“You have it too, then? The—gift?” Mehr asked. “You can move dreamfire to your will?”
Her mother nodded. “My mother had four children, and I was the only one to inherit it.”
“I have aunts and uncles? A family?”
“We are depleted,” Ruhi said, her voice subtly strained. “There have been difficult times. A great deal of hunger and suffering. Some vanished. Others chose to leave Irinah and never returned.” She paused. “There are few of us left now.”
Mehr clasped her own hands, letting that answer settle within her heart. She couldn’t imagine how difficult life had been out here in the desert. The Amrithi had been hunted, their culture and their way of life decimated, their people stolen and forced to choose vows to the Maha or freedom at the end of their own blades. No wonder her mother didn’t dress in finery; no wonder Kamal continued to stare at Mehr with narrow-eyed suspicion. They had so little hope left.
“Why did you leave us?” The question escaped her almost without her say-so. But now that she had spoken, she couldn’t unsay it. She didn’t want to. “You would have remained safe in Jah Irinah.”
“Your father exiled me,” Ruhi said. “I couldn’t return to you.”
“But you could have stayed with us. Arwa and me. He would have allowed that.” Mehr stared into her mother’s eyes, which were so like her own. “I remember.”
Ruhi shook her head at that, her mouth thinning.
“I couldn’t, Mehr. I was afraid.”
“Of the Maha? His Saltborn?”
“Of many things,” said Ruhi. “When I fell in love with your father … Mehr, I was an idealist. I had great dreams of what we could accomplish together, a Tara’s daughter and the Governor of Irinah. I believed we could make the world better for the Amrithi. But I learned, soon enough, how little power an Ambhan nobleman has. Your father loved me, but he still obeyed his Emperor. When his nobles attacked my people, he turned a blind eye—for my sake, he told me, and yours. A Governor who refuses to obey the Emperor’s will, he told me, does not remain a Governor for long. And what would become of us all then? What would happen to you and Arwa, without the protection of his title and power? The thought terrified me, Mehr.”
Ruhi leaned forward, her gaze intent. She spoke as if she didn’t care what Kamal heard—as if there were no shame in it, airing their family’s grief before an audience. Mehr, raised behind walls and protocol, was frozen by her mother’s honesty.
“I was afraid,” Ruhi said frankly. “Afraid of what your father and I had done by loving one another. Afraid that no matter how well your father obeyed his Emperor and his Maha, one day their eyes would turn on him and they would see me, hisamata-gifted Amrithi mistress, and steal me away, or punish him for loving me. And worse still, I feared they would punish you and your sister for existing at all.”
“Is that why you left? To protect us?” Mehr’s voice sounded small, so small.
“I had a duty, Mehr,” said her mother. “My clan needed a Tara, my mother had passed on, and I …” She paused, then continued, slow and deliberate. “I chose to leave for your sakes, yes. But I also left for my own. For my people. My clan. Your father told me if I left, I could never return. He thought he could use you and your sister as a weapon, as chains to hold me. But I would not be caged, Mehr. I had made him no vows and no promises. I told him: I am Amrithi. I know the price of freedom.” Her voice was flint, all its richness hardened to a fine edge. “I don’t ask you to forgive me, Mehr. I have thought of you and your sister every day since I left the city. But I will not say I regret my choices. I believed that I left my half-Ambhan daughters well protected, and far safer than they would be in my care. I thought his blood would keep you safe; our gifts are so rare, after all. I never thought one of my daughters would inherit mine.”
All Mehr could think of, as she listened to her mother speak, was of the grief she’d felt when her mother had left: the weight and the greatness of it, the way it had shaped her into what she was. She thought of her father’s guilt-stricken face. She thought of all the things Arwa had never experienced, the love she’d never had and the stories she’d never been told, and now never would be.
“Now that you’re here, I’ll keep you safe. Whatever the Maha has done to you, whatever hold he continues to have on you, you will be protected,” Ruhi said into the silence.
“Will you vow it?” Mehr asked.
Her mother’s answering look was steady. “We don’t make vows, Mehr.”
There were many things Amrithi didn’t do that Mehr had done. Mehr had made vows and manipulated the dreams of the Gods. She had done things that Ambhan women didn’t do too. Knowing that she stood on the distant edge of both the world she’d been born to and the world she had always wanted to belong to left her heart cold. She lowered her head.
“Mehr,” her mother said, her voice soft. She reached out a hand as if to comfort her.
“I can’t look at you,” Mehr said sharply. Her voice was full of all the bitter things she couldn’t allow herself to think, feel. “Don’t touch me. Please.”
Ruhi dropped her hand. Mehr saw her hesitate, saw her clasp her own hands together, as Kamal shifted angrily in the corner.
“Lalita was right,” Ruhi said ruefully. “You are very like me after all.”
In the end she left with a promise to return, taking Kamal—and the lantern—with her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mehr was soon moved from the tent to a new hiding place, a moderately larger shelter carved into rock. The clan weren’t willing to accept her in their own home yet, and it was possible they wouldn’t be for a long time. Many, Lalita told her, were afraid she was still bound to the Maha; others feared that her presence would somehow draw the mystics to them. Mehr couldn’t find it in herself to blame them for their fears.
Lalita also told her that the shelter that would now be her home had once been used by Amrithi preparing for the Rite of Dreaming, as a place to dress and pray and wait for the dreamfire to fall. Now it was abandoned. Not large enough to hold a clan, too enclosed by sand and its own walls to act as a guard post, it served no purpose to their clan.
For Mehr, it was perfect. It didn’t have the honeycomb warren of corridors of the Maha’s temple, or the gleaming, golden elegance of her father’s household. Instead the structure was dark and secretive, its columns and walls all soft lines, flowing with the grace of dunes. It felt peaceful, but most of all, it made Mehr feel safe. She couldn’t help but trace its whorled walls with her hands, thinking of what it must have been like when those with and without theamatagift walked the room together, ready to dance the Rite of Dreaming as a clan.
