She didn’t pass away then. It would have been easier if she had. But she said nothing more over the hours that followed. Her breath rattled in and out of her lungs. Her lips foamed blood. Mehr watched as she gritted her teeth against the pain, her eyes glassy, all her attention focused inward. Mehr thought of her dagger, thought of ending Usha’s suffering. It would have been easy. It might even have been kind.
As the dreamfire quieted beyond the haveli’s walls, as Mehr kept vigil, Usha’s breath finally faded into silence. Mehr stayed with her until the very end, her dagger a heavy presence at her side.
It didn’t take long for her father’s men to find her. Ever since the storm had calmed and the sky had lightened with morning, Mehr had been walking listlessly through the streets of Jah Irinah. In her blood-spattered Amrithi clothes, her feet bare, she was a hard sight to miss.
They surrounded her on their horses, their steel armor gleaming sharply in the light. Their commander dismounted. His gaze flickered over her, taking the sight of her in.
“Lady Mehr,” he said. “Are you injured?”
She shook her head.
“The blood is not mine,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears. She swallowed. “I’m unhurt.”
The commander nodded, mouth thin, and looked away from her. Around him, his men were wearing identical expressions of embarrassment. Noblewomen rarely showed their faces to men outside their own families. They wore hooded robes in public; they traveled in veiled palanquins when they left the safety of the home. For Mehr to be barefaced before them, beforeeveryone, was a breach of her dignity. Worse still, without the protection of her veil, dressed in her Amrithi garb, she was painfully, undeniably foreign. Half Amrithi. Heathen. Outsider.
The sight of her shamed them. It should have shamed her.
She was too numb, and too tired, to care.
The commander arranged for a palanquin to carry Mehr home. She was met at the women’s quarters by a group of grim-faced guardswomen, who ushered her inside without words.
Mehr was allowed to bathe and redress in a clean tunic and pajami. She didn’t argue when one of the maids gathered up her Amrithi clothes and took them away. She had no energy to fight. It was hard enough to simply obey as she was poked and prodded, as her hair was combed roughly and bound back into a hasty braid, as she was ushered along the familiar halls of the women’s quarters toward a corridor that led to her father’s chambers.
At the end of the corridor lay the room Mehr had most dreaded visiting in her childhood, the room where she’d been brought to be scolded and punished for misbehavior. The Governor’s Study. She could still remember the terror it had once inspired in her. An echo of that old dread rippled through her now, as a guardswoman opened the door and ushered Mehr inside.
The difference between the women’s quarters and the Governor’s Study was impossible to ignore. The women’s quarters were Maryam’s domain, elegantly decorated with silks and jewels and cool marble, but the study belonged entirely to Mehr’s father. Every inch was stamped with his mark. The furnishings were dark, the walls unmarked and austere. There were great thick books and sheaves of paper piled on a table set at the center of the room. No fine gems and delicate touches here. This was a purely masculine space. Here, Maryam’s power ended and the Governor’s power—the power of swords and steel, currency and politics andmen—began.
Her father and Maryam were seated, waiting for her.
“Sit,” her father said. His voice was rumbling, soft.
Mehr kneeled down woodenly. When she met her father’s eyes she saw him flinch before recovering himself.
Governor Suren ruled one of the most barbaric yet holy reaches of the Empire on the Emperor’s behalf. He had hundreds of men at his command. He was built broad and imposing, and his eyes were sharp as steel. In the rich jet and ivory of his clothing, his hair swept back in a turban, he looked every inch the statesman and soldier. He was not a man who showed weakness easily.
But Mehr looked so very, very much like her mother.
“You’ve disgraced yourself,” said her father. He said it without inflection, without feeling. It would have been better if he had shouted.
“A woman is dead,” Mehr said quietly. “And my friend is missing. I left to try to help them.”
And what a waste it had been. She’d failed. In her father’s face she saw that knowledge reflected back at her.
“I know where you went. I know how my guards found you,” he said. “Your face bare, your skin—tainted.” A heavy breath. “I have given you so much freedom, Mehr. I have been generous. And you—you have used my kindness to ruin yourself.”
“You’ve brought scandal on us,” Maryam added. Her voice trembled. “And you’ve disgraced yourself.” Mehr saw her father’s fingers touch Maryam’s tenderly. Mehr looked away from them both.
“What does it matter, if I am disgraced?” Mehr asked numbly. Her father was silent. Maryam was silent. They left her room to dig her own grave. She wet her lips, which still tasted of sand and the rich iron of blood. “What will disgrace do to me, Father? Are you afraid I will stand in the way of Arwa’s marriage? That I will drag her down with me?”
From the periphery of her vision, she saw Maryam’s eyes narrow.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mehr repeated. “Arwa and I were born ruined. You know it to be true. You know what people think of Amrithi.”You know what your own wife thinks, she did not say. She raised her arm up, holding it to the light. “My skin was tainted a long time ago. But ah, perhaps Arwa’s skin will spare her my fate.”
“Don’t say such things,” her father murmured.
“I was born ruined and without the legal protection of your name,” Mehr said. Bitterness bubbled in her blood. She lowered her arm. “My mother kept true to her people’s laws. She never wed you. She never wore your seal, and you never wore hers. And now she is gone.” Mehr’s voice cracked. “In the eyes of the Empire we are less than nothing, Arwa and I. You should never have raised us here. You should have known that no matter what we would do, we would be judged as tainted by our blood. In the eyes of the Empire, we are less than nothing, Father.”
“I allowed your mother to keep her customs,” her father acknowledged. “But in raising you as I have, I have kept mine. Make no mistake, Mehr: You are my daughter. You have been raised in my household, fed with my food, clothed from my coffers. You are your mother’s daughter …” He faltered. “But you are also mine. And half your blood is Ambhan, noble and strong.”
