The hermitage of widows was a beautiful building, built of a stone so luminescent it seemed to softly reflect back 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.
Finally, she allowed Nuri to guide her forward again, and entered the hermitage. Three women, hair cut short in the style worn by widows, 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 only common 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, by dint of her wealth and no doubt her lineage, 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?”
“Twenty-one,” said Arwa, voice subdued.
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, still damp-eyed. “I thought you would be—older. Why, you are near a child. When I heard the widow of the famed 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 chattering 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 their family 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, choosing solitude and prayer over the bonds and duties of family.
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 breaking. Such hopes. And now they’re all gone. As dead as your fool husband.
She 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.