Then she opened her eyes and saw nothing but her own skin once more.
The tent flap opened.
Gulshera strode in, bow and arrow still over her shoulder. Gone were her widow whites, her veil. She was dressed like a guardswoman, with nothing but a shawl wound about her hair to protect her modesty.
“Come to kill me?” Arwa asked.
“I don’t want you dead,” Gulshera said. “I’m trying to convince Jihan to arrange you a physician. For now, you will have to be patient.”
“I might… be dead. Before then.”
“Try not to be,” said Gulshera. She kneeled down. Offered Arwa a cloth. “Bite on this.”
Arwa did not want to take it, but when she turned her head, Gulshera merely stuffed the cloth into her mouth. Then she took hold of the shaft of the arrow, and snapped it clean.
Arwa bit down hard, screaming. Gulshera waited a moment, then pulled the cloth from Arwa’s lips.
“You should be a little more comfortable now, when the pain passes.”
“You shot me,” Arwa said hoarsely.
“I told you court had teeth and claws,” Gulshera said eventually. “Well, now you have faced court’s fury.”
“You didn’t… tell me,” Arwa forced out, “that you were… the claws.”
“I did not know I would need to be,” she said.
Arwa forced herself into an almost seated position. For all it hurt, white-hot, it was easier to breathe like this. She dreaded looking at her shoulder, which still had the rest of the arrow embedded within it.
“What will happen to me?”
“If Jihan allows you a physician, you’ll live,” Gulshera said levelly. “Until the Emperor decides what best to do with you, of course.”
“Death either way, then,” Arwa said. “I see.”
“She ordered me to shoot you if Zahir disobeyed,” Gulshera said, no inflection in her voice. “She was testing me, as she does. I could not fail her.” Gulshera reached a hand out to Arwa’s face. Hesitated. Drew it back. “I tried to prepare you for this world, Arwa. I truly did. But my first loyalty has always been to Jihan. That has not changed. Your fate is in her hands now.”
Gulshera stood and began to walk away. But Arwa could not, would not, let her go so easily.
“For a little while. In the hermitage. And in the palace.” Gasp of breath. Gritted teeth. “I thought of you as—a mentor. As a—friend. I trusted you.”
“Ah, Arwa.” Gulshera shook her head. “There’s no need for this.”
“No. There is. I trusted you when I feared trusting. Trusting anyone. And now.” Deep breath. “She’ll turn on you too, one day. We are all—things. To people like her.”
“I know what Jihan is,” Gulshera said steadily, her eyes on Arwa. “Perhaps one day she will. And when that day comes I will accept my fate. Because she is the child I nursed—and because she is the only worthy child the late Emperor had.” Gulshera bowed her head. A gesture of respect and farewell. “Emperor’s blessings on you, Arwa. I promise you, although it may be little comfort to you now: Your fate will haunt me for the rest of my days.”
Then the tent flap closed, and Gulshera was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hours and hours.
Hours and hours and hours.
No one was going to come for her. There would be no physician. No food. No water.
She heard the men and women in armor. The stamp and cry of elephants. Music.
The Emperor is here, then, she thought. She thought of Zahir and felt helpless, helpless.
She could not save him. She couldn’t even save herself.
“Can’t you?” A man’s voice. Gentle. Patient. “Come now, Iria. Remember.”
With difficulty she raised her head. Through the flicker of ash and glass, as the world wavered, she saw figures of ash kneeling around her. No longer nothing but broken limbs, they were whole people, staring at her eyes like the palest clouds.
“You can’t be here,” she said, uncomprehending. “I am still Arwa. Still myself.”
“Your mind is full of ash,” Iria said. She was no child any longer. She was a woman grown, with keen dark eyes and a braid of curling hair thrown over her shoulder. Her face was a thing carved of dust. “We are with you. Within you. And you haven’t the sense to keep us distant.”
Were those Iria’s words or Arwa’s own? Now that she was paying attention, forcing herself to think through the pain, she could taste the ash through the iron of blood in her mouth. She could feel the tug of the ash clouding her mind, the way the memories of her long dead were unfurling within her.
“I suppose,” Arwa gritted out, “that dying has made a fool of me.”
“No,” said Nazrin. Her ash was missing a great gout at the neck, leaving nothing but a void where her dagger had sliced her own artery through. “You simply don’t want to die alone. There is nothing foolish about that.”
Arwa swallowed. But she was alone. That was the truth.
“I don’t want to be in pain anymore,” whispered Arwa. “I don’t.”
The ash moved in her head. A great whirl of it.
“Then you know what to do,” Nazrin said gently.
Yes. Arwa knew.
She needed to go to a place where she was not flesh. Where the pain would be a distant thing—bound to her only by thin roots of blood. She closed her eyes. Breathed deep and slow. She did not need anything but her own will.
She sank back into the realm of ash.
The tent still surrounded her. Her body lay still upon the floor. When she had entered the realm of ash in Zahir’s tomb, she had entered another world entirely. But this was Irinah, where all realms met. The world of flesh lay against the realm of ash, one breathing with the lungs of the other.
She kneeled, free of her flesh. The pain was blessedly far away.
She could remain where she was and take comfort in the peace the realm had offered. She could wait, now, quietly for death. But when she’d entered the realm with Zahir in Irinah’s desert, she’d felt as if she could walk forever. She felt the same now. Two worlds lay spread about before her. Her feet of mirror and memory could carry her.
She thought of remaining here, dying, inch by slow inch.
She thought instead of throwing herself into the abyss before her.
Always, when she had a choice, it was the danger she chose. She looked back at her body, at its bloody wound, at the way her chest rattled from the pain of it. She looked about—at the walls of the tent, at the ghosts around her—and took a step forward.
She walked through the canvas wall into the open. She saw the elephants, the soldiers, the glaring blankness of the sky. The realm of ash echoed with things still living. There was a tent in the distance, far vaster in size than the one she’d been contained in. Its surface glittered in the light, richly embroidered with either silver or gold.
So the Emperor was here, after all. She had not been wrong to think so.
Zahir, she thought. Walked on.
The realm unfurled a storm beneath her feet, carried her forward as if on a wave. She could feel Zahir’s blood roots, still. His soul had walked with her own. Just as he’d found her in the realm of ash when she’d left him behind in the House of Tears, she found him now.