I remembered what Zahrah had said the day I cut her hair—that if it grew too long, she would braid it. Braiding was making. You could turn braided cloth into a rug with a bit of sewing, and braided threads could be stitched onto a hem for decoration. Zahrah couldn’t braid her own hair, and wouldn’t be able to for some time thanks to the latest trim, but she could braid Arwa’s.
Her first attempt was clumsy, the plaits wide and gaping, and one of her strands was much shorter than the other two, which resulted in a larger tail than was generally considered fashionable. I laughed quietly as she began again, this time taking care to separate the strands so that they were all of even length. The second attempt was more tightly woven, and I tapped her on the shoulder to let her know that I thought she had done well.
“You’re not helping, Yashaa,” she breathed, so quietly that I had to lean forward to hear her.
“You’re doing fine,” I whispered back, close to her ear. Her own veil was still anchored on her head, so I couldn’t see her face. I wished I could. I had learned that I liked to watch her work.
She made six more small braids in Arwa’s hair before she stopped. Each one was neater than the one that had come before it. When she was done the sixth, she carefully unwove all of them. Arwa’s hair, used to braiding, held its shape even without a tie, so all but the loosest of Zahrah’s attempts had stayed in.
Arwa quickly rebraided her hair into a single plait and wrapped her veil around her head again. We had not spent much time on the exercise, but I could feel Zahrah relax against me, and I knew that she was feeling momentarily better for having done something, even if it was only busywork. Arwa was more settled too, and Tariq, who had been spooling and unspooling his own store of thread, also looked calmer.
Saoud slept on, and we waited…and waited. As wretched as the waiting was, I knew that any action would be worse. It would mean we had been found, and I would endure all the monotony in the world if we could avoid that.
When Saoud woke, we decided it must be close enough to midday to eat something and drink a ration of the water we had hoarded. Though I wasn’t hungry before I started eating, I found that as soon as my portion was gone, I was famished. I took another drink of water instead. We had enough food for two days in the cave and water for three days after that, and it would do me no good to want more of it now.
Zahrah was holding her head.
“Do you need more water?” I whispered as quietly as I could. Saoud looked on with concern.
“No,” she said. “This time it’s different. The headache from sewing was an ache that started in my back, and went to my neck and my teeth and the place behind my face. This is like a stabbing needle, right in both of my eyes. It’s sharper. Like something is trying to catch me by surprise and open me up.”
She spoke the words as they came to her, describing what she felt, but in the instant after she said them aloud, we both understood them. For the first time, I saw true fear in her eyes, and I knew that I probably looked the same way.
“Saoud,” I whispered. “I think the demon queen rides with the Maker King’s son.”
We all carried iron knives and pins. The demon could not take them from us, but the prince’s men could. Even Zahrah would be unprotected if they found us now. I was still scouring my brain for an idea when I heard something and froze. The others froze, too. I’m not even sure any of us breathed.
The croaking of the wadi toads had faded hours ago, and there had been little noise beside that ever since, but there was a sound now. It was the scrabbling step of feet on loose wadi stones, and it was coming closer.
Zahrah groped for my hand but dropped it as soon as she had caught it. I knew why. If we were found, she could not show fondness for any of us. They would use it against her, or they would use her against us. Instead we sat, trembling and waiting and hoping.
And then there was a shadow in front of the cave, and it swallowed up any hope we might have had left.
The key to a good plan is patience. Any idiot can cobble together an idea, taking pieces of knowledge and power and foresight and laying them out so that the order of them finds itself, but more than that is required for true excellence. I have watched countless schemes fall apart within sight of their end because the one who had charge of them lost patience. Men were out of place, the weather did not cooperate, tools or weapons failed, and without them, all was scuttled.