Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  “You should be a little more comfortable now, when the pain passes.”

  “You shot me,” Arwa said hoarsely.

  “I told you court had teeth and claws,” Gulshera said eventually. “Well, now you have faced court’s fury.”

  “You didn’t… tell me,” Arwa forced out, “that you were… the claws.”

  “I did not know I would need to be,” she said.

  Arwa forced herself into an almost seated position. For all it hurt, white-hot, it was easier to breathe like this. She dreaded looking at her shoulder, which still had the rest of the arrow embedded within it.

  “What will happen to me?”

  “If Jihan allows you a physician, you’ll live,” Gulshera said levelly. “Until the Emperor decides what best to do with you, of course.”

  “Death either way, then,” Arwa said. “I see.”

  “She ordered me to shoot you if Zahir disobeyed,” Gulshera said, no inflection in her voice. “She was testing me, as she does. I could not fail her.” Gulshera reached a hand out to Arwa’s face. Hesitated. Drew it back. “I tried to prepare you for this world, Arwa. I truly did. But my first loyalty has always been to Jihan. That has not changed. Your fate is in her hands now.”

  Gulshera stood and began to walk away. But Arwa could not, would not, let her go so easily.

  “For a little while. In the hermitage. And in the palace.” Gasp of breath. Gritted teeth. “I thought of you as—a mentor. As a—friend. I trusted you.”

  “Ah, Arwa.” Gulshera shook her head. “There’s no need for this.”

  “No. There is. I trusted you when I feared trusting. Trusting anyone. And now.” Deep breath. “She’ll turn on you too, one day. We are all—things. To people like her.”

  “I know what Jihan is,” Gulshera said steadily, her eyes on Arwa. “Perhaps one day she will. And when that day comes I will accept my fate. Because she is the child I nursed—and because she is the only worthy child the late Emperor had.” Gulshera bowed her head. A gesture of respect and farewell. “Emperor’s blessings on you, Arwa. I promise you, although it may be little comfort to you now: Your fate will haunt me for the rest of my days.”

  Then the tent flap closed, and Gulshera was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Hours and hours.

  Hours and hours and hours.

  No one was going to come for her. There would be no physician. No food. No water.

  She heard the men and women in armor. The stamp and cry of elephants. Music.

  The Emperor is here, then, she thought. She thought of Zahir and felt helpless, helpless.

  She could not save him. She couldn’t even save herself.

  “Can’t you?” A man’s voice. Gentle. Patient. “Come now, Iria. Remember.”

  With difficulty she raised her head. Through the flicker of ash and glass, as the world wavered, she saw figures of ash kneeling around her. No longer nothing but broken limbs, they were whole people, staring at her eyes like the palest clouds.

  “You can’t be here,” she said, uncomprehending. “I am still Arwa. Still myself.”

  “Your mind is full of ash,” Iria said. She was no child any longer. She was a woman grown, with keen dark eyes and a braid of curling hair thrown over her shoulder. Her face was a thing carved of dust. “We are with you. Within you. And you haven’t the sense to keep us distant.”

  Were those Iria’s words or Arwa’s own? Now that she was paying attention, forcing herself to think through the pain, she could taste the ash through the iron of blood in her mouth. She could feel the tug of the ash clouding her mind, the way the memories of her long dead were unfurling within her.

  “I suppose,” Arwa gritted out, “that dying has made a fool of me.”

  “No,” said Nazrin. Her ash was missing a great gout at the neck, leaving nothing but a void where her dagger had sliced her own artery through. “You simply don’t want to die alone. There is nothing foolish about that.”

  Arwa swallowed. But she was alone. That was the truth.

  “I don’t want to be in pain anymore,” whispered Arwa. “I don’t.”

  The ash moved in her head. A great whirl of it.

  “Then you know what to do,” Nazrin said gently.

  Yes. Arwa knew.

  She needed to go to a place where she was not flesh. Where the pain would be a distant thing—bound to her only by thin roots of blood. She closed her eyes. Breathed deep and slow. She did not need anything but her own will.

  She sank back into the realm of ash.

