Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  “I will it. And if you defy me I will personally ensure that your life is as unpleasant as possible.” Kalini’s voice was even, but her eyes were fierce and cold. “I hope we understand each other.”

  Mehr nodded, clenching her hands tight.

  “Answer me,” Kalini demanded.

  “Yes,” said Mehr thinly. “I understand.”

  Bahren had a set of knives. They were not Amrithi blades, but they were sharp and clean, doused with medicinal alcohol and wiped dry with cloth by Bahren in Mehr and Amun’s presence. Mehr listened without surprise as Bahren told them that they would need to cut their own flesh and mark all the most important chambers of the temple with their blood.

  She should have anticipated that this service would be expected of her. Unlike the Ambhans of Jah Irinah, the mystics knew the power of the daiva intimately. They would want to keep the strongest of the daiva—the amorphous ones, not quite as powerful as the humanoid daiva of the past or the young animal-spirits of the present—away from their home. What better tool to keep them at bay than the blood of their pet Amrithi?

  They didn’t have to ask for Mehr or Amun’s consent. They didn’t have to barter with them, as the Irin had once bartered with the Amrithi clans who drifted near their cities and villages. They could simply take. After all, Mehr and Amun had made a vow.

  “I don’t mind,” Mehr told Amun, who was visibly unhappy, his shoulders hunched and his jaw tight.

  “I do,” Amun said shortly. But after that he kept his feelings to himself, obeying Bahren’s directions in sullen silence.

  Mehr really did not mind, at first. She reasoned that she would at least have the opportunity to find out exactly where the most important chambers in the temple were. Any knowledge she could gain during the night would be a worthwhile price for a bit of stolen blood. Amun had consistently refused to discuss escape since the first time Mehr had raised the possibility of it, but Mehr still carried the seed of hope within her. She held on to it as they began to move through the temple, marking the windows with their blood.

  But the temple was huge, and to Mehr it soon began to feel as if every single empty hall, every storeroom or empty unshuttered window was considered important. The cut on the soft skin of her inner elbow stung from being constantly reopened.

  It felt like a long, long time before Bahren declared that they were done. He gave Mehr and Amun cloth bandages to tie around their cuts to stem the blood, then told them to return to their room.

  “I don’t know how you managed to do this on your own,” Mehr said to Amun once they were alone, wincing as she tightened the bandage an increment further. She was exhausted; her fingers were trembling with tiredness. “That was difficult enough for both of us.”

  “Give me your new tunic,” Amun said. “You’re going to need it tomorrow.”

  Of course. She’d have to make an effort to look presentable in front of the Maha. The Maha would not care how hard they had worked. He wouldn’t care how exhausted they were, or how long they’d been bled. He would expect them to dress and act in a way that showed him the proper respect and reverence. Mehr gave Amun the tunic and lay back on the bed, letting her exhaustion take her. She watched through half-lidded eyes as he moved around the room, picking up a needle and thread. He sat down next to her, close enough that his leg brushed her knee, and began to sew. Mehr watched, letting the silence blanket them both. She’d thought the sight of him with a needle would be absurd, but instead it was strangely comforting.

  She closed her eyes to the sound of the wind howling beyond the windows, and the gentle in-out of Amun’s breath.

  Tomorrow there would be no such comfort. Tomorrow they would face the Maha. But Mehr didn’t want to think of that. To think of the Maha was to think of all the ways she could fail—the secrets she could reveal, the freedoms she could lose. She had to be stronger and braver than she believed she could be. She had to meet the Maha’s terrible eyes and lie to the man who held her soul in the palm of his hand.

  “You’ll need to try this on,” Amun told her.

  “Now?”

  “When I’m done.”

  Mehr murmured her agreement. She could feel the heat of his leg against her knee. You believe in me, she thought. I don’t know why, but you do. And I’ll try not to fail you, Amun. No matter what, I promise you I’ll try.

