You must be better than your blood, Arwa. For all our sakes.
Her parents had needed her to make a good marriage, to wed a nobleman of immaculate reputation and stable wealth. They’d needed her to save them. Not from poverty. Not from death. But from the insidious, destructive suffering that disgrace had brought upon their family.
They’d had no son. A man could strive to save his family, could serve valiantly in the military or ascend through the rungs of governmental service. A daughter could only hope to wed well enough to raise her position in society, and raise her family up with her.
So Arwa had done what was necessary. For a handful of liminal years, she had learned to weave a veneer of placidity, for the sake of making herself an attractive prospect as a bride, a worthy noblewoman, better than what lay in her blood. She’d learned to smile and to be soft, to say gentle words when sharp ones came far more easily to her tongue, and in the end her hard-won calm—and her youth—had granted her the older, powerful husband her mother had hoped for her. For a time, she had been better than her true, barbed self. She’d been a commander’s wife. She’d been a noblewoman worthy of respect. Her parents had been able to hold their heads high.
But that was before the circle of blood, and eyes like gold. Before Kamran’s death. Before she realized there was no running from the curse that lived in her own body: that no matter what she did, no matter how she had tried to obey her stepmother’s entreaty, she could not rise beyond what she was.
“I know,” Arwa said, “that you have scrolls that were sent to you by an Ambhan noble family. I was a commander’s wife, Aunt. I know the seals of the great families. But I didn’t recognize the seal upon them, which suggests to me that the seal is not real. Someone of noble blood communicates with you but seeks to hide their true identity. I know you own a man’s bow more expensive than anything I have possessed in my lifetime, embellished in a manner intended to please the eyes at court. Your husband, then, was a politician and a courtier. You wear no jewels but I suspect it is not Roshana who is truly of highest standing in this hermitage. You are.”
Arwa leaned forward, not allowing her gaze to falter.
“You’re not a ghost of a woman, cut off from the world,” said Arwa. “You serve someone. You answer to someone powerful. And you seek to take care of me, of all people. Forgive me, if I do not think your motives are entirely benevolent.”
“Well,” Gulshera said finally. “If we’re talking bluntly…” She leaned forward, intent, mirroring Arwa. “I am under no obligation to tell you anything. You have no power here. No standing. I know a little of you, Lady Arwa. You may have been a great commander’s wife once, but your father was disgraced—”
“Don’t speak of my father,” Arwa said abruptly. She curled her fingers in her lap. She saw Gulshera’s gaze flicker to her fists, then up again. Reading her.
“You are no woman of a great noble house,” Gulshera continued calmly. “Only a woman lucky to wed well. And if you truly believe I am of such high stature and influence, then you shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.”
“I meant no disrespect.”
“Now that is a lie,” Gulshera said.
“Then I apologize,” said Arwa. “I know you don’t have to tell me anything. I know I have no power. I could have been patient. I could have waited for you to reveal what you truly require, in the fullness of time. But I am tired of games, Lady Gulshera. If you do truly care for my welfare, then do me a kindness: Tell me what you want, then leave me alone to mourn.”
“If you have a choice between being blunt or being patient in the future, then choose patient,” Gulshera said. But there was a thoughtful light in her eyes. “Come back here tomorrow morning, after breakfast. We’ll take a walk together.”
Arwa let out a slow exhale.This, after she’d asked for no more games…
“We’ll go down to the valley,” Gulshera said. “Just the two of us, where we can’t be overheard. And there, you can tell me about Darez Fort.”
CHAPTER THREE
The widows ate their evening meal together. Asima had called them prattling owls, and she hadn’t been entirely wrong. Gossip flowed between them ceaselessly, its rhythm broken only by the clatter of plates as they passed dishes of sweet melon and lentil broth and large, soft flatbreads between them. The widows spoke largely of their distant families: of sons struggling to hold tenuous command in their posts, as unrest swelled in famine-stricken provinces, and sharp bouts of unnatural terror flared to life in scattered villages and outposts; of granddaughters primping for court, in the hope of earning a powerful husband or a place in the household of one of the imperial women; of friends or siblings who complained of the tedious duties of household management in provinces where food and fuel were in short supply, as the trade routes crumbled and crops rotted in distant fields.
The widows were not as remote from the politics of the Empire as Arwa had first suspected. Far, far from it. They were noblewomen, after all. She should have known their personal concerns would be rich with veins of political significance, that if they maintained any link with their families, however tenuous, they would know something of how the world continued to fracture far beyond the hermitage’s walls.
From the sound of their gossip, the Empire’s suffering was growing worse with greater speed. Arwa knew she should listen with care, search within their words for seeds of knowledge of use to her. But she could not. She could think only of Darez Fort, and the interrogation that awaited her. She tried not to think of tomorrow, tried not to think of the questions Gulshera was going to ask her. She tried not tofeel.
She failed miserably.
She was tired of questions about Darez Fort. Even before the bodies had been buried, when she’d still been raw with shock and weeping, a high-ranking noblewoman had sat with her and cajoled answers out of her with cold-blooded patience.What did you see, Lady Arwa? How did the men die? And your husband—were you there when he passed? Did he fight the terror bravely? Cry, my dear. Cry, if you must. Just answer me. Good girl.
A male courtier, sent by the Governor of Chand, had spoken to Arwa the evening after the formal funeral. Her mother had been with her then, holding her wrists with firm hands. The man had sat on the other side of a partition wall, clearly uncomfortable with the task he’d been set. Arwa had answered all his question in whispers, as her mother had stared into the middle distance with burning eyes, hot with shame and fury. Another nobleman had come immediately after him—this time a courtier from Ambha itself, sent by the imperial record keepers—and asked nearly the same questions. It was only then that Arwa had finally felt her own outrage spark to life.
Gods curse the lot of them. Couldn’t they have left her to mourn, even that day, of all days? Why had they insisted on interrogating her over and over again, when she clearly had nothing she was willing to offer them? Wasn’t her grief—the terrible, trembling weight of it—enough?
She had hoped the hermitage would offer her safety from the curiosity of the world, a place where her secrets would lie undisturbed. She’d been a fool, of course. Her first moments in the hermitage, when the widows had come to stare at her en masse, had shattered that particular delusion. And Gulshera…
Gulshera had letters from a noble family and a priceless bow lacquered in mother-of-pearl hung on her wall. Gulshera wanted answers from Arwa.You can tell me about Darez Fort, she’d said, as if Arwa would not tell her the same thing she’d told all the people who had interrogated her in the past: The same truths. The same necessary handful of lies.
She’d asked for this, she reminded herself. She’d asked Gulshera not to play games. It was better like this, to speak to her now, to not wait for the inevitable interrogation. She would speak to Gulshera tomorrow, and then she would refuse to answer anyone else. Let the women like Rabia look at her and wonder what had happened to her. Let them pity her. She’d earned the right to silence.
After the meal ended, and the women began to disperse, Arwa returned to her room. She lit her lantern and refreshed the blood on her window. Despite the worry gnawing at her, despite the fact she curled up on the bed with her dagger beside her in her usual vigil, she fell swiftly into sleep, and woke the next morning with a sore neck and her lantern guttered.
She’d had a nightmare. The details had already left her—all she had was the dull echo of terror thrumming in her blood—but it didn’t matter. She knew what she’d dreamed.