  The tent still surrounded her. Her body lay still upon the floor. When she had entered the realm of ash in Zahir’s tomb, she had entered another world entirely. But this was Irinah, where all realms met. The world of flesh lay against the realm of ash, one breathing with the lungs of the other.

  She kneeled, free of her flesh. The pain was blessedly far away.

  She could remain where she was and take comfort in the peace the realm had offered. She could wait, now, quietly for death. But when she’d entered the realm with Zahir in Irinah’s desert, she’d felt as if she could walk forever. She felt the same now. Two worlds lay spread about before her. Her feet of mirror and memory could carry her.

  She thought of remaining here, dying, inch by slow inch.

  She thought instead of throwing herself into the abyss before her.

  Always, when she had a choice, it was the danger she chose. She looked back at her body, at its bloody wound, at the way her chest rattled from the pain of it. She looked about—at the walls of the tent, at the ghosts around her—and took a step forward.

  She walked through the canvas wall into the open. She saw the elephants, the soldiers, the glaring blankness of the sky. The realm of ash echoed with things still living. There was a tent in the distance, far vaster in size than the one she’d been contained in. Its surface glittered in the light, richly embroidered with either silver or gold.

  So the Emperor was here, after all. She had not been wrong to think so.

  Zahir, she thought. Walked on.

  The realm unfurled a storm beneath her feet, carried her forward as if on a wave. She could feel Zahir’s blood roots, still. His soul had walked with her own. Just as he’d found her in the realm of ash when she’d left him behind in the House of Tears, she found him now.

  The large tent had a sumptuous carpet spread across the entirety of its floor. Great lanterns hung on stakes set in the ground. A select group of nobles lined the walls, their expressions blank, bodies tense. Behind a screen of fine netting were Gulshera and Jihan, the two of them seated.

  Before them all, sat the Emperor. Parviz was cross-legged upon his throne, hands upon his knees, back ramrod straight. There was nothing opulent about his garb. He wore plain clothing once more, an unadorned turban and a tunic and trousers of plainest mourning white. There was something fierce and cruel about his plainness: about his military posture and the flint of his eyes as he stared down at the ground before him.

  The ground where Zahir kneeled. Hands chained, his head tipped forward, as if he could not hold the weight of it up. Perhaps he could not.

  “Zahir,” said Parviz. “You will look at me.”

  Arwa wondered how many times Parviz had asked. He was thin-lipped with fury, his hands curling into the threat of fists.

  “Zahir,” she whispered. “Look up.”

  “Zahir,” the ash echoed around her. All her dead, speaking with her voice. “Look up.”

  With great difficulty, he raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheek bruised.

  “Zahir.” Parviz’s voice was iron. Unyielding, and deadly for it. “Son of Bahar. Did you falsely call yourself the Maha’s heir? Did you lead men and women of the Empire to heresy using my ancestor’s name?”

  “You’ll give me the illusion of a trial, then?” Zahir asked. His voice was broken glass. His lip, too, she thought, was swollen. How long had he been gone from her? She didn’t know. “I know—I know my fate.
Already. There’s no need for this.”

  “Did you use heretical arts,” Parviz pressed on, “occult and barbaric, to speak with the dead, and to flee the palace and imperial justice?”

  “Imperial justice?” Zahir echoed. A smile tugged his mouth. He was still drugged, she thought, although his eyes were bright, his words clipped and fierce. “Imperial justice… No. It was not that I fled from. And I used no heretical arts. The Maha’s own heir surely cannot defy the faith he dictates.”

  “You admit your lies, then.”

  “I admit what our father and Emperor named me, upon his deathbed. Who am I to deny his will?”

  “He was not your father.” Parviz’s voice was rumbling, deadly and soft. “Know your place. You are a traitorous whore’s son. A bastard. And your actions have proved you barbaric as any black-blooded Amrithi heathen. My father never named you Maha’s heir.”

  “You are Emperor now. If you say it, then it must be so.” Zahir’s head jerked, his gaze tracing the circle of noblemen around them. “Even if your court heard the truth from our father’s own lips.”

