3
“YOU ARE, OF course, supposed to wear a dress for dinner,” said Iahir, several hours later, as he stood in the doorway to her room.
“I have only this to wear,” she said, gesturing to her warrioress outfit.
“Well, this is why we should have visited someone to have clothes made up for you,” said Iahir, tilting his head to one side.
He was wearing a suit with a startlingly blue tie tied just under his neck.
“If you object to dresses, you could, I suppose, dress like a man, which would work well for our ruse, I think. It would make the entire thing with you more perverse, which pleases me.”
She raised her eyebrows.
He shrugged. “I like to affect people, I suppose.” He approached her, furrowing his brow, his expression determined, and she felt the urge to back away from him.
She stifled it, unwilling to show any weakness in front of this man. She did not want him to have any more advantages over her than he already had. After all, she was here only because of him, and she was uniquely vulnerable, an orc in Findas’s court.
He moved all the way up on her, and she stayed in her place but she moved her head back, eyes widening. He was practically touching her. Then, he was touching her, his body against hers, and he was feeling up her waist and his own.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, and her voice was a bit breathy, which made no sense, of course.
Well. He was so very beautiful, she supposed, breathtaking in his way, and his chest was touching her chest, his belly touching her belly.
It was affecting her, even though she hated him and could never find him actually attractive.
She didn’t even like the look of elvish men, truthfully. They were so fragile, really. She preferred an orc man, burly and strong and broad, someone to balance her own size, to make her feel dainty and tiny and—
No, she had long given up on being dainty. Even with an orc man, it was never that way. She was a warrioress. They treated her like some kind of oddity, something exotic, something interesting as an experience, but not like a real woman.
“Apologies.” He backed away. “I think my things might fit you. Maybe it will all be a bit snug around your bosom, but I will not mind that in the least, I don’t think.”
Her nostrils flared.
He was smiling. “And it will be quite the thing, your wearing my clothes.” He laughed a little, as if he had told a joke that had particularly amused him.
“Yes, I think that’s exactly what we will do.
” He gave her a nod. “Right back, then? One moment.” He turned, going for the door.
“Stay right there,” he threw over his shoulder.
In a moment, he came back with a suit and a shirt and a tie. He laid them all out on the bed for her, beaming. “Put these on.”
“Leave the room,” she said.
“Oh, of course,” he said, nodding. “Apologies again.”
He left the room.
The clothes did fit. They weren’t even that tight across her bosom. She supposed he had a broad chest for an elf.
The trousers were too long, but that was the only problem.
When he knocked a moment later to ask if she was changed yet, she told him to come in.
He looked her over in approval, smiling at her. “Yes, look at you, then. I always think a woman in men’s clothing looks even more feminine. It tends to accentuate all the places she is shaped differently than a man.”
By the great goddess Haem, could this man ever stop commenting on her breasts?
But he gestured to her hands. “You have remarkably small wrists, warrioress.”
She lifted her hand, and she supposed there was quite a gap there.
“Ah, the trousers are a bit too long,” he said, and knelt down on one knee to cuff the trousers himself, his long, graceful fingers brushing her calves and making little shivers go through her, which annoyed her. She did not care if he touched her.
He stood up, and she squared her shoulders.
They regarded each other.
“As I said, this will likely be a bit awful,” he said.
“Everyone is going to be talking about us, but no one will be talking to us. When they do say anything to us, it will be an insult. The High King is going to be livid, of course. But we can bear it, of course. It will be best if we pretend as if we are caught up in each other, spend all of our time making eyes at each other.”
“Will it.” She sighed heavily.
“Can you not pretend to like me at all?” He was amused.
“Of course I can,” she said with a nod.
But then, it was not awful, actually, not truly awful at all.
He was right that no one talked to them, at least not often, anyway.
When they did speak to them, they seemed polite to her.
If there were insults, she did not hear them.
They said that she looked ever so dashing in her suit, and they said that she cut quite a figure, so tall, so strong.
Iahir smirked after they said all of these things. He certainly didn’t behave as if they were insults, but instead stared at her rather constantly. She did her best to look back at him.
As for the High King, he never looked at her once.
She looked at him. She had only seen him once, from far away, when he had come to visit the barlinship where she grew up. He had given a speech on a far dais, droning on and on about something or other, but she’d been too far away to hear whatever it was he was saying. He looked older now.
For a fair elf, he was not very tall or very striking. His hair was a sort of orange color, but it was more brown than orange, and his features were not entirely symmetrical. He had a rounded area at his middle. His shoulders were rounded too, and narrow.
After the dinner, Iahir escorted her back to her room.
He spoke of how cruel the elves had been to her, apologizing.
She was confused. “Cruel? They said nothing except how dashing and tall and strong I was.”
“Yes, but that’s really an insult,” said Iahir.
“Is it?” She blinked at him.
“Yes, because it’s the sort of thing you would say about a man, not a woman.”
“And that’s insulting?” She supposed she could understand that to a degree, but she did not feel as if it had been cruel. That seemed to be stating it rather strongly.
“It’s quite insulting,” said Iahir, who furrowed his brow again. “Perhaps it isn’t entirely that insulting to you, I suppose, because you have spent your life trying to act like a man anyway.”
“I have not spent my life trying to act like a man,” she retorted. “The warrioress tradition has been written about in all manner of stories and lore. The goddess Kranr herself was a warrioress, and—”
“All right,” he said. “I see I’ve hit a nerve, there. Somehow, calling you strapping, however, did not.” He was amused.
“You have not ‘hit a nerve,’” she said, her voice rising, aware that she would not be so angry if he had not angered her.
Iahir made to say something else, but they were interrupted by a servant coming after them, who had a grim expression on his face as he summoned Iahir to an audience with the High King.
Iahir’s smile widened. “Perfect,” he said. “I quite expected this.” He turned to the servant. “You’ll need to escort my companion back to her room. She does not know her way around yet.”
The servant made a face as if something smelled bad. He was wordless as he walked Gathren through the hallways, and he walked very, very fast. But he did get her back to Iahir’s chambers in the end.
IAHIR PRESENTED HIMSELF to High King Findas with as little fanfare as possible. He bowed, of course, and he said all the standard greetings, but then he began fumbling about in his waist pouch for his pipe. He packed it with tobacco as the High King looked on.
“I could have her sent to Arzakh, you know,” said the High King. “Your orc woman? I could do that.”
Iahir stuck the pipe between his teeth and began fumbling for a match. “You could,” he said, his voice muffled.
“I know why you’re doing this, however,” said the High King, “and it’s not about me. I know it’s about your father.”
Iahir rolled his eyes. Everyone assumed it was about his father, all the time.
They could not understand that his father had washed his hands of Iahir a very long time ago, that there was no reaching his father, and that if he had ever thought that behaving badly would get some kind of reaction out of his father, he’d been disabused of the notion rather quickly.
No, it wasn’t his father who reacted to his antics, it was everyone else.
He had grown a bit addicted to that, he supposed. It was power, in its way, the ability to shock and horrify. However, he realized it was not power he had control over, not truly. It was power he tapped into, but it could easily get away from him.
“So,” said the High King, “I have, of course, dictated a letter to be sent to him right away about this latest incident.”
Iahir had found a match. Now, he needed something to strike it against. He looked about the room, the pipe still clenched between his teeth.
“No reaction to that?” said the High King.
There. Iahir crossed the room to the marble mantel and struck the match there.
He lit the pipe. The smoke filled his lungs and he felt that sharp feeling of relaxation and alertness combined that the tobacco smoke always seemed to make him feel.
He blew out smoke and regarded the High King.
“My father won’t be pleased. But he also won’t want me around.
He’s stuck you with me, and you and I both know that is the way of it.
If you want rid of me, you’re going to have to order him to take me back, and he won’t like that. ”
The High King’s mouth twitched. “Well, none of them like doing my bidding these days, I’m afraid.
I can’t believe how many people do not see how much I’ve improved this country.
I have restored it to its former glory, to an age of greatness that was long past, generations ago.
It is a pure land of elvish might and elvish ingenuity and elvish toil.
It is the most beautiful of accomplishments. ”