They had hoped that in this kingdom of tradesmen and merchants, they would find a place where they could do their work and be paid for it. But Qamih was different from the home they had left, and on this side of the Iron Mountains, a harsh guild system prevented unlicensed crafters from selling their wares in public markets. The guilds were also behind the trade agreements that Qasim had been forced to sign with the Maker King, which beggared Kharuf at every turn while the coffers in the Maker King’s capital overflowed. It was impossible for a spinner from Kharuf, even one as highly respected as my mother, to be given the credit she was due. New spinners, especially talented ones, were unwelcome competition.
We couldn’t stay in the cities or towns, and so we wandered for two years, Arwa on her mother’s back and me carrying my mother’s loom, until Saoud’s father, who had found us on the road and hired on as a guardsman even though we could barely afford him, took us to the crossroads, to camp with the other non-guild traders there. He understood spinning even less than Saoud did, and wanted to train all of the children in combat. My mother disapproved but never directly forbade it, even when it became clear that I was more enthusiastic about fighting than I was about spinning. For Arwa and Tariq, spinning was a game that, once they had mastered it, became as important as breathing. For me, who could remember the castle and the king’s face and the way the Little Rose laughed from her place at the table, it was a hateful reminder of what we had lost.
We could hear my mother coughing before we reached her tent. Arwa stopped in her tracks, and looked up at me.
“Can you get my spindle?” she said. “Maybe bring it to dinner?”
“I will,” I told her. “Go and see if they need help cooking.”
Arwa’s mother had died of the sickness that plagued my mother. It wasn’t contagious—at least, not in the traditional sense, or we would have been driven out of the crossroad camp—but it was hard to watch, and harder still when you knew the outcome. Magic is not common in the world, but from what I have seen of it, it is mostly cruel; and, at least when it comes to the magic that hurts the ones I love, tied back to the Little Rose. Tariq’s father had died of it first, a drowning gurgle that grew more and more quiet, until all breath was gone; then Arwa’s mother; and now my mother was ill. I didn’t know what we would do if she died. The other merchants were reluctant enough to keep us as it was.
I took a deep breath, and lifted the tent flap. There was light inside, because of the lamps, but the air was heavy with the herbs my mother burned in the brazier to help clear her lungs. I didn’t like the smell very much. Mother was sitting up, and spinning. I had asked her once why she could never keep her hands still. She hadn’t answered, but instead had smiled, and told me to coil the yarn so it didn’t knot on the floor. I was glad to see her spinning now. Some days, her hands did not have the strength for it.
“Yashaa,” my mother said to me, “thank you for coming. Do you feel better now that you have hit Saoud for a while?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said, my voice clipped. I had hoped, for a moment, that she was going to apologize for being so obtuse earlier. We had quarreled over Saoud’s father, again, and it had brought us no closer to understanding each other than it ever did. “It is not from hitting him, though. It is from moving with purpose.”
“There is purpose to all movement,” she said to me. “Even in the simple coil and rhythm of spinning.”
“What did you wish to tell me?” I hoped I was changing the subject. I didn’t want to fight with her again.
“I have had word from Saoud’s father,” she said. “I wanted to tell you what he discovered.”
“Is he coming back?” I asked, unashamedly eager. He had turned a little strange when Tariq’s father died, as though seeing our curse play out in front of him made him regret throwing in his lot, and Saoud’s, with us in the first place. He traveled much more after that, but he always came back—or he always had before.
“No,” said my mother. “He is too busy to come back. But he has sent me important news, and you need to hear it.”
“Then tell me,” I said, sitting at her feet as I might have done once to hear stories of the Little Rose.
“Kharuf is dying,” she said. “The people are starving and there is no money. Even the king and queen struggle. The Little Rose cannot spin, and so no one can.”
I wanted to say something about how Kharuf had been dying for years, and that Qasim and Rasima’s struggle meant nothing to me, but my mother raised a hand, and I held my peace.
“There was a blight in the wool last season,” she continued. “They could not sell very much, which meant they had no money to buy cloth.”
Once they had spun their own thread and woven their own cloth, I thought. But I knew better than to say it out loud. It would be wasted breath, and my mother had no breath to waste.
“Qasim has made a deal with the Maker King,” my mother said. “The Little Rose is seventeen now. When she is eighteen, she will wed Prince Maram, and by that marriage, Qamih and Kharuf will be united again, and the Maker King will get whatever name his people choose to give him.”
“What has this to do with me?” I asked. “We have left Kharuf, and we have never been welcome in Qamih.”
“If the kingdoms are united, there will be a treaty for the spinners. There must be,” my mother said. “You shall go to the Maker King’s court, by the sea. You must find out who is negotiating the treaty, and make sure you are included in it. Take Tariq and Arwa with you.”