“She’s the Maha’s creature.”
“Maha’s creature or not, she’s Ruhi’s daughter.”
That stopped him short. He gave Mehr an unreadable look, then drew his hood down over his face and walked abruptly away.
Lalita took Mehr by the shoulders.
“Ah, Mehr,” she said, her voice choked. “I am so sorry, dear one. If I had known, I would have warned you.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Mehr said gently. She touched Lalita’s shoulder in return. Behind Lalita, she could see the Amrithi watching her with wary eyes.
“There is a place—an outpost—near here. You’ll be safe there for now.”
Mehr nodded, slowly. Then she said, “Lalita. Why did you mention my mother’s name?” Mehr asked.
“Because Kamal—the others—they belong to her clan, Mehr.” Lalita said the words gently enough, but they still dropped through Mehr like a stone. “Your mother is here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Perhaps the veiled daiva hadn’t been there to take her to her final rest after all. Trudging after the Amrithi, blinded with a cloth that Lalita had tied carefully around Mehr’s eyes, Mehr only knew for certain that the ancient had been a harbinger of a great change in fortune. After months of living to a set routine of prayer and rites and service, her life free from the Maha’s control was a whirlwind, a storm within a storm. She felt adrift. Only Lalita’s hand on her arm, gently guiding her forward, kept her tethered.
“We’re here,” Lalita said. She didn’t say where, or what,herewas. But Mehr heard the heavy rustle of cloth, felt the ground change from giving sand to the firmness of pinned fabric, and knew they had entered a tent even before Lalita removed the blindfold from her eyes.
The tent was a low construction, barely tall enough for Mehr to stand without stooping. Its fabric was the same dun color as the world around it. It was likely easily concealed; from a distance, it probably looked like no more than an eddy of sand. It was a clever construction, but clearly not the home of all the Amrithi. It was barely larger than the tent she’d slept in, alongside Amun, on her journey to the temple.
She and Lalita were alone now, although Mehr suspected Kamal was still waiting just beyond the tent entrance. Lalita sat cross-legged on the floor, and Mehr sat across from her. Lalita pulled a skin of water from her robes and offered it to Mehr, who drank the warm water in careful sips, trying not to gulp it down greedily as she wanted to.
Lalita watched Mehr drinking for a moment, then began to speak. In a quiet, measured voice she told Mehr how she’d come to be in the desert with an Amrithi clan. She told Mehr that the restless nobility, stirred up by the Emperor’s missives, had become suspicious of her. Even though Lalita had changed her birth name to a Chand one to hide her origins, even though she had embraced life among Ambhans, the truth of Lalita’s origins had made it somehow to their ears.
Lalita had planned to move somewhere else for safety. But nobles who called themselves devotees of the Saltborn had come for her, and she’d been forced into Irinah’s deep desert instead. She’d found her way to a place where she had known she would be safe.
“Mehr,” Lalita said carefully, hope folded up in her voice. “Do you know—that is, did you see Usha? Is she well?”
Mehr’s stomach dropped like a stone.
“I’m sorry,” Mehr said, her voice soft. “I am so sorry, Lalita. The mystics killed her.”
Grief flitted across Lalita’s face. The hope in her eyes died away. “I should have known,” Lalita said. “And yet, I hoped …” She swallowed, holding her grief back. “I hoped she had escaped somehow.”
“On the night of the storm, I was looking for you,” Mehr said. “I walked through the dreamfire, and I asked it to help me find you. I begged it …” She trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut, embarrassed at her past naïveté. “It brought me to Usha. I was with her at the end, Lalita. She wasn’t alone.”
“Ah, Mehr, I’m glad of that,” Lalita said, her voice thick. “I’ll dance a rite for her. A proper death rite. She would have liked that.”
“She would have,” Mehr agreed.
They sat in silence for a moment, both of them thinking of Usha. Grieving her. Mehr pretended not to notice when Lalita wiped her eyes, slowly calming herself.
“Tell me about my mother,” Mehr entreated finally, breaking the silence.
“She’ll be here to talk to you soon. You know we were friends once, when she lived in Jah Irinah?” When Mehr nodded, Lalita continued. “When she left, she asked me to watch over you and your sister. So I did. But when I ran, I knew she would take me in. In this clan, your mother is Tara,” Lalita said, using the title for an Amrithi clan leader. “She took the mantle when she returned, after her own mother—your own grandmother—passed on.”
“Tara,” Mehr repeated. Stunned. “I hadn’t expected that.”
“She’ll be very glad to see you, Mehr. Of that, I’m sure. But she will have questions too. We can’t truly trust that you’re free of the Maha. It isn’t a thing that can be done, the breaking of vows.” Lalita’s voice was gentle, slow, as if she wanted to soften her words. “The vows we make are inviolable. When they are made, they bind forever.”
Mehr shook her head. “In my case, the Maha made an error. He couldn’t risk the ire of the nobles. To simply take me—my father would have revolted. It would have offended his honor. He realized I could not be bound as Amrithi are, although I have the gifts, without causing fury among the nobles. So he bound me the way Ambhan women are bound: marriage.” She heard Lalita’s sharp inhale. “He wed me to the last Amrithi he had, whom he’d bound as a child. That man … Amun. Amun is the reason I’m free.”
She told Lalita about her life among the mystics: about the endless rote prayers and practice, about the Maha’s cruelties, large and small; about Hema’s kindness, and Hema’s brutal death; about Amun and the mercy he’d shown her. She spoke until her voice cracked, then stopped to take a sip of water. When she paused she realized how heavy the silence was, and how closely Lalita was hanging on her every word.
