“Space,” Amun echoed.
Mortification flooded her. What had possessed her to say that? She knew how much Amun hated to be noticed. She knew how he held his strength back carefully, how he tried to fade into the background. She’d let her words run away from her. She’d spoken without thinking.
Amun was giving her a level look, expression unreadable. His arms were held stiffly at his sides. She was sure she had offended him. She looked back at him blankly, trying to frame some semblance of an apology, when she saw his lips twitch.
He was trying not to laugh at her.
“I am what I am,” he said again, softly now, almost fondly.
The sound of a loud bell echoed throughout the temple. Mehr nearly jumped out of her skin. Somehow, for a single moment, she had forgotten where she was. She had forgotten how dire her circumstances really were. For a single moment, there had been nothing but her and Amun, and Amun’s smile.
Amun’s expression shuttered quick as lightning.
“Time for prayers,” he said. He stood and went toward the stairway.
Mehr grabbed her shawl and raced down the stairs after him.
It was Kalini who led the morning prayers, standing before the effigy of the faceless Emperor with her head lowered and her hands clasped. Mehr was glad that there was no sight of the Maha. Kalini’s voice didn’t have the power to curdle Mehr’s blood the way the Maha’s did. In her presence Mehr could contain her fear. She kneeled with her hands clasped and tried to ignore her aching knees until prayers ended.
Breakfast was not as elaborate as dinner had been. Mehr joined a queue of mystics and was handed a flatbread and a handful of sweet, dried dates, which were rich with flavor but tough as leather. Mehr ate hurriedly as she walked through the corridors by Amun’s side.
Amun led her up the stairs of another tower to a room where, he told her, Edhir would be working. Mehr had grown used to the bareness of the temple, so she took in the chaos of the room around her with wide eyes.
The room was crammed from end to end with books. Charts and maps covered every spare inch of space on the walls. Mehr’s father, wealthy and privileged though he was, had never owned so many books. Her fingers itched to trace the spines. Instead she took them in with her eyes. Books of alchemy, of weather, collections of maps of distant lands. Maps of Irinah. There were scrolls, too, laid out on a table and bound shut with long lengths of silk.
There were mystics scattered all over the room. At the edge of one table sat Edhir. Without his heavy robe, hunched over a scroll unfurled to its full length, Edhir looked younger than ever. The hands holding the scroll were gloved. As they approached him, he raised his head and gave Amun an uneasy look. For Mehr, he managed a smile.
“Emperor’s grace upon you this fine morning,” he said to her. His gaze slid nervously to Amun. “And you,” he added.
Mehr looked at Amun along with him. His face was as hard and cold as a thing carved from rock. His eyes were dark hollows, with none of the softness in them that Mehr had somehow grown to expect. She looked away quickly. If she hadn’t experienced his gentleness earlier and seen that smile tug the corners of his mouth, she never would have believed he was anything but the cold brute he appeared to be in that moment.
“Emperor’s grace upon you also,” she said to Edhir. He gave her a grateful look as she stepped between. “What is this?” she asked, pointing at the scroll in front of him.
“A map of the Empire,” he said.
“How beautiful,” Mehr breathed. It was highly detailed, colored in lush blues and golds, marking the Empire from Irinah to Ambha and beyond. Even lands beyond its borders were inked in. She had never seen such a fine piece of work before—certainly no map as vast and detailed as this one.
“She needs to be prepared for the next storm,” Amun said abruptly, breaking Mehr’s focus. “The Maha said it will be upon us soon.”
Mehr did not think she’d ever heard Amun speak directly to Edhir. It startled her. She wasn’t alone in that. Edhir’s eyes were wide. The other mystics were watching, some covertly, some not so covertly.
“Yes,” Edhir said, after a moment’s hesitation. “It will be.”
“When?”
Mehr wanted to wince at Amun’s behavior. If this was how he talked to the mystics, then it was probably wise that he was so often silent. He showed Edhir none of the ease or careful gentleness he so often showed her. Instead he spoke abrasively, his voice unashamedly cold and unfeeling.
Edhir’s jaw tightened, but he made no complaint. Instead he stood and made his way to one of the many shelves lining the walls. He lifted a mounted sphere from one low shelf and brought it over to the table. It was a strange tool—Mehr had never seen the like of it before. The sphere was faceted glass, etched with symbols, and surrounded on all sides by movable dials and calipers, all etched with small, intricate measurements. Without a word Edhir began adjusting the calipers and dials around the sphere, his eyes narrowed. Another mystic brought over a scroll and unfurled it. This one was covered in lines and equations. Catching Mehr’s questioning look, Edhir said, “This is a map of the stars.”
“I didn’t know stars could be mapped,” Mehr said honestly.
“Oh, they can,” Edhir said, distracted. He adjusted another dial in slow increments. “The Maha, praise him, discovered that by tracing the movement of the stars, we can predict storms.”
“How is that possible?” Mehr asked. She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the sphere. Now that she was looking more closely, she could see that the symbols were etchings of the celestial bodies: the moon and sun and dozens of stars, all arrayed across the sphere’s surface. As Edhir moved the dials, the facets moved too, the sphere turning in a smooth arc.
“Everything in the world comes from the dreams of the Gods,” Edhir said, still moving the dials with care. “Almost everything they’ve dreamed is perfectly designed, and adheres to its own laws. Just as we obey the law and the faith, the seasons, the tides of the great ocean, the movements of the stars, all follow the order set down by the Gods. But in Irinah, when the dreamfire falls, the order—bends.” He stopped to look down at the map at his side, then adjusted one dial a mere increment to the left. “Look.”
Mehr looked. Mehr did not know anything about the order the stars obeyed, but she knew there was something subtly wrong with the surface of the sphere. There were hairline gaps between its facets, a strange order to the stars.
