Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  “We can study the question together,” he said. “If you’d like to. We can try to find out why this daiva seeks to keep you safe. Aliye has books we can use.”

  “Maybe,” Arwa said, after a time. “Let me think on it.”

  “If I were you,” he said, “I would want to study its relationship to me. My power over it. And its power over me in return. The mechanisms of our relationship. Everything.”

  “You’d write a book, I expect,” said Arwa, not without fondness. “You take a joy in scholarship that I simply do not. In that, we differ.”

  Oh, she hungered for knowledge. But she hungered for something no amount of study could give her: a history that was not a book with pages ripped out, bare-spined. She wanted to understand the daiva, and rites, and her Amrithi heritage. She wanted knowledge that would lie soft and easy in her bones. A thing that needed no codifying. A thing she had not had to fight for.

  Arwa looked behind them at the sleep mat, distracting herself.

  “You sleep out here, don’t you?”

  “Foolish though it may be, it allows me to feel as if I’m keeping watch. If Parviz—if the Emperor—knows I live… well.”

  “You think he knows you’ve survived?”

  “I don’t know. Aliye tells me people claim to have seen a dark shadow fly from the palace the night my father died. An ill omen, they call it. So perhaps he does. Perhaps not. All I know is that he is not here, and I hope that does not change.” Zahir’s voice was grim.

  Arwa thought of the guards that had watched her and Zahir drop from the dovecote tower. The expanse of wings that had opened at Zahir’s back. She had no words of comfort for him. Only ash in her mouth, and a voice in her ears. Ushan.

  “You should rest,” she said.

  “At dawn, I’ll consider it. Perhaps.”

  “Believe me, I know you’re competent with a blade,” Arwa said gently. The memory of his blade stabbing through the soldier’s neck would stay with her a long time. It absurdly comforted her. You were right. You are not as soft as your sister thinks you are, Zahir, and I am glad for that. “I’m sure you could dispatch a dozen of your brother’s men, if the need arose. But as we’ve discussed, I have spirits ensuring my survival. I can keep watch.”

  “You’re mocking me,” he said, after a pause. Rubbed his knuckles against his forehead. “Fine. I suppose I can rest.”

  “Good,” she said. “Lie down now.”

  He muttered something unsavory under his breath, then lay down on the sleep mat. He was unconscious in minutes.

  Arwa’s own eyes stung with exhaustion, her head full of ash. She did not have the energy to fear that palace soldiers would come crashing through the doors, as Zahir did. But she would remain awake for his sake. She tucked her chin against her knees once more and closed her eyes. She listened to the hum of the city, and didn’t open her eyes again until dawn lightened the sky and turned the dark of her closed eyelids red.

  Aliye was waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder. Her lips were reddened, her kohl-rimmed eyes slightly smudged from sweat. She had been awake all night, but her gaze was still sharp. Urgent.

  “Zahir,” she said. “I have a visitor for you.”

  “A visitor,” Arwa repeated. She looked at Zahir askance, but his gaze was fixed on Aliye. He nodded slowly.

  “Well.” Exhaled breath. “Could you take me to them, Aunt?”

  Arwa nudged his arm, trying to draw his attention. He studiously ignored her. Kept walking.

  Coward.

  Aliye led them along the narrow corridor. At the end was a door; she drew the bar back and guided them through, to a bedroom. There was a woman within, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed. She raised her head.

  Arwa knew her.

  “Eshara,” she whispered.

  “Lady Arwa.” Something flitted across her face. An expression somewhere between disbelief and hope. “Lord Zahir. You both live.”

  “You survived,” Zahir said. Voice tight. “I wasn’t sure. I hoped, of course.”

  “It wasn’t my shift,” Eshara said. “I was lucky.”

  “Reya?” Arwa whispered.

  “As I said. I was lucky.”

  They stared at one another, a long moment in which words were not spoken.

  “You know Eshara, I see,” Zahir said finally, clearing his throat a little.

  “Yes,” said Arwa. “She patrolled my corridor in the women’s quarters.”

