Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  Arwa. Lalita. She squeezed her eyes shut. Hot tears slid down her cheeks.

  Usha.

  She felt Amun’s fingertips. They were light as butterfly wings against her shoulder.

  “Mehr,” he said softly.

  So he’d been feigning sleep after all. She dashed the tears away from her eyes, blinking them back. Although he shifted away at her first movement, he was still there, a warm presence at her back. She brushed her knuckles over the ribbon of her seal, heavy at her throat.

  He was here. He would always be here. That, at least, she could trust.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just fine. Go back to sleep.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mehr expected the next day to follow their established routine of prayer and food and breathing. Instead, after prayers Amun handed Mehr a small portion of bread wrapped in cloth and guided her down an unfamiliar set of corridors. When Mehr realized they were not going to the hall—that they were, in fact, walking away from it—she tugged at Amun’s sleeve to force him to slow down.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You need supplies,” said Amun.

  “If by ‘supplies’ you mean more clothes, I do,” Mehr admitted. She had been struggling to manage with what she had. “Some more soap would be helpful too.”

  “Well, we’re going to get you what you need.”

  Other mystics had also finished their prayers and their meals and were making their way through the temple. Surrounded by other people, Mehr wasn’t sure how openly she could speak. She spent a good few minutes eating her bread in silence.

  “I imagine the Maha won’t be pleased,” she said quietly. “We should be preparing for the storm. If he believes we’re neglecting our duty …”

  Amun shook his head. “Practicing constantly is clearly ineffective,” he said. “A morning spent on other tasks would do us both some good.”

  “I doubt the Maha will agree with you.”

  Amun didn’t answer immediately. He guided Mehr beyond the communal bathing rooms and said, finally, “If the Maha becomes aware of our absence, I will take responsibility. I can tell anyone honestly that this was my decision. Don’t trouble yourself, Mehr.”

  “And you think he’ll believe you led me astray, like a lost child?” Mehr tutted in disbelief. “Don’t be foolish, Amun.”

  “As my wife bound by Ambhan vows, you should obey me,” Amun said blandly. “I’m sure the Maha will understand that.”

  Mehr laughed despite herself. She bit her lip when she saw the startled eyes of other mystics turn on her. “I think you take my vows too literally.”

  Amun gave her a quizzical look. It occurred to Mehr that Amun’s experience of marriage had to be limited. Amrithi didn’t wed—Mehr saw now, for very good reasons—and mystics vowed to remain unmarried while in service. How to explain the nature of Ambhan marriage to an outsider?

  “An Ambhan wife shares her husband’s burdens,” said Mehr. “She is bound to him, soul to soul. He defines her.”

  “So he is her master.”

  “He often is,” Mehr admitted. “But I don’t believe a man bound in marriage can remain unchanged. My father altered after his marriage. Before he wed my stepmother he was—more tender. Kinder. She changed him. She had that power.” After he married Maryam, his relationship with Mehr and Arwa had changed forever. A wall had grown between them, and it had never truly fallen since. “It’s not a fair bond, Amun. I would never call it fair. But it’s still a bond—a rope with two ends.”

  Amun was silent for a moment. He had a way of always mulling over her words, considering them carefully before allowing himself to speak.

  “Do you believe any bond, even one founded on great unfairness, can have power?” He spoke slowly, deliberately.

  Mehr thought of all the bonds, unchosen and unequal, that had shaped her like clay. She thought of how losing her mother had scarred her, and Maryam had hardened her, and Lalita had given her the strength to be bright rather than brittle.

  “The bonds that tie people together change who they are,” Mehr said. “They have to.”

  They walked a little farther in silence, Mehr’s world heavy between them. Then Mehr touched her fingertips again to Amun’s sleeve.

  “Don’t worry about taking the blame. If we get in trouble we’ll face the consequences together,” she told him. She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Frankly I’d rather walk out into the desert without water than return to that damnable rite again.”

