Our pace was slow, though the ground was even and the air was plentiful again. Saoud took the front, and did not push us. I guarded the back, poorly, I’ll admit, as I was halfway lost in my own thoughts.
I had always carried a spindle. Even though I hated it and loved it in turn, it had always been in my pocket, in my belt, in my pack. When we had no food upon the road, I’d had my spindle. When I was angry with my mother, angry with the Little Rose, I’d had it. I set it down only for sparring, when the manic energy of the staff or the knives took me over, and made me into a tool for crafting of a different purpose. The spindle didn’t weigh very much, even with the weighted whorl, but I knew it was with me when I had it, and now that it wasn’t, I felt its absence.
This was the burden my mother had borne that whole last year in Kharuf, when she stayed for love of the queen. To keep the spindle and feel her lungs fail her, or to give it up and always be searching for it? I had been without mine for not even an hour, and I was nearly mad from wanting it back. How had she lasted? How had she felt the pull and stretch of her craft and ignored it until she was safely in Qamih, and could work again?
I nearly tripped when I realized it: she hadn’t. She had spun for the king and queen, and for the Little Rose, even though she had felt it killing her. She had not been able to stop. Not even after it was made illegal. She had spun and spun, and unspooled, until finally she had crossed the mountains with the illness already set into her lungs, drowning her with every breath. She had done her duty—no, she had done more than that—and she had carried the price of it across the mountains, where it was still killing her. I wished I had been kinder.
Our days went well enough. We walked and walked, and there was plenty to keep us occupied. The evenings, however, were not so easy. Saoud sharpened knives until the sound of iron grating on the whetstone made Arwa beg him to stop, to give her some peace and quiet. But the quiet was even worse. I could hear Tariq’s fingers move against the fabric of his trousers, spinning wool that wasn’t there with a spindle he didn’t have. I could hear Arwa’s breathing, and wondered if it wheezed more today than it had yesterday. I could hear my own heart beat, hard against my ribs, for lack of anything else to do.
We sparred, each of us taking a turn against the others. I even squared off with Arwa, and though I tried to go easy on her, she fought with such ferocity that I was forced to maintain my guard, and strike at her harder than I might have liked. We fought each other with the staff, and with our fists, and with knives, which was something Saoud’s father had never allowed, because there was no way to make it safe.
“There is no safe,” Saoud said, panting, when I reminded him of this. “There is no safe, and the three of you are wild here. Knives, I think, are the least of our worries.”
We were lucky that he kept his head.
It was Saoud who planned how far we would walk each day, now, and where we would camp and what we would eat. Left to ourselves, Tariq and Arwa and I would not have managed it. We skirted what few villages we passed, and not even Saoud went into them to seek news or food. He would not leave us alone, and neither would he take us with him into a town. Instead, he shepherded us up and down the heathered slopes with the care and attention of the best herd master, and took care of us when we could not take care of ourselves.
One night, I woke to Saoud carrying Arwa out of our tent. She struggled against his hold, her veil and robe loose in the night breeze, and her arms flailed against him in useless blows.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at him.
“She was trying to get into my pack,” Saoud said, and I heard the words he would not say: she was trying to get her spindle.
“Please,” she begged. “Just for a little while. Just for a little while.”
“No, little goat,” he said to her, and I heard his father’s gentlest voice when he spoke. “You mustn’t. You must sleep without it.”
He put her in her tent, and then came back for his pack. I had never given it much consideration before. It was merely a part of Saoud, Saoud’s pack on Saoud’s back. He saw how I looked at his pack now, though, and sighed.
“Yashaa,” he said. “We need a better way than this.”
He was tired. We were killing him, and the spindles were killing us. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop staring at the pack. I watched while he picked it up, wrapped it tightly in his arms, and went to sit by the fire alone.
It was a long time before I could go back to sleep.
“Saoud,” I said, when we rose gritty-eyed in the morning. Tariq and Arwa had gone to the river for water, and would not overhear us. “Saoud, tonight I should spin.”
“No!” he said.