29
DATHOR WAS LEFT with Lashrud, who gazed into Aerhril’s wake, a puzzled expression on his face. “She is easy with you. Even after everything you have visited upon her.”
“She’s formidable in her way,” said Dathor.
“They say she’s your childhood sweetheart or something of that nature,” said Lashrud, turning back to him.
“No,” he said curtly.
“But it’s something, sir. And bringing her with you, in finery, to the High Chieftain? What are you planning?”
Well, this was what he got for having them both here at the same time when he delivered the news. He should have simply gone back into her room, and they could have schemed together. As it was, he had to do all of it alone, and he didn’t have much time to get it straight.
All because he cared what the orcs thought of him?
He was never going to be one of them, just as he was never going to be an elf, either.
He belonged with nobody and no one.
Except her.
He’d do well to remember that.
Lashrud lowered his voice. “It is not as you say, sir. I do not think that you do not deserve your relatively quick rise in the ranks of the orc forces. I see that you have a certain genius, a capacity to understand people. Perhaps it is only that you do not shy away from the worst elements in others. You see them and you exploit them—their vanity, their insecurity, all of it. I see what you have done to worm your way into the High Chieftain’s good graces. ”
“Worm my way, hmm?”
“Yes, I see it, but I do respect it,” said Lashrud. “I respect you.”
“But you do not trust me,” said Dathor. “None of you do. It’s all right. I’m used to that.”
“I suppose you are,” said Lashrud. “But a man like you, with all his intelligence, all his intensity, all his conviction… you are formidable, but you are unpredictable. Who is it you’re fighting for, sir?”
“I am fighting for a better world,” said Dathor.
“You know what I think? I think you might be fighting for her cunt and nothing else.”
“Well,” said Dathor, “if that’s the case, I suppose I’ve already won. No need to fight anymore.” He glared at Lashrud. “Next time I want your opinions, ashreg, I’ll ask for them. Dismissed.”
Lashrud inclined his head. “Noted, sir. Apologies, sir.” And then he left.
Dathor ran a hand through his hair, sighing heavily.
His balls ached.
Next time he got a letter from the High Chieftain and he was that close to an orgasm, he wasn’t forgoing it.
“HE IS TAKING me to Bilkwood,” Aerhril said to Celedin. “Also, the letter to the south, it did not get out. He intercepted it. So, no help is coming.”
Celedin got off the bed. “You won’t be here?”
“No,” she said. “I am, even now, in the midst of trying to pack a trunk without any servants. How does one keep dresses from wrinkling in a trunk, Celedin, do you know?”
He drew back. “Wrinkled dresses, yes, that’s obviously what we need to be worried about now.”
“No, I know,” she said, hugging herself.
“I am the only one who knows you are here. You can’t be fed if I am not here.
I can tell someone, of course, but I don’t know who to trust. I think perhaps the Wardeness nae Gilsin seems as if she will not betray you, but I am not sure she is capable of bringing you food and seeing to you, and—”
“No, no,” said Celedin. “Do not worry about me. I’ll see to myself.”
“How?” she said.
“I am much better,” he said. His voice was still rasp, but she had seen that his neck was knitting itself together again. He would have a horrible scar, but he would be all right. “I am going to find a way to sneak out.”
“They are on every door, Celedin,” she said.
She considered. “I am going to see Elrion today with Dathor, and Elrion knows you are alive, so if there’s some way we could make that work, perhaps…
you could be in disguise again, like a woman again?
He could come and call? He could usher you into his carriage? ”
“Why are you going to see Elrion?” Celedin gave her an odd look. “With Dathor? I can hardly make that make any sense.”
Well, here she was, right at the crossroads of it all.
“You’re with him now,” said Celedin, blinking at her. “That actually took longer than I thought it would. I suppose his taking you by force in front of all our wedding guests took you a bit of time to forgive.”
She hung her head.
“But you’d forgive him anything,” said Celedin.
She let out a breath.
“Why is that?” said Celedin. “Why forgive him, and not me?”
“I told you, I have forgiven you,” she said.
And at this point, she even meant it. “We were all hurt here,” she said, gesturing around the walls.
“This place is our home but also a means to torture us. It is safety and a nightmare all at once. None of us…” She shook her head.
“No one was kind to you, Celedin. But at least Dathor and I had each other.”
Celedin scratched the back of his head. His eyes were shining, as if what she had said had moved him.
She moved forward and took one of his hands in both of her own. “I may be with him now, but I will not allow him to kill you, no matter what he wishes. You can trust that.”
He nodded slowly. “All right.” A pause. “You aren’t telling me why you’re going to Elrion.”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “There was some plan before, that we were going to try to get Elrion to contact his old revolutionary friends from when he was at university. Back when he marched for the rights of orcs, you know? Those people might ally with the orcs, and they might help us to topple Findas and then—”
“That’s the plan?” he said. “You both want some world where you can be together, I suppose.”
She nodded. “You see through me.”
He eyed her. “And there is no chance of us, is there?”
She drew back. “Us? Like that? After everything?”
“What have I done to you that he hasn’t?”
