The Maker King’s face was frozen and blank, but Qasim looked determined.
“You have also offered a marriage alliance between our kingdom and yours, to be fulfilled by our children,” Qasim continued. “Forgive an indulgent father, but we had not yet even begun to think of such arrangements for our daughter, and thus are grateful for the time you have accorded us to consider.”
Every breath in the hall was held. It was as quiet as I had ever heard anything be. I could feel my heart race in my chest, and my mother’s hand gripped my shoulder.
“Our ancestor the King Maker made us separate our kingdoms, as you will recall,” Qasim said. “We have consulted our advisors and agree with them. A marriage between our daughter and your son would reunite the kingdoms, and so for the good of Kharuf, we cannot agree to it.”
A gasp is a quiet sound when made by one person. When made by dozens in a hall of stone, the echo is rather remarkable. Still, the Maker King remained cold, though his eyes tightened briefly before relaxing.
“Your majesty is as wise as I have been told,” he said to my king. “Perhaps if we have younger children someday, we might revisit negotiations?”
Qasim nodded regally, and they all took their seats again. There was a moment of pause, and then the servers who bore the dessert remembered that they were meant to be serving it. With their movement, the hall relaxed. Soon, everything would be back to normal.
The Maker King departed the following day, taking his company with him, and normalcy did indeed return. For one more year, we lived in the castle in peace and comfort, until the Little Rose turned five, and came under a curse. Then the Maker King offered marriage again, on harsher terms and with no pity. And Qasim was forced to accept it; and our long suffering was begun.
ILL-CLAD AND BAREFOOT though she was, they knew her for the Little Rose immediately. They knew the same way I had: by her hair. You could not say her summer-wheat hair was lovely, not shorn close and patchy as it was; but it was recognizable, and they recognized her. She would need a better scarf to wrap her head with, or we would be caught the instant someone saw us. Instead of the instant afterward, I supposed, when one of us deferred to her accidentally and gave her away. Tariq was all but making formal prostration at her feet. She could not help but notice.
“You had better call me Zahrah,” she said to them. She ran a hand over the patched scarf on her head, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. “And forget where I came from.”
“We can’t do that,” Arwa said, leaning toward her the way she leaned toward the fire when the nights in the mountains were cold. Her face shone in the moonlight. “Don’t ask us to do that.”
Saoud said nothing as he rummaged through Arwa’s pack, hunting for her spare shoes. They would be tight on the Little Rose but better than nothing. He would not speak his piece in front of her, not until he was sure of her character. The rest of us had been brought up to love her, but Saoud had been raised to question strangers in the night, and not without reason.
“Did I know you before?” she said to Tariq. I remembered them, racing ahead of the nurse or hanging off my hands, and fought off a wave of jealousy. She had not recognized me.
“Yes, Prin—Zahrah,” he choked. “We played together when we were small.”
“You were meant to bring back information,” Saoud said, dropping the shoes in the Little Rose’s lap. His words were only for me, even though everyone else could hear him. “Not the princess herself.”
“You didn’t see it, Saoud,” I said. “You didn’t see where they were keeping her. You would have brought her back, too.”
He hadn’t heard her voice, the quiet assumption that I had come to kill her. He would hear her soon enough, I thought. He would hear, and he would finally understand what it was to be a spinner of Kharuf, to truly be one of us.
Saoud wanted to argue with me, but the moon had come too high in the sky, and it was too bright to go back. It was too late to do anything except run for it.
“When will they miss you?” he asked her. He did not use his gentle voice, but the Little Rose didn’t quail.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “About an hour after sunrise. That’s when they come to bring my breakfast and take the blankets away.”
“Why do they take the blanket?” Arwa asked.
“To check for threads,” said the Little Rose. There was pain in that voice, and a longing so deep I wavered on my feet. “They have to make sure there aren’t any loose threads.”
“Why—” Arwa began, but Saoud held up a hand. It would have been a flood of questions if she started to ask right now, and we didn’t have the time. The moon was high and bright, and, worse, the sun was coming.