The large tent had a sumptuous carpet spread across the entirety of its floor. Great lanterns hung on stakes set in the ground. A select group of nobles lined the walls, their expressions blank, bodies tense. Behind a screen of fine netting were Gulshera and Jihan, the two of them seated.
Before them all, sat the Emperor. Parviz was cross-legged upon his throne, hands upon his knees, back ramrod straight. There was nothing opulent about his garb. He wore plain clothing once more, an unadorned turban and a tunic and trousers of plainest mourning white. There was something fierce and cruel about his plainness: about his military posture and the flint of his eyes as he stared down at the ground before him.
The ground where Zahir kneeled. Hands chained, his head tipped forward, as if he could not hold the weight of it up. Perhaps he could not.
“Zahir,” said Parviz. “You will look at me.”
Arwa wondered how many times Parviz had asked. He was thin-lipped with fury, his hands curling into the threat of fists.
“Zahir,” she whispered. “Look up.”
“Zahir,” the ash echoed around her. All her dead, speaking with her voice. “Look up.”
With great difficulty, he raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheek bruised.
“Zahir.” Parviz’s voice was iron. Unyielding, and deadly for it. “Son of Bahar. Did you falsely call yourself the Maha’s heir? Did you lead men and women of the Empire to heresy using my ancestor’s name?”
“You’ll give me the illusion of a trial, then?” Zahir asked. His voice was broken glass. His lip, too, she thought, was swollen. How long had he been gone from her? She didn’t know. “I know—I know my fate. Already. There’s no need for this.”
“Did you use heretical arts,” Parviz pressed on, “occult and barbaric, to speak with the dead, and to flee the palace and imperial justice?”
“Imperial justice?” Zahir echoed. A smile tugged his mouth. He was still drugged, she thought, although his eyes were bright, his words clipped and fierce. “Imperial justice… No. It was not that I fled from. And I used no heretical arts. The Maha’s own heir surely cannot defy the faith he dictates.”
“You admit your lies, then.”
“I admit what our father and Emperor named me, upon his deathbed. Who am I to deny his will?”
“He was not your father.” Parviz’s voice was rumbling, deadly and soft. “Know your place. You are a traitorous whore’s son. A bastard. And your actions have proved you barbaric as any black-blooded Amrithi heathen. My father never named you Maha’s heir.”
“You are Emperor now. If you say it, then it must be so.” Zahir’s head jerked, his gaze tracing the circle of noblemen around them. “Even if your court heard the truth from our father’s own lips.”
Arwa saw two of the departed Emperor’s old council of advisers exchange glances, their faces carefully blank of feeling. The rest stood frozen and silent.
“The ravings of a dying man,” Parviz said coldly, “who did not know what he was saying. He was not himself.”
“Not himself, when he named me Maha’s heir, and Akhtar his own,” Zahir said. “I see.”
“I saved the Empire from a dying man’s feverish error.” Parviz’s voice was iron, a great weight forcibly reshaping the world to fit his vision of it. “The only worthy heir to the Empire is a powerful one. A strong one. And that,” Parviz said levelly, “you are not. But I am.”
There was a noise from beyond the partition veil, quickly hushed. Parviz did not move, but his expression seemed to darken.
“My sister’s soft womanly yielding to your monstrous occult acts is done. You will plead for your false soul, heretic, and then you will be put to death. If you do not confess your crimes, your fingers will be cut from your hands. Your eyes will be gouged. Your teeth will be pried from your mouth. Your skin will be burned. These are the punishments the worst heretics suffered, when I quelled Durevi beneath my boot.” He leaned forward. “Jihan pleaded for death by swift poison. I am inclined to indulge her soft nature, if you confess now, and beg me to be kind.”
“Bastard, heretic, son of a traitor whore—you do not think much of me, brother.” Head raised, eyes bright as new coins, mouth twisting into a smile. “And yet, that makes me no less the Maha’s heir. It was those you call bastards who the Maha raised up and proclaimed as his mystics. The fatherless, the unloved, the children of traitors—he loved them. Who else would he choose for his successor, but a bastard of his own blood? The Maha’s own spirit dictated our father’s choice. I know it.”
He spoke the lie with utter conviction. It lit him from the inside, and she saw his words fall on the nobles’ ears like a blow.
They would remember this. When Zahir was dead, they would remember this. And they would doubt Parviz a little more, as each day passed, as the curse on the Empire sank its claws deeper and deeper into the bitter earth.
“You will be executed for your heresy,” Parviz said. “And it will not be quick. I promise you that.”
Beyond the screen, Arwa saw Jihan lower her head.
Arwa kneeled down beside Zahir. The world rippled around her.
He turned to her.
Looked at her.
“Arwa,” he breathed.
“You fool,” she whispered. “You utter fool. We’re not dying like this, Zahir. Not like this.”
She touched her glass fingers to his face. Drew back. The ash whirled through her, around her, so close.
She stepped back. Back.
“I need knowledge,” she said. The grand tent around her wavered. Even Zahir was a smear of faint light.
“We are knowledge,” the ash said.
“No,” said Arwa. She felt her distant flesh—fading, suffering. And she was alight, furious. If she’d had blood in her, it would have burned. “I need all your rites. All your sigils. All your lost knowledge. I need to save us both. And for that, I need everything. Can it be done?”
“Perhaps,” said Nazrin.
“Perhaps,” said Iria.
“It will come at a cost,” Ushan said. “You will go far deeper than any mortal woman should.”
“You could lose yourself,” said Nazrin. “The ash could carry away your name. Your nature. The weft of your soul.”
“You could become trapped here, never able to return home,” said Iria.
“Or worse, both,” said Nazrin. “You could become lost, forgotten even to yourself. A ghost within a land of ghosts.”
“I know,” Arwa whispered. But of course she did. They were part of her. “And yet, I would rather lose myself than let them take me.”
She turned to face her ghosts.
“Did you walk the world in the end, Iria? Did you save people from ill-starred daiva?”
Iria’s ash turned to her. The answer rose to the lips of her ash, from deep within Arwa’s own skull. From the wealth of memories she’d consumed.
“I did, for a time. But no one can protect others forever.”
“No.” Arwa said. “I suppose not. But I would have… I would have liked the chance to try.”
Arwa gripped her courage—and her roots—tight. She turned from Zahir and began to walk her path of ash.