11 #2
She kept talking. “I know this with us is never going to be like that, and I don’t even know if I can bear it at all, because I don’t see myself ever being able to quite be whatever it is that wives are even supposed to be, but I cannot be this, not anymore.
I need a man to treat me as if I’m worth something, as if I am something he does not wish to harm but to…
” She didn’t know. Her voice got quieter. “Cherish.”
Then, there was no noise except the hoofbeats of their horses against the road for several long moments.
“Oh,” he said eventually, in a different voice.
This made her furious. “All right, you have gotten me to make myself into a sentimental fool, my lord. Promise to drop the subject, if you please.”
“No, no,” he said. “It surprised me, is all. It’s such a, um, such a common sort of thing to say, I suppose, but then that would make sense, because you are not born into the nobility, and I can’t see why you would think of it the way that people of my birth think of it, and I was being rather an idiot myself to expect you to, and I’m ever so sorry, really. ”
“Common?” she repeated. “Now, you’re trying to insult me?”
“We did have that conversation about orcs wanting to rise into the nobility, didn’t we?” He winced. “Well, apologies again.”
She wanted to let it go. She wanted the conversation to end. She wanted to forget all about it. But… “Fine, explain it to me, my lord, explain why what I said was a sentiment of the common people.”
“You’re still angry,” he said. “Absolutely everything I say seems to make you angry