Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  Then she was gone, back into the light and pomp, leaving Arwa alone to clutch at the lattice, her mind whirling, stomach knotted with fear and with fury.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She walked across the bridge, over water black as the night sky above it, and through the doors and gates that enclosed the women’s quarters of Akhtar’s palace. Guardswomen opened the doors, unbarring the way. Arwa did not look at them. She focused on simply striding forward.

  Rage and feeling. That was all she was, and all she could think of. Her skin, her bones, ached with it.

  Instead of returning to her own room, she made her way out to the gardens, not caring if she was seen. And who was here to see her anyway? Only a handful of elders, too infirm to attend the celebration; only guards and maidservants who saw and knew everything regardless.

  She should not have been there. She should have calmed herself, collected herself, remembered the training her mother had given her. She’d known the trick of locking away her feelings once. She should have gone directly to her own room and remained there until morning, breathing through the fury until she could not feel it any longer.

  But Arwa had offered herself to service, body and soul. She had held out her palm and asked Zahir to make a tool of her. Her cheeks burned at the memory. Her insides knotted. Foolish. Foolish.

  It was the shame that compelled her to keep on walking and make her way down the dark staircase into Zahir’s workroom. He was there as he always was, seated at his table with his studies laid out in front of him. He was making a clean duplicate of the book, the original placed to his left, the fresh copy to the right, where he could ink in line after line with neat strokes of his hand.

  “Lord Zahir,” she said.

  He lifted his head.

  “Lady Arwa. I was not expecting you tonight.” He lowered his pen and rose to his feet. “I heard that Parviz had returned.”

  Who had told him? Were there maidservants who swept his room and cleaned his clothes, who also imparted gossip? Did he ever emerge from this place to eat or sleep or simply experience life beyond the confines of the tomb enclosure’s walls? Did he have a place in Prince Akhtar’s household of men, as an impoverished relative, as Arwa and the other elders and widows did in the part of the household under Jihan’s purview?

  None of it mattered. In truth, he should not have been here at all. He was a blessed. He should have been given a position as a military general serving under a governor, a commander of a garrison fort, even a governor of a far-flung province. He had the talent to be a scholar. He could have served as a scribe or in the imperial court. Anything but this strange half life, hidden away in darkness and secrecy.

  The thought of his incongruity, his strangeness, only made her angrier.

  “Princess Jihan spoke to me alone,” said Arwa. “She wanted to impress upon me the importance of making you happy. She asked me whether I would be willing to discard my reputation for the sake of service. To you.”

  “Did she.” Zahir’s voice was carefully neutral.

  “I believed I was serving you in order to save the Empire. That was what I offered. And, my lord, that is all I offer.”

  He closed his eyes, head tilting back. Exhaled.

  “I suppose I should be grateful,” Arwa said shakily. “I suppose I should want to make you happy, of my own volition. I am only a widow, after all. Only the illegitimate, Amrithi-blooded child of a nobleman in disgrace. What do I matter, compared to you?”

  His eyes snapped open. He lowered his head.

  “Lady Arwa,” he said. “No.”

  His eyes were fixed on her hands now, which were fists before her. She uncurled them, and he raised his head, gazing at her veiled face.

  “I want nothing from you,” he said. “I promise you.”

  Liar.

  She knew he was drawn to the movement of her hands, that something about her fascinated him. Perhaps he did not even know it. Lonely, Jihan had called him. But Arwa could only look at him and think of his vulnerable neck, his wrists, the moonlight on him and think, Starving, he is starving.

  It only made her more furious to think it. She was starving too.

  “So, then,” she said. “Is this what you want, freely offered, my lord?” She lifted her veil, her mother’s voice winter in her ears. Fool girl. Fool. “What do you think? Will I suit?”

  He looked upon her face. Of course he did.

  He had seen it before, in the realm of ash. But there she had not been flesh. She was flesh now, skin chilled by the air, her shorn hair curling faintly around her ears, lantern light flickering on her skin, just as it did on his.

