I could not bring myself to travel with Prince Maram, though I was less than confident in his ability to complete the task I had given him. He had never been tested in real battle, living as he did in the peace his grandfathers had made, and his skill as a hunter was nothing particularly special. I might have taken hold of his horse, or perhaps the horse of one of his riding companions, in order to monitor him, but I was reluctant to do so; Maram was free with the spur. Even leaving that pain aside, I had not yet lowered myself to join with a common animal, and I swore I never would. My spies might take bears and birds and common dogs, but I had my dignity. I would have the Little Rose or nothing.
I was limited to visiting the prince’s camp for short periods of time in the evening, after he had given up his pursuit for the day. He was not moving as quickly as I wanted him to. He usually rode with less regard for the well-being of the mounts, but the others he rode with were holding him back. I seethed but said nothing. Maram was petulant and contrary, and if I commanded him, he would only seek to countermand me.
While I was not harrying the prince, I scoured the southern parts of Kharuf, looking for my lost rose. I haunted villages and raised horrors to loosen the tongues of merchants on the road. No one had seen her. No one had seen anyone suspicious at all. I widened the scope of my hunt, venturing north into the abandoned wastes. This, I thought, would be an easy path to take. Since the abandonment of most of the northern villages, for which I was largely responsible, it should have been simple enough to track anyone. People leave trails. They set fires. They make marks.
What I found instead were bees. Bees and sheep. The sheep had fouled the areas around the old roads, their tracks stamping out any evidence that other creatures had passed. The bees swarmed any time I tried to walk upon the ground itself, pushing me back into the sky, where my view of the earth was obscured.
It could not have been more obvious if the Storyteller Witch had come back to tell me herself.
The Little Rose was close. She was ahead of me, but she was close. And the creatures were trying to shield her from me so she could flee into the desert.
I gave myself up to the wind, and hurtled across the sky to the foothills where the prince’s men were camped. Their tents were disorderly, pitched without regard for where their companions would sleep, and already there were discarded tools and food littering the ground. They were set up at the crossroads of two routes, where a permanent, if poor, trading camp was established. When I arrived at the prince’s tent, he was polishing his sword by a cooking fire and looking out over the trading camp, as though he were imagining what it might look like if it were on fire.
It galled me that I had to use a creature who didn’t even feel loyalty to his own kind. One of my own kind had done that once—had put himself above the rest of us, and sought glory and power. For a time it had gone well, but when he was brought down, we had all been brought down with him, and now we suffered. That I would make the Maker King’s son suffer, too, was my great solace.
“I have found her,” I told him, not bothering to make any courtesies to him before I spoke. I cared little for his rank or feelings.
“That is wonderful news,” said the prince. “I have found out who has taken her.”
That was a surprise. I hadn’t expected him to have done anything useful at all.
“Do explain,” I said.
“An old spinner came to see me when we were pitching the tents,” he said. “She had come to beg news of her son, who she had sent to petition me. She hoped to hear that he was well, that his petition had been heard and considered justly. She hoped he would have a place in my court when I married the Little Rose, because he was a spinner from Kharuf.
“Imagine, then,” he said, “that poor mother’s grief when she learned I had not ever seen her son. That he had never come to me, or to court at all, and that her hopes for him had been dashed before they had even truly gained their bearings.”
“And you think he has the Little Rose,” I said.
“These people from Kharuf, they have nothing but their memories,” the prince said. “We have made sure of that. I asked her how old her son was, and she told me he has only eighteen winters. He would remember the Little Rose, you see. He would remember her and her castle.”
I considered the words. The Maker King’s son was wrong about the people of Kharuf, but he was close enough to the mark that he might have struck upon something by accident. They had more than their memories. They had their pride, and they had their love for their princess.
“Were there others with him?” I asked.
“A boy of his own age, another boy a few years younger, and a slip of a girl,” the prince said.
His grin turned vicious, and if I had bothered to give myself a true face, mine would have as well. Even with all the protection the damned Storyteller Witch could muster for them, five children were nothing. Nothing but easy prey.