She saved her questions for Lalita instead. On one of Lalita’s visits, Mehr asked her if there was any way she could assist the clan. “I’m just a burden as I am,” Mehr said with a shrug, thinking of all the food she had eaten, the prayer flames she’d burned that could have been put to a better use. “I’d like to help if I can.”

“How would you like to help?” Lalita asked her, quirking an eyebrow at her.

Mehr shook her head. “You know well enough I have nothing to offer.” She smiled. “I have a noblewoman’s skill for doing nothing.”

“Oh, hush.”

“Let me contribute,” Mehr said. “Teach me a skill, if you’re willing.” She thought of the way Amun had fixed her torn sleeve with those large, gentle hands of his. She swallowed and said, in a voice that was less even than she’d hoped it would be, “I can’t simply sit here and wait. I feel—restless.”

Lalita made a soft humming sound. “I can teach you to sew. When the clan accepts you, they’ll be glad of the skill.”

“You can sew?”

“There’s no need to sound so surprised, Mehr.”

“Forgive me,” Mehr said. “It just doesn’t seem like something that would interest you.”

“It isn’t. And yet here I am, darning day in and out.” Lalita’s laugh was strained. “And you wonder why I wanted a life in the Empire,” she added wryly.

They spoke of other things after that, but Mehr noticed the way Lalita looked down at her own hands, studying the new calluses that had covered their old softness. Mehr was reminded, forcefully, that she was not the only one who was struggling to adapt. Lalita had chosen a life beyond the desert and flourished in it. Now she had been forced to return to a clan that wasn’t her own by birth, to a desert haunted by strangeness, and a life defined by her blood and not by her choices. Her dear friend had been murdered. She was adrift, just as Mehr was adrift, struggling to carve a place in a world that was not fit for her.

When Lalita moved to leave, Mehr reached for her. She took Lalita’s hands in her own, feeling their new roughness, and their new strength. Her heart was so heavy inside her.

You’ve always been my clan, Mehr thought. Even when I didn’t realize it, fool child that I was, you were more a mother to me than I understood or deserved.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

“What is it?” Lalita asked.

Mehr couldn’t say all she wished to, not without splintering the brittle strength Lalita had drawn tight around her, keeping her tall. So instead she said, “I would love it if you taught me to sew.”

Lalita laughed at that. “You’ll forgive me if I doubt you.”