  Abruptly, he blinked. Sucked in a breath and looked away.

  “Put your veil back in place. Please.”

  She didn’t. She was in no mood to obey him.

  “I am waiting for an answer, my lord.”

  “You do not understand. I only seek an apprentice, Lady Arwa.”

  “That was not what Jihan said.”

  “My sister’s will is not my own,” he snapped. There was color in his face, creeping up his neck. “I am loyal to Jihan, I love her, but I also know what she is. Surely you recognize that she is not—as we are.”

  “As we are, my lord?” She took a step closer to him, their shadows melding upon the floor. Her voice felt viperous in her own throat, sweet. “Please, explain that to me.”

  “We know the necessity of being useful, do we not, Lady Arwa? We know the weight of it. The danger of not being what we must be.” He looked over her shoulder, at a fixed point in the distance; even the way he consciously avoided her face was like a brand upon her. “When my mother fell into the Emperor’s disfavor, Jihan was the one who begged for my life to be spared. She will say, perhaps, that I was saved for love or for pity. But I know her mother saw the use of me—I had the knowledge of such arts even then—and as a result I was spared and given a place in the imperial household. I had tutors. I was given a home and a purpose, by her grace and favor. But I do not forget that I live for my worth alone. And Jihan is…”

  Zahir trailed off. Gestured helplessly. “She is clever in the ways of court. She knows the value of knowledge, and of power. She knows how to play the games the court play. She could have remained in her father’s court and cultivated his ear as Masuma does, but she chose to become the head of Akhtar’s household instead because she has a measure of freedom here that she would not have under Masuma’s thumb. She has the right, among other rights, to keep—me.” Zahir shook his head, a bitter and fleeting smile on his face. “She knows how to spin people to her whims, my sister. And she does so whenever she deems it necessary.”

  “And she thinks she will gain some benefit from giving my honor to you?”

  “She cannot give what you don’t offer.”

  Arwa laughed harshly. She could not help it.

  “Of course she can.”

  “She cannot give what I won’t take, then,” snapped Zahir. “You came here of your own free will, Lady Arwa, came to this service out of loyalty and love for the Empire, and I am grateful. But I know how free will can bend to necessity and survival. I know. And I do not ask for more.”

  There was silence. Arwa touched a hand to her own throat. She felt her pulse, a harsh rhythm beneath her fingertips. She breathed.

  “Whatever Jihan may attempt,” he said finally, “whatever she may believe, I have told her and I tell you now: I called you my apprentice, my assistant, and that is all I want, and all I need from you.”

  Need and want.

  “She called you lonely,” said Arwa. “And I am…”

  She trailed off. She would not tell him what she was. She could not even tell herself.

  He raised his head as she lowered her veil. This slight man, with a disarmingly lovely face and cool, clever eyes. She looked at him through gauze and felt her stomach knot.

  Starving, she thought again. Starving.

  He looked at her as if he knew, as if he had always known what J
ihan had hoped. There was pity in the turn of his mouth, but something sharp too.

  “My sister’s will is not my will,” he said. “Now, Lady Arwa, I have work I need to do. You don’t need to stay.”

  She went to Zahir the next night. She did not know what to expect from him. She prepared herself for barbed tension, for awkwardness, even to be banished away. But Zahir had placed new books on the table for her: slim, simple volumes of poetry and essays. He had placed cups of tea, poured fresh from the samovar, upon the table too.

  “Don’t fear,” he said. “This is the normal kind of tea.”

  Arwa recognized a peace offering when she saw one. She sat down and took a cup. Adjusted her veil and drank.

  Zahir sat down across from her and took up his own cup.

  “We should discuss the terms of our arrangement.” His voice was tentative. Gaze fixed on the tea.

  “There’s no need.”

  “I think there is. Your apprenticeship would benefit from clearer rules. Clearer boundaries.”

