“Our father’s wife didn’t care for Amrithi tales.” Mehr kept her gaze fixed on the black horizon. Maryam seemed like such a distant memory, now. A creature from another time and another world. “She thought it would be best to raise Arwa as an Ambhan, ignorant of her heritage.”
“Perhaps she has done Arwa a kindness,” Ruhi said. “Perhaps she has given Arwa the chance to live a life without regrets.”
Ruhi didn’t sound as if she truly believed her own words, but Mehr shook her head anyway.
“I don’t believe that,” Mehr said. “Arwa is part Amrithi. It’s part of her, just as being Amrithi is part of me.”
You are part of us, like it or not, Mehr thought.
Mehr was so like her mother. She had always known she was. She’d seen the truth of it often enough in her father’s eyes. It still made it no stranger to be confronted with the truth of it. Her mother’s eyes, her face, the way she held herself like a creature always on the verge of flight—
Mehr was not so sure, anymore, that she was happy to be her mother’s daughter. Her mother was so … hard. Hard as blade or bone, and she wore her feelings like scars that pained her still. She’d left her clan once, although she’d returned to them, to be their Tara. She’d left her daughters behind too, though she welcomed Mehr now with open arms. She wore her love for her clan and her love for Mehr like a grim wound, a thing that had to be borne. Looking at her made Mehr think of her own love for Arwa. Her love for Amun.
She’d left them both behind too. Ah,Gods.
She looked at her mother again, then looked away. It was so hard to acknowledge her, when the feelings she conjured in Mehr were a child’s feelings, deep and grief-stricken and furious. So Mehr looked back at the daiva instead. Once the sight of them would have filled her with joy. Now the sight of them only made her heart beat faster and a cold sweat rise on her skin. Joy seemed a faraway thing.
“The desert isn’t right,” Mehr said. “Something is wrong. I know you see it.”
“I do,” Ruhi acknowledged. “But it will return to normal soon enough.”
Ruhi spoke in a tone that suggested she didn’t want to be asked any further questions. Instead of heeding her, Mehr said, “Why is the desert as it is now, then? Why will it return to normal?”
There was a brief silence. Then Ruhi said, “The night of the storm … you didn’t perform the Maha’s rite. Did you?”
“No.”
“No one did.” Her mother looked tense. “There is a balance, Mehr, to the world the Gods have woven. Death and life, sickness and health, dreams and nightmares. The Maha has altered the natural balance through his rite, ensuring that the Gods dream sweetly for his sake. Without the Maha demanding imbalance, holding their dreams in his hands, balance inevitably attempts to restore itself. The daiva grow stronger. And the dreams he has kept at bay so long begin to take shape.” She sighed. “But he will find another Amrithi to wear his leash, as he always does. And everything will be as it has been all the years of the Empire.”
“What will happen,” Mehr whispered, “if he doesn’t find another Amrithi to perform the rite?”
The temperature almost seemed to plummet at her words.
“What does balance look like?” Ruhi shrugged helplessly. “Mehr, we don’t know. Who living can? But we fear that setting the world right will come at a terrible cost. The Gods have so much fury waiting to be unleashed. And …”
“Tell me,” Mehr prompted, when she saw her mother hesitate, still watching the darkness whirl on the horizon.
“We fear the full anger of the Gods,” she said. “We fear the worst: that they will awaken in their fury and shatter the world.” Finally, she looked at Mehr. Her face was gray. “But Mehr, you needn’t fear. Nothing will happen. The Maha will find another of us, as he always does.”
“And if he doesn’t, this time?”
“He has shaped the world into a place that is kind to him,” Ruhi said shortly. “He will.”
Mehr wasn’t so sure. She thought of the way word of the Emperor’s displeasure with “barbarians” had spread across the Empire, the way the Maha had stretched his eyes and ears across the Ambhan provinces, seeking gifted Amrithi far and wide, when he should have been able to thieve them from his own doorstep. She thought of the way she had been taken, despite the fact that she was Ambhan, and a nobleman’s child, and the Maha had risked igniting the fury of the Emperor’s most loyal followers. The Maha had been desperate when he’d claimed Mehr, and now that she was gone and Amun lay somewhere in an agony Mehr could barely contemplate, he would be more than simply desperate.
“If you truly believe he will find another Amrithi, why are you so frightened?” Mehr said softly.
“I’m not afraid.”
Mehr looked at her mother. She met those dark eyes, set beneath straight, serious eyebrows. Oh, she knew that look. “I know that you are,” she said.
For a moment her mother was utterly silent. Then, with visible effort, she held Mehr’s gaze and spoke.
“I am afraid,” she said slowly, “because when I danced the Rite of Dreaming with the clan the last two storms, I felt a fury grow. I can feel the Gods’ anger, Mehr, as you must.” She touched her fingertips to the nape of her neck, at the place where Mehr could still feel the cold touch of the nightmares in her own skull. “I know that their anger wears its own flesh and squats in the shadows, waiting for the dreamfire to breathe life back into it. I fear what immortals are capable of.” Her voice lowered. “The clan are afraid too. And the fear makes them act—differently. Rashly. But when the next storm comes, and they see he has control again, they won’t fear any longer.”
The clan were afraid, and here was Mehr, a convenient tool to be returned to the Maha’s keeping. Mehr understood then that it was more than distrust of Mehr’s vows that had led her mother to keep her out here alone, far from wherever the clan resided. She was trying to keep Mehr safe.
Perhaps the Amrithi feared the Maha more than they cared to keep a fellow tribeswoman—a daughter of their own clan—safe. Perhaps they didn’t think of her as Amrithi at all. The thought made anxiety knot in Mehr’s chest, so she pushed it away.
