13
NOW, DATHOR SENT for Aerhril to come to the master’s quarters, his uncle’s old quarters, later that night. He stood in the quarters, waiting for her, and drank in the feeling of being in there, the master of the keep.
He had discovered from the servants that—mystifyingly—Celedin had never moved into these quarters. Celedin had said he wished to honor his father, but that did not ring true to Dathor, who knew that Celedin had resented the old man. Perhaps Celedin had craved his favor, also.
Dathor had craved it, once.
But the old steward had bestowed favor rarely. He had been a hard sort of man, cold, quick to violence. He was like the countryside itself here up on the cliffs, frigid in winter, overtaken often by sudden storms.
Perhaps they all were.
It was better than Dathor expected, however, being in the rooms. They were vast. He had two antechambers, a sitting room and a room just for dressing, all of his uncle’s clothes still hanging in neat rows in the closets there.
There was a tub built into that room too, deep and large enough that even an orc might soak in it, he thought.
Dathor had never had a bath all to himself.
Sometimes the servants would bring water for a collective tub and they would all take quick turns in it, but there was no soaking, just getting in, dunking, scrubbing, and getting out. The water was always tepid and getting out was always a shivery experience, and he had never much enjoyed it.
He wondered what it would be to slip into warm water like that, to simply lie in it, to have a vast army of servants bring up water just so that he could feel the pleasure of soaking in it?
Well, there weren’t a vast army of servants, and he did not know if this was a luxury he could indulge in or not. Perhaps he could carry the water himself.
The bedchamber was dominated by the large bed, which had a canopy over it, curtains tied away.
The bed itself was quite high up off the floor.
There was a step stool to climb into it, but he could have managed without it.
So could his uncle. The elves were tall, as tall as the orcs, but they were slender and pale and graceful where the orcs were burly and large.
Not for the first time, he studied his fingers. They were long and graceful but thick. His palm was wide, his fist large.
Aerhril wasn’t there.
So help him, if he had to go and seek that girl…
He would, of course. He would pick her up, throw her over his shoulder, and haul her back here—
Oh, no, he could not do that, not after his pretty speeches about how the elf women had a choice to be with the orcs or not. This had been agreed-upon, though, by all of the leaders.
There had been discussion when planning the attacks about the decision to rape the women publicly. Not because the orcs thought this was too brutal, but because they didn’t want anyone to think that they wanted elf women.
It was true that they were always accused of it.
More orc men had been imprisoned or beaten or even strung up on the accusation of raping some slip of an elf girl.
Sometimes the case was that the elf girl had been willing, had even initiated.
Sometimes it was all just falsehoods, the orc had never touched her.
Dathor supposed some of them must have been actual rapes, that sometimes orcs raped elves, but he did know that it was a great deal more rare than the elf men seemed to think it was.
So, the argument had raged.
We are playing into their prejudices about us. We are framing ourselves as beasts. We must be better than they think we are.
But the argument that won out was: This is what they fear most from us. This will shake them. This is how we make it hurt.
At any rate, the compromise was that there was one theatrical rape done in the very beginning to break their spirits, and afterwards, there would be no more of it. After that one, the pointed strategic rape, their behavior towards the women would be sterling.
The men in the army grumbled about it. All right for the commanders, who got to do the fucking, but they were soon silenced by being reminded that fucking would be for an audience, that it would likely not be pleasurable only nerve-wracking.
Which it had been.
And now, where was she?
He could not force her to come, but if she did not come, he would have to put her in the room with the women, the small and cramped room where they were all crowded together, sleeping on the floor.
He did not want to do that to her, not after all the things he’d already done to her today.
He decided he would summon her again, and then, if he heard nothing, he would let it lie for that night, but that tomorrow, she must join him here or be ousted from her bedchamber.
But as he went to ring for a servant, there was a knock at the door.
“Yes?” he called.
“It’s me,” she answered.
“Come,” he said.
She swung the door open and stepped inside. She was wearing a long flowing nightgown in a shade of pink, with an equally flowing robe over top of it. She looked lovely, a vision of beauty.
His mouth felt dry.
She shut the door behind herself. “I am here tonight, but if you think you will take any liberties on my person, you are sorely mistaken.”
He smiled at her. “Ah, noted. So, no kissing, then.”
She glared at him.
“I’m remembering there was a kiss today, and I didn’t initiate it.”
She did not answer him. She walked around him and went into the bedchamber and let out a little noise.
He followed her. “Yes, here he was with all this, all this time. How large is your bedchamber now, as the stewardess?”
“I am not the stewardess.”
“You have the stewardess’s chambers, though.”
“It’s much smaller,” she said. “I wonder that Celedin didn’t take these over.” She sighed.
“I wonder that, too,” he said. “Why wouldn’t he have?”
“He had weaknesses,” she said, wandering around to run her fingers over the coverlet of the bed.
