By evening, the worst of my headache was gone, though I still could not stare at the fire for long, and I was exhausted. Worse, I was bored out of my mind. The others had taken advantage of the day to mend tears in clothing and bags and fix what they could of our gear. When I tried to focus on something, though, my eyes swam and my head pounded anew. I would have even been grateful to spin, but I could barely hold my hands still for Tariq while he wrapped the last of his thread around them.
He sighed when the job was done, taking the skein and putting it carefully in his bag. Both he and Arwa had brought carded wool for spinning on the trip. Each night, at the fire, they had brought out their spindles and worked them, spinning thread for no particular reason other than that they could, and that they found it to be a comfort. Arwa had run out of wool the night before the bear attacked us, and this was the end of Tariq’s supply.
“I know spinning is not your favorite,” he said to me, “but it’s all I have left from my father.”
“I know,” I said. Maybe when my mother—no, I wouldn’t even give that consideration. Instead, I ran a practiced hand over the thread in Tariq’s bag. “It’s well-made,” I told him. “Even and strong. He would be proud of you.”
“It’s not like we can spin in Kharuf anyway,” he said. That had been his decision after much consideration. He closed the bag and stowed it with the rest of his gear.
That was the other story from the mountains. The Little Rose could not spin, and thus no one in Kharuf could spin. Qasim had made a proclamation of it, and that law had driven most of the spinners from his land. Those who stayed—like my mother, who stayed for love of the queen—knew only suffering. I would not let Tariq and Arwa suffer if I could do anything to prevent it.
“That is why we must break the curse,” I said.
There was stunned silence. I could almost hear Tariq’s mind as he considered all aspects of what I had said, and selected which bit to take apart first.
“Is that your plan?” Saoud said. “Or are you just speaking whatever words come into your battered head?”
“It’s not the injury talking,” I told him. “It’s the only solution that works for us long enough to be truly useful.”
There were several more moments of silence while Tariq thought. The longer he was quiet, the more a desperate sort of hope began to rise in Arwa’s eyes. I had to look away from her.
“We don’t know how it will work at all,” Tariq finally pointed out. “We don’t know what it will do to the Little Rose, to break her curse.”
“I don’t really care what happens to the Little Rose,” I said, more harshly than I had intended.
“Yashaa.” Arwa sounded upset, but I pushed forward. This would not be easy, and it was best to air all of the problems as soon as we could.
“Is it fair that so many suffer for the sake of one girl, princess or not?” I said to her. “Is it fair that she lives in a castle while you live on the side of the road, and your mother paid for her craft with her life?”
“Of course not,” said Saoud, speaking carefully. “But I didn’t like killing the bear, and it was possessed by a demon that wanted our blood.”
“I don’t want to kill her,” I said, realizing belatedly that my words had been vague enough to suggest it. “But we have to do something. Do you think Kharuf would be better under the Maker Kings?”
“Why do you care about Kharuf at all?” Saoud asked. Usually he and his father kept clear of our debates about spinning and our homeland, but committed as he was to us, I couldn’t fault him for joining in now.
“I don’t,” I told him. We both knew I spoke too quickly, but I pushed onward, gesturing to where Tariq and Arwa sat. “I care about them. I want them to have the life they were meant to—to be respected for their craft, and honored for the history of their work.”
“Then why don’t we just keep going after we cross the mountains?” he pressed. “Why don’t we take the Silk Road and cross the desert? Let the Little Rose grow old and die and take her curse with her to her tomb. You’ve been made unwelcome in two kingdoms, Yashaa, but you know there is a third that will have you, and have you gladly. You have only to get there.”
We were strong enough to make the desert crossing now; I did not doubt that. And perhaps one of the spinners who had gone there would recognize me, or at least my mother’s name, and make us welcome. But it was all too uncertain.
I felt like my brain was on fire. Demon bears and piskey dust, spindle whorls and desert roads—it was too much. I wanted my mother to be healthy and to stop looking at me like I had betrayed her by preferring the staff to the spindle. I wanted Tariq to be left alone with enough carded wool to spin himself back to the happy child I remembered. I wanted Arwa to have charge of a room full of weavers, as her mother had done in the castle of Kharuf-that-was. I wanted the Little Rose to pay for what she had brought down upon the people that I loved. I wanted to unleash twelve years of hunger and uncertainty on her, and make sure that she felt, in her marrow, the pain that she and her parents had caused.
Overcome, I pitched sideways and Saoud caught me back from the fire. I fought him off, weakly and with no real effect, except that he let me go when I regained some measure of steadiness.