  Amun’s lips twitched into a smile. The sight of it made a kernel of warmth bloom in Mehr’s chest. She ducked her head, her cheeks hot.

  The reprieve from the rite was not only necessary but revealing. Mehr did her best to memorize the layout of the temple. She still found its winding corridors dizzying, but walking slowly at Amun’s side in daylight allowed her to truly understand how the corridors interconnected, and the role that each part of the temple served. Over the course of the morning Mehr saw the communal bathing rooms, and halls of contemplation where more senior mystics sat in meditative silence, wreathed in incense and darkness, and the irrigated fields of crops that marked the shadier edges of the oasis. The mystics were young and old, all celibate and dedicated to their calling. And there were so very many of them.

  Mehr realized quickly that the mystics had to rely heavily on offerings from the Empire, carried by those courier mystics who followed the trade routes, to sustain themselves. The mystics were so numerous, after all, and the crops were so sparse. The majority of their food, the cloth they wore, their medicines, their fuel—all of it had to come from beyond the desert, just as it did in Jah Irinah. Like her father’s people, they didn’t live with the desert, thriving on its strangeness and strength. They lived in spite of it.

  An unfettered view of the temple helped Mehr face the bitter truth: Although the Emperor needed his nobles to administer the Empire, they would never come first in his heart or his politics. It was the Maha’s concerns that came first. It was the Maha’s need for Amrithi with amata that had driven the Emperor’s search for people like Mehr. Law and faith were intertwined, but it was faith that held sway in the Empire.

  Together she and Amun collected soap, made from fat and sweet herbs, from an open veranda where herbs lay drying crisp in the sun. They even managed to wrangle some fairly new tunics for Mehr. The mystic in the laundry who offered them up said they would need some minor alterations, but surely Mehr would be able to do that for herself? To which Mehr nodded agreeably, while internally accepting that she would be wearing ill-fitting clothes for the foreseeable future. Her life experience hadn’t equipped her with skills anywhere near as useful as sewing.

  “I’ll help you fix them,” Amun muttered once they were alone.

  “Thank you,” Mehr said graciously, and tried not to burst into fits of laughter at the thought of Amun with his big hands delicately darning a ripped hem.

  Amun had kept his silence throughout every interaction with the mystics, hovering like a dark presence over her shoulder as Mehr wheedled the mystics they encountered into giving her what she needed. It was hardly difficult. She noticed quickly that the mystics were more than willing to help her. They looked at her with pity, and no little kindness. The sight of her mussed hair and faded clothes aroused their generosity.

  When they looked at Amun—if they looked at him at all—it was with loathing. Always.

  “Why do they hate you?” Mehr asked. His coldness was no excuse for the level of silent spite directed at him. “Is it because you’re Amrithi?”

  “You are too,” he pointed out, as if that were an answer.

  “I’ve been reliably informed that I am not Amrithi in the way you are,” Mehr said dryly. “But I can’t quite believe that they hate you so much for that alone.”

  “Then you think too well of them,” Amun said. They walked in silence for a moment longer. Then Amun said, “You have a way with people. They like you. It changes how they view you.�
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  Amun made it sound as if Mehr had a natural touch with people. She didn’t. Mehr cultivated connections with people by necessity. She’d learned to be whatever she needed to be, in order to win favor and gain the knowledge she needed to ensure her own survival.

  Instead of telling him so, Mehr shook her head. “Oh, Amun. If you had known me before, in my father’s house, you wouldn’t say so. I wasn’t well loved.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Doubt all you like. It’s the truth.” She clutched her new clothes tighter to her chest. She’d tucked the soap between the folds of cloth, letting the sweetness of the herbs permeate through the bundle. She inhaled the scent of it now: lush like the rose gardens of the Governor’s palace. “I have no special gift. I just try a little harder with them than you do.” That was to say, of course, that she tried at all.

  “Do you miss your father’s household? Your family?”

  “They’re different things,” Mehr said. “But yes. I miss my family.”

  “I miss mine too.”