“Insecurities. He was cruel when they were exposed, hoping that he would be so cruel that no one would expose them again, and I did not expose them on a whim, but they were weapons in my arsenal. I took note of every single thing I could use against him. His father was one of his weaknesses.”
Dathor knew this was true, that the old steward had been hard on Celedin.
“I sometimes wonder if the old steward loved his bride. If he was so heartbroken over her death that he wished there was someone to blame.”
“And he blamed Celedin?” he said.
“You have said this to me before,” she said, turning to him. She touched her temple. “That you can not think you’re doing something here, with your conscious mind, but still be doing it, even though you swear you are not.”
He shook his head. “Do not attempt to justify him. You know what that man did to me. You know how many times he had me beaten bloody.”
“It was not justification,” she said. She tugged aside the covers. “Perhaps we don’t talk. I find I’m very tired. It’s been a truly horrific day.”
He sighed.
She turned her back on him and removed her robe, hanging it on a hook by the bed which must have been made for the purpose, not that he was used to having hooks by beds or anything of that nature.
She got into the bed, pulled the blankets over her, and turned her back to the middle of the bed, yawning pointedly. “Can you turn down the lamps?”
He stripped off his own clothes. He’d never been one for small clothes, deeming them something for pansies and weak, overly stuffy men.
He slept only in a night shirt. Usually, he would wear the undershirt he had worn all day, but the uniforms did not have undershirts.
He went into the steward’s closet and selected one.
It was a bit snug on his upper chest region, but it would serve, at least until he could find something else or have these altered. He came back to the bedchamber, turned down the lamps and got in bed with her.
He turned on his side to face her back. He gazed at her blond curls in the scant light, at the curve of her spine. “Did I hurt you?” he breathed.
“What do you think? You said my cunt was dry.”
“That is why I tried to use—”
“Yes, I remember you rubbing that on yourself,” she said.
It had been a bit of oil, and he’d done it surreptitiously, for he knew that there should be no thought seen to the elves’s comfort, not when they were being conquered.
“So, it did not work.”
“It didn’t hurt,” she said softly. “Not physically, I suppose. But it broke me, and you know that it did.”
“You don’t seem broken,” he said. “I don’t think that would be the thing to break you.”
“No?” she said. “You truly thought I would welcome you.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “No, I did not think you would welcome that done to you. But when they found out that I used to live here, they wanted it as a target, and I could not exactly say no.”
“So, you were reticent?” She was mocking him.
“I told you that it had to be done,” he said. “I told you it was not the way I wanted it between us.”
“Well, it is not the way I would have wanted it either, but to be quite honest, I had thought it was something that was never going to happen anyway. Because you left me, for that orc woman, and I—”
“Let us not do this again,” he said, rolling onto his back.
She rolled over to face him. “Were you with her after you caught up to her? Did you sleep in some orc hovel together and did you run your hands over her swelling belly—”
“I told you she died!” he growled.
“You did,” she said. “But you didn’t say when or how.”
“She never made it through the pass,” he said. “I left everything behind for her, and I sought her as I made my way through, and you don’t know what it is like, all the elf soldiers with their guns. They shoot if there is a hint that you are trying to go back to Lothnehil.”
“They shot her?” Her voice was different now.
“I found her body,” he said. “I didn’t see it done. I don’t know why it happened.”
“Did you sob over her?” She was ugly again.
He flung an arm over his face. “I won’t do this with you. You know there’s no reason to be jealous of her.”
“I’m not jealous.” She rolled over again and put her back to him.
He drew in breaths, one after the other, trying to get the image of Nathre’s broken form, tossed aside like nothing, lying there on the side of the path. She’d hated him. He’d deserved it.
He’d wanted to atone somehow, to make up for all of his many sins, but it had not turned out that way.
He’d impregnated that woman and gotten her killed, and then the worst of it was that he was stuck in Arzakh.
It was the worst because he hated it there and it was the worst because he was so self-absorbed that he could only think of his own discomfort.
He would think of her then, not Nathre, but Aerhril, screaming at him that he thought he was the only person who suffered in the whole world, and his countering, saying he did suffer worse than she did.
Certainly, he did.
But his suffering, his relative suffering, sleeping in that room above the stable with the fire, her slipping out to find him in the night, the way they had lain in his narrow bed together and kissed each other senseless until their hands started wandering, the way he’d been fed every day and clothed and sheltered—all those things his uncle had spat at him as being privileges and he had despised the man for pointing them out.
Turned out they were privileges.
Turned out there were worse ways to live.
Turned out that perhaps he was just… prone to complaint, difficult to satisfy, a bit of an unpleasant person all around.
He took his arm away from his face. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She twisted to look at him over her shoulder. “For what?”
“For fucking her,” he said. “For fucking you.” A long pause. His voice came out defeated. “For all of this.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” she said, turning away with a yawn. “I’m sorry I did not run away with you to go live in a hovel of our own.”
“No, no hovels for you, little fair elf.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He sighed again. “Goodnight.”
She didn’t say it back.