“The crowds are the problem!” snapped Eshara. “So many eyes and so many whispers—I can’t keep us safe here. What if—”
“Eshara.” Zahir’s voice. “We trust your judgment. We’ll do as you suggest.”
Eshara stopped, falling silent. She nodded.
“Well.” A breath. “Well. Let’s go, then.”
Over the next few days they relied on Eshara to guide them as they walked through the rich vegetation of undisturbed green, far from the worn-smooth familiarity of the pilgrimage route. Arwa found she missed the noise and the throng of people. Eshara and Zahir were far too quiet. Arwa could not help but prod him with questions, uneasy with the weight of his silence and Eshara’s combined.
“Does it worry you?” Arwa asked him. “These tales?”
“What led you to that conclusion?” Zahir said tiredly. Eshara did not even look back. She was striding forward, utterly focused and determined.
“Zahir,” she said. “Please.”
“Fine. Stories of the Maha’s heir? Of course they worry me. It means Parviz will look for us, whether he believes I live or not. It will be enough that others do.”
“You truly think he will care what ordinary people say?” Arwa asked.
“I think we both know that stories grow,” said Zahir. “They swell and they spread swiftly, like sickness. And this story…” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I can see the appeal of it. It offers… hope. An alternative. That is dangerous to him.”
Arwa thought of the story Aliye had told her, when Arwa had recovered in the safety of the pleasure house, under the shadow of the tree-carved lattice. There was a tale of sacrifice and love woven into the very fabric of Ambhan society: in its widows and their hermitages, its courtesans and their pleasure houses. A tale unspoken butknown, in the bone and the blood. The Maha was a myth embedded in the skin of the Empire, deeper than any arrow. His death had left a void behind, waiting to be filled. All the Empire needed was the right tale. The right man.
Of course a legend was growing around Zahir. Not around Zahir himself, exactly—sharp-boned and exacting and hungry for knowledge as he was—but around what he represented. Emperor’s blood. Not-prince. Blessed. He was a symbol around which the growing fear and discontent of the people could focus, a shining light of possibility in a world that stumbled, stricken by ill luck.
He was the promise of a miracle.
But the miracle had been Arwa’s miracle, of course, a thing born of daiva and Amrithi blood.
What room did the Empire and its people have for that?
Arwa opened her mouth to speak, when Eshara stopped abruptly in front of them. In the blink of an eye she had her scimitar in her hand, free from its careful concealment under her robe.
“Eshara,” Zahir said. Soft.
“The cart ahead,” Eshara said. “Look.”
Through the shadows of trees, an overturned cart was just visible. One of its sides was splintered through. Now that Arwa was paying attention—as she should have been all along—she could hear the wet buzz of flies, and smell more than vegetation sweetness in the air.
She could smellrot.
There was a body there. She knew it. Her own body remembered the scent. She drew her shawl over her mouth and nose, straining to blot it out.
Bandits had attacked the cart, perhaps. Or animals.
Or something else.
“Someone,” Zahir said, “may still be alive.”
“No one is alive,” Arwa whispered. “You can be sure of it. Whoever died has been there for some time.”
“What do you know of death?” Eshara said. There was no sharpness in her voice; instead it trembled as if on a knife edge.
Arwa crumpled her hand tight into her shawl. Breathed deep and slow.
“I was at Darez Fort, Eshara,” she said. “You know that. Surely you guardswomen gossiped. But look, if you like.”
They all walked forward together, in the end.
