Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick.

  The palanquin jolted suddenly, tipping precariously forward. Arwa bit back a curse and gripped the edge of one varnished wooden panel. The curtain fluttered; she saw her maidservant reach for it hastily, holding it steady. Nuri’s eyes met her own through the crack between the curtain and the panel, soft with apology.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” said Nuri. “I’ll tie the curtain in place.”

  “No need,” Arwa said. “I like the cold air.”

  She adjusted her veil to cover her face, and Nuri nodded and let the curtain fall without securing it.

  Arwa leaned back and forced her tense fingers to release the panel. Traveling through Chand province hadn’t been so bad, but once her retinue had reached Numriha, the journey had become almost unbearable. A frame of wood and silk was a decent enough mode of transport on even paths, such as were found in Chand, but the palanquin was ill-suited for travel up a mountainside. And Numriha was all mountains. For two days, Arwa’s nausea had ebbed and flowed along with the shuddering movement of the palanquin, as she was carried slowly up the narrow and treacherous southern pass through the Nainal Mountains.

  Once that day already, she’d stopped to heave up her guts by the roadside as her guardswomen milled close by and her guardsmen waited farther up the pass, respectful of her dignity. Nuri had stroked her hair and given her water to drink and told her there was no need for shame, my lady, no need. Arwa had not agreed, and still did not, but she knew no one expected her to be strong. If anything, her weakness was a comfort to them. It was expected.

  She was grieving, after all.

  Arwa sank deeper into her furs, her veil a cloying weight against her skin, and tried to think of anything but the ache of her stomach, the heat of nausea prickling over her skin. She turned her head to the faint bite of cold air creeping in through the faint gap between the curtain and the palanquin itself, hoping its chill would soothe her. Even through the rich weight of the curtain, she could see the flicker of the lanterns carried by her guardswomen, and hear her guardsmen speak to one another in low voices, discussing the route that lay before them, which was made all the more treacherous by nightfall.

  The male guards were meant to walk in a protective circle around her guardswomen, close enough to defend her, but far enough from her palanquin to ensure she was not directly at risk of being visible to common men. But the narrowness of the path and the dangers posed by following a cliff-edge road in darkness had made following proper protocol impossible. Instead all her guards snaked forward in an uneven, mixed-gender line, with her palanquin at its center.

  She felt the palanquin jolt again, and this time she did swear. She hurriedly gripped the edge of a panel again as her retinue came a stop, voices beyond the curtain rising and mingling in a wave of indecipherable noise. Someone’s voice rose higher, and then suddenly she could hear the crunch of booted footsteps against stone, growing louder and then fading away.

  Her palanquin was lowered to the ground. The path was so uneven that it tipped slightly to one side as it touched soil, enough to make the curtain flutter and Arwa’s weight fall naturally against one wall.

  Arwa drew the curtain the barest sliver wider. She saw Nuri’s silhouette in the darkness, saw her carefully adjust her own shawl around her head, lantern light flickering around her, as she kneeled down to Arwa’s level.

  “My lady,” Nuri said, voice painstakingly deferential, “the palanquin can go no farther. We will need to walk the final steps together. The men have gone back down the path and will not see you, if you come out now.”

  When Arwa did not respond, Nuri said gently, “It is not far, my lady. I’ve been told it’s an easy walk.”

  An easy walk. Of course it was. Most of the women who took the final steps of this journey were not as young or as healthy as Arwa. She adjusted her shawl and her veil. Last of all, she touched the sash of her tunic, hidden beneath the weight of her furs and her shawl and her long brocade jacket. Within her sash, she felt the shape of her dagger, swaddled in protective leather. It lay near her skin where it rightly belonged.

  She pushed back the curtain of the palanquin. Her muscles were stiff from the journey, but Nuri and one of the guardswomen were quick to help her to her feet.

  As soon as Arwa was standing, with the cold night air all around her, she felt indescribably better. There was a staircase to the side of the path, carved into rock and rimmed in pale flowers, that led up to a building barely visible through the darkness.