  Arwa saw two of the departed Emperor’s old council of advisers exchange glances, their faces carefully blank of feeling. The rest stood frozen and silent.

  “The ravings of a dying man,” Parviz said coldly, “who did not know what he was saying. He was not himself.”

  “Not himself, when he named me Maha’s heir, and Akhtar his own,” Zahir said. “I see.”

  “I saved the Empire from a dying man’s feverish error.” Parviz’s voice was iron, a great weight forcibly reshaping the world to fit his vision of it. “The only worthy heir to the Empire is a powerful one. A strong one. And that,” Parviz said levelly, “you are not. But I am.”

  There was a noise from beyond the partition veil, quickly hushed. Parviz did not move, but his expression seemed to darken.

  “My sister’s soft womanly yielding to your monstrous occult acts is done. You will plead for your false soul, heretic, and then you will be put to death. If you do not confess your crimes, your fingers will be cut from your hands. Your eyes will be gouged. Your teeth will be pried from your mouth. Your skin will be burned. These are the punishments the worst heretics suffered, when I quelled Durevi beneath my boot.” He leaned forward. “Jihan pleaded for death by swift poison. I am inclined to indulge her soft nature, if you confess now, and beg me to be kind.”

  “Bastard, heretic, son of a traitor whore—you do not think much of me, brother.” Head raised, eyes bright as new coins, mouth twisting into a smile. “And yet, that makes me no less the Maha’s heir. It was those you call bastards who the Maha raised up and proclaimed as his mystics. The fatherless, the unloved, the children of traitors—he loved them. Who else would he choose for his successor, but a bastard of his own blood? The Maha’s own spirit dictated our father’s choice. I know it.”

  He spoke the lie with utter conviction. It lit him from the inside, and she saw his words fall on the nobles’ ears like a blow.

  They would remember this. When Zahir was dead, they would remember this. And they would doubt Parviz a little more, as each day passed, as the curse on the Empire sank its claws deeper and deeper into the bitter earth.

  “You will be executed for your heresy,” Parviz said. “And it will not be quick. I promise you that.”

  Beyond the screen, Arwa saw Jihan lower her head.

  Arwa kneeled down beside Zahir. The world rippled around her.

  He turned to her.

  Looked at her.

  “Arwa,” he breathed.

  “You fool,” she whispered. “You utter fool. We’re not dying like this, Zahir. Not like this.”

  She touched her glass fingers to his face. Drew back. The ash whirled through her, around her, so close.

  She stepped back. Back.

  “I need knowledge,” she said. The grand tent around her wavered. Even Zahir was a smear of faint light.

  “We are knowledge,” the ash said.

  “No,” said Arwa. She felt her distant flesh—fading, suffering. And she was alight, furious. If she’d had blood in her, it would have burned. “I need all your rites. All your sigils. All your lost knowledge. I need to save us both. And for that, I need everything. Can it be done?”

  “Perhaps,” said Nazrin.

  “Perhaps,” said Iria.

  “It will come at a cost,” Ushan said. “You will go far deeper than any mortal woman should.”

  “You could lose yourself,” said Nazrin. “The ash could carry away your name. Your nature. The weft of your soul.”

  “You could become trapped here, never able to return home,” said Iria.

  “Or worse, both,” said Nazrin. “You could become lost, forgotten even to yourself. A ghost within a land of ghosts.”

  “I know,” Arwa whispered. But of course she did. They were part of her. “And yet, I would rather lose myself than let them take me.”

  She turned to face her ghosts.

  “Did you walk the world in the end, Iria? Did you save people from ill-starred daiva?”

  Iria’s ash turned to her. The answer rose to the lips of her ash, from deep within Arwa’s own skull. From the wealth of memories she’d consumed.

  “I did, for a time. But no one can protect others forever.”

  “No.” Arwa said. “I suppose not. But I would have… I would have liked the chance to try.”

  Arwa gripped her courage—and her roots—tight. She turned from Zahir and began to walk her path of ash.

  Deeper and deeper she went. Ink-black trees that had once been Zahir’s surrounded her. The sand glowed, as rich and wild as the Haran sea. She was unraveling from her own flesh, step by step. The pain faded. She looked up at the sky, which was a lidless eye, blazing with fury and storm light.

