“What are you doing?” whispered Arwa.
“Speaking,” said Mehr. “Hush now.”
She drew her hands close together, thumbs interlocked, fanning out her fingers in the old sigil for bird. The daiva rustled its wings in recognition. It knew its name when it saw it.
“Ah,” breathed Mehr. Her heart was beating fast in her chest. “You can move now, love. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“It still looks like it wants to bite me,” Arwa said warily.
“It’s a bird-spirit,” Mehr said. “That’s what birds do. But there’s nothing evil inside it. It’s a simple creature. It won’t hurt you.”
She took another step closer. The daiva cocked its head.
She could smell the air around it, all humid sweetness like incense mingled with water. She sucked in a deep breath and resisted the urge to set her fingers against the soft shadows of its skin.
She held one palm out. Go.
But there was no compulsion behind the movement, and the daiva did not look at all inclined to move. It watched her expectantly. Its nostrils, tucked in the shadows of its face, flared wide. It knew what she was. It was waiting.
Mehr drew the dagger from her sash. Arwa gave a squeak, and behind them the guardswoman startled into life, drawing the first inch of her sword out with a hiss of steel.
“Calm, calm,” said Mehr soothingly. “I’m just giving it what it wants.”
She pressed the sharp edge of her dagger to her left thumb. The skin gave way easily, a bead of blood rising to the surface. She held her thumb up for the daiva.
The daiva lowered its head, smelling her blood.
For a long moment it held still, its eyes never leaving hers. Then the shadows of its flesh broke apart, thin wisps escaping through the lattice. She saw it coalesce back into life beyond the window, dark wings sweeping through the cloudless, brightening air.
Mehr let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. There was no fear in her. Just the racing, aching joy of a small adventure. She pressed her thumb carefully against the window lattice, leaving her mark behind.
“All gone,” she said.
“Is it really?” Arwa asked.
“Yes.” Mehr wiped the remaining blood from the dagger with her sash. She tucked the blade away again. “If I’m not here and a daiva comes, Arwa, you must offer it a little of your own blood. Then it will leave you alone.”
“Why would it want my blood?” Arwa asked, frightened. Her eyes were wide. “Mehr?”
Mehr felt a pang. There was so much Arwa didn’t know about her heritage, so much that Mehr was forbidden from teaching her.
To Arwa, daiva were simply monsters, and Irinah’s desert was just endless sand stretching off into the horizon, as distant and commonplace as sky or soil. She had never stared out at it, yearning, as Mehr had. She had never known that there was anything to yearn for. She knew nothing of sigils or rites, or the rich inheritance that lived within their shared blood. She only knew what it meant to be an Ambhan nobleman’s daughter. She knew what her stepmother wanted her to know, and no more.
Mehr knew it would be foolish to answer her. She bit her lip, lightly, and tasted the faint shadow of iron on her tongue. The pain grounded her, and reminded her of the risks of speaking too freely. There were consequences to disobedience. Mehr knew that. She did not want to face her stepmother’s displeasure. She did not want isolation, or pain, or the reminder of her own powerlessness.
But Arwa was looking up at her with soft, fearful eyes, and Mehr did not have the strength to turn away from her yet. One more transgression, she decided; she would defy her stepmother one more time, and then she would go.
“Because you have a little bit of them in your blood,” Mehr told her. When Arwa wrinkled her nose, Mehr said, “No, Arwa, it’s not an insult.”
“I’m not a daiva,” Arwa protested.
“A little part of you is,” Mehr told her. “You see, when the Gods first went to their long sleep, they left their children the daiva behind upon the earth. The daiva were much stronger then. They weren’t simply small animal-spirits. Instead they walked the world like men. They had children with humans, and those children were the first Amrithi, our mother’s people.” She recited the tale from memory, words that weren’t her own tripping off her tongue more smoothly than they had any right to. It had been many years since she’d last had Amrithi tales told to her. “Before the daiva weakened, when they were still truly the strong and terrifying sons and daughters of Gods, they made a vow to protect their descendants, and to never willingly harm them.” She showed Arwa the thin mark on her thumb, no longer bleeding. “When we give them a piece of our flesh, we’re reminding them of their vow. And, little sister, a daiva’s vow is unbreakable.”
Arwa took hold of her hand, holding it near the glow of the lantern so she could give it a thorough, grave inspection.
“That sounds like a children’s story,” she said finally, her tone faintly accusing, as if she were sure Mehr was telling her one of the soft lies people told their young.
“It is a children’s story,” said Mehr. “Our mother told it to me when I was a child myself, and I’ve never forgotten it. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
“I don’t know if my blood will work like yours,” Arwa said doubtfully. She pressed her thumb gently against Mehr’s. Where Mehr’s skin was dark like earth after rain, Arwa’s skin was a bare shade warmer than desert sand. “I don’t look like you, do I?”
“Our blood is just the same,” Mehr said quietly. “I promise.” She squeezed Arwa’s hand in hers, once, tightly. Then she stepped back.
“Tell Nahira it’s safe to return,” she said to the guardswoman. “I’m going back to my chambers.”
The guardswoman edged back in fear. She trembled slightly.
If Mehr had been in a more generous mood, she would, perhaps, have told the guardswoman that Irinah was not like the other provinces of the Empire. Perhaps she would have told the guardswoman that what she so derisively called Irin superstition was in truth Irin practicality. In Irinah, the daiva had not faded into myth and history, as they had elsewhere. Weakened though they were, the daiva were holy beings, and it was wise to treat them with both wariness and reverence when one came upon them on Irin soil.
But Mehr was not in a generous mood. She was tired, and the look on the guardswoman’s face had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Never mind,” said Mehr. “I’ll go.”
“Daiva aren’t real,” the guardswoman said blankly, as Mehr swept past her. “They’re a barbarian superstition.”
Mehr didn’t even deign to answer her. She walked out into the hallway, Arwa scampering after her, the lamp swinging wildly in her grip. As they left the nursery, Nahira swept Arwa up into her arms and one of the maids plucked the lamp deftly away. Mehr kept on walking until Arwa called out her name, holding out her arms again in a way that made Mehr’s traitorous heart twist inside her chest and her legs go leaden beneath her.
It would be best, she told herself, to keep walking. It would be best not to look back. She did not want to be punished. She did not want Arwa to be punished.