  She could have walked alone and unaided up those steps, but Nuri had already taken her arm, so Arwa allowed herself to be guided. The steps were blessedly even beneath her feet. She heard the whisper of Nuri’s footsteps, the gentle clang of the guardswomen before her and behind her, their lanterns bright moons in the dark. She raised her head, gazing up through the gauze of her veil at the night sky. The sky was a blanket scattered with stars, vast and unclouded. She saw no birds in flight. No strange, ephemeral shadows. Just the mist of her own breath, as its warmth uncoiled in the air.

  “Careful, my lady,” said Nuri. “You’ll stumble.”

  Arwa lowered her head and looked obediently forward. At the top of the staircase, she caught her first proper glimpse of her new home. She stopped, ignoring Nuri’s insistent hand on her arm, and took a moment to gaze at it.

  The hermitage of widows was a beautiful building, built of a stone so luminescent it seemed to softly reflect the starlight. Its three floors rested on pale columns carved to resemble trees, rootless and ethereal, arching their canopies over white verandas and latticed windows bright with lantern light. Within it, the widows of the nobility prayed and mourned and lived in peaceful isolation.

  Arwa had thought, somewhat foolishly, that it would look more like the squalid grief-houses of the common people, where widows with no husband to support them and with family lacking in the means or compassion to keep them were discarded and left to rely on charity. But of course, the nobility would never allow their women to suffer so in shame and discomfort. The hermitage was a sign of the nobility’s generosity, and of the Emperor’s merciful kindness.

  For that kindness, Arwa was grateful.

  Finally, she allowed Nuri to guide her forward again, and entered the hermitage. Three women, hair cut short in the style of widowed women, were waiting for her in the foyer. One sat on a chair, a cane before her. Another stood with her hands clasped at her back, and a third still stood ahead of the rest, twisting the ends of her long shawl nervously between her fingers. Behind them, leaning over balconies and standing in corridors were … all the other women in the hermitage, Arwa thought wildly. By the Emperor’s grace, had they all truly come to greet her?

  She shook off Nuri’s grip and stepped forward, removing her veil as the third, nervous woman approached her. Arwa forced herself to make a gesture of welcome, forced herself not to flinch as the woman’s eyes grew teary, and she reached for Arwa’s hands.

  The woman was old—they were all old to her weary eyes—and the hands that took Arwa’s own and held them firm were soft as wrinkled silk.

  “My dear,” said the woman. “Lady Arwa. Welcome. I am Lady Roshana, and I must say I am very glad to see you here safe. My companions are Asima, who is seated, and Gulshera. If you need anything, you must come to us, understand?”

  “Thank you,” Arwa whispered. She looked at the woman’s face. The shawl she wore over her short hair was plain, as one would expect of a widow, but it was made of a rare knot-worked silk common only in one village of Chand, and accordingly eye-wateringly expensive. She wore no jewels but a gem in her nose, a diamond of pale, minute brilliance. This woman, then, was the most senior noblewoman of the hermitage, and the two others were the closest to her in stature. “It’s a great honor to be here, Aunt,” Arwa said, using a term of respect for an elder woman.

  “You are so young!” exclaimed Roshana, staring at Arwa’s face. “How old are you, my dear?”

  “Eighte
en,” said Arwa.

  A noise rippled through the crowd, hushed and sad. Noblewomen could not remarry; to be young and widowed was a tragedy.

  Arwa’s skin itched beneath so many eyes.

  “Shame, shame,” said Asima from her chair, overloud.

  “I truly hadn’t expected you to be so young,” Roshana breathed. “When I heard the widow of the commander of Darez Fort was coming to us—”

  Arwa flinched. She could not help it. Even the name of the place burned, still. It was just her luck that Roshana did not see it. Instead, Roshana was still staring at her damply, still twittering on.

  “… have you no family, my dear, who could have taken care of you? After what you’ve been through!”

  Arwa wanted to wrench her hand free of Roshana’s grip, but instead she swallowed, struggling to find words that weren’t cutting sharp, words that would not flay this fool of a woman open.

  How dare you ask me about Darez Fort.

  How dare you ask me about my family, as if your own have not left you here to rot.

  How dare—

  “I chose to come here, Aunt,” Arwa said, her voice a careful, soft thing.

