16
AFTER SHE TRIED to run away with Dathor, Aerhril’s ankle was badly hurt.
The doctor came and gently put his fingers to her ankle and she screamed every time he touched it, but he wrapped and splinted it, saying it might be broken, but it was not so broken it needed setting.
She was to stay off her foot for months, the doctor said, to stay in her bed.
She was trapped there, then, in her room, and she could not go out to see Dathor, and she did not know what they did to him.
She asked when the steward came to talk to her, and the steward only said that it was no more than Dathor deserved.
“You are too soft on him,” said the steward.
“It did not matter when you were nothing more than a ward from the Vale. I could not give a care who it was that you associated with then. But now, I have been in contact with your father about a possible marriage contract between you and Celedin. You are the future stewardess of the Peak. Your behavior must be beyond reproach.”
“In contact with my father?” she said. This was news to her.
“After you told Celedin of your family’s plight, I was moved to write,” he said, smiling thinly.
She could see that he had enjoyed the idea of it, of being in a position to assist the nae Oir who were suddenly penniless.
It had made him feel powerful when he had not felt powerful before. “They are ever so grateful.”
She swallowed.
“You are ripe to wed, of course,” said the steward.
“But Celedin is young yet. I have told him he must wait until he is at least twenty years of age.” Celedin was between her and Dathor in age.
He was not yet seventeen, but he would be seventeen before she was.
“So, you will continue on here for the next few years, and we will see to you. There is much to learn if you will take on the responsibility of stewardess. I will not have you bring shame upon this household or this line.”
She only stared at him. She wanted to ask questions, ask why the steward would accept her and not demand that Celedin marry some other girl, the daughter of some nearby steward or warden.
She wanted to ask if it was only that somehow, even though the silvans despised her kind, that they also held them in high regard, and there was something desirable about having the blood of a nae Oir elf.
“You are not grateful?” said the steward.
“Th-thank you, my lord,” she said. “It is a kindness I had not hoped for.”
“Yes, we will assume the continued expense of feeding and sheltering you,” said the steward.
“You will need new clothes, appropriate clothes for your new role. I will have to hire someone to come and teach you the ways of a lady. You will have to accompany us to dances to represent the household at teas, if you are invited. It will be quite an expense. So, you should be grateful.”
“Quite, my lord,” she said. “Quite grateful.” She did not say that she was confused. And she supposed she was grateful, in some way, because she had not known what was going to become of her else.
“You will no longer spend time feeling sorry for the orc,” said the steward. “It speaks to your kind heart, I suppose, which women cannot help, but you must understand that he is set upon ruining himself, and if you attempt to stop him, he will only drag you down with him.”
This was the only indication the steward gave that he thought the story they had told him was anything different than what had actually occurred.
“However, the broken foot,” said the steward. “It is a lesson sent to you by the gods themselves. They are sending you a message that you must take your place in the rightful way of things. Elves do not associate with orcs. You know this, of course.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, I know that.”
“Good,” he said.
“But is he all right? How badly did you—”
“He is an orc,” said the steward. “He could survive far worse than what I mete out to him.”
And she did not see him for months.
For the first three months, she was confined to bed.
After three months was over, she could be up and around, but she was forbidden to go down the stairs, though she thought she could have managed them.
But she was forbidden, so she had to rely on one of the male servants to help her down, and often they were too busy to be at her beck and call.
She did not make it downstairs often for the next month or so.
So, it was a little over four months before she was able to go outside on her own. She saw him for the first time, and he looked the same as ever, pushing a wheelbarrow of straw and filth off to dump it, coming back to use a pitchfork in the stables to fill it again.
Their gazes met and locked, but they did not speak to each other.
It was as before, when she watched him and he noticed her watching.
By the time she finally felt as if she trusted herself to visit him above the stables, she was stunned to find that there was a guard at the door of the stables, a man from the village named Nardion, who was sleeping stretched out just inside the doorway when she opened it.
She shut the door quickly and quietly so as not to wake him.