  Mehr gave him a sharp, surprised look. He’d never mentioned his family before.

  “Will you tell me about them?” she asked tentatively.

  “My mother was strong,” he said, after a while. “Strong and clever with a knife. My father was gentler, but neither of them was weak. We lost our clan, so we traveled between villages and settlements, bartering blood and rites in return for everything we needed to survive. They were good people.”

  “What happened to your clan?” Mehr asked.

  Amun shrugged.

  “The rare ones with the amata—or the ones the mystics thought might have the amata—were hunted down. They used their blades to save themselves,” he said matter-of-factly. “Clans like ours became afraid of trading with villages. They feared that the villagers would tell the mystics how to find them. Food became scarce. When our clan began to starve, some left Irinah to start again. The rest of us tried to survive in smaller, less noticeable groups. That was what my parents chose to do together.”

  Amun stopped, letting out a slow exhalation. His jaw was granite, lines of tension furrowing his brow. She hadn’t realized how tense he had become, or how tightly she’d been holding her own breath inside herself, coiled like wire.

  “What happened to your parents?” Mehr asked him softly.

  She regretted her question almost instantly. She placed her hand on his arm, watched as he lowered his head.

  “Amun,” she said. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “No one has ever asked me before. That’s all.” But he still wouldn’t look at her. “My mother didn’t return to our tent one night. A week passed. My father looked for her, and when he came back he told me she had turned her knife on herself. The mystics must have discovered her. She preserved her freedom in the Amrithi way. As for my father …” He looked at her then. “Losing my mother was hard. Losing my father, too, was harder. In those early days, my grief made me an animal. I was too young and too foolish to realize that raging and howling like an animal would only make the mystics treat me as one. The mystics think I am a monster, Mehr, because in those early days, I was.”

  He spoke matter-of-factly, no emotion in his voice, as if those early days were long gone and couldn’t hurt him anymore. But Mehr had seen him lower his head like he couldn’t carry the weight of the memories that lived inside it. She knew those days lived inside him still.

  “You’re not a monster, Amun.”

  “Not anymore,” he agreed.

  “You’ve never been a monster. I’ve seen monsters.” As have you, she thought. The Maha. Even Kalini. “You’re not one of them.”

  “Doubt it all you like,” he said, echoing her words back at her. He smiled, but it was a bleak look. “It’s still true, Mehr.”

  Mehr shook her head. She could have called him a fool, then, but what good could it possibly do? He was harsh enough to himself. He didn’t need her help to make him feel any worse.

  “I manage myself better now,” he continued. “But I still don’t need these people to be kind to me. I don’t want them to be. I learned long ago that no one can replace my family.”

  “I’m not trying to replace anyone,” Mehr snapped. The words stung.

  He shrugged inelegantly.

  “I cope in my own way,” he said. “You need to cope in yours.”

  It wasn’t an apology, but Mehr had had enough apologies from Amun to last a lifetime. She didn’t need one more.

  Especially when his words felt like truth.

  When they returned to the hall to practice, Mehr didn’t feel her frustration build as it usually did. The morning of freedom had given her the chance to let go of her anger, but in its place was a sadness that had coiled itself through her bones. The knowledge of how much Amun had lost was a terrible weight. She didn’t know how he could bear it. But Amun looked calm and untroubled, as if he hadn’t shared his grief with her, as if nothing had changed at all.

  “Try again,” said Amun.

  She stood still and breathed slowly in and out, searching for a state of mind that would take her out of her own skin. She had to be calm. She had to put her feelings aside and focus on learning the first stage of the rite. She had to learn: Time was running out, and when the storm came Mehr would need to be prepared to do the Maha’s bidding. Only by giving him her apparent obedience could she keep her soul unbound.

  “Mehr,” said Amun. “Open your eyes.”

  Mehr did as she was bid. Amun was frowning at her, a fine crease showing in the skin between his eyebrows.

  “You’re holding yourself too stiffly,” he said. “You look as if you’re performing a rite.”

