Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  Abhiman forced her to a stop, his hand a vise on her wrist. Mehr stumbled over her feet.

  “Show some respect,” Abhiman said. His voice was full of disgust. “Kneel.”

  Mehr kneeled. Amun was thrown to the ground beside her. She bowed her head and waited.

  “Come closer and kneel by your sisters, Mehr,” the Maha said. His voice was terrible and gentle. There was an undertone to it that made her mark burn cold with fire. She sucked in a sharp breath and stood, moving to kneel by Anni’s side. The Maha was so sure of being obeyed that he didn’t give her a second glance. His eyes were fixed on Amun.

  “I have been given some news that has made me unhappy,” he said slowly. “Can you imagine what news that was, Amun?”

  “I think so, Maha,” Amun said. His voice low. Mehr didn’t dare turn back to look at him. All her focus was on the Maha, standing before her, his hands clenching and unclenching on nothing but air.

  “Well then, Amun. Tell me this. Have you fucked your wife?” The ugliness of the words made Mehr flinch. His voice was so soft, so terrible. “This isn’t a question I should need to ask you.” A beat. “Have you? Speak.”

  Amun said nothing. Mehr could hear nothing but Hema’s breathing, shallow and overloud in the vast quiet. She clenched her own hands, heart hammering.

  “The longer you wait, the more your vows will hurt,” the Maha said. “I am not averse to hurting you, boy.”

  “No.” Amun’s voice was strangled. Every word was ripped from his throat. “No. I have not.”

  The Maha nodded. He leaned down and offered Anni his hand. She took it and stood, trembling. She didn’t look at Mehr. She didn’t look at Hema.

  “You’ve done me a great service, daughter,” the Maha said. He kissed her forehead. “A great service, and one you will be rewarded for. But for now, you may go.”

  “Thank you, Maha,” Anni whispered. She bowed again—deep and low, pressing her forehead to the floor—then turned and left as fast as her legs could carry her.

  The sound of her footsteps died away. The Maha let out a long, drawn-out sigh. His hands flexed.

  Without a word, he hit Mehr. One blow, then another, hard enough to send her skidding across the stone. She curled up, covering her face with her arms. She thought he would keep going, would beat her bloody in front of Amun and Hema and Bahren and Kalini and Abhiman, debase her with an audience. But after the second blow, as she cowered and bit her tongue and waited—he stopped, and stepped away from her.

  “I will deal with you further in a moment,” he promised. Mehr lowered her arm from her face and watched him turn to face Hema.

  Hema was crying.

  She hadn’t betrayed Mehr. But Mehr wished now that she had. Instead Anni had heard more than either Mehr or Hema had suspected, that night by the oasis. She must have understood enough of their hushed conversation to know that Mehr had disobeyed the Maha, and that Hema had chosen to keep her confidence—enough to condemn them both. Now Anni had told Mehr’s secret, and left Hema to face the consequences.

  Oh, Hema. Now you know what the Maha is. I’m sorry for it.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me you serve with all your heart and soul?” His voice rang out. “Aren’t you going to beg forgiveness, child? You have deceived me. Betrayed your Maha and your Emperor.”

  Hema shook her head wordlessly. She looked too terrified to speak. The confident, sly woman Mehr had grown to know had been reduced to this—to silence and fear, to the wait for the inevitable punishment to rain down upon her.

  “If Anni had not come to me, your betrayal would have continued. I know it. I know your heart, child. And it is rotten.” A sigh. “I am so disappointed in you.” He paused to let his words sink in: the consummate orator. “You understand, I’m sure, that your actions have consequences. You were told when you first came here that traitors must be punished.”

  Someone in the room sucked in a sharp breath. Hema raised her face, her teary eyes fixed somewhere around the Maha’s chin. Even now, she was loath to give offense by doing something as heinous as meeting his eyes.

  “I have always tried to serve truly, Maha,” she whispered. Mehr had never heard Hema’s voice sound so small. She sounded like a small creature left out in the cold. “I am faithful. I only hoped …” She stopped, swallowing. “I only hoped to help Mehr be faithful too.”

  The Maha stared down at her, his fractured eyes glacial. He held out his hand. “My blade, Kalini,” he said.

  Hema let out a sob.