  She could have told the older widow that her mother had offered to take her home. She’d offered it even as she’d cut Arwa’s hair after the formal funeral, the one that took place a full month after the real bodies from Darez Fort had been buried. Maryam had cut Arwa’s hair herself, smoothing its shorn edges flat with her fingers, tender with terrible disappointment. As Arwa’s hair had fallen to the ground Arwa had felt all Maryam’s great dreams fall with it. Dreams of renewed glory. Dreams of second chances. Dreams of rising from disgrace.

  Arwa’s marriage should have saved them all.

  You could come back to Hara, Maryam had said. Your father has asked for you. A pause. The snip of shears. Maryam’s fingers, thin and cold, on her scalp. He asked me to remind you that as long as he lives, you have a place in our home.

  But Roshana had no right to that knowledge, so Arwa only added, “My family understand I wish to mourn my husband in peace.”

  Roshana gave a sniffle and released Arwa’s hands. She placed her fingertips gently against Arwa’s cheek. “You must still love him very much,” she said.

  I should weep, Arwa thought. They expect me to weep. But Arwa didn’t have the strength for it, so she simply lowered her eyes and drew her shawl over her face instead, as if overcome. There was a flurry of noise from the crowd. She felt Roshana’s hand on her head.

  “There, there, now,” said Roshana. “All is well. We will take care of you, my dear. I promise.”

  “She should sleep,” Asima quavered from her seat. “We should all sleep. How late is the hour?”

  It was not a subtle hint.

  “Rabia,” said a voice. Arwa looked up. Gulshera was speaking, gesturing to one of the women in the crowd. “Show her where her room is.”

  Rabia hurried over and took Arwa’s hand in her own, ushering her forward. Arwa had almost forgotten that Nuri was present, so she startled a little when she heard Nuri’s soft voice whisper her name and felt her hand at her back.

  Roshana’s outpouring of emotion had both embarrassed Arwa and left her uneasy. She’d treated Arwa the way a woman might treat a daughter or a longed-for grandchild. She wondered if Roshana had either daughter or grandchild somewhere beyond the hermitage. She wondered what sort of family would discard a woman here to gather dust. She wondered what sort of family a woman would, perhaps, come here to hide from.

  She thought of her mother’s hands running through her own shorn hair. She thought of the way her mother had wept, as Arwa hadn’t: full-throated, as if her heart had utterly broken and couldn’t be mended.

  I had such hopes for you, Arwa. Her voice broke. Such hopes. And now they’re all gone. As dead as your fool husband.

  Arwa followed Rabia through the crowd into the silence of a dark, curving corridor.

  The widow Rabia was dying—nearly literally, it seemed, from the way she kept spasmodically pursing and loosening her lips—to ask Arwa questions that were no doubt completely inappropriate to put to a freshly grieving widow. Accordingly, Arwa kept dabbing her eyes and sniffling as they shuffled forward, mimicking tears. If the woman was going to ask her about her husband—or worse still, about what happened at Darez Fort—then by the Emperor’s grace, Arwa was damn well going to make her feel bad about it.

  “You must not mourn too greatly,” Rabia said, apparently deciding to put her questions aside for now and provide unsolicited advice instead. “Your husband died in service to the Empire. That is glorious, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes,” Arwa said, patting furiously at her eyes. “He was a brave, brave man.” She let her voice fade to a whisper. “But I can’t speak of him yet. It’s far too painful.”

  “Of course,” Rabia said hurriedly, guilt finally overcoming her. They fell into silence.

  Arwa’s patience—limited, at the best of times—was sorely tested when Rabia piped up again a moment later

  “I know some people say the Empire is cursed and that—the fort, you know—that it’s proof. But I don’t think that. This is your room,” she added, pushing the door open. Nuri slipped inside, leaving Arwa to deal with Rabia alone. “I think we’re being tested. One day the Maha is going to come out of hiding if we prove our worth against evil forces, if we show we’re worthy. And what happened to your husband, his bravery, it’s proof—”

  “Thank you,” Arwa said, cutting in. Her voice was sharp. She couldn’t soften the edge on it and had no desire to. Instead she bared her teeth at Rabia, smiling hard enough to make her face hurt.