  “She’s a Hidden One born and reared,” said Zahir, looking between them like a man attempting to solve a dangerous puzzle. “As a girl, she attended salons at my mother’s home, with her own mother. She’s carried messages from time to time between Aunt Aliye and me, as a kindness to me.”

  “That was brave of you,” said Arwa.

  “I couldn’t tell you about me, of course,” said Eshara, her expression guarded. “I did not know if you could be trusted.”

  I still don’t know, her gaze seemed to say. And why would she? Arwa had never won her trust. After their first conversation, she had barely spoken to Eshara, wrapped up as she’d been in the realm of ash and the promise of service to a higher purpose.

  She’d thought Eshara despised Arwa’s own service. She hadn’t looked beyond that surface veneer of distaste. No doubt Eshara had never intended her to. That veneer had been its own protective veil.

  “I’m here with news,” Eshara was saying to Zahir. “Do you have any idea what kind of rumors are sprouting up around your name?”

  Zahir looked at Aliye.

  “No,” he said. “Please, do tell me, Eshara.”

  “Apparently, no one has seen the body of the Emperor’s blessed son, the one he named Maha’s heir before his death,” Eshara said levelly. “No one has seen him alive, either, of course. But on the night Prince Akhtar and his closest confidantes were murdered, many people claim they saw a man fling himself from the palace walls, grow wings, and fly.” Eshara shook her head. “Those people babbled, of course, and though many believe the man was Prince Akhtar or Nasir or the dead Emperor himself ascending to the Gods, even more still claim that the Maha’s heir survived. They whisper that he must have used his Maha-touched power to save himself from death at the new Emperor’s bloodied hands. They say, The Maha’s heir lives, as gifted and Gods-graced as his great ancestor, and he will save us all.”

  Zahir lowered his head and swore.

  “I didn’t quite believe it,” Eshara said. “But here you are. Wings, Zahir?”

  “They should have seen a woman and a man,” he said tersely. “How far have the rumors spread?”

  “Oh, everywhere. I haven’t been back to the palace since—Reya’s death.” Eshara’s voice caught, just for a moment. “But you can’t find a shop or drinking house where people aren’t talking of the deaths of the princes and the survival of the Maha’s heir.”

  Zahir swore again and pressed his knuckles to his forehead.

  “Before we lament further,” said Aliye, cutting in from where she stood by the door, her arms folded, “have you decided what you will do, Zahir?”

  Zahir shook his head. Aliye frowned.

  “You told me you wish to go to Irinah.”

  “Wished,” corrected Zahir. “Things are different now, Aunt. The Empire is greatly altered. Parviz is more likely to hack off my head than accept my counsel, Maha’s ash or no.”

  “You know it is not only the Emperor who seeks to preserve the Empire, or has the means to do so.”

  Zahir was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I promised you information. I’ve given you and your sister scholars my knowledge of the realm of ash. I offered no more than that.”

  “I don’t ask for the Maha’s knowledge out of a desire to barter with you further. Giving us the Maha’s knowledge would be the right thing to do, Zahir.” Aliye’s voice was suddenly rich, impassioned. “We do not have armies and thrones, as your brother does, but we are not lacking in influence. We are everywhere, seeking and learning, holdin
g the Empire as it crumbles. You do not know what we have already averted, through carefully chosen lies and truths, through the men we cultivate, through the light of knowledge alone.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “If you hear nothing of the fall of Atara Fort, it is the work of a group of my sisters, who betrayed one soldier’s traitorous pillow talk to his commander. If you do hear of a fatherless man of low blood raised to commander or noble adviser, then you see our efforts to ensure the strongest in the Empire rise. And if the royal mortician tells his pretty mistress in confidence that Prince Akhtar was strangled to death, and she spreads the knowledge of it, so that Parviz may not sit easy on his stolen throne…” Aliye made an expansive gesture. “Small gestures can have great power.”

  “The spread of the story of the Maha’s heir,” Arwa whispered. “You had a hand in it. Didn’t you?”

  Aliye said nothing. But she nodded, eyes on Arwa, as if to say, You have the measure of me.

  “Aliye,” Eshara said, in an aggrieved tone. “Tell me you haven’t.”

