But she would. And Arwa did not think she would receive a simple letter in response.
Four days later Arwa was woken by sharp rapping on her door. She shot awake, and wrenched open the door. Gulshera was waiting for her. She was dressed for travel, her veil thrown back, her expression firm.
“They’re here,” she said.
“Who?” Arwa asked.
“The guards who are going to accompany us to Ambha.”
“Us?”
“You have a great number of inane questions,” Gulshera said. “Dress. I assume you’ve already packed your possessions.”
Arwa veiled herself appropriately, dressing in a white robe that covered her body from head to toe. A servant arrived to take her possessions; she assumed Gulshera had arranged it and was thankful. She could barely think over the tense joy and fear running simultaneously through her.
There was a void ahead of her. Unknowable. It brought her far more pleasure than it should have.
There was no great crowd of women, waiting to send Arwa off with tearful farewells, although they watched from their rooms through cracked doors, or hovered guiltily at the edges of the corridors, eyes shadowed, shawls drawn protectively around their faces. Only Roshana and Asima met them at the foyer, Asima leaning heavily on Roshana’s arm.
“You’ve been avoiding us all,” Asima said, overloud. Arwa winced, offering a soft murmur of apology, which Asima discarded with a pointed wave of her hand. “You should have come,” Asima continued. “I would have defended you. I like you better than those other silly owls, ill blood or no.”
She gestured for Arwa to come closer, which Arwa did. She glanced at Roshana’s face, which was downturned, and realized the older woman was crying.
“Take this with you,” Asima said gruffly, shoving something into Arwa’s hands.
“Thank you, Aunt,” Arwa murmured, reflexively. “I’ll miss you. Both of you.”
“Good of you to say,” Asima grumbled, even as Roshana softly murmured, “Take care, Arwa. Please.”
“They’re waiting,” said Gulshera.
Asima and Roshana watched them go.
“I didn’t think you would come with me,” Arwa said, tentative, not yet quite willing to frame a full question, as Gulshera walked ahead of her, and adjusted her veil carefully into place.
“I knew I would have to return to my mistress eventually,” Gulshera said. Her voice was grim. “You are my gift to her. I offered you up. Of course I intend to accompany you.”
That was not correct, of course. Arwa had offered herself up. Her history, her blood. But she made a noise of agreement, lowering her own veil into place.
It was only when she and Gulshera had exited the hermitage, unfamiliar guardswomen waiting to greet them and lead them down the mountainside, that Arwa looked at what Asima had pushed into her hand. It was a grave-token, empty but expertly woven, the grass that had formed it still warm from Asima’s palm. She thought of the way it curved around soil, the way the world cupped the bodies of the dead. Arwa curled her own fingertips over it gently. It would not do to crush it.
The palanquin the soldiers had brought with them was no more comfortable than the one Arwa had traveled to the hermitage in. It was larger, at least. Large enough to accommodate both Arwa and Gulshera comfortably, protecting them from the eyes of the male soldiers who guided the palanquin. Their female retinue was sparse, but the guardswomen were heavily armed and alert, light on their feet around the palanquin’s curtained sides. They’d made no complaints the first—or second, or third—time Arwa had asked for the retinue to pause and allow her to throw up her guts at the roadside.
“They come from my mistress’s own household, I expect,” Gulshera said, speaking to Arwa softly, as Arwa lay on the palanquin’s cushions, trying to regain her composure once again.
It was impossible not to converse, confined as they were with no other entertainment, on their interminable, lurching journey through the mountains. Gulshera had remained pointedly silent for a good day after Arwa first removed her dagger and made a small cut, daubing a crook of the palanquin wood with blood. But in the course of time, she had thawed to Arwa again. Perhaps she was even grateful.
“Tell me about your mistress,” Arwa requested, not particularly expecting a response. She was not surprised when Gulshera merely huffed, reclining back and closing her eyes.
Arwa was already lying on her side, her shawl drawn tight around her, as if the shell of it could keep the full weight of her nausea at bay.
“You will need to trust me eventually,” Arwa pointed out. “I am your gift to her, after all.”
“I suppose,” Gulshera said slowly, “you need to be prepared.”
That would be nice, Arwa thought, with instinctual acidity. She wisely maintained her own silence.
“My mistress,” said Gulshera, “is Princess Jihan, the Emperor’s only legitimate daughter. When I left for the hermitage, she had just risen to the head of her brother Prince Akhtar’s household. She is…was, very much like her mother once was. A clever woman. I have no doubt she has only grown in strength.”