  “Maha,” Kalini said. Her voice trembled. “I beg you. Please, no.”

  “The blade, Kalini.”

  “Maha—”

  Abhiman swore a sharp oath. Mehr turned just in time to see him snatch the blade from Kalini’s grip. He bowed to the Maha and handed him the hilt before stepping back to stand again at Amun’s back. The Maha gave a faint nod of thanks.

  “Kalini,” the Maha said gently. “You are my most faithful servant. No taint from this will touch you.”

  “Maha, my lord, please. When my sister and I joined you, you promised we would be safe.” Kalini sounded wretched. “We both love you above all things.”

  “You love me, that I don’t doubt. But your sister has not shown me her love as she should have. I am sorry for your loss, Kalini,” he said gently, kindly. When Kalini said nothing more, he turned his attention back to Hema. “Stand and turn away from me, child.”

  Hema’s gaze finally drifted to Mehr. But she looked right through her, her eyes full of uninflected terror. She stood, shaking, and turned. “Kalini,” she said. Her voice was small, so small.

  “Maha,” Kalini said in a strangled voice.

  “Kalini, it is my love for you that takes this responsibility out of your hands,” he said soothingly. “Stand down, before I change my mind and ask you to prove your love.” He waited. Kalini was silent again. The threat had stoppered her. “Close your eyes, if it makes matters easier,” he suggested.

  Then, without further ceremony, he raised the blade and cut Hema’s throat.

  Hema didn’t die instantly. That was the worst of it. Mehr watched Hema sway for a moment, as if the shock held her steady; she watched Hema raise her hands as if she thought, somehow, she could stem the bleed. There was silence in the hall, utter silence, but even if there hadn’t been, there would have been no way for Mehr not to hear the choking noise Hema made, as she tried to breathe, tried to scream, and failed at both. Mehr would remember that sound for the rest of her life.

  She watched Hema crumple to the ground. It took her a long time to realize the noise had stopped, and longer still to feel the hot wetness of the blood pooling around her knees.

  “This punishment was not for you, Mehr. But I hope it teaches you a lesson,” the Maha was saying. His voice sounded like a faraway thing, an echo through water, even though he was walking closer to her, breaching the barrier of blood between them. “The Empire expects loyalty from its people. Disloyalty must have a price.”

  He kneeled down before her, heedless of the blood staining his robe. But what did it matter to him? The thought was vague, hysterical, tripping through the frozen horror of Mehr’s mind. He probably had many robes to spare, just as he had many people to kill, if the mood so took him. What did a little bit of blood on one robe matter, when he had such a glut of property at his disposal? What did it matter to a man like the Maha, that Hema had been kind and good and faithful, that she had been a leader of women, a sly and clever and kind friend?

  “You and Amun have failed me repeatedly,” he said, low and soft. “Hema earned an easy death, but you, Mehr—you have earned my disappointment. All the power of the storm wasted. Because of you.” A shake of his head. “I would not enjoy killing you both, but I would do it.”

  Oh, how he lied. She looked into his eyes. There was a nightmare inside them. He would enjoy it.

  “But you are the Empire’s tool,” he said slowly. “Harming you would only harm our good Emperor. So you will live
, and be thankful. But if you betray me again, Mehr, if you tell me a single lie, have no doubt that I will make you dance until your feet bleed, and I will make sure my mystics pray for dreams that curse your sister and your father and every gentle soul in the Governor’s household. I will focus all my strength on making them die the death you rightly deserve, and it will be your dance that kills them. You will be the blade at their throats, as surely as you were the blade at Hema’s.”

  He traced her throat as he spoke, one fine fingertip following the hummingbird beat of her pulse. She almost wanted him to close his fingers around her neck. At least then she could stop being afraid of the unknown.

  “Are we clear, Mehr?” he asked.

  She could feel the blood staining through to her knees.

  “Yes, Maha,” she whispered.

  His hand moved lower. He gripped the edge of the braid of cloth around her neck, the braid that held her marriage seal. He raised it, looking at the wooden carving Amun had made for her, so many months ago.

  “Let me begin with a simple question. How did Amun leave you untouched? How did he lie to me?”

  Her knees hurt. She could hear Kalini now, keening, a low, terrible sound of mourning.

