At last Tariq sighed and cast himself on the bare floor of the tent. They hadn’t put down a rug for us, so we were at the mercy of any insect that might come burrowing though the light material of the tent floor. Still, it was what we had, and tomorrow night we would have no tent at all. As we watched, Tariq curled in on himself, as though willing himself to sleep.
Arwa kissed my cheek, and Saoud’s, as she had done when she was still a baby that we carried because it was too dangerous to set her down. Then she huddled beside Tariq, her arms wrapped around her pack so tightly that I didn’t think anyone would be able to pry it from her. It was all we had left, and I didn’t even know what was inside it. There had never been any good time to ask.
It got darker, and my thoughts were no more quieted than they had been before. We heard a chorus of wadi toads, though they were all but covered by the noise made by the soldiers who sat around their campfires and celebrated the end of their hunt. They were going home, or at least closer to it, and they had nothing to fear at the end of the journey.
I thought Saoud would sleep, or at least lie down and pretend to, but instead he sat up for a long time. This might be the only chance he had, I realized, to mourn the certain death of his father. We would have no opportunity tomorrow, and after that we could not say when we would have any respite at all. Saoud had promised to remember and to teach his own children about his father’s bravery, but if Saoud died too, then there would be no one to carry the tale.
“If we fail,” Zahrah said, “if we fail, and you die, and I have to wed the Maker King’s son, I will tell the truth, for as long as I can. Before the demon takes me, I will tell anyone who listens that you all were my rescuers, not my captors, and that we tried to save Kharuf. I will tell them what we learned about the demons and the good creatures who live in the mountains. I will tell them about your father, about his sacrifices for us and for a kingdom that would have been proud to adopt him and his son.”
Saoud said nothing, but we knew he heard. She could promise him nothing more. The time for promises was done. We would make this last march together or not at all. So Saoud sat in vigil for his father, who was dead and not-yet-dead, and Zahrah and I sat with him, her hand in mine.
“I wondered why he was so eager to leave me,” Saoud said, after he had been quiet for so long that I began to wonder if he had managed to fall asleep sitting up. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Would you have let him?” Zahrah asked. Her voice was kind and sincere. She would have made such an excellent queen for Kharuf. “Would you have understood? Would anyone?”
I thought of the children we had been, bound and burdened by life at the crossroad camp. Directionless, and without any prospects beyond inheriting the meager work our parents did. No, we would not have understood. My mother would have driven Saoud’s father out, and Saoud along with him, and I would have lost my brother before I truly loved him.
“No,” said Saoud. “And even if I had, no one else would have.”
“Your father loves you,” she said. “And he helped make you strong. He wanted something better for you, and this was how he got it.”
Saoud looked at her, and the tears that had been shining in his eyes began to fall. He leaned forward into her arms and wept. She held him, and I put my hands on his shoulders, and he mourned the father he had lost, and the father he would lose tomorrow. I had thought I would shed tears for him as well, but I found that I couldn’t. Perhaps I had nothing left. At last, Saoud straightened. He bowed to Zahrah and pressed his forehead to mine, and then he crawled beside Arwa and collapsed into a fitful sleep.
Zahrah shifted and leaned against my shoulder. I put my arm around her, and she squeezed my hand. I hissed with pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I forgot.”
“So did I,” I admitted. “It seems like the least of my worries at the moment.”
“Is it broken?” she asked. “I couldn’t tell from how the guard hit you.”
“No,” I said. “Just swollen. The prince wanted pain, not infirmity.”
“Everything I feared about him is true,” she said. “He will ruin Kharuf just to watch it burn.”
“And the demon will ruin Qamih,” I told her. “But that is not a solution, to lose both countries. Our ancestress did not cross the desert for that.”
“So we run,” she said. “And hope we are caught by one of the Storyteller Queen’s creatures before we are caught by the demon.”
“It’s a terrible plan,” I said.
“Someday, Yashaa,” she said, “you will have a good plan. I know it.”
I kissed her, and the squalor and terror of Prince Maram’s camp faded around us, discarded like burrs and clods of dirt pulled from new-washed wool. There was only her, and there was only me, and there was our foolish dream that everything was going to be all right.
“Does your head hurt?” I asked, when we stopped to breathe.
“It passes more quickly now,” she said, not entirely answering the question.
“Does it feel safe?” As if safe were possible for us.