Mehr nodded stiffly. She could hardly offer her name again, when they knew everything there was possible to know about her already.
“Tell me about your family’s name, Edhir,” Mehr said.
“Ourfamily’s name,” Kalini called out. Mehr didn’t react.
“Please,” she said instead, looking at Edhir.
He was hesitant, now that the attention of his brethren was focused on him. He began in a halting voice.
“In the old mantras, they say the desert existed long before the Gods went to their long sleep. In the early age of the world, it was created by an old, grieving Goddess who mourned her children, who had died and left her.” He was warming to his topic, his voice growing stronger. “Mother’s tears, some called it, because the sand was born from her sorrow. Others named it—”
“Get to the point, Edhir,” another man muttered.
Edhir coughed. “They called it the Salt. For tears, you see? And we call ourselves the Saltborn, because—the Maha says—without the Salt, we wouldn’t be what we are.”
He smiled. Mehr managed to murmur out some appreciative nonsense. She saved herself from having to offer a better response by biting into the flatbread, softened by the heat of her fingers. Her mind was whirling. She hoped her hands weren’t shaking.
Salt.
How do you forget a death that happened in your arms?
Mehr lay in the darkness of the tent with her eyes wide open. The entire camp was asleep. She was sharing a tent with Amun, a single blanket beneath them, their robes thrown over them for warmth. The temperature had dropped even further, and Mehr was very cold. But there was nothing she could do about it. All she could do was lie still, and wait. And remember.
Who came, Usha? Please.
Salt.
She shivered.
Salt. Saltborn. Usha had tried to warn her. Mehr did not know if the mystics had been the ones to kill Usha, but their name had been on her lips when she had died. They were responsible in some way, tangled up irrevocably with her death and with Lalita’s abrupt absence. That, at least, she was sure of now.
She wanted to turn to Amun and ask him if he knew what had happened to Lalita. But she bit her lip. She wasn’t an utter fool. So Amun was a good enough man not to want to hurt her—what did that matter? It didn’t mean he was trustworthy. It didn’t mean she could show him all her weaknesses without consequence. He was still bound to the Maha; he had still made vows that held him fast, that covered his skin like chains made flesh. What kind of man bound himself to people like these? Could anyone truly understand a man like that?
Whatever had happened to Lalita, Mehr would have to find out on her own.
But Mehr couldn’t think of Lalita. Usha’s death was a splash of red across her memory. Every time she closed her eyes she saw it all over again. There was no room in her tonight for anything else. So she kept her eyes open. She listened to one of the mystics pacing the edges of the camp, his booted footsteps crunching steadily against the sand. She listened to Amun’s steady breathing, her own breath warming her hands, which were clasped in front of her.
Then she heard another sound. Light footsteps. Chimes.
“Are you well?” Amun asked.
Mehr realized that she had sat up.
“I’m fine,” she said. All was quiet again. She had thought she had heard a dancer’s tread, a distinctive way of moving that reminded her of Lalita and her mother, and made her yearn for a home she’d never had. She must have imagined it. Her mind had begun slipping into sleep, perhaps, chasing dreams. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You didn’t.”
Mehr didn’t have to look at Amun to hear how alert his voice was. All this time he’d been wide awake, and she hadn’t even known it.
Mehr lay back down. She ached all over. Her body was one long bruise. She tried to imagine getting up and packing away the tent and doing this all over again in just a few hours. Even the thought exhausted her.
“How many more days of this?” she asked. “How long until we reach your Maha, husband?”
“At least a week,” Amun said.
Gods, a week. She had no idea how she’d make it through so much time in the company of these men, with Kalini’s eyes always on her, with Amun a constant, silent shadow at her back. She shivered and curled up tight.
She would just have to find a way.