  On the evening of their dinner with the Maha, they were led to a balcony facing the desert. The glow of the coming storm mingled with the gold of the lantern flames, giving the walls a rose-hued warmth. But it was the opulence surrounding them, not the light of the storm, that left Mehr stunned and silent. There was a fine, handwoven carpet unrolled on the ground, the like of which she hadn’t seen since she had left her father’s household. The low table was covered in an exhaustive array of food: meat in a heady spiced broth, rice plump with heat and dotted with golden raisins, honeyed figs and rose sherbet. The Maha’s table was set with a true feast.

  And Mehr, hungry as she was, was too afraid to touch it.

  The Maha left them kneeling for a long time. When he finally entered, the food had begun to cool, the steam rising from its surface fading to thin wisps. Mehr and Amun bowed their heads, pressing their foreheads to the floor as the Maha kneeled down across from them. He didn’t touch the food.

  “Sit up,” the Maha said. “Eat. Don’t be shy.”

  Mehr raised her head. She looked at all that food, sweeter and richer than anything she’d had since the moment the marriage seal was placed around her neck. She couldn’t touch it.

  Amun ate a little. A piece of bread. A sip of fruit nectar. Mehr echoed his movements, grateful that he was here to show her the way. Her fear was choking her. If the Maha asked the right questions, if he grew suspicious of her …

  Mehr had far, far too much to hide. She tried not to let her fingers tremble as she raised a bite of food to her lips.

  “The storm closes in,” the Maha said, after a time. He didn’t seem to expect a response.

  Mehr watched his hands, and only his hands, as he poured a glass of mint tea, green leaves swirling in the fall of steaming water.

  “Tonight the Saltborn will begin their fasts.” She watched him stir in a spoonful of honey. “Food, hunger—these things are of the flesh. I have been blessed by the Gods, and I have moved beyond such needs. When the storms approach, I ask my mystics to try to do the same.” The spoon clicked against the edge of the glass. Again. Again. “By putting aside sustenance, they are better able to focus all their desire on one purpose: the glory of the Empire. My dear mystics.” His voice was full of affection. He lowered the spoon back to the table. “Their dreams, their hopes—do you know how strong they are? Ah, children, you can’t imagine it. They pray so fervently that I truly believe they should be able to sway the Gods without intercession. Their prayers should be able to part oceans, set the sky ablaze.” A sigh. “But alas, the daiva’s children must carry their prayers for them.”

  He spoke, Mehr thought, exactly like a man who was used to being listened to, and never argued with. He spoke like an Emperor himself. His voice was mild and calm, but every word he said made her mark flare with pain. She bit down on her tongue, reminding herself that the pain would pass. After the dinner, the Maha would leave her and Amun alone again for a time. One dinner, and then she would be able to focus her attention on the Rite of the Bound, and the storm that lay ahead of her.

  “It is a shame,” the Maha continued with utter calm, “that the daiva’s children are such lazy fools.”

  Mehr suddenly felt very cold. Both she and Amun stayed utterly silent.

  “Kalini was not pleased with your progress, Mehr. She said you were clumsy. Unskilled. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  She didn’t know what to say. The words were stuck in her throat. I am doing well, Maha. I know I’m doing well. He spoke like a teacher chiding a student, but Mehr knew what lay beneath that civil veneer. Beneath his smiles, his gentle voice, his heart was a starles
s night. His anger, she feared, would be a terrible thing.

  “She is doing everything she can,” Amun said. “Maha, I promise you, no one could work harder.”

  “I didn’t ask you to speak, Amun,” the Maha said. His voice was pleasant. Far too pleasant. “So now you will not, until you leave my presence.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath at Mehr’s side. Then nothing. Mehr had felt the order, a cold shadow passing under her skin. She knew Amun would not be able to help her anymore this evening.

  “Speak to me, Mehr. Tell me truth.”

  “I am trying, Maha.” This, at least, she could be honest about. She let the compulsion wash over her, forcing the words from her lips. “On my honor, I am trying as hard as I can.”

  “You believe you are,” he said gently. “But I believe you could do better—and I am a great deal older and wiser than you are, Mehr.”

