“No, no. Not flowers. What do I need them for?”
Arwa picked Asima green vegetation, and long grass.
“Can you weave them together?” Asima asked.
When Arwa shook her head, Asima clucked in response.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she said, shaking her head. “A noble girl who can’t weave a simple basket! The Empire has truly fallen to shit, Gods save us.”
Her words drew a startled laugh from Arwa, quickly quelled by Asima’s gimlet-eyed stare. “As you say, Aunt,” Arwa said quickly.
“Can you embroider?” Asima demanded.
“Yes, Aunt.”
“But you can’tweave?”
What followed was a demonstration of how to make a grave-token. It was a simple enough lesson, and one Arwa could follow without paying it all her attention. As she followed Asima’s directions, taking green roots into her hands and winding them into a miniature braid, she worried over the thought of Gulshera watching her lantern-bright window. She worried over the thought as one worries over a sore tooth, incessantly, unable to soothe the irritation away.
She knows, a chill voice said in Arwa’s head.The widow knows what you are. She can see it. Your ill blood. The curse in your bones.
She’ll have you thrown from the hermitage. She’ll set the guards on you, to hunt you like an animal.
You know how they punish people like you.
Gulshera couldn’t know. She couldn’t. But if she did—if she had evenguessed…
Arwa shuddered. The air suddenly felt very cold indeed.
Gulshera was not in her room. The door was locked. Arwa waited outside it for the woman to return. Eventually, Gulshera appeared, striding along the corridor. She hadn’t been attending to prayer or to mourning, or ambling gently along a well-trodden path, as the other widows had. Her bow was at her back, her face flushed with the heat of the day.
“Arwa,” Gulshera acknowledged, tipping her head.
“You watched my room last night,” said Arwa, without preamble. “Why?”
She saw Gulshera’s forehead furrow into a frown.
“Did your mother not teach you subtlety?” Gulshera asked incredulously. “They would eat you alive in Jah Ambha, by the Emperor’s grace! Come inside.”
Arwa followed Gulshera into her room, shutting the door behind her as the older woman swiftly divested herself of her boots and her bow, and the long jacket she wore over her tunic. Finally, when Gulshera was done, she sat by the window, and gestured for Arwa to join her.
“I looked out of my window and saw the light in yours. For amoment,” Gulshera stressed. “No longer. I had no darker motive. I only cared about your welfare. Are you satisfied?”
No, Arwa was not satisfied. Far from it.
“In my experience,” Arwa said steadily, “people don’t just simply care about one another’s welfare. All actions have a purpose. I may be a child to you, Aunt, but I’ve lived long enough to know what people are.”
“Then you’ve lived a terribly sad life,” Gulshera said, not mincing her words. “You’ll learn that we have to look after one another here. We’re not like the noblewomen you left behind, we have no need to play political games and tread on one another for the sake of our husbands or children or even ourselves. Our time of power and glory is finished.
“Perhaps you don’t understand yet,” she continued, “that when your husband died, the part of you that shared in his world died with him. We all came here, by choice or by necessity, because we Ambhans hold our marriages more sacred than the lesser peoples of the world, and we respect our vows beyond death. We are the ghosts of who we once were, and accordingly we must take care of one another. No one else will.” Gulshera’s gaze was fixed on Arwa’s, her voice unrelenting. “You’ll think me dramatic, Arwa, but I assure you I am a realist. You must be one too. For your own sake.”
Fine words. Strong words. But Arwa could not let the bare-fisted blow of them mislead her.
“I know what I know,” she said. She raised her head higher, jaw firm.
Her mother had tried to teach her subtlety. But the art of folding secrets inside words and smiles, and hiding the knife of her anger until it was already in someone’s gut, too late to be escaped—those things had never been Arwa’s strength.Flighty, she’d been called as a child, andmercurial. She wore her heart, fierce and changeable as it was, right on her skin.
Sometimes, her mother had called her worse things. Out of love, and out of fear.Tainted. Cursed.