  Rabia flinched back.

  “You’ve been very kind,” added Arwa.

  Rabia gave a weak smile in response and fled with a mumbled apology. Arwa didn’t think she’d be bothered by her again.

  It was a nice enough room, once Rabia had been encouraged to leave it. It had its own latticed window and a bed covered in an embroidered blanket. There was a low writing desk, already equipped with paper and a lit oil lantern ready for Arwa’s own use. One of the guardswomen must have brought in Arwa’s luggage via a servants’ entrance, because her trunk was on the floor.

  Nuri kneeled before it, quickly sorting through tunics and shawls and trousers, all in pale colors with light embellishment, suitable for Arwa’s new role as a widow. The ones that had grown dirty from use would be washed and aired to remove the musk from their long journey, then refolded and stored away again, packed with herbs to preserve their freshness.

  Arwa sat on the bed and watched Nuri work.

  Nuri was the perfect servant. Mild, discreet, attentive. Arwa had no idea what Nuri truly thought or felt. It was no surprise, really: Nuri had been trained in her father’s household, under the keen of Arwa’s mother, who demanded only the best from her household staff, a clean veneer of loyal obedience, without flaw. She’d been sent by Arwa’s mother to accompany her on the journey from Chand to Numriha, as Arwa had not had a maidservant of her own any longer.

  “The guards,” said Arwa, “are they camping overnight?”

  “The hermitage provides accommodation not far from here,” Nuri said. “They’ll leave in the morning, I expect.”

  “Does the hermitage have servants’ quarters?”

  Nuri was momentarily silent. Arwa watched her smooth the creases from the tunic on her lap. “I thought I would sleep here,” Nuri said finally. “I have a bedroll. I would be able to care for you then, my lady.”

  Care for me as my mother ordered you to, Arwa suspected. The thought made her both sad and terribly angry. Her feelings concerning her mother—and her mother’s brand of love—were far from straightforward. But her choice today, at least, was clear.

  “I don’t want you to stay,” said Arwa. “Not here in my room tonight or in the hermitage at all. You can accompany the guards back tomorrow. I’ll pay for your passage back to Hara.”

  “My lady,” Nuri said qu
ietly. “Your mother bid me to stay with you.”

  “You can tell her I made you leave,” Arwa said. “Tell her I refuse to have a maidservant.” Blame my grief, Arwa thought. But Nuri would surely do that without being told. “Tell her I raged at you, that I wouldn’t be reasoned with. She’ll believe it.”

  “Lady Arwa,” Nuri said. There was a thread of fear in her voice. “You … you need someone to take care of you. To protect you.”

  From yourself, went unsaid.

  “She won’t cast you out for leaving me,” Arwa said tiredly, ignoring Nuri’s words. “She’ll know it was my choice. I’ll write and tell her so. I expect she’ll be glad of your help with Father anyway.”

  Arwa reached into her sash and removed a purse. She held it out. “Take it,” she said. “Enough for your journey to Hara, and more for your kindness.” She could have given Nuri jewels—she had little need for them anymore, after all. But a maidservant with jewels would inevitably be accused of theft. Coin was different. Coin could come from anywhere.

  Hesitantly, Nuri held out her hand. Arwa placed the purse on her palm, and watched Nuri’s fingers curl over it.

  “I should finish sorting your clothes,” said Nuri.

  “There’s no need,” said Arwa. “You should go and rest. You have a long journey tomorrow.”

  Nuri nodded and stood. “Please take care, Lady Arwa,” she said. Then she left.

  Arwa kneeled and sorted through her own clothes. She would have to arrange for one of the hermitage’s servants to have them washed in the morning. When the job of sorting through her clothing was done, Arwa latched the trunk shut and closed the door.

  She placed the oil lantern on the window ledge, sucked in a fortifying breath, and took her dagger from her sash.

  She held the blade over the heat of the oil lantern’s flame. Her hand rested comfortably on the hilt of the blade, where the great teary opal embedded within it fitted the shape of her palm in a manner that brought her undeniable comfort. She counted the seconds, waiting for the blade to warm, and stared out of the window. The dark stared back at her, velvet, oppressively lightless. She couldn’t even see the stars.