“Oh, we do,” said Eshara. “But that doesn’t make either of you less foolish.”
Arwa knew they were foolish. She was a widow. He was a blessed. They had no future, and only a thin scrap of hope to sustain them.
But he was hers. And she was—
“Let’s find this boarding house,” Arwa said. “And never speak of this again. Does that bargain suit you?”
“That’s not a bargain of any kind,” said Eshara, rolling her eyes. “But fine.”
A pilgrim paid for rooms in a boarding house, in the end. When their companions fell swiftly into sleep, Arwa took Zahir’s hand and said, “Do you think there’s a way onto the roof?”
“Most likely,” he said.
“Well, let’s find it. I want to look across the city.”
They climbed a ladder to the roof. Then they stood at its edge and stared—between the buildings—at the true Irinah that lay beyond the borders of the city.
The desert.
In the dark it was almost blue-gold, great rolling waves as night-dark as an ocean. The sky above it was a deeper black, and beneath it the desert seemed to shine.
This was the true Irinah. Not the dilapidated, half-abandoned city of Jah Irinah that pilgrims had populated, walking its ruins like bright ghosts. Irinahwasthe desert.
“My father’s armies were all driven away from this desert,” Zahir murmured, staring out at the waves of darkness with something like awe. “By daiva, by the very sand—they said it flung them back, and those that weren’t flung were consumed.”
He leaned forward, dangerously close to the edge. He stared at the sand.
“Arwa,” he breathed. “I have never seen anything like it.”
The wind caught her shawl, ruffled her hair. She held her shawl still.
“I have something to tell you,” said Arwa. “While we’re alone.”
He dragged his gaze away from the desert. Took a step back, giving her his focus.
“Go on.”
“I taught Sohal a rite,” said Arwa. “The rite I used in the House of Tears. He’s…” She hesitated. “Zahir. He’s like me.”
“How so?”
“In the way of blood, Zahir,” she said sharply. Then she bit her lip. Ah. She hadn’t meant to snap so. “It isn’t an easy thing for me to say. It is a sign of my trust in you that I am. Being part Amrithi—well.” She curled her fingers tighter in the cloth. “When I was small… once, my mother took me in the palanquin to watch an Amrithi family being driven from the edges of our hometown in Hara. The family had traveled far. They were just a mother and father—two children. They had their heads shaved and were beaten. And then they were driven off with sticks. And that was consideredkind.
“She wanted me to see,” Arwa went on, “so I would understand why I had to be better than my mother’s Amrithi blood. Only barbarians, she told me, scrape at the edges of the civilized world. Only heathens are not allowedin.”
He touched a hand to her sleeve. She took it. Held it tight and turned to him, resting against him. She felt him exhale and wrap an arm around her, ever so gentle.
“Sometimes those who love us harm us,” he said. “I am sorry for it, Arwa.”
“Don’t be. I’m well enough.”
“Who am I to argue?” He pressed his face to her hair. “It is only that—well.”
Only that she was so visibly in pain. Only that her mother’s love was both a comfort and a forever wound.
“I know,” she said. “But I am glad I have met Sohal. I’ve given him what little knowledge I can. Of—nightmares. Of a rite to manage them. I am glad that… I am not alone. I knew there had to be others like me in the world, Zahir. Other Amrithi living and thriving in the Empire. But to meet one—to truly know, with your own eyes and your own heart, that you are not alone—it’s beyond words. There are others like me, Zahir. Somewhere. Everywhere. I am notalone.”
He said nothing, only held her against the brush of the wind, the ash raining behind the closed lids of her eyes. The distant glow of the desert welcoming her home.
