“I will bring him to you.” A mutter. “Better he sees you’re well for himself, anyway.”
There was a long wait, and Arwa was not sure she would be able to stay awake. She closed her eyes for a moment, wrung out with exhaustion. In the distance, she could hear singing—a faint, warbling song about lovers and their amorous games. If she’d had the energy, she would have blushed.
Zahir walked in. He wore no turban, and his hair was longer than she had expected, pin straight where it touched his jaw. He was wan, and he walked carefully, his tunic loose enough to accommodate a bandage. But he was whole.
“Lady Arwa,” he said. “I’m glad you’re awake. And you—remember yourself?”
“Your wound,” she murmured. “Is it paining you?”
A faint smile. “We will see if it heals clean. But I hope it will.”
She wanted to ask him many things—of the palace, of daiva, of their flight that hung in shards in the storm of her memory. Of the soldiers and his blood and her own. But instead she said, “Can I trust…?”
Could she trust Aliye? Could she trust this place—trust anyone but him?
It was terrifying to realize how much weight she placed upon his answer. She trusted Zahir, at least, implicitly. In the panic of that bloody night, she had not even considered leaving him behind.
“I trust her,” said Zahir. “You can also, if you wish.”
“You promised her something.”
“Nothing I can’t afford to give.”
Aliye cleared her throat. Zahir looked down and said, “Drink a little. You have a fever.” A line of worry knitted his brow.
If he trusted Aliye, it would have to be enough.
Arwa drank, clumsy. Zahir helped her, carefully holding the cup.
Arwa closed her eyes then, resisting the urge to ask him not to go. All well and good. When she next opened her eyes, he was gone.
She fell in and out of slumber and fever over and over again. Sometimes she saw ash before her eyes. Other times she simply dreamed. Sometimes Aliye was there, sometimes not. Once, in something like a dream, Arwa thought she saw a new woman watching her from the doorway, her long shadow reaching across the floor. But that was only once, and fever lied.
Aliye brought her food fit for an invalid, and showed her where to bathe and relieve herself. She was a kind nursemaid, but Arwa had a sense she was consuming time that Aliye did not readily have available. Sometimes the older woman appeared with rouged lips and a brocade gown, hurrying in and out of the room, leaving the scent of perfume behind her. At night, Arwa heard not just singers but distant male voices and women’s laughter.
“You say you are a Hidden One,” Arwa said tiredly one morning. The noise and ill dreams had left her restless.
She had asked after Zahir—as she often did—to no avail.He is also recovering, Aliye would tell her, as if that were answer enough. Better, Arwa had decided in the end, to ask different questions. Perhaps she’d eventually receive some helpful answers.
“I am.” Aliye was wetting a cloth for Arwa’s forehead. The coolness, she claimed, would fight the weight of the fever. Arwa accepted this, although she had always had fevers sweated out of her as a child, swaddled in blankets, banking the heat until the sickness passed.
“And you are a courtesan, too?”
“Courtesan, dancing girl, brothel madame,” said Aliye with a shrug. “Call it what you like. A woman must make a living. Well,” she amended. “Most women. I know ladies do not.” She gave Arwa a shrewd look. “But perhaps the world would be better if you ladies were allowed to give more to the Empire. And if we were also.”
Arwa did not know if theweAliye spoke of were the Hidden Ones or courtesans, but she supposed it made little difference. All people in the Empire had their service. All had boundaries they could not cross, for fear of the punishment that would face them on the other side.
The thought quelled Arwa to silence. She looked past Aliye to the lattice window facing—she assumed—the household’s courtyard. Light was pouring through its roots and its leaves, casting winding shadows upon the floor.
“You like the decorations?” asked Aliye, clearly having followed the direction of Arwa’s gaze.
“I spent time in a hermitage,” Arwa said hoarsely. She needed more water. Her throat burned. “There was a similar lattice there. In the prayer room.”
She remembered the daiva rising on wings beyond it.
Tasted ash.
She heard the cool sound of water being wrung from cloth.