  “I am performing a rite.”

  “This one is different. I told you,” Amun said. “You can’t be connected to the earth. You need to focus on moving beyond your body, to the immortal place inside you. The place your amata gift comes from.”

  Mehr sighed.

  “Show me what I’m doing wrong.”

  Amun moved. The change in his posture was subtle but noticeable. He stood taller, his spine like iron, his legs bent so that his body was poised for movement. “You see?” he asked. “Your back is too straight and your shoulders are too stiff. You need to relax. Like this.” He closed his eyes and let out a breath. The tension in his body eased away, until he stood before her with all the dazed stillness of a man on the edge of sleep.

  “You look ridiculous,” she told him.

  He opened his eyes.

  “When I’m in the storm, and the dreamfire lifts me up, I won’t,” he said. “And neither will you. Now close your eyes.”

  She closed them. She thought about the immortality in her blood, about the place where the Gods dreamed, far beyond mortal flesh. She squeezed her eyes tighter, and slowly exhaled—

  “Mehr.”

  “I’m trying,” Mehr said, opening her eyes. “But I need you to help me. Direct me.”

  “Fine.” His frown had smoothed. “Close your eyes again.”

  Mehr did. She heard the scuff of his footsteps, heard him murmur an apology. Then she felt one of his hands against her spine. Her eyes snapped open.

  “What—?”

  “Relax.”

  But Mehr could not. With one hand on her upper back, the other at her hip, he was tilting her body off balance. A nudge farther and she would have nothing to hold her up but his arms.

  “You’ll be weightless in the rite,” he told her. “This is as close as I can bring you to how it feels.” A pause. “If you want me to stop …” he said in a low voice.

  “Will this help?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then go on.” Mehr steeled herself internally. “If you need to show me, show me.”

  She knew touch was the best way to teach a rite. Hadn’t Lalita taught her by taking her arms and legs in hand, directing her like a doll? Hadn’t Mehr’s mother done the same before her?

  There was a differ
ence, of course, between this lesson and the ones of the past. Mehr had wanted to learn, when her mother and Lalita had taught her. But Mehr didn’t want to learn the Rite of the Bound. She didn’t want to relinquish control of her own flesh. She didn’t want to commit a heresy against the Gods. When she thought of sinking into the immortality within her, she remembered the tales she’d been told, as a child, of the fate of Amrithi who didn’t show reverence to their ancestors.

  She didn’t want her soul to pay the price for her survival. In her heart, she feared that when she found the immortality within her, she’d find the punishment that awaited her also. The scar on her chest ached at the thought.

  “Relax if you can,” Amun said. “I can hold you.”

  He was strong. She knew that. It wasn’t his strength that worried her. Heart pounding, she gave a small nod.

  “Trust me in this,” he said.

  She closed her eyes again. In small increments he eased the weight of her body, tilting her until her feet skimmed the ground and her head was thrown back, heavy with the weight of her own hair. His palm was hot against her back, his fingers outstretched. Every time she breathed she could feel the shape of his fingertips.

  “Try again,” he said.

  It should have been hard to forget her flesh, with Amun so close to her, with her own fears stretching their bleak hands behind her closed eyelids. But without having to hold herself upright she felt dizzy, weightless. The rush of her own pulse soothed her mind to something akin to silence.

  She breathed.

  The place beyond flesh. The place mortal minds drifted to when they dreamed. That was the place she had to go to. She could trust her body to his hands. She could leave it behind.

  She remembered how it felt when she’d moved through the storm in Jah Irinah, and the dreamfire had held her wrists and ankles, guiding her through the storm. She’d been driven by desperation. But during the next storm, she wouldn’t be unwittingly begging the Gods for guidance. She would be purposefully compelling their dreams, using sigils to force their dreams to give the Empire the good fortune it needed to expand and conquer and grow as close to immortality as an Empire could. She would channel the power of the Gods through all their fire, and all their strength.