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 regardless, 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, concealed where no one would find it and recognize it for what it was.

Arwa looked out of the lattice window. Without the dark of the 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 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 a midday rest, some of the women apparently liked to go for a walk, or so Roshana told her as she dragged Arwa out to join them. 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 her instinct to be waspish and tried to be gracious in response. Still, she was glad when Asima commandeered her, demanding that Arwa walk by her side instead.

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.

“Pick some of that for me,” demanded Asima, pointing to some gnarled vegetation.

“Not the flowers?” Arwa asked, leaning down.