  “I am sorry if—”

  “Please don’t apologize. You believed I erred. That I broke the boundaries that define your honor. I understand the significance of such a thing. My mother…” His mouth thinned. His voice was careful. “My mother was a successful courtesan. But when she tried to be more, to use her scholarly knowledge to help the Empire… Well. It was not her place, in my father’s eyes. And she paid a high price for her transgression.”

  He lowered his cup to the table.

  “Lady Arwa. I am familiar with the fear a relationship without rules engenders. I am a blessed. I am a man. And yet here I am, in the imperial palace, in the women’s quarters, in this—place. There are no rules for what I am, and that means I have no guidance on how best to ensure my own survival. You have, perhaps, realized that I am a person who appreciates guidance.”

  She looked at the books behind him and said nothing. Yes. She’d understood that about him some time ago.

  “For your sake and mine, we should establish rules between us. A contract of a kind.”

  “I cannot make contracts,” Arwa said, strangely numb. “Beyond the choice of whom I marry—that is a boundary of my honor as a noblewoman, also.”

  Noblewomen were the treasures of their husbands and their fathers. Their care—their futures—lay in the hands of their men. Zahir knew this as Arwa did, but he kindly did not point out all the ways Arwa had vowed herself to him and Jihan both, in ways that she had no right to.

  “Of a kind,” he repeated. “A discussion, then. An act of trust. Is that more agreeable to you?”

  She nodded wordlessly. She kept her tea clasped between her hands, taking comfort in its warmth.

  He began.

  “I will not ask anything of you—anything—beyond what is required to reach the Maha’s ash. I cannot promise you will not be harmed in this endeavor. As you know, I am not aware of all the risks.”

  “I am not afraid of harm.”

  “No,” said Zahir. His gaze flickered to her hands, and back to his own cup. “I know.”

  She clasped her fingers an increment tighter. Heat against her scarred palm.

  “Beyond that, Lady Arwa, your honor is your own. The terms of your reputation are your own. How you maintain it—the behaviors you choose, the actions you take—are in your hands. And I will respect the parameters you choose.”

  “You have no boundaries of your own? No rules I must abide by?”

  He paused.

  “I have never considered it,” he said. Then: “No, Lady Arwa. But if you’re willing, I would like to enter the realm of ash again. Will you join me?”

  “Of course,” she told him. It was what she was here for, after all.

  She removed her veil when he lit the fire. He did not comment on it. He carefully avoided staring at her face as he brought the flames to a gentle smolder, as he poured laced tea, and gave her the dagger so she could add her own blood to the glow of the flames.

  If he had asked, she would have explained that the smoke made her feel as if she were choking, that combined with the weight of her veil it made her feel trapped, that she could not sleep covered as she had been. But he did not ask. Arwa drank the tea and fell into a swift, unnatural sleep.

  Zahir was there instantly. The storm surrounded her, and then his hand was on her own, their blood roots binding fast. She followed him, stumbling through the feel of her body’s quick heartbeat, into the forest of his path of ash.

  “Are we going to seek the Maha’s ash?” she asked.

  Zahir was silent for a long moment.

  “Consuming ash was—not a comfortable experience.”

  Arwa felt no more at ease in the realm of ash than she had the first time they had entered it. The feel of being cleaved into two halves was still distinctly terrifying. Dizzying. But she had enough familiarity with it to now marvel at the smaller elements of its overall strangeness: the pulse of the blood roots, shifting across and beneath the facets of her dreamed skin. The refracted strangeness of her own limbs, and Zahir’s, as they rippled and changed, glittering beasts of glass.

  Zahir was entirely still. As he pondered, the ground shifted beneath them, pale-leaved.

  “Are you prepared?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “We must try. It’s our purpose, after all.”

  Our purpose.

  “Together, then,” Arwa said softly. “Lead the way, my lord.”

  They walked along his path, deeper and deeper into the realm of ash. As before, the trees loomed and changed. Arwa saw figures moving in the gloom. It became harder and harder to move through the ash. She could feel the tightening grip of the blood roots, and far away, the beat of her own heart, the rattle of her own breath in her lungs.