She backed away and she looked up to see Dathor in the window above the stables, looking down at her.
This was why he had never come in to see her for all these months, she realized. He could not get past the door of the stables at night.
The following day, she was sitting out in the sun as Dathor went to and fro between the barns and the stables, calling out to the other servants there.
At one point, he stopped directly in front of her.
He didn’t look at her, but he called, very loudly, “I’ll go and check to see how the east field looks, then. ”
He turned to look at her, and she knew this was a communication.
He disappeared.
She waited.
Finally, after she felt no one would notice what she did, she got up and made her way to the east field.
She was still limping a bit, her ankle quite stiff in the mornings and evenings.
Celedin thought it was funny, saying that a lame wife was just as good as one with two good legs, that all the important parts of a woman were still intact, and that he might like it if she had trouble running away, anyhow.
Celedin chortled, “Easier to make her hold still, hmm?”
“Don’t speak, Celedin,” said the steward. “This is why I said you must wait to marry her. You talk like a stupid, disgusting boy. Grow up, would you?”
Celedin would narrow his eyes and gaze at the steward with hatred writ all over his face, and the steward would be too interested in cutting his meat to even notice.
When Dathor saw she was unsteady on her feet, he came over and offered his arm. “Sorry,” he said. “I should not have made you walk so far. It was broken, was it?”
“The doctor said it hardly mattered if it was or not. I must stay off it regardless,” she said.
Dathor looked around, at the keep in the distance, at the field in front of them, which was in dire need of weeding, and then into her eyes. “I would have come to you.”
“No, I saw last night that you could not get out.”
“He always falls asleep,” said Dathor. “I have thought, often, I might step over him and he would never wake. But then I must get all the way into the keep without disturbing anyone, and—”
“No, it is all right,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re healing,” he said.
“What did they do to you?”
He shrugged, looking away. “It wasn’t that bad, actually.
Just a beating. And now, there is some ledger somewhere where the steward keeps track of how much I cost him as a boy, and how I must work it all off.
Supposedly, if I ever make it there, I’ll be paid a wage.
” He laughed under his breath, but he didn’t sound amused, only bitter.
“You could go,” she said. “Without me, I mean. You could leave and set off on your own—”
“No,” he said.
“Well, if you are waiting for me—”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “No, we’re not going anywhere.”
She seized his hand. “We cannot stay. My father has all but sold me to Celedin. The steward says we’ll wait until he is twenty, which is three and half years or thereabouts, so we have time to plan—”
“Stop this.” He gently tugged his hand out of hers. “This isn’t why I asked you to come and see me.”
She eyed him. “You’re still angry with me for the things I said out there? I was only hungry, and it was a very long time ago. You cannot hold that against me.”
“I’m not,” said Dathor. “I am only saying that neither of us have ever been on our own.”
“If you won’t help me, then I’ll find someone who will. I can’t marry him.”
Dathor looked into her eyes for a long time before he looked away. “No, of course not. You can’t marry him. We’ll go. I’ll work hard, get to the point where I am making a wage, and then we’ll have money and we’ll find a way.”
She realized he did not mean it. That something had happened to him, that something had broken in him, that he was now content to stay here and be a prisoner above the stables, to labor for nothing, and she did not know why. “What did they do to you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing that they haven’t done before.” He licked his lips. “You are not healed, not fully, so we must wait, anyway, and you say we have years, so there is time.”
She regarded him.
He twisted his mouth into a semblance of a smile. “We’ll find a way.”
“I can’t marry him,” she said again.
“Of course not,” he said, nodding, but he wasn’t looking at her now.
And then it was quiet.
She watched him. He scuffed a toe against the grass as he looked thoughtfully out over the field in need of weeding. “Well?” she said finally.
His head jerked up. “What?”
“What is the reason you asked me to come and see me, then?”
He ran a hand through his long dark hair. “Just to apologize. For all of it, for everything. I should have never touched you.” He wasn’t looking at her again.
She wasn’t sure what to say. “They’ve beaten you somehow,” she murmured.