Abruptly, Zahir stopped.
“I cannot go farther,” he said.
“Can’t or won’t?” asked Arwa.
“Can’t.” He held his hand before him. Around the blood roots, his hand had faded; light poured through shattered facets of flesh that barely resembled the shape of fingers, of a wrist, of a palm. “This feels,” he said, “like an end.”
He stared into the distance.
Then: “Your blood, the fire built from the dust of Irinah—none of it is enough. We cannot do it.”
“Pull back with me,” she said softly. “Let the roots take you home.”
They returned to the waking world. Rose to their feet. Arwa grabbed the water carafe as Zahir rubbed his knuckles over his closed eyes, frowning and thoughtful.
When she offered him the water—after drinking some herself—he said, “We need to go to Irinah. Nothing else will work. Nothing else will be swift enough for our need.”
“And you think,” Arwa said, all even disbelief, “that anyone is going to allow you or me to visit Irinah? To leave the palace, after what the Emperor said of you?”
“I can ask Jihan,” he said.
“She has no more power than she did before, my lord.”
“She is now the head of the household of the Emperor’s heir,” Zahir replied. “And there is no other way to reach the Maha’s ash. I can only ask. And hope.”
He did not sound convinced. Arwa was not either.
“I will talk to her,” he said. “Don’t worry, Lady Arwa.”
Of course she worried.
She went to the dovecote tower to watch the dawn. She saw no bird-spirits there this time: only pale light rising in the distance, and the city of Jah Ambha spread out before her, beyond the expanse of water surrounding the sprawl of the imperial palace.
When she returned to her own room she thought unceasingly of the realm of ash, of the defeated slump of Zahir’s shoulders, of Ushan and Nazrin and all the ghosts within her still, their ash in her skull and soul. She thought of her sister’s ghost, a thing so horribly alive that it filled her gut with poisonously false hope.
Zahir had told her the dangers of the realm of ash, of breaking away from the protection of shared blood roots. Well, Arwa was now reaping the consequences of her own foolishness. She had broken away from him, felt the ash of her broken ancestors, and carried it with her now. She could not shake it. Sometimes, in truth, the world of the ash—of Ushan and Nazrin, of her sister smiling andalive—felt more real than Arwa’s own mortal life.
What the ash had done to her was no different from the way Zahir could now embroider, could shape familiar stars. And yet it was entirely different. Traumatic. A colder, more difficult burden.
What would it be like holding the Maha in his skin? Worse. To know what it was to be Amrithi was to know family and love, and persecution and fear, rites of worship and magic in the blood. To know what it was to be the Maha…
A shudder ran through her at the thought. The ash rose within her too. She felt its shadow steal through her veins. Her flesh.
She held her hands before her. The one scarred, the other nearly unmarked. She turned them before her. She remembered the shape of a knife in her hand. The shape of sigils her ancestors had used to speak to the daiva in their own language. She reached for that knowledge now, out of curiosity, out of a fear that was half hunger: How much still remained with her?
She felt the ash rise higher within her, felt knowledge bloom, somehow sharp as glass. A rite was a form of worship. A rite communicated with the daiva, worshipped the daiva. Feet firm to the ground, tying one to earth. Hands to the air, to touch sky. The body as the conduit between.
Arwa raised her hands. Widened her stance.
Breathing deep, she moved. Sigils flickered on her fingers, hands drawing into unfamiliar shapes. Muscles unused to the actions took a hairsbreadth of a moment to respond, but respond they did.
It was only when she stopped, panting, that she knew what she had done, cobbled together from a patchwork of ash. The Rite of Shelter. A safe harbor from the storm. A rite Nazrin had performed, to protect her children, foolish as the hope was.
She had prayed for safety with the same foolish hope as her ancestors. She stared down at her hands, then drew them up to her face, holding them to her skin. In the cover of her own palms, she felt shielded from the weight of her own crushing fear.
I don’t want to die, she thought.But I can’t leave. I won’t.
I chose this path. I will see it to the end.
