rage instead and—skewering it through.”
“Ah.”
“It is a thing that Gulshera taught me.”
The thought of Gulshera—maybe dead, maybe gone, Arwa did not know—only wound her feelings tighter.
She let the arrow loose. It buried itself in the bark of the tree. She released a breath.
“Do you know what Eshara said to me?” said Arwa.
“No.” Crunch of his boots. He stood beside her. “Did she say something that made you angry, by any chance?”
“I’m not angry with her,” Arwa said. “I am just—angry.”
Angry with her own choices and her own nature. Angry with a world that had told her that to be worthy she had to be a proper noblewoman, no more and no less; angry with herself for believing it. Angry that she had not been better, more, with what she’d been given.
Eshara had not been wrong. That stung.
When you strip everything away, Arwa thought, there is nothing in me but raw feeling: rage pulsing free like the blood of a thing unskinned.