CHAPTER ONE
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 uncurl from 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 naturally found in the flat fields of Chand, but the palanquin was ill-suited for travel up winding mountain roads. And Numriha was all mountains. Here, the disrepair of the Empire’s trade routes was impossible to ignore.
Arwa had heard the guards complain of it often enough: the way the once grand passes through the Nainal Mountains had grown unstable from rainfall and avalanche, their surfaces by turns sheer as a knife edge or gouged with deep, ankle-twisting holes. One misplaced step, and a man could easily stumble and fall straight to his death down the mountainside.
“If the roads don’t kill us,” one guard had said to Nuri, “then the bandits are bound to do it. These Numrihans are like goats.”
“Goats,” Nuri had said, nonplussed.
“They can climb anything. I once heard of one Numrihan bastard who jumped down right into the heart of a lady’s retinue, straight into her palanquin—cut clean through the woman’s throat—”
“Don’t scare her,” another guard had said. “Besides, what if she’s listening?” She, of course, being Arwa. Their fragile, silk-swaddled package, silent inside her four walls. “She doesn’t sleep as it is. Girl,” he said to Nuri, “you tell your lady she needn’t fear these people. They’re not Ambhan, not proper, but they’re no blood-worshipping heathens either. They’ll leave us be.”
“It’s not fear of bandits or Amrithi that keeps my lady awake,” Nuri had said coolly, and that of course had been the end of that conversation.
They all knew—or thought they knew—why Arwa did not sleep.
For four 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 pass. She could not see the road from her veiled seat, but her body was painfully aware of the truth of her retinue’s grumbling. 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 flesh. She turned her head to the faint bite of cold air creeping in through the narrow 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, 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 to 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 wondered, briefly, if bandits had fallen upon them after all. But she could hear no weapons and no more shouting, only silence.
Perhaps the guards had simply abandoned her. It was not unheard of. She knew very well how easily a soldier’s loyalty could falter, how much coin and wine and bread it took to keep a soldier loyal, when danger and hardship presented themselves. Steeling herself for the worst, she 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 at the side of the path, carved into rock and rimmed in pale flowers, leading 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.
Good.
“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.