  “He followed the word, not the spirit of your orders.” Her voice was dull, her mouth full of ash.

  “Did he now?”

  “Truth can be twisted,” said Mehr.

  The Maha made a noise, a soft hum of acknowledgment. “I see. Ah, Amun. I thought I’d molded you into something better than this. A shame.” He looked over Mehr’s shoulder. She wished she could turn, wished she could see Amun’s face. But the Maha still had her marriage seal in his hand, holding her as steady as a leash held a hound.

  Amun. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.

  “I’m not going to be coy with you any longer, Amun.” The Maha’s voice hardened. “Make her your wife in more than name. Fuck her. Are we clear? On your vows, you will make this woman yours in flesh now, or may your damnable vows eat you whole.” He flung Mehr to the ground and stood. Mehr scrambled back onto her hands and knees and turned, fixing her frantic gaze on Amun.

  Whatever expression he had been wearing before was gone. She saw black in his starless eyes, utter emptiness in his face, as if his soul had been banished behind a wall. Perhaps it had been. He’d been given his order. He would obey it. Everything in Mehr recoiled. Her breath grew shallow with panic.

  He was going to reach for her here, with Hema dead, with the floor bloodied, with the Maha and the Emperor’s effigy staring down at them; he was going to reach for her, and he was going to—

  Mehr swallowed, nauseous. No. She could survive it. She could survive anything if she had to. But Amun had fought so long and so hard to be good. Hurting her—doing this?—would destroy him beyond repair. She couldn’t allow it.

  She crawled across the floor, head swimming from the blows of the Maha’s hand, from the metal scent of blood, from the pure acid of terror. She placed a hand on Amun’s chest, right over the mark of that unfulfilled vow, that spidery white mark of a marriage seal that bound them both together as husband and wife, as slaves, as survivors.

  “No, Amun,” she murmured. “No, no. Remember yourself. Remember me. Please, Amun. Not like this. Amun, remember.”

  He was trying to fight. He gripped her hand; his hand shook, his grip hard enough to hurt, his palm slippery with sweat. He gritted his teeth, squeezed his starless eyes shut. She saw the sigils on his wrists and his face shift, livid. She tried to speak to him in the language of their forefathers and mothers, clumsily shaping the hand against his chest into half sigils. Promise, trust, you.

  Love.

  On the last sigil, he jerked away from her, a snarl on his breath. His eyes snapped open. He rolled on the floor, curving in on himself just as Mehr had when the Maha had beaten her. Mehr cried out when he slammed his head against the ground, once, twice—and then his eyes rolled back, and he went still.

  The Maha made a noise of disgust.

  Mehr jerked her head up. Bahren, Abhiman, Kalini—they were all watching. For all her keening, Kalini’s face was dry. She looked down at Mehr and Amun with an expression Mehr couldn’t read.

  “Fool boy,” the Maha sighed. “Make sure it’s done, Bahren. And Abhiman, get a girl to come in here and clean up this mess.” He strode out.

  “He will expect me to watch,” Bahren said.

  Amun’s bedroom was incongruously peaceful after the horror of Hema’s death. The sweetness of the oasis wafted in on the breeze. The oil scent given off by the guttering lanterns had left a palpable warmth in the air. Mehr relit the lanterns as Bahren, with surprising strength, arranged Amun on the bed. It gave her something to do.

  She looked outside at the sky, dark and clean and cloudless.

  “You don’t need to do that. It will be done.”

  “He will ask me if I did.”

  Ah, but you can lie, Mehr thought. There was little point saying so. No doubt Bahren had no desire to have his throat cut.

  “Then you’ll have a long night,” she said instead. “If fighting his vows makes Amun anywhere as sick as he was after the storm, he’ll take time to awaken and to be—prepared.” Mehr’s stomach lurched.

  She imagined how Amun would surely look at her when he awakened. She imagined his horror. She knew he cared for her, just as she cared for him. But their caring had grown on the knife edge of the vows that bound him, and half bound her. They had run out of doors, run out of options. How would he react to knowing he was going to be forced to take her?

  She thought of how much worse it would be with Bahren standing over them. Shuddered again.

