“I don’t know if you want absolution from me,” the Amrithi woman said, “but I’m not in a position to provide it.” The woman leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “If you’ll allow me to rest,” she said, “I’ll provide you with my blood in the morning.”

Rahima murmured agreement and went back to her own bed to weep.

When she woke, the woman was gone. She’d taken some of Rahima’s food and water with her, and one of her robes too. There was a gold necklace on the floor where the woman had slept. Rahima looked outside, but the woman was already long gone, the sand unmarked, the sky painfully blue. She hadn’t left any blood.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

After their conversation, Amun stayed close to her side. There was no other discernible change in his behavior. He didn’t grow friendly or talkative, didn’t relax in her company or show her any particular gentleness. He simply shadowed her, slowing his pace to match hers as they walked through the desert with the mystics vigilant around them. Every day he walked beside her. Every night he slept by her side, his back to her. They didn’t repeat their discussion. Mehr felt the silence grow between them, heavy with the weight of words unsaid. All Mehr could do was hold on to her faith that the silence would break. She had to hope that once she met the Maha, Amun would tell her everything she needed to know, as he’d claimed he would. She had taken Amun’s measure, weighed his weaknesses against his strengths, and she was sure—almost sure—that he would keep his word.

Thoughts of the Emperor and the Maha haunted Mehr constantly. For so long, her only image of them had been a faceless effigy on an altar, the world held in its upraised palm, symbolic of the powers of all the Emperors who had ever held the throne. It was hard for her to envisage either of them as flesh and bone. Her father had at least met the Emperor, had served in his court and earned his governorship by winning imperial favor. She knew the Emperor was a mortal man. But the Maha …

The Maha, the Great One, first Emperor of the Ambhan Empire, had lived far, far longer than any mortal could. His apparent immortality was proof that the imperial bloodline was blessed by the Gods. His temple stood on the sand where the Gods slept, his mystics prayed for the Empire, and the Empire had grown and flourished with fortune on its side.

When Mehr tried to imagine him—the man who ruled the soul and faith of the Empire—she imagined a man with no face, smooth and unblemished and timeless.