  She was shivering. She couldn’t control herself. She wished the Maha had ordered her to be silent instead of Amun. It was hard to resist the urge to garble out apologies, to cry and beg for his mercy. He had done nothing to her, but in her bones she knew he would. He wanted her fear. He wanted it more than her gratitude.

  The Maha allowed the moment to stretch thin between them. His hand drifted, with deceptive casualness, away from the tea glass and spoon toward a tray of fruit. There was a knife on the tray. It was small, with a firm handle and one sharp edge, useful for cutting fruit down into fine segments. He took hold of it.

  “Hold out your left hand, Mehr. Palm up.”

  Mehr wanted to refuse. But he had ordered her. She should not have been able to resist an order. Allowing his voice to compel her was almost a relief. She held her arm out across the table, palm upraised. With his order racing through her blood, her arm didn’t even tremble.

  He held the knife over the smallest finger. The metal skimmed her skin.

  “You don’t need all of your fingers for the rite,” he told her. “I know that.” A pause. “I was once served by an Amrithi male named Gaur. He was strong. Healthy. But the smallest finger of his left hand was lost when my mystics took his blade from him. A shame, but he learned to serve despite his early failures.”

  Mehr held her breath. There was a whiteness buzzing behind her eyes.

  “Will you do better?” the Maha asked quietly. “Or will you require encouragement?”

  He pressed a little harder. A bead of blood welled up on Mehr’s skin.

  “I will do better,” Mehr said. Her voice shook like a leaf. “I promise I will.”

  Even in the cloud of fear fogging her mind, Mehr knew he was unlikely to risk maiming her permanently so near the storm. She knew. But that made no difference. He could hurt her. He had hurt her today—cut the knowledge of her powerlessness directly into her flesh. Once the storm had passed, he could hurt her even worse. Skin deep, soul deep. However he liked. Her life belonged to him.

  This knife would hang over her, always and always, for the rest of her vow-bound life.

  He met her eyes. Whatever he saw must have pleased him, because he nodded to himself and placed the hilt of the blade in her open palm.

  “I will observe your training directly from time to time, in the future,” said the Maha. “Clearly I was wrong to think Amun would be a reliable teacher.” He slid the tea across the table to Mehr. It was still warm, steam rising from its surface. “For now, wipe the blade clean,” he said. “Drink the tea and calm yourself.”

  There was nothing for Mehr to clean the blade with. Under the weight of the Maha’s hooded eyes, she took the blade in her bloodied, shaking hand and wiped the knife clean on the sleeve of her new tunic. Her hands refused to stop trembling. She put the blade down, lifted the glass, and drank. The liquid was scalding, a shock of sweetness and heat.

  “You will both perform for me now,” the Maha said, his voice silken. “Show me that you will be able to do what is required of you, and you aren’t as clumsy and foolish as I’ve been led to believe.”

  Under his watchful gaze, Mehr and Amun stood. Unable to speak, the weight of the Maha’s command upon him, Amun guided her to look at him with a light touch of his fingertips to her arm.

  Follow me, his eyes seemed to say. Trust me. We will get through this together.

  Mehr took a deep breath and raised her hands to form the first sigil.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  You seem calm.” Amun watched her carefully as she sat down on the bed in their room, as she curled her hands in her lap.

  “I’m not calm,” Mehr said. “I just can’t allow myself to feel. Not yet.”

  She inspected her hand carefully. The cut was shallow. It had pained and bled far more than a cut of its size deserved to. Even now, every time she curled her fingers, sluggish blood oozed from the wound. She pressed her stained sleeve hard against the cut to stem the flow. Performing the rite, shaping its sigils, had opened the cut again and made it pain all the more.

  Her poor sleeve. After all the effort Amun had gone to in order to make her tunic presentable, the fact that the cloth was irreparably ruined seemed somehow a greater injustice even than the wound the Maha had inflicted on her. Mehr ran a finger over the cloth. The stain had dried fast. Even if Mehr begged some boiled water from the kitchens and sacrificed some of her new soap to the task of getting it clean, something of the stain would be left behind—some faint hint of darkness, the smell of bitter iron.

