The male guards were meant to walk in a protective circle around her guardswomen, close enough to defend her, but far enough from her palanquin to ensure she was not directly at risk of being visible to common men. But the narrowness of the path and the dangers posed by following a cliff-edge road in darkness had made following proper protocol impossible. Instead all her guards snaked forward in an uneven, mixed-gender line, with her palanquin at its center.

She felt the palanquin jolt again, and this time she did swear. She hurriedly gripped the edge of a panel again as her retinue came a stop, voices beyond the curtain rising and mingling in a wave of indecipherable noise. Someone’s voice rose higher, and then suddenly she could hear the crunch of booted footsteps against stone, growing louder and then fading away.

Her palanquin was lowered to the ground. The path was so uneven that it tipped slightly to one side as it touched soil, enough to make the curtain flutter and Arwa’s weight fall naturally against one wall.

Arwa drew the curtain the barest sliver wider. She saw Nuri’s silhouette in the darkness, saw her carefully adjust her own shawl around her head, lantern light flickering around her, as she kneeled down to Arwa’s level.

“My lady,” Nuri said, voice painstakingly deferential, “the palanquin can go no farther. We will need to walk the final steps together. The men have gone back down the path and will not see you, if you come out now.”

When Arwa did not respond, Nuri said gently, “It is not far, my lady. I’ve been told it’s an easy walk.”

An easy walk. Of course it was. Most of the women who took the final steps of this journey were not as young or as healthy as Arwa. She adjusted her shawl and her veil. Last of all, she touched the sash of her tunic, hidden beneath the weight of her furs and her shawl and her long brocade jacket. Within her sash, she felt the shape of her dagger, swaddled in protective leather. It lay near her skin where it rightly belonged.

She pushed back the curtain of the palanquin. Her muscles were stiff from the journey, but Nuri and one of the guardswomen were quick to help her to her feet.

As soon as Arwa was standing, with the cold night air all around her, she felt indescribably better. There was a staircase to the side of the path, carved into rock and rimmed in pale flowers, that led up to a building barely visible through the darkness.