“No, princess,” I told her. “I train with Arwa sometimes, because it teaches me patience, but I learn as much as she does when we do it.”
“You said you would show me,” she said. There was a delighted sparkle in her eyes when she spoke. I thought she must be desperate for any sort of activity after a life of idleness.
“Saoud is better at it,” I said. “I expected them to be gone for longer, and for us to have to find something to do to pass the time.”
“Show me,” she said.
I hesitated, remembering her headache after we had repaired the fence.
“Tariq,” I said, “give the princess your staff.”
He passed it over with some measure of reluctance and followed us to a patch of ground where we would be clear of Arwa and Saoud. I showed the Little Rose how to stand, and marveled at the quickness with which she mastered the starting pose. It was not an entirely natural way to stand, and most newcomers to the fighting style leaned too far forward. The Little Rose found her balance immediately, and even the placement of her hands on the staff was perfect.
“You said you had never done this before,” I said.
Saoud’s father had finally got so fed up with my tendency to put my hands too close together that he had made me carry a stick around for days at a time, so that I would become accustomed to the proper distance. Even Saoud hadn’t mastered it right away. Yet here stood the Little Rose, feet and hands expertly spread.
“The sprite’s gift includes dancing,” she reminded me. “Maybe this is it.”
“If you say so, princess,” I said. Magic, it seemed, would follow me everywhere. “Here is the low block.”
I demonstrated the move and then practiced it with her. To the relief of my dignity, while her form was excellent, her strength did not match mine. When I switched her to the low strike, she grasped it much more quickly, and I realized it was because I had used the move on her to teach her the block. I had forgotten to count for her, so that she would know the rhythm of the strikes, but she seemed to know the rhythm innately and matched her movements to mine without effort. Except for the disparity of force, it was almost exactly like sparring with Saoud.
She was smiling and breathing hard when I held up my staff to signal a stop. Saoud and Arwa had finished and had both come over to watch. Saoud’s face was troubled.
“I was careful,” I told him. “You know I can hold back, you’ve seen me do it.”
He only shook his head, and went back toward the fire.
“How do you feel, princess?” I asked. She wasn’t holding her head, but the headache had taken a while to appear the first time.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s much better than the fence.”
That worried me.
“Don’t look at me like that, Yashaa,” she said. It was unmistakably a command, and I straightened as she spoke it. “Remember, the most enduring part of a rose is the thorns.”
“Of course, princess,” I said automatically.
Tariq took his staff back and commended the Little Rose on her first efforts. Arwa followed them back toward the fire, chattering in her excitement at having another girl to train with, since we boys were far too cautious with her. I caught Saoud’s eye. He smiled briefly but immediately looked away, and I knew that he was still troubled. I couldn’t face him yet, so I stayed off by myself, listening to the sounds of the night as they came alive around me.
These were the sounds I had known all my life. The insects and night birds, the creaking of trees. I knew that I had, at one point, known only the sounds of a stone castle in the night, but I did not remember them. My life had been a long march and a meager camp, but the constants in it had been fireside spinning, and the sounds of night. I wondered for the first time what night sounded like in the desert. With the lack of greenery, the insects must be different. And surely there were no trees at all.
I called my thoughts back from that far distance and focused on the rolling plain directly before me, though I could hardly see it in the dark. First we would have to get through Kharuf—where we would be hunted, where food would be scarce, and where there would be nothing to break the wind as it bore down on us. Then we would worry about the desert.
“Yashaa!” Tariq shouted from near the cookfire, and I turned to run toward him.
We had gone down the slope a ways to find a place to spar, so the camp was uphill from us. As soon as I turned, I froze, for I saw why Tariq had shouted for me.
The Storyteller Queen had made a chain of discrete mountains, most with a single peak, though they were joined together by lower hills everywhere except the pass. Therefore, I could see quite clearly that it was the peak of the mountain on which we stood that had called Tariq’s attention. Its neighbors were all black-topped with the dark of night and with their own dark stone. Our mountain blazed with light, burning golden, as if the iron ore that laced its very bones glowed in the dark. I shook myself, and raced toward the others.