Arwa followed Gulshera into her room, shutting the door behind her as the older woman swiftly divested herself of her boots and her bow, and the long jacket she wore over her tunic. Finally, when Gulshera was done, she sat by the window, and gestured for Arwa to join her.
“I looked out of my window and saw the light in yours. For a moment,” Gulshera stressed. “No longer. I had no darker motive. I only cared about your welfare. Are you satisfied?”
No, Arwa was not satisfied. Far from it.
“In my experience,” Arwa said steadily, “people don’t just simply care about one another’s welfare. All actions have a purpose. I may be a child to you, Aunt, but I’ve lived long enough to know what people are.”
“Then you’ve lived a terribly sad life,” Gulshera said, not mincing her words. “You’ll learn that we have to look after one another here. We’re not like the noblewomen you left behind, we have no need to play political games and tread on one another for the sake of our husbands or children or even ourselves. Our time of power and glory is finished.
“Perhaps you don’t understand yet,” she continued, “that when your husband died, the part of you that shared in his world died with him. We all came here, by choice or by necessity, because we Ambhans hold our marriages more sacred than the lesser peoples of the world, and we respect our vows beyond death. We are the ghosts of who we once were, and accordingly we must take care of one another. No one else will.” Gulshera’s gaze was fixed on Arwa’s, her voice unrelenting. “You’ll think me dramatic, Arwa, but I assure you I am a realist. You must be one too. For your own sake.”
Fine words. Strong words. But Arwa could not let the bare-fisted blow of them mislead her.
“I know what I know,” she said. She raised her head higher, jaw firm.
Her mother had tried to teach her subtlety. But the art of folding secrets inside words and smiles, and hiding the knife of her anger until it was already in someone’s gut, too late to be escaped—those things had never been Arwa’s strength. Flighty, she’d been called as a child, and mercurial. She wore her heart, fierce and changeable as it was, right on her skin.
Sometimes, her mother had called her worse things. Out of love, and out of fear. Tainted. Cursed.
You must be better than your blood, Arwa. For all our sakes.
Her parents had needed her to make a good marriage, to wed a nobleman of immaculate reputation and stable wealth. They’d needed her to save them. Not from poverty. Not from death. But from the insidious, destructive suffering that disgrace had brought upon their family.
They’d had no son. A man could strive to save his family, could serve valiantly in the military or ascend through the rungs of governmental service. A daughter could only hope to wed well enough to raise her position in society, and raise her family up with her.
So Arwa had done what was necessary. For a handful of liminal years, she had learned to weave a veneer of placidity, for the sake of making herself an attractive prospect as a bride, a worthy noblewoman, better than what lay in her blood. She’d learned to smile and to be soft, to say gentle words when sharp ones came far more easily to her tongue, and in the end her hard-won calm—and her youth—had granted her the older, powerful husband her mother had hoped for her. For a time, she had been better than her true, barbed self. She’d been a commander’s wife. She’d been a noblewoman worthy of respect. Her parents had been able to hold their heads high.
But that was before the circle of blood, and eyes like gold. Before Kamran’s death. Before she realized there was no running from the curse that lived in her own body: that no matter what she did, no matter how she had tried to obey her stepmother’s entreaty, she could not rise beyond what she was.
“I know,” Arwa said, “that you have scrolls that were sent to you by an Ambhan noble family. I was a commander’s wife, Aunt. I know the seals of the great families. But I didn’t recognize the seal upon them, which suggests to me that the seal is not real. Someone of noble blood communicates with you but seeks to hide their true identity. I know you own a man’s bow more expensive than anything I have possessed in my lifetime, embellished in a manner intended to please the eyes at court. Your husband, then, was a politician and a courtier. You wear no jewels but I suspect it is not Roshana who is truly of highest standing in this hermitage. You are.”
Arwa leaned forward, not allowing her gaze to falter.
“You’re not a ghost of a woman, cut off from the world,” said Arwa. “You serve someone. You answer to someone powerful. And you seek to take care of me, of all people. Forgive me, if I do not think your motives are entirely benevolent.”
“Well,” Gulshera said finally. “If we’re talking bluntly…” She leaned forward, intent, mirroring Arwa. “I am under no obligation to tell you anything. You have no power here. No standing. I know a little of you, Lady Arwa. You may have been a great commander’s wife once, but your father was disgraced—”
“Don’t speak of my father,” Arwa said abruptly. She curled her fingers in her lap. She saw Gulshera’s gaze flicker to her fists, then up again. Reading her.
“You are no woman of a great noble house,” Gulshera continued calmly. “Only a woman lucky to wed well. And if you truly believe I am of such high stature and influence, then you shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.”
“I meant no disrespect.”
“Now that is a lie,” Gulshera said.
“Then I apologize,” said Arwa. “I know you don’t have to tell me anything. I know I have no power. I could have been patient. I could have waited for you to reveal what you truly require, in the fullness of time. But I am tired of games, Lady Gulshera. If you do truly care for my welfare, then do me a kindness: Tell me what you want, then leave me alone to mourn.”
“If you have a choice between being blunt or being patient in the future, then choose patient,” Gulshera said. But there was a thoughtful light in her eyes. “Come back here tomorrow morning, after breakfast. We’ll take a walk together.”
Arwa let out a slow exhale. This, after she’d asked for no more games…
“We’ll go down to the valley,” Gulshera said. “Just the two of us, where we can’t be overheard. And there, you can tell me about Darez Fort.”
CHAPTER THREE
The widows ate their evening meal together. Asima had called them prattling owls, and she hadn’t been entirely wrong. Gossip flowed between them ceaselessly, its rhythm broken only by the clatter of plates as they passed dishes of sweet melon and lentil broth and large, soft flatbreads between them. The widows spoke largely of their distant families: of sons struggling to hold tenuous command in their posts, as unrest swelled in famine-stricken provinces, and sharp bouts of unnatural terror flared to life in scattered villages and outposts; of granddaughters primping for court, in the hope of earning a powerful husband or a place in the household of one of the imperial women; of friends or siblings who complained of the tedious duties of household management in provinces where food and fuel were in short supply, as the trade routes crumbled and crops rotted in distant fields.
The widows were not as remote from the politics of the Empire as Arwa had first suspected. Far, far from it. They were noblewomen, after all. She should have known their personal concerns would be rich with veins of political significance, that if they maintained any link with their families, however tenuous, they would know something of how the world continued to fracture far beyond the hermitage’s walls.