  “You were not there when we conferred, Eshara,” Aliye said. “But the will of the Hidden Ones is united in this. We honor the Emperors who rule by right of the Maha’s blood. But Parviz is no true Emperor. He was not his father’s chosen heir. He has broken the imperial line of legitimacy, and worse still, he abhors everything we believe in.” Her voice lowered. “We know what became of Durevi, under his rule. We will not see the people of the Empire suffer as Durevi has for what he names heresy.”

  “Spreading tales will only anger him, Aunt,” said Zahir.

  “He may be angry, indeed,” she agreed. “But his court will remember that he strangled the fine, upstanding brother who should have ruled them. They will remember that the Maha’s heir has slipped beyond his reach. And when he gives his orders to seek out heretics and see them gutted, his court will hesitate. Perhaps they will even disobey.” She shrugged, one elegant lift of her shoulders. “Better for us all, that his throne rests upon such a bed of sand.”

  Eshara muttered something unsavory under her breath. Then she said, “It paints a target on Zahir.”

  “It does,” Aliye acknowledged. “But, Zahir, you need not be in danger. You can travel invisibly. There are plenty of pilgrims making their way to the Maha’s grave. A few more would not be noticed. Eshara has offered herself for the task, and I can provide your provisions. Coin, food, supplies.”

  “That is all your Hidden Ones can offer?” Arwa asks.

  Aliye and Eshara both turned looks upon her.

  “Only coin, and no defense but a single guardswoman. It suggests,” said Arwa, chin raised, “that your power is limited.”

  “Not limited,” Zahir said, an edge of bitterness to his voice. “Divided. Isn’t that so, Aunt?”

  “Knowledge is complex, the path to truth shaped by the individual’s own nature,” Aliye said softly. “But we have one rule, for our sisters. One alone. The Hidden Ones remain secret. Secrecy keeps us alive. Bahar was wise to try to influence the Emperor and Empress to look kindly upon our vision of a better world, one shaped by more than circumstance of birth, but she revealed too much. She broke our trust. For her son to continue her work…” Aliye shook her head. “A traitor’s child, and a boy. Many of my scholar sisters will not be willing to provide resources to his work.”

  “And others are willing,” Eshara said. “Like me. Obviously. Zahir, there are scholars enough that may not support you, but will accept the Maha’s knowledge. They’ll make use of it—build the better world you hope for, as we do—”

  “No more.”

  Zahir said it quietly enough, but his voice was so cold and hard that it silenced the room.

  “I find,” he said, “that I am growing tired of being a tool in the vast games of others. And the players seem to keep dying. Aunt Aliye, Eshara, it’s your division that makes me doubt the worth of placing the Maha’s knowledge in your hands. I revere the work of the Hidden Ones, but I won’t break myself upon this cause if it will all come to nothing.”

  Aliye sighed. Her eyes were sad.

  “Then what would you do, Zahir? Stay here? Take up your mother’s profession perhaps?”

  “You think to shame me into going?” He sounded incredulous. “Do you think so little of my regard for you? For my mother?”

  “No. I only think to remind you that your skills have been honed to this purpose, and this alone. Pursuit of knowledge. Service to a higher power. So use them, dear one. Try to save the Empire. And trust that the Hidden Ones will do all in their power to use your knowledge well, and see it placed in the wisest hands.”

  “I need time,” he bit out.

  “Go, then,” said Aliye. “You have it.”

  Zahir left. Without pause, Arwa turned on her heel and followed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He was on the roof once more. The sunlight was blazing now. It took Arwa a moment to adjust to it—to blink the painful burst of new light from her eyes and fix her gaze on Zahir, sitting on the edge of the roof, his head in his hands.

  Arwa sat down beside him.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “I’m not doing anything,” she replied. “I’m just sitting here.”

  She kicked her feet idly back and forth as she stared across the city in daylight. At night, it glimmered. In the day, the bright paint of the buildings of the pleasure district was clearly peeling. The streets were festooned with burnt-out lamps. People milled about, bullocks and carts, food traders; there was the smell of flowers in great baskets, and sweets and fried dough. The air was rich with noise and life.

  “Jihan may be dead.”

