A beat. Two. Three.
“No, Arwa.” Gulshera shook her head, mouth thin. As if she’d already considered the option and discarded it. “Widow though you may be, you still have a noblewoman’s honor. That must be protected. Your place is here, or in your father’s care.”
“I can’t stay here,” Arwa said. “I came here for peace, but now the widows know what I am—you think they will allow me to stay?”
“Of course not.”
“The daiva follow me. Darez Fort follows me. I can’t run any farther from what lies in my blood. Send me to your mistress. Let me offer my cursed blood to her curiosity and her cause. As for my family… You think I wish to carry this darkness home with me, to my mother and father?”
“I imagine not,” said Gulshera. “That makes your offer no less foolish.”
“I am not being foolish,” Arwa said. For once, foronce, she was not. “I am attempting to be useful. Is that not what we are taught from birth, Aunt? To serve the Empire—to be loyal and dutiful, to offer our service to the Empire’s glory—there is no higher purpose, surely?”
Gulshera laughed. A strange, helpless sound, full of bitterness. She looked over Arwa’s head, at something in the distance that Arwa could not see—a memory, an image beyond her reach.
“They will eat you alive, and spit out your bones. They will take everything you offer and they will feel nothing for you,” Gulshera said. “That is their way. More than that, that is theirright.”
“It is better than being useless,” Arwa said softly. She meant it.
To be of no use to the Empire was to be discarded. She had seen what became of her family, when Mehr exposed them to disgrace. She had seen what had become of her father, denied his inherited governorship, his daughter, his health. She had felt her mother’s horror as their old friends and old power withered away from them, leaving them utterly alone.
If her father had been well, perhaps in time he would have restored their lost glory. If he had been ill, but still Governor, he would have had the right to retire with honor, respected and feted. But in a world where all hisusewas gone, when the Empire could not benefit from him, he had been erased.
Arwa had no hope of restoring her family’s glory, not now that she was widowed. But she could avoid heaping further disgrace upon them. She could take her cursed blood and lay it out before Gulshera as a priceless gift, a weapon and a tool that could be bartered or sold, instead of a reason to destroy what little position and reputation she had left. She could beuseful.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a chance for the possibilities in my blood to be put to good use,” Arwa said quietly, letting something other than anger infuse her voice for once. “All my life, I’ve been ashamed of it. I have kept my blood a secret. Even after Darez Fort I knew it would do me no good—do no one any good, only harm—if I shared the truth. But now the truth may serve a use. Now my blood may help the Empire, may be a cure, and…” She released a breath. “That is a relief, Aunt. I can’t deny it.”
The idea was insidious. She didn’t need to hold on to her rage; this awful thing turned both inward and outward, hungry and hurt. She could throw herself to the mercy of larger forces. Instead of being a victim of the Empire’s curse, she could be its cure.
“Ah, fool child,” Gulshera said. There was despair in her voice. Then she was abruptly silent, passing a hand over her face, as if she could grasp her feelings and draw them away in her palm.
Arwa closed her eyes. The dark behind them felt like it was enfolding her; she was held up by it, distant from her flesh, distant as stars. She could hear something like whispers.
“I think,” she said faintly, “that I am going to need a physician very soon.”
“Ah,” Gulshera said. “Yes.”
Arwa heard her footsteps. She took Arwa’s wounded hand and held it gently up, cursing in a short whisper. Then she spoke again, her voice its normal tone and cadence.
“I will write to my mistress,” said Gulshera. “If she wants you… well.”
“She will,” Arwa insisted. “You know she will.”
“I expect you’re correct,” said Gulshera. She placed a hand against Arwa’s forehead. Her touch was soft. “I am sorry, child.”
“Don’t be,” Arwa said, not knowing if Gulshera apologized in sympathy for Arwa’s pain, or for the fate that lay before her. “This is all my own doing.”
CHAPTER SIX
Gulshera wrote a letter to her mistress that night, as Arwa’s hand was cleaned and bandaged by one of the servants who refused to meet her eyes. The next morning, Arwa found her dagger by her door, wrapped in cloth and cleaned so that no soil marked it any longer. A terse message lay beside it:
I have sent your offer.
After that, the waiting began.
In this hermitage of widows, Arwa had begun to find a way to survive. She’d found the promise of comfort in her walks with Asima, in the quiet solace of worship and even the gossip that filled the widows’ evenings. Most of all, she had found a safe outlet for her anger: a weapon shaped to let her rage fly free. Now all that had to be put away. Her new life had to be folded up, peeled away from her skin. It did not belong here any longer.
Now she had only this: Her clean blade. Her wounded, aching, healing hand. The promise of purpose worth dying for.
