5
HE DIDN’T KISS her again, not before the orc army invaded.
He touched her a lot, and Gathren found herself enjoying his touches more than she strictly ought to have, but there was no kissing.
They sparred daily, and sometimes she sparred with Kinsahad and sometimes with other guards.
Only a few of them were really worthy partners, in her opinion.
They were all spoiled and showy with their sword fighting, thinking that, somehow, the point of it was to clang the blades together, when the point was to put the sword into another person’s flesh, and the clanging only happened because the attempt was blocked.
Of course, maybe they didn’t actually want to stab her—not that they could because they were all using blunt practice blades. Still, perhaps they went easy on her, she never knew. It was what men always claimed when she beat them. She was used to it.
They had dinner in the main dining room every night.
King Findas presided over the table, eating a lot, crying across the table to urge people to have more food or to try some raspberry wine or to be sure to eat their fill.
He seemed, Gathren noted, nervous, as if he knew that things were about to go badly, as if he could see that he had gotten himself onto the wrong side of a number of people, and now he was simply trying to placate them all.
She did not like Findas. How could she, when she had seen the tracts he had printed up, tracts featuring drawings that depicted the orcs as akin to rodents or insects?
However, she had not expected him to be the way he was, she supposed. She thought he would be formidable or frightening. He was… small.
Not because of the way he looked, she supposed, though he did have a certain round-shouldered way about him that made him seem as if he was always curling in on himself.
No, the smallness was something else, a perception within the man, a self-fulfilling prophecy. That smallness infected him and he wanted to be big.
Perhaps he targeted her people because he thought them easy to cow and frighten. Perhaps he thought that being bigger than an orc was a simple thing?
She could see that Findas desperately wished to be big, but that he was not.
She did not feel sorry for him, and she was still quite convinced he needed to die, but as the days wore on and the date of his death approached, she began to feel only a grim feeling about it, akin to a knowing that one must muck out the stalls in a stable—it was necessary, it had to be done, but she was not going to enjoy it.
Well, it wasn’t as if she was killing him herself, anyway. Iahir would do it. She found herself grateful that she did not have to kill this pitiful small man herself. It seemed distasteful now, somehow.
The days had gone slowly at the beginning, but they seemed to go quicker and quicker as the day of the planned assassination approached.
She had no one to speak to except for Iahir.
Well, the guards during the sparring sessions, sometimes, but that was just jokes and one-upping each other, taunts and boasts.
She supposed she also spoke to the servants. At one point, her bleeding came. As a warrioress, she was quite adept at handling the inconvenience of it, for if it came on the battlefield, she could not stop to change her bloody rags.
But the truth was that she had not brought anything with her, not the very absorbent rags she used or the harness that kept everything in place or anything of that nature.
If it had not been for the servants, she would have had to go to Iahir about it, and she could just imagine what sort of conversation that would have been.
Luckily, she was spared from such things.
The servants had brought her fabric and pins, like an infant’s diaper, really. Was this what the elvish women did?
But her bleeding came and went, then, and time continued to pass, and soon enough, it was the night before they were set to kill Findas.
At dinner, Gathren was surprised when the woman seated next to her struck up a conversation with her.
“I am Katil,” she said to Gathren.
Gathren introduced herself.
“Oh, yes,” said Katil. “We are all aware of your name. Everyone talks of little else, truly.”
This unsettled Gathren. She had been functioning as if she were invisible, considering that no one much spoke to her. She now felt aware that everyone was likely watching her, and she felt self-conscious.
“We are all curious about Iahir’s prowess in bed,” said Katil with a giggle.
Gathren’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Oh, only because Marlir, who is a widow, had an affair with him some years ago and pronounced him a rather uninspired lover. She said he was often too drunk to perform and that he fell asleep inside her more than once.”
Gathren could not help but burst out laughing. “I have to say that sounds like him.”
“So, he is much the same with you, then? Has he repeated the same behavior?” Katil was very amused.
Hmm. What to say? Gathren did not wish to flatter Iahir anymore than he was already flattered, but she also did not wish to appear as if she were some woman here at his beck and call, chained to him though he behaved badly.
If she made it out that he was so terrible at pleasing her, then it begged the question why she remained here with him.
Gathren shrugged. “Let us say he required… instruction.”
Katil let out a delighted laugh. “Oh, yes, all right.”
“But he has proved an adept learner,” said Gathren. “And, I suppose it is satisfying to have a man who looks like that want you, of course.”
