“I have,” said the most terrible voice I had ever heard. Every part of me rebelled against her, but I couldn’t flee. And even if I could have, I wouldn’t have left Zahrah alone.
“Come, my little rose,” said the demon queen. I hated it for using that name. That was our name, and she made it seem like Zahrah was a thing that could be cultivated and picked. “Let me see what you have made.”
THE DEMON IGNORED ME, so I watched it as it circled the tent. It looked almost human except for its color, and the way that it held its head at strange angles. Instead of walking, it glided along the floor, moving first slowly and then much too fast. It made me sick to my stomach to look at it for long. When we’d fought the bear, the demon in it had been weaker, and we’d had iron. I sensed this demon was much stronger, and the iron I carried had already been taken from me.
It reached Zahrah and put a hand on her shoulder. Somehow Zahrah didn’t shudder at the touch. She held up the loom, showing the work she’d done so far as though the demon were a favored aunt or teacher, like my mother. The demon laid a finger, or a fingerlike appendage, on the frame, and an odd light suffused both of them. Prince Maram didn’t appear to notice anything, and neither did the demon, but when I looked at Zahrah’s eyes, I knew that she could see the light, too, and that she didn’t know what it meant either.
“Do you feel better now, my little rose?” the demon asked.
“Yes,” said Zahrah, iron and thorns. “I do, thank you.”
“It is so difficult to learn these tasks late in life,” the demon said. “You ought to have learned them as a child. It would not have hurt so much then, and you wouldn’t need my help to make the pain stop.”
“I have dealt with pain all my life,” said Zahrah. “It is a gift.”
The demon recoiled at the last word, remembering its jailors, I hoped, and the misery and suffering it had felt in the mountains.
“You have so many gifts, my love,” said Maram. “It gives me such pleasure to watch you use them.”
The demon seemed to realize for the first time that I was in the room. It turned and looked at me, and I was glad I was still sitting or I might have fallen over. We had heard stories of the King-Who-Was-Good, who was made good, and how he had suffered before that. How the demons had come to the Storyteller Queen’s family and burned them alive at her sister’s wedding. It had not prepared me for the malice I felt directed toward me now. It didn’t just want us to die; it wanted us to suffer. I knew it would not stop at Kharuf. It would have Qamih too, and the desert, and the world, if it could. Maram must be stupid if he didn’t see this part of it. Or perhaps he knew and just didn’t care. From what I had seen of him so far, I wouldn’t think it too far a stretch for him.
“Maram, why is this spinner still alive?” the demon said.
“Because I haven’t decided how he is going to die,” the prince told it. “He and his cohorts kidnapped my beloved, and I must determine an appropriate punishment for them. Also, they have been useful. My men cannot teach her what you want her to know.”
“But this one loves her,” the demon said, and I flinched to hear the words from this terrible being. I hadn’t said them yet myself, not out loud, and now Zahrah had heard the truth from this monster.
“How delightful,” Maram replied, and he sounded truly joyous. I had their full attention now. “I’ll make her light his pyre with her own hands. If he’s very, very lucky, I’ll make sure he’s dead before I make her start the fire.”
There is an odd sort of freedom that accompanies the pronouncement of your own death from a person who has the power to do it. I reached out and squeezed Zahrah’s hand. It didn’t matter if he broke all of my fingers. I needed her to know that it was all right. That I didn’t blame her if she chose Kharuf over me. I had always known she might have to.
Maram smiled and called for a guard. He did not hit me again.
“Take these two back to the prison tent,” the prince said. “My fiancée must learn another lesson, it seems.”
“Yes, your highness,” said the guard. His voice was oddly muffled.
“And make sure they’re fed something,” Maram said. “They have a long walk ahead of them.”
The guard pulled Zahrah to her feet. While he had her, I would not resist. He took us back through the mess of a camp to the tent where the others were. There was a bucket of water on the ground by the flap, and Tariq was washing his hands in it.
“They let us out to use the privy, such as it is,” he said.