  The air was closing around her.

  “That’s it,” he said, when Arwa’s grip tightened. “Hold on tightly.”

  They had moved far. Far. It felt like centuries had slipped away beneath their dreamed feet, trampled bloody and soft. Around them the world narrowed. Arwa felt strangely crushed. Every step was growing harder.

  Beneath them the haze of the ground had altered.

  They were standing upon sand. Pale, white sand.

  “This reminds me of Irinah’s desert,” she told him. Her distant heart speeding, jaw tight. “We must be close to him. The Maha. Surely we are?”

  “I think I can feel him.” She felt more than heard the trembling hope in Zahir’s voice. Around them the branches of the trees twisted, becoming sharp knifepoints that speared the ivory sky.

  She felt the sand rising around her ankles. Her distant breath felt shallow, far too shallow. Her ears strangely ached, full somehow of the howl of a storm, wailing—

  “I don’t think I can go farther,” she told him. “My flesh. My head—”

  “I know,” he said. “The pain is—”

  “Too much,” Arwa wrenched out. “My soul hurts. I did not know a soul could hurt.”

  Zahir paused, silent. An unreal wind blew the sand around their feet.

  “The bridge is not strong enough after all,” he said finally. “Despite your blood. We’ll have to rethink.”

  He took a step back, leaning into the tug of those roots. Arwa felt the moment soul and flesh joined, like a piecing together of two halves, roots fusing her whole—

  She woke. Gasping.

  Her limbs ached strangely. They felt like ill-fitting clothes; they felt as if she had outgrown them. A moment, and the feeling passed. But still, she didn’t move, her face pressed to the blanket beneath her, her breath and tears damp on the cloth.

  “Lady Arwa.” Zahir’s voice. “I have water.”

  She took it and drank gratefully, straight from the carafe.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “I will do some study,” he said. “We cannot go farther, if the realm affects us so. Can you stand?”

  “I think so.”

  He stoo
d and stepped back, allowing Arwa to rise to her own feet. She followed him then back into his library. She steadied herself with a hand on the shelf, making a show of staring at each book in turn to hide her weakness, and following the titles with the brush of her fingers, as she had seen Zahir do many times before.

  “You have a number of books by the Hidden One,” she noted.

  “The poems are important to me,” he said.

  “I’m not surprised, Lord Zahir. They are rather beautiful.” There was an intimacy to them that appealed to her, resonated in her mouth, when she followed the words.

  “Take one of the books with you, if you like,” he said. A pause. Then, careful: “Or read here, if you prefer.”

  Her finger paused upon the shelf. She hesitated.

  Arwa thought of Jihan, telling her to make Zahir happy. The memory was utterly bitter.

  My honor is my own, Arwa told herself. My boundaries my own. So she and Zahir had agreed.

  Oh, she knew what a paper-thin fiction that was. Reputation and honor were the business of society, and Arwa’s only responsibility was to adhere to the laws the world laid out for her. But here, within these strange walls, she could almost convince herself of the sweet lie Zahir had offered her, that the pact of trust they had concocted together protected her from dishonor. She wanted to believe she had such power—that she defined her worth and her status.

  So in that moment, she allowed the fiction to stand.

  “The company would be pleasant,” she told him.

  They both sat at the table. He began his copy work once more, and Arwa read the poetry, the crackle of the lantern and the hum of the breeze the only noise between them.

  Eventually Arwa lifted her head. She saw then that Zahir had fallen asleep, head against the wall, chin tucked against his chest. A strand of dark hair had somehow escaped his turban, and lay across his forehead. He looked younger, in sleep.

  The night was cold, and he wore no jacket, just a long-sleeved tunic and trousers. In a fit of sudden compassion, Arwa removed her shawl and draped it around him. He didn’t even stir.

  She snuffed out the lantern upon the table, then stood and left him. She walked through the garden, beneath the rustling trees, as rock doves flew free from their tower over her head, black shadows against the star-flecked night.