“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You need supplies,” said Amun.
“If by ‘supplies’ you mean more clothes, I do,” Mehr admitted. She had been struggling to manage with what she had. “Some more soap would be helpful too.”
“Well, we’re going to get you what you need.”
Other mystics had also finished their prayers and their meals and were making their way through the temple. Surrounded by other people, Mehr wasn’t sure how openly she could speak. She spent a good few minutes eating her bread in silence.
“I imagine the Maha won’t be pleased,” she said quietly. “We should be preparing for the storm. If he believes we’re neglecting our duty …”
Amun shook his head. “Practicing constantly is clearly ineffective,” he said. “A morning spent on other tasks would do us both some good.”
“I doubt the Maha will agree with you.”
Amun didn’t answer immediately. He guided Mehr beyond the communal bathing rooms and said, finally, “If the Maha becomes aware of our absence, I will take responsibility. I can tell anyone honestly that this was my decision. Don’t trouble yourself, Mehr.”
“And you think he’ll believe you led me astray, like a lost child?” Mehr tutted in disbelief. “Don’t be foolish, Amun.”
“As my wife bound by Ambhan vows, you should obey me,” Amun said blandly. “I’m sure the Maha will understand that.”
Mehr laughed despite herself. She bit her lip when she saw the startled eyes of other mystics turn on her. “I think you take my vows too literally.”
Amun gave her a quizzical look. It occurred to Mehr that Amun’s experience of marriage had to be limited. Amrithi didn’t wed—Mehr saw now, for very good reasons—and mystics vowed to remain unmarried while in service. How to explain the nature of Ambhan marriage to an outsider?
“An Ambhan wife shares her husband’s burdens,” said Mehr. “She is bound to him, soul to soul. He defines her.”
“So he is her master.”
“He often is,” Mehr admitted. “But I don’t believe a man bound in marriage can remain unchanged. My father altered after his marriage. Before he wed my stepmother he was—more tender. Kinder. She changed him. She had that power.” After he married Maryam, his relationship with Mehr and Arwa had changed forever. A wall had grown between them, and it had never truly fallen since. “It’s not a fair bond, Amun. I would never call it fair. But it’s still a bond—a rope with two ends.”
Amun was silent for a moment. He had a way of always mulling over her words, considering them carefully before allowing himself to speak.
“Do you believe any bond, even one founded on great unfairness, can have power?” He spoke slowly, deliberately.
Mehr thought of all the bonds, unchosen and unequal, that had shaped her like clay. She thought of how losing her mother had scarred her, and Maryam had hardened her, and Lalita had given her the strength to be bright rather than brittle.
“The bonds that tie people together change who they are,” Mehr said. “They have to.”
They walked a little farther in silence, Mehr’s world heavy between them. Then Mehr touched her fingertips again to Amun’s sleeve.
“Don’t worry about taking the blame. If we get in trouble we’ll face the consequences together,” she told him. She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Frankly I’d rather walk out into the desert without water than return to that damnable rite again.”
Amun’s lips twitched into a smile. The sight of it made a kernel of warmth bloom in Mehr’s chest. She ducked her head, her cheeks hot.
The reprieve from the rite was not only necessary but revealing. Mehr did her best to memorize the layout of the temple. She still found its winding corridors dizzying, but walking slowly at Amun’s side in daylight allowed her to truly understand how the corridors interconnected, and the role that each part of the temple served. Over the course of the morning Mehr saw the communal bathing rooms, and halls of contemplation where more senior mystics sat in meditative silence, wreathed in incense and darkness, and the irrigated fields of crops that marked the shadier edges of the oasis. The mystics were young and old, all celibate and dedicated to their calling. And there were so very many of them.
Mehr realized quickly that the mystics had to rely heavily on offerings from the Empire, carried by those courier mystics who followed the trade routes, to sustain themselves. The mystics were so numerous, after all, and the crops were so sparse. The majority of their food, the cloth they wore, their medicines, their fuel—all of it had to come from beyond the desert, just as it did in Jah Irinah. Like her father’s people, they didn’t live with the desert, thriving on its strangeness and strength. They lived in spite of it.
An unfettered view of the temple helped Mehr face the bitter truth: Although the Emperor needed his nobles to administer the Empire, they would never come first in his heart or his politics. It was the Maha’s concerns that came first. It was the Maha’s need for Amrithi withamatathat had driven the Emperor’s search for people like Mehr. Law and faith were intertwined, but it was faith that held sway in the Empire.
Together she and Amun collected soap, made from fat and sweet herbs, from an open veranda where herbs lay drying crisp in the sun. They even managed to wrangle some fairly new tunics for Mehr. The mystic in the laundry who offered them up said they would need some minor alterations, but surely Mehr would be able to do that for herself? To which Mehr nodded agreeably, while internally accepting that she would be wearing ill-fitting clothes for the foreseeable future. Her life experience hadn’t equipped her with skills anywhere near as useful as sewing.
“I’ll help you fix them,” Amun muttered once they were alone.
“Thank you,” Mehr said graciously, and tried not to burst into fits of laughter at the thought of Amun with his big hands delicately darning a ripped hem.
Amun had kept his silence throughout every interaction with the mystics, hovering like a dark presence over her shoulder as Mehr wheedled the mystics they encountered into giving her what she needed. It was hardly difficult. She noticed quickly that the mystics were more than willing to help her. They looked at her with pity, and no little kindness. The sight of her mussed hair and faded clothes aroused their generosity.