  It startled her, when he spoke. Her legs froze mid-kick. She lowered them and turned a little to look at him.

  “After my mother’s death, she arranged my tutors. My housing. My life. And now she may be gone. Arwa…” Exhale, shaky with feeling. “I know I have a duty to the Empire. To do what’s right. And it’s time. My wounds are healing. But.” Voice a whisper. “My soul feels like a thing splintered. I do not think it is strong enough for the Maha’s memories. Grief has undone me.”

  Arwa swallowed. Her throat, her heart, felt full of grit.

  “I know something of grief,” Arwa said.

  “Yes,” Zahir murmured. “Do you miss him, your husband? Mourn him still?”

  He’d never asked her about Kamran. But she was a widow, of course. Some things were inviolable.

  She thought of Kamran. Of trying to be worthy of love. Of meals carefully arranged, and papers tidied; of his careful eyes on her, seeking to read her, to understand her, always finding the void where their natures could not meet.

  It had not hurt, trying to be a good wife. Given the chance she would have done it all her life without considering how carefully she had to fold her true nature away—her fire, her biting tongue, the mercurial sweetness of her own joy—and how the folding erased her, piece by piece. Being a good wife to Kamran had felt like a success in its own right. She had won her family a future: reputation, a measure of honor. Bartered herself, but for an outcome she’d considered worthy of the cost.

  “Yes,” she said finally, into the silence left by his voice. “I mourn him still. Just not as he deserves to be mourned. I loved him. Just not as he deserved to be loved. We weren’t well suited to one another. He was older and… he didn’t know me. I think in truth I knew little of him. We shared one soul, one duty, but we were strangers to one another.”

  “Arwa,” he whispered. “I am sorry for that.”

  Arwa shook her head.

  “You shouldn’t be. It was my fault. I wasn’t—right, Zahir. I was too angry. Too mercurial. Too… Too much myself,” she said. “Kamran thought he was marrying an impoverished noblewoman who would love and obey him and instead he had… me. But he tried to be good to me. He did what he could. It was love of a sort.”

  She swallowed. Ah, the way grief burned. “In truth, it’s my sister I s
till mourn. Ever since I saw the Amrithi dead in the realm of ash, her death has felt like a fresh wound all over again. Sometimes in the realm of ash, I’ve seen her,” Arwa admitted. “I know she is dead, and yet to me she looked so alive, Zahir. I couldn’t help but think if I reached out and touched her I’d feel real flesh and she would be right there, alive before me. But I knew she would have just turned to ash in front of me and it would have been like death all over again. So I just—looked at her. And loved her. And missed her. And it—hurt me.”

  She felt warmth against her skin. His hand was pressed over her own, a silent, grounding comfort.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Entirely well.”

  “Nonetheless,” he said gently. “I am sorry that love is so often unkind.”

  There was a lump in her throat. He had lost people too. He understood.

  “Just so,” she managed to say.

  They sat, silent for a long moment. At some point they had turned to face one another, still sitting on the roof’s edge, unseen and alone, his hand warm upon her own.

  “I know I have to do it,” he said finally, into the quiet carved out by their grief. His voice was soft. “I have to go to Irinah. I have to seek the Maha’s ash. And I will have to trust in the cunning and the strength of the Hidden Ones, and hope that their many voices are a better answer than the singular power an Emperor wields.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Arwa told him.

  “But I want to. Arwa, all of this: the searching, the study, the deaths. Your deaths, and mine. They cannot be for nothing. I’ve set my feet on this path. I’ll see it to the end.” Faint smile. “Perhaps I’ll even find my lamp of truth.”

  She swallowed. Ah, Zahir.

  “Just… Promise me. Don’t give the Hidden Ones the knowledge of what the Amrithi can be used for,” she said. “If you find that the only answer in the Maha’s ash is more enslavement, more killing, please. Don’t give it to them.”

  “Enslaving the Amrithi caused the Empire’s curse,” he said quietly. “And it was monstrous. For that reason, and many others, I would not.”

  She should have agreed with him then. But she couldn’t. She drew her hand back, and looked down at it, at the paling silver of her scar.