  “You’re doing well,” Amun said. “No matter what the Maha claims, you are.”

  “Then why punish me?”

  “He wants you to be as skilled in the rite as I am,” said Amun. “He needs us both to be prepared, Mehr, or his rite can’t be performed. He doesn’t have other Amrithi to perform the rite as he once did. He just has us.”

  It was strange to think of the Maha as fearful. It was stranger still to think that the Maha needed them: that without Mehr and Amun the great Empire, all its provinces and wealth and beauty, would fall to dust.

  “You are prepared, Mehr,” Amun said into the silence. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Mehr lied. “Has he ever observed your training before? Ever demanded you perform for him?”

  Amun shook his head. “He taught the woman with whom I performed the rite, from time to time. But not me. He trusted her to teach me.”

  But he didn’t trust Amun. More than that, he didn’t trust Mehr. She was too green, too clumsy; she was not an adequate tool. He’d used his blade to hone her. The thought left her feeling raw.

  “We were lucky he didn’t find out the truth about my vow,” said Mehr. Now that they were back in the privacy of Amun’s room, she could be honest. She could feel the weight of their shared secret. She knew how easily she would have revealed it if the Maha had cut just a little deeper.

  “You did well.”

  “Of course. I didn’t have to lie.” Mehr pursed her lips. “But if he’d asked me the right questions we would have been ruined.”

  “You did well,” Amun repeated.

  He was nearly vibrating with energy. She could see the tension in his shoulders.

  “Let me fix your hand,” he said abruptly.

  “The cut isn’t so bad.”

  Amun didn’t move. He was so tense she feared he would snap. So she sighed and relented.

  “Go on then.”

  He moved immediately, looking for a clean cloth and water. She understood that he wanted to help her—that watching the Maha hurt her without being able to interfere had been agony for him—but there was little he could do. The cut was shallow and would heal with time, but the wound the Maha had left in Mehr’s head wasn’t so easily fixed. And that had been the Maha’s intention, of course: to give Mehr a long-lasting hurt without compromising her usefulness. He was a clever man, and all the more terrible for it.

  She let Amun take her hand without complaint. He turned her hand over gently, lowering his head to take a closer look at her skin. His fingers were warm as coals.
She realized suddenly how cold she was.

  She looked away from him, forcing herself not to stare at his lowered face or the blue whorls that swept from the nape of his neck down under the cover of his tunic. Instead she looked at the bare room around them. Red-gold light filtered in beneath the cracks in the shutters.

  When had Amun’s bedroom begun to feel like home? She didn’t know. Here was the only place she felt like the Maha’s eyes were not on her. She still had uneasy dreams, still woke reaching for the blade that was no longer under her pillow. But within these bare walls, these shuttered windows, she felt safe.

  “The Amrithi he spoke of,” Mehr said slowly. The cogs of her brain were still turning, sifting through the Maha’s words for a pattern, an answer. Knowledge. She had to seek knowledge. “The man. Gaur. He wasn’t the one who trained you, was he? You told me you were trained by a woman.”

  “There’s only been one Amrithi pair in the temple, in my time here,” said Amun, his attention still focused on her cut. “The woman who trained me, and myself. Then you and me. No more than that.”

  Mehr thought of the Amrithi pairs who had come before them. She thought of the great effort the Maha had gone to, in order to acquire Mehr—the way he had twisted the sacred institution of marriage, sacred to his Empire and to his people, in order to control one single half-Amrithi woman with the amata gift.

  “The Amrithi, our gifts, our people,” Mehr said softly. “We’re fading, aren’t we?”

  Amun let out a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. I try not to think of it.”

  Mehr closed her eyes and let out a breath. She thought of the Empire. She thought of the Maha. She thought of all those dreams that had never touched either of them. She thought of dreams of aging and death.

  Death and decay followed humans with every breath, every heartbeat. Skin could be cut, and skin could heal. Bodies could hunger and be fed. But the Maha no longer hungered as humans hungered. She’d seen the light under his skin, the strangeness of it. She wondered if he could even bleed any longer.