There were herbs steeped in water, a small bowl of honey, and a shallow tray of attar-scented water. Next to the tea were vegetables fried golden in gram flour. Arwa poured the tea and heaped in honey for both her and Gulshera, then took a quick sip from her own cup that was burning sweet.
“You didn’t sleep,” said Gulshera.
It wasn’t a question. “I slept a little,” Arwa said anyway.
“No food, and no sleep.” Gulshera sipped her own drink; steam rose up around her face in coils. “I see.”
Arwa picked up a fritter and bit into it pointedly, resisting the urge to bristle. No doubt Gulshera thought she was a fragile creature, a young and witless thing fueled by love and religious fervor, shattered by what she had seen that day and night at the fort a mere handful of months ago.
Let her think it. It was better than the truth.
She waited for Gulshera to begin lecturing her. She stared down at her oil-stained fingers in silence, as Gulshera sipped her tea and took one of the fritters for herself.
Instead, Gulshera said, “Eat. Drink your tea. Then go, when you like.”
“Go?”
“When you like,” Gulshera repeated. She soaked her fingers in the attar-water, then stood, leaving Arwa alone with her tea and the cooling fritters, under a pale slant of sunlight pouring in through the window. She heard Gulshera settle at the writing desk. The sound of rustling paper followed.
Arwa hesitated.
A memory came to her, unbidden, of the feral cat she’d found in the gardens of her first home in the province Hara, where she had lived as a girl of ten. She’d been determined to make a friend of that cat, with its one bad eye and fanged teeth, but it ran and hid in the foliage whenever Arwa approached it. She’d gained a number of scratches before she’d learned that if she left slivers of meat on the ground near her, it would come and eat by her warily, as long as she studiously ignored its presence. In the end, it had grown warm with her, following her around the gardens, sleeping on her lap if she sat in the right patch of sun. Indifference and food had won it better than any straightforward affection could ever have.
Arwa had the discomforting sense that Gulshera was treating her with the same studied, indifferent regard Arwa had once shown that cat.
She wants something from me, Arwa thought.
She ate another fritter anyway, and drank her tea, before she murmured a suitably gracious thank-you and moved to leave.
“Come back whenever you like,” Gulshera said, not raising her head as Arwa left the room. “I always have enough for two.”
Arwa had liked the brusqueness of Gulshera’s care, somewhat despite herself. But as time went on—as she walked from Gulshera’s room across the hermitage, passing rooms and other widows—the memory of Gulshera’s words began to feed her disquiet.
You didn’t sleep, Gulshera had said. It hadn’t sounded like a guess. Perhaps Arwa was simply that transparent, but she went to her room anyway, checking the undisturbed line of blood on her window ledge, hidden carefully beneath her own miniature effigy of the Emperor. No one had searched her room. And her dagger was in her sash, hidden where no one would find it, and recognize it for what it was.
Arwa looked out of the lattice window. Without the press of night beyond it, she could see that the hermitage stood above a deep valley studded with rich swathes of flowers. The hermitage curved like a crescent moon, following the shape of the valley below it. Arwa’s window faced another, far at the other edge of the building.
Gulshera’s room lay at the other end of the hermitage. She’d walked the journey between their bedrooms, and knew that now. No doubt she must have looked out of her own window in the night and seen Arwa’s oil lantern burning. Perhaps she’d looked for a moment only, then gone back to bed. Perhaps she’d watched for a long time, marking the constant flicker of light in Arwa’s window, wondering what dark thoughts kept Arwa far from rest.
Either way, she knew the exact location of Arwa’s room. She’d stared through the press of the dark at Arwa’s lantern light, deliberately, thoughtfully. It disturbed Arwa to be so watched. She stepped back from the lattice and sat on her bed, hands clenched, searching for calm. She had told Nuri she would protect herself. She’d been sure she would be able to keep her secrets hidden. And yet, Gulshera had watched her. Gulshera had marked her strangeness, even if she did not truly know its cause. Arwa thought of how she’d listened to Gulshera’s words without discerning their full import, and stared about the older woman’s room wide-eyed without using any of the thought and cunning a noblewoman should sensibly employ. Fool. She was a fool.
What else, she thought,did I miss?
After the midday rest—which Arwa spent pacing her room back and forth, fear and fury building up within her like a steady poison—Roshana dragged her out to join a small group of widows on their daily walk. Roshana spoke to Arwa anxiously, asking how well she was settling in, and how she liked it here in Numriha, so far from her old home. Arwa clamped down on the instinct to snap at her, struggling to be gracious in response to Roshana’s steady stream of questions. She had already raised the suspicions of one widow with her night-long candle burning. She did not need to disturb another with her rage. Still, she was glad when Asima commandeered her, demanding that Arwa walk by her side instead. Asima demanded nothing of her but a steady arm and occasional murmur of understanding. That, Arwa could provide.
She felt as if her insides were coiled tight.
There was a gentle avenue that followed the edge of the hermitage, not quite dipping into the steeper territory of the valley. It was a smooth enough path for the widows of varying levels of health to walk it comfortably. From here, Arwa could see the valley, and also glimpse the guardswomen who walked the roof of the hermitage, on the lookout for bandits who’d normally consider a house of noblewomen a ripe target.
“You should dress more warmly,” muttered Asima. “A thicker shawl at least, girl. There’s a bitter chill in the air this season. Even the Emperor caught a chill, I hear.”
“Did he?”
“Don’t listen to gossip, do you?” Arwa did not have the chance to interject that her recent bereavement had rather stood in the way of her gathering gossip, before Asima continued. “Good. You’re better than these other prattling owls, then. Pick some of that for me now.”
Asima pointed to some gnarled vegetation.
“Not the flowers?” Arwa asked, leaning down.