  “Nonetheless …”

  “Please,” Mehr said sharply. She placed a hand over her eyes. Oh, what she would give for the comfort of a veil, a screen. Anything. “Please, Bahren, let me keep a little of my honor. I am Amrithi, but I am an Ambhan noblewoman too. I had an Ambhan woman’s dignity once. I had the right to cover my face. I had the right to give my soul as I wished. And now …” She let out a sob. She showed Bahren her anguish, in all its real, ugly glory, hoping it would sway him. She looked at his face between her fingers. He looked stricken.

  Good. She’d struck a blow.

  “Now,” she gasped out. “I’m nothing. Just this man’s—wife. A belonging. Please, Bahren. Give me this. Show me a little mercy.”

  He let out a breath. He wouldn’t have relented if he hadn’t just seen Mehr beaten, Hema’s throat cut. He wouldn’t have. But Mehr had found his weakness, small as it was. He was not the Maha. He was not a monster. His conscience was her ally.

  Bahren let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t want to be here either. Know that, Mehr.”

  “Then don’t be,” she said wretchedly. She lowered her hands. Looked at him with eyes she knew were red, wet. “Please, Bahren.”

  A long silence. Finally he said, “I’ll wait at the bottom of the stairs. Come morning …” A huffed sigh. “For all our sakes, do your duty, girl.”

  He didn’t wait for her to thank him. He strode out of the room. She heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then silence. He’d settled down to wait. For Mehr to do her duty.

  She rubbed her eyes dry. Walked over to the door and softly closed it. She turned back to the bed. Amun lay unconscious, forehead bruised, his sigils still so livid they shone in the flickering light. She sat on the edge of the bed and brushed one dark curl away from his wound. He murmured, turning into her touch. Trusting as a child.

  A memory flashed before her eyes: Hema’s throat cut. Hema falling.

  She snatched her hand back and stood. She went over to the window, leaning out to meet the cold night air. She was dizzy, and the sky was whirling with stars.

  Gods. There was nowhere left to run, was there?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At first she wasn’t sure if Amun would even wake up before dawn. Fighting the Maha’s orders had drained his strength severely. He lay on the bed, still and gray
and hurt, silent for hours. She feared for a while that she would have to seek out Bahren and ask for a physician to be sent. But eventually he began to move fitfully in his sleep, eyelids flickering as he struggled against harsh dreams. Then she began to wonder if he’d wake with the same dead-eyed stare he’d had when the Maha had laid down his orders. The idea filled with her dread.

  What could she do if he woke blank-eyed and broken, a shadow of himself? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She was powerless here. So she pushed her fear away, locking it into the dark place inside her where all her grief and horror lived, waiting to be let out. She focused on practicalities instead. She took off her bloodstained robe—oh, how she would have loved to burn it whole—and put on her plainest shawl and tunic. She left her legs bare, not bothering with pajami, even as she wrapped the shawl tight around her shoulders and drew the cloth up to her face, breathing its scent in. If she breathed deep enough, perhaps she’d be able to find the scent of the women’s quarters, that unique combination of rosewater and oil and perfume she’d once kept stoppered in a perfect glass vial on her dressing table. But there was no scent of home. The shawl smelled like everything in the temple smelled: of sand and sunlight and dust. It was as if her old life were a story she’d made up, an utterly perfect dream she’d conjured to comfort herself through the bitter reality of her slavery.

  But her life before had been real, just as real as her life was now, and it hadn’t been perfect. She’d been an outsider in her own home, protected from the worst cruelties a legal wife could inflict on an illegitimate, mixed-blood stepdaughter only by the strength of her father’s guilt. Even then, she hadn’t been safe, and she hadn’t been free. But she’d had Arwa, and Lalita, and Nahira. She’d had love, she saw now, in abundance. That love had given her the strength to breathe.

  Now all the people she’d once loved were gone from her life, and her chains had grown heavier and heavier. She didn’t know if she could survive without hope. Could she let the thought of freedom go, and live like Amun had lived for years on end, like an animal in a cage, quelled and silent, always watching warily for the next blow to fall? She didn’t know if she had his strength. It would be easier to simply splinter herself on hating the Maha. Her pride made her want to. It would be the Amrithi thing to do, after all, to annihilate herself rather than letting the Maha have her heart and soul.