“Oh, a lot of things,” she said. “He has never hit me, for one thing.” But she found herself touching her neck where he had taken her by the throat that time, and she thought about all the times she had hit him.
“Why? What is it about him? He’s a fiend.”
“He’s my fiend,” she said. “And you’re… you and I…” She was quiet. “Oh, no one knows these things, Celedin. No one knows why love blooms between two people and not between two others.”
“Or blooms on one side sometimes and isn’t reciprocated,” he said, sighing.
She nodded. “Right. I am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “But this is my home. And if you have some notion that you and he can preside over this place, you’re sorely mistaken. I will never give up the Peak.”
She winced. All right, all right. Celedin is a problem for another time. “That’s so far in the future as to hardly be important now. Try to stay alive, I suppose, to avoid being killed by the orcs in this keep or starving to death, and we’ll come to that later.”
He smirked at her. “Good luck.”
“To you, too, Celedin.” She meant it.
THEY WENT HORSEBACK on one horse to Thelandel Chapel, and Dathor had to explain the plan to her as they trotted along the dirt road that wound to the other keep. He tried to concentrate on the plan, anyway, but it was difficult with her so close.
“We must convince him to write to his revolutionary friends and get them to meet with the High Chieftain in Bilkwood,” he said. “That is how we begin to craft the alliance. And we must be well assured that he will not betray us.”
“Well,” she said, looking back at him, her small and round little bottom nudged up against his crotch in a way that was starting to make his cock stir again.
Admittedly, he had not had a chance to relieve the pressure from this morning.
He’d been moving from one thing to another to prepare for their departure.
“I cannot think of how we are going to manage that.”
“No?” he said. “You don’t think he can be swayed by appealing to his ideals?”
“What ideals?” she said. “You’re the one who pointed out that he never treated the orcs as equals. He always thought of them as lesser than him. You’re the one who said that he rescued people to gratify himself, to make himself feel important.”
“Did I say that?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought so. Maybe I just had the thought myself.”
“Right, no, I know this,” he said, sighing, tightening his grip on her, pulling her firmly against his body.
“All men are more motivated by whatever gratifies them personally than by anything else. Figure that out, figure out what they fear, and then you can control them.” It was what Lashrud had said to him this morning, but oddly, he had never quite thought of it like that.
Hearing it, however, he knew it was right.
He had simply always sort of done it without thinking about it, subconsciously.
He supposed that spending his whole life seeing people show him their worst selves with the way they treated him, it had meant that he could understand how a person could seem upright and also conceal a well of ugliness.
People wanted to let out that ugliness, that was the thing. They derived pleasure from it. Many people didn’t think they did, but they all did. Knowing this about others was an advantage.
“What does he fear?” she said thoughtfully. “I think he fears not being respected. His fortune comes from trade. He fears that he is not a real gentleman.”
“I thought he managed to buy the Chapel.”
“Yes, but buying a thing and inheriting it are not the same.”
“True,” he said.
“He is willing to be generous, but only to the point that it does not come up against his desire to be respected.”
“So, he might wish to alert the wrong people about the attacks, if only to get respect from them.”
She leaned back against him, seemingly enjoying their closeness. “I think so.”
“That’s not good, Aerhril.”
“We also have to think that he doesn’t like you,” she said. “You had your hands all over his future bride to the point that he would not marry me. He would be happy to spite you.”
“That’s even worse,” he said.
“Well, I said this all last night, but then you changed the subject to wanting me to undress.”
He chuckled, and, just like that, he was hard. He pressed himself into her.
She gasped. “Oh, well, hello there, Dathor.”
“Hello,” he said. “I have plans for you in the carriage.”
She let out a noisy, ragged breath.
He kissed her jaw, feeling bright and excited and glad, in spite of everything. If he could hold her like this, the world couldn’t be that bad, could it?
But he needed to focus here. Elrion. “Fine,” he muttered. “Nothing for it, then. We’ll just have to capture him.”
“Capture him?” she said.
“No, but I don’t want him in the carriage with us,” he said. He groaned, kissing her neck, a little trail down the long line of her creamy skin.
She sighed. “We can’t capture him, anyway. What about my sister? She’s meant to stay with him and be safe.”
“All right, all right. Would he believe that you hate me?”
“What?” she said.
“Does he know what I did to you on your wedding day, for instance?”
“Well, I didn’t tell him,” she said.
“But could you make out that you realized I was an awful monster of a thing, and that you were ashamed of yourself for ever wanting to be with me?”
“Well, I could say that.”
“Could you make him believe it?” he said.
“After I sent Nathre to her death over jealousy over you? I don’t know. Why?”
“I’m trying to think of how it is that I could control him, and I thought, if he thought that someone he needed to rescue was in my power, he might be quite malleable. And I don’t know that he cares about anyone, but he used to want to rescue you. Can you make him wish to rescue you again?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How would I do it?”
“Well…” He thought about it. “Let’s see. Perhaps you go in alone, and you have run all the way from the Peak to get away from me?”
“But there’s no way I could get out. There are orcs on all the doors.”
“He doesn’t know that,” said Dathor. “Let’s try it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll capture him. Or perhaps Igbar will help.”