Arwa hesitated.
A memory came to her, unbidden, of the feral cat she’d found in the gardens of her first home in the province Hara, where she had lived as a girl of ten. She’d been determined to make a friend of that cat, with its one bad eye and fanged teeth, but it ran and hid in the foliage whenever Arwa approached it. She’d gained a number of scratches before she’d learned that if she left slivers of meat on the ground near her, it would come and eat by her warily, as long as she studiously ignored its presence. In the end, it had grown warm with her, following her around the gardens, sleeping on her lap if she sat in the right patch of sun. Indifference and food had won it better than any straightforward affection could ever have.
Arwa had the discomforting sense that Gulshera was treating her with the same studied, indifferent regard Arwa had once shown that cat.
She wants something from me, Arwa thought.
She ate another fritter anyway, and drank her tea, before she murmured a suitably gracious thank-you and moved to leave.
“Come back whenever you like,” Gulshera said, not raising her head as Arwa left the room. “I always have enough for two.”
Arwa had liked the brusqueness of Gulshera’s care, somewhat despite herself. But as time went on—as she walked from Gulshera’s room across the hermitage, passing rooms and other widows—the memory of Gulshera’s words began to feed her disquiet.
You didn’t sleep, Gulshera had said. It hadn’t sounded like a guess. Perhaps Arwa was simply that transparent, but she went to her room anyway, checking the undisturbed line of blood on her window ledge, hidden carefully beneath her own miniature effigy of the Emperor. No one had searched her room. And her dagger was in her sash, hidden where no one would find it, and recognize it for what it was.
Arwa looked out of the lattice window. Without the press of night beyond it, she could see that the hermitage stood above a deep valley studded with rich swathes of flowers. The hermitage curved like a crescent moon, following the shape of the valley below it. Arwa’s window faced another, far at the other edge of the building.
Gulshera’s room lay at the other end of the hermitage. She’d walked the journey between their bedrooms, and knew that now. No doubt she must have looked out of her own window in the night and seen Arwa’s oil lantern burning. Perhaps she’d looked for a moment only, then gone back to bed. Perhaps she’d watched for a long time, marking the constant flicker of light in Arwa’s window, wondering what dark thoughts kept Arwa far from rest.
Either way, she knew the exact location of Arwa’s room. She’d stared through the press of the dark at Arwa’s lantern light, deliberately, thoughtfully. It disturbed Arwa to be so watched. She stepped back from the lattice and sat on her bed, hands clenched, searching for calm. She had told Nuri she would protect herself. She’d been sure she would be able to keep her secrets hidden. And yet, Gulshera had watched her. Gulshera had marked her strangeness, even if she did not truly know its cause. Arwa thought of how she’d listened to Gulshera’s words without discerning their full import, and stared about the older woman’s room wide-eyed without using any of the thought and cunning a noblewoman should sensibly employ. Fool. She was a fool.
What else, she thought, did I miss?
After the midday rest—which Arwa spent pacing her room back and forth, fear and fury building up within her like a steady poison—Roshana dragged her out to join a small group of widows on their daily walk. Roshana spoke to Arwa anxiously, asking how well she was settling in, and how she liked it here in Numriha, so far from her old home. Arwa clamped down on the instinct to snap at her, struggling to be gracious in response to Roshana’s steady stream of questions. She had already raised the suspicions of one widow with her night-long candle burning. She did not need to disturb another with her rage. Still, she was glad when Asima commandeered her, demanding that Arwa walk by her side instead. Asima demanded nothing of her but a steady arm and occasional murmur of understanding. That, Arwa could provide.
She felt as if her insides were coiled tight.
There was a gentle avenue that followed the edge of the hermitage, not quite dipping into the steeper territory of the valley. It was a smooth enough path for the widows of varying levels of health to walk it comfortably. From here, Arwa could see the valley, and also glimpse the guardswomen who walked the roof of the hermitage, on the lookout for bandits who’d normally consider a house of noblewomen a ripe target.
“You should dress more warmly,” muttered Asima. “A thicker shawl at least, girl. There’s a bitter chill in the air this season. Even the Emperor caught a chill, I hear.”
“Did he?”
“Don’t listen to gossip, do you?” Arwa did not have the chance to interject that her recent bereavement had rather stood in the way of her gathering gossip, before Asima continued. “Good. You’re better than these other prattling owls, then. Pick some of that for me now.”
Asima pointed to some gnarled vegetation.
“Not the flowers?” Arwa asked, leaning down.
“No, no. Not flowers. What do I need them for?”
Arwa picked Asima green vegetation, and long grass.
“Can you weave them together?” Asima asked.
When Arwa shook her head, Asima clucked in response.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she said, shaking her head. “A noble girl who can’t weave a simple basket! The Empire has truly fallen to shit, Gods save us.”
Her words drew a startled laugh from Arwa, quickly quelled by Asima’s gimlet-eyed stare. “As you say, Aunt,” Arwa said quickly.
“Can you embroider?” Asima demanded.
“Yes, Aunt.”
“But you can’t weave?”
What followed was a demonstration of how to make a grave-token. It was a simple enough lesson, and one Arwa could follow without paying it all her attention. As she followed Asima’s directions, taking green roots into her hands and winding them into a miniature braid, she worried over the thought of Gulshera watching her lantern-bright window. She worried over the thought as one worries over a sore tooth, incessantly, unable to soothe the irritation away.
She knows, a chill voice said in Arwa’s head. The widow knows what you are. She can see it. Your ill blood. The curse in your bones.
She’ll have you thrown from the hermitage. She’ll set the guards on you, to hunt you like an animal.
You know how they punish people like you.
Gulshera couldn’t know. She couldn’t. But if she did—if she had even guessed…
Arwa shuddered. The air suddenly felt very cold indeed.
Gulshera was not in her room. The door was locked. Arwa waited outside it for the woman to return. Eventually, Gulshera appeared, striding along the corridor. She hadn’t been attending to prayer or to mourning, or ambling gently along a well-trodden path, as the other widows had. Her bow was at her back, her face flushed with the heat of the day.
“Arwa,” Gulshera acknowledged, tipping her head.
“You watched my room last night,” said Arwa, without preamble. “Why?”
She saw Gulshera’s forehead furrow into a frown.
“Did your mother not teach you subtlety?” Gulshera asked incredulously. “They would eat you alive in Jah Ambha, by the Emperor’s grace! Come inside.”