Kharuf, where they herded sheep and little else, was nothing to me, except that I needed it to be, and I needed it to wither toward inevitable doom. And slowly, slowly, it did, presenting an ever more tempting target for the latest of the Maker Kings, who had no title of his own yet, and who hungered for conquest.
Finally, I saw my chance. A girl was born to Kharuf three years after a boy was born in Qamih; ideal for an arranged marriage, if their parents could be convinced. The timing was perfection, beyond what I might have engineered. Kharuf already hovered on the brink of desolation—one or two hard winters, or a summer with too much rain, would be enough to send it over into desperation—but I would leave nothing to the mercy of possibility. When the proposal was made, it would be accepted.
There had been one like me before amongst our kind. He had taken a king and ruled that king’s lands, but in the end he had been undone, and his undoing had ruined our kind for time nearly beyond measure. I would take no king, not directly. Instead, I would have the girl, the Little Rose. I knew she would be raised from infancy to rule: given the best education, taught to do everything from spinning thread to planning battle strategy. Her mind would be a fortress, each stone of it laid with the will to lead, and once I took it, I would make it impregnable. She would be queen, but once married, she would not be the focus of power—at least, not until I decided it was time for her to be.
I waited five more years, almost nothing compared to my wait thus far, and then I went to the castle in Kharuf where the Little Rose spent her days. It was her birthday, and the Great Hall was full to bursting with her subjects. This suited me, as I fed as much on fear as I did on craft. I spent the afternoon in the kitchens, unseen, and watched as the cooks prepared a feast that almost didn’t require my help to be stunning. As I lurked, I felt the approach of the beings who might undo my plan before I could begin it.
It was tradition to leave offerings for the creatures that kept my kind hemmed into our mountain prison. It was not tradition for them to actually attend. Perhaps they sensed me. Perhaps they were, at last, aware of my actions over the previous decades. Perhaps it was poor luck on my part. In any case, I had not come this far to be thwarted now. I cast aside my dignity, and waited, crouching in the kitchen embers, while the feast went on above. I waited while each of my hated jailors gave a gift to the Little Rose, and as they gave their power to her, I held back a flood of laughter. They gave her gifts to make her a better queen. Without meaning to, they would only strengthen my designs.
At last, I could stand to stay in hiding no longer. I left the kitchens and went to the Great Hall in a storm of darkness and flame. I looked upon the Little Rose and I gave her a gift of my own: a promise that, someday, we would achieve great things together, and her own people would suffer greatly if she tried to work against me. In the face of my fury, only the piskey spoke, adding the wisp-thin thread of her magic to the strong-spun cord that was my own. Her gift to the princess was so laughable that I let her bestow it, as though sleep could protect her kingdom from my designs.
I left them there, in panic and devastation, to reason out the depth of the doom I had presented to them. The effects would not be felt in full right away, but time would show them how far their fall was destined to be. The Little Rose would live; I had seen to it. She would grow up as blessed and talented as my jailors had decided to let her be. And then—then, she would be mine for the taking.
That would give me Kharuf, but I did not wish only for that sheep-infested mire. I wanted Qamih as well, and I had plans for that, too. Each year of my enforced exile in those hated mountains, each moment spent pandering to one Maker King after another, all of it would come to fruition in the endless meadows of Kharuf. My kind make no art, it is true; but if we did, then the curse I gave to the Little Rose, to her parents and her kingdom and her people, would be our greatest work.
THE WAY THROUGH the Road Maker’s Pass was easy, thanks to years of long trade between Qamih and Kharuf, but we did not take that road. Even after our encounter with the demon bear, Saoud and I deemed it unwise to travel in view of others. Bears, we had learned, we could handle. We were less sure of ourselves if confronted with a group of armed men. Banditry had not always been a problem on the trade route that linked the two kingdoms, but as the ruination in Kharuf increased, so too did the number of desperate souls upon the road. It was, Saoud’s father told us, the simplest of mathematics.
“Why doesn’t the Maker King fix it, like he did in Qamih?” Tariq had asked, prying his knives out of the target while Saoud’s father lectured. My mother liked our weapons training little enough, and cared even less for when Saoud’s father taught us politics, but that had not stopped us from learning either. “We could all call him the Peace Maker after he does it.”