“He is handsome,” admitted Katil.
“At any rate,” said Gathren, “I am really here simply to help him learn to fight better. I am, as he says, his sparring partner.”
Katil just laughed again. “Yes, yes, his sparring partner.” She winked at the orc woman.
Gathren wondered if that would be the end of the conversation.
But Katil kept looking at her, seemingly still willing to engage.
And Gathren could not stop herself from asking, “What do they say about me?”
“Oh,” said Katil, looking away. “Well, it is nothing, I suppose.”
“That bad?” Gathren should have guessed. She busied herself with smoothing her napkin and turned back to her plate.
“In truth,” said Katil, “I think some of them—or, well, at least I know I am—are envious of you.”
Gathren turned back to the other woman. “Envious?”
“You have such freedom,” said Katil. “Or it seems that way to me. Here you are, wearing men’s clothing to dinner, sparring with the guards in the ring during the afternoons, able to choose a man for yourself, to teach him if he does not satisfy you. How could I not be envious?”
Gathren wanted to assure the woman that she was not truly free, because she was here in obligation to the orc cause—but of course she could not say that. And she did not know why she had conceived of this scheme, anyway.
It mattered only that Findas was dead, she supposed.
But it would all be going badly soon, when they discovered her lies.
She shook herself. Time enough later to think on that, she supposed.
Katil was still talking. “I am a cousin to the High King. He asked me to court and said he would find a husband for me, but I have not been offered marriage, only more and more lascivious situations, always with the promise that they will lead to marriage. I have been induced to sit on the laps of lords and allow them to touch me through my clothes. I have even been instructed to slide my hands inside men’s trousers and pleasure them, and I know that if any man knew his bride had done such things he would not want me.
I think my cousin has, in fact, ruined me for marriage entirely. ”
Gathren swallowed. “I am sorry, my lady.”
“Not a lady,” said Katil. “No title for me, nothing like that.” She shrugged, smiling. “I am at court, of course. Otherwise, I should have been home in my brother’s household, and I should have been hidden away, no chance for adventure.”
Gathren felt a stab of guilt, because right now, it was likely the worst time to be at court, with an army that would advance as soon as the High King was dead.
The deal she had made with the elves, of course, would not hold, because she was of no interest to the High Chieftain, so there would be no stopping the orcs.
They would come, and this palace would fall, and she was not sure what would happen to a pretty little slip of an elf like Katil.
“I am only saying, it is not so bad as all of that,” said Katil. “I am not displeased with my life.”
“I think things may be growing more volatile, however,” said Gathren quietly.
Katil shook her head. “Oh, no, no, I have heard these rumors, and if it were true, you would not be here, would you? If orcs were really planning on coming to invade, you would stay far, far away from this place.”
Gathren felt that guilt in her twist. “Indeed,” she said finally. “Yes, that is quite sound reasoning.”
And that night, she awoke to the sounds of screams.
She got up, pulling a dressing gown (one of Iahir’s castoffs, actually, since she had not had any clothes made, she had taken to wearing his old things) and went to the window, and she could see the fires of the torches in the distance, hear the booms of the cannons and the patter of the gunfire.
Even before she saw the first orc, she knew.
They had come already, before the High King was even dead.
She went into Iahir’s bedchamber, but he was not there.
He was guarding the High King for this hour of the night, of course.
She must get there to him, must get him to do it now. If she did not, the orc’s attack was likely doomed. If Findas lived, the elves would rally against the orcs and back the High King.
There was no time to lose.
She knew the palace better than when she had first come, but she was still not entirely sure exactly where the king’s chambers were.
She dressed and went into the hallway. It was not empty, but there were only a few elf men, carrying swords, going to and fro through the hallways.
They looked at her and there was murder in their eyes.
She made herself sound shrill and frail. “I am only looking for Iahir. I am frightened. Please, you must not take this out on me. I cannot control the other orcs. I had no notion of this!”
“That way,” said one of the elves, pointing toward a darkened hallway.
She began to rush towards it, but then she was stopped, arms grasping her at the elbow.
She turned, shocked, to see an elf there, glowering at her.
“The kingsguard needs no distraction from a woman now. He must be defending the king with his life. You will only be in the way.”
She jerked her elbow out of the elf’s grasp, going for her sword. But then she hesitated, thinking that fighting her way through this was not the way. And after all, there were a number of them, and only one of her.
She removed her hand from her sword, surveying the man, looking this way and that.
How was she going to get to Iahir?