“I doubt Parviz’s hatred of heresy helps,” murmured Zahir, and Arwa nodded in agreement. Traveling to Irinah was not an entirely sanctioned act, and no one yet knew what this new Emperor would decide to do with the mourners his father had tolerated. But there was an answer, of a kind, on the city’s walls, where heads of the heretic mystics were still hung, reduced now to gristle and bone.
Although there were soldiers on the streets in significant numbers, soldiers at the city’s walls, none looked their way. They were far more concerned with inspecting new arrivals to the city for sickness. For now, at least, Akhtar’s policies of cleansing against the nightmares remained. The three of them passed makeshift tents and great drums of water, huddles of merchants and farmers with their carts, waiting to be assessed, and—Gods be praised—passed by them all unseen, carried by the mass of pilgrims out of Jah Ambha, and onto the first steps of their journey to Irinah’s sands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In mere weeks, they would reach Irinah. But Arwa could not imagine it. Irinah felt like a place that lived in her childhood memories alone. Irinah was the Governor’s palace: great marble corridors, and the flickering candlelight on the pillows in her own nursery; her father’s footsteps, firm and sure, and the whisper of her sister’s voice, murmuring stories in her ear. It was like the realm of ash, gossamer and strange but not a thing of the world.
Appropriate, then, that their journey was a tough and slow thing, a true test of her will. Arwa had traveled long distances before. She’d had to, as a commander’s bride. But she had traveled in the relative, if nauseating, comfort of a palanquin. She’d been tended to and guarded. Now she was a pilgrim, unveiled, her shawl knotted over her hair, walking. And walking. And walking.
Every painful step—beat of the sun on her forehead, sweat sticky at her neck and her back, her leg muscles aching—felt as if it were building the realness of Irinah. The desert was the thump of her heart and her parched throat and the hungry twist of her belly. It was a place that demanded body and bone to be reached, no different than traveling to the realm of ash.
Zahir—still recovering from his wound—could only walk slowly. Eshara was solicitous of him. She slowed her pace so she could remain at his side, talking about life beyond the palace, about Aliye and her pleasure house, about Hidden Ones whose names Arwa had never heard before but clearly meant something to Zahir, who lit up at their mention. Arwa walked a little behind them on aching feet, and tried not to think too much on the way Eshara carefully avoided looking at her, her shoulders always turned, her back a forbidding line.
It was easy enough to do so. The journey was a new world, one very unlike any realm Arwa had walked in before. The pilgrimage route was well-established, the earth shaped by thousands of footsteps, which had killed the vegetation and worn the way smooth. The pilgrims traveled largely on foot, but there were a few notable wealthy travelers, in bullock-drawn carts or on horseback, their women concealed in swaying veiled side-saddles or separate palanquins. The sheer press of people made Arwa feel like a speck of dust, insignificant, carried on a strange wind quite beyond her control.
They stopped, now and again, at the roadside stalls that had been established to cater for the wave of travelers. They drank tea, rich in mint and cardamom, heaped with honey. At night they tried to sleep far from the other travelers, beneath the vague cover of sparse trees, a small fire lit for warmth. Sometimes, Arwa would wrap herself in a thick over-shawl and sit and stare out at the dark, seeking daiva in the shadowy flicker of their camp’s flames. But she saw nothing. They were alone.
She woke early one morning, dawn barely breaking the sky. Zahir was asleep propped against a tree, his robe wrapped tight around him. But Eshara was awake, tending to the fire, warming flatbreads over the flames so that their doughy surface blistered with heat. She raised her eyes and gave Arwa a flat, unfeeling look.
“Ah. You’re awake.”
“Yes.” Arwa watched Eshara lower her eyes, saw the tic in Eshara’s jaw, as she ground her teeth. “Can I help?”
“Can you cook?”
“I’m teachable.”
Eshara plucked the bread from the flames. Neatly flicked it onto a cloth.
“No, then,” she said. “Quicker for me to do the job myself.”
Eshara kept on working, as Arwa straightened, rolling her shoulders to erase the stiffness of a night’s rest. She couldn’t look away from Eshara. The woman’s shoulders were hunched, her jaw still tight with feeling.
A voice, very like her mother’s, whispered a warning in her skull.
Don’t say a word. You don’t need any more trouble than you’ve already earned.
“You do not like me very much, I think.”
Eshara’s jaw only seemed to tighten an increment further. Then she huffed out a sigh, and visibly forced herself to relax.
“I am not required to like you. You are not my mistress. Nor are you a sister in my order. You are just… a set of characteristics that have utility. To Zahir. To the cause.”
“A tool, you mean.”
“I have seen you, Arwa,” Eshara said. “Servants see a great deal more than people think we do.Yes, you are a tool, shuttled about for the purposes of people greater than you.” A beat. “No offense meant, of course.”
“And how exactly,” Arwa said, “am I not meant to take offense at that?”
“Oh, Princess Jihan said worse to you, I’m sure,” Eshara said. “And no doubt you smiled and accepted her words without argument. But when I speak—well. I was just a function in your life, and my opinion is accordingly worth little.”
There was no spite in Eshara’s voice, which was somehow worse than if there had been. Instead her tone was weary and matter-of-fact. She dampened the fire, movements pointed but not hurried, then folded the cloth around the bread to keep it warm.
“I understand the need for you, and I appreciate you being here,” Eshara added, in a tone that suggested she did not in fact appreciate Arwa being here at all, “but I trust in Zahir’s dedication, and my own. Yours?” She shook her head. “You were not born to the Hidden Ones. You never earned our secrets. You haven’t proved your worth.”
Arwa clasped her hands tight, nails digging into her own skin. In a controlled voice, she said, “I’ve walked the realm of ash. I have chosen this path.”
“You’ve walked the realm only because of your blood,” Eshara said dismissively. “But for all your blood, Lady Arwa, you’re no different from the rest of them.”