  She had walked Zahir’s path. She had stumbled through her own out of desperation. But she had never walked it deliberately. The realm raged around her, sweetly familiar, a thing born from her own soul, and terrifying for it. Irinah unfurled itself beneath her feet, real and mortal and yet so far away. It shifted about her like a dream.

  On her path loomed her past. Doors opening to opulent rooms. An overgrown garden. Blades and—

  She stopped. Froze.

  Around her loomed Darez Fort.

  Before her were Darez Fort’s great gates. And before them lay Kamran, all riven ash, slumped, a knife through his gut.

  “You are not my blood,” she whispered, gazing at him. “You should not be here.”

  But he had been her husband. She’d wed him in the Ambhan way: placed her marriage seal around his throat. Worn his, until his death. Vowed that her soul was bound to his, all through her mortal lifetime.

  She walked toward him. Kneeled by him. His face was a void. His head thrown back, hand reaching for nothing.

  “I wish you were here,” she said. “And yet I don’t. We should never have wed, husband. We were so ill-suited to one another. And yet I so desperately wanted to be the wife you needed. Did you know it, Kamran?”

  He could not answer her. He was a shadow. If she touched his ash, breathed it…

  “I do not want to keep you. I want to let you go.” She would have wept, if she could have. “That is wrong, and I know it. But I do not want to mourn you forever. I do not want to be the silent widow you deserve.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and pressed her hand to the gates. And pushed.

  They were ash. No more than ash. They fell to dust around the press of her hand.

  His dust crumbled behind her. She kept on walking.

  A moon bloomed in the sky above her, opening like a flower.

  The trees were melting around her, collapsing into reams of words, which spread their limbs across the sand. Poetry. A piece of the Hidden Ones lived in her too.

  Her soul had traveled the breadth of Irinah. Her soul had traveled the breadth of the realm of ash.

  The realm of ash wasn’t always straightforward. It could be made of ta
les and of the dead. It could lead to your childhood. It would always pass through your greatest griefs. Arwa was beginning to understand the poetry of the Hidden Ones, all those many tracts of longing and loss, as she never had before.

  The realm of ash contracted around her. She knew, then, that she had come near to the end of her journey.

  Mehr waited, ahead of her.

  Her sister was seated, cross-legged on the sand, with her back to Arwa. Her hair was loose, curling over one shoulder. Arwa could see the curve of her neck. Whorl of her ear. She was entirely still. It was as if she had been in the sand all this time, waiting for Arwa’s end. Waiting for Arwa to find her way home.

  Arwa took a step forward. Another.

  There was a shout, and a screech of laughter and—a child. It ran up to her sister, flinging itself into her sister’s arms. Mehr murmured something, and the child laughed again. It was a chubby thing, with big curls, babbling volubly away. But Arwa could not listen to it. She could only walk forward and stare at her sister, who was brown-skinned and smiling and moved as a living woman moved, lifted and lowered her shoulders, tilted her head to hear the child speak.

  All the times she had seen Mehr in the realm of ash—in fragments, between the smoke of the storm, or standing lamp bright before the bodies of the Amrithi dead—Mehr had been too far to see clearly. But Arwa saw her now. This was not her sister as Arwa remembered her, with guarded smiles and wary eyes. This woman was older, softer in the face with skin darkened by sunlight, a grown woman with a fall of loose curls and a face that smiled easily.

  This woman was alive.

  Arwa felt as if she would shatter. As if she were truly a thing of glass, fragile enough to fragment. She could not hope. She could not hope.

  And yet—

  “Mehr.” Her voice came out of her without her bidding. Thin as a reed. “Sister. It’s me.”

  Mehr turned. Froze.

  Arwa did not know what Mehr saw, what strange thing peered at her through the worlds, fleshless and terrible. But Mehr looked at her and looked at her, and began to shake.

  “Arwa.” She rose to her feet. “Arwa?”

  The child murmured something in a small voice. But Mehr said nothing. She stared at Arwa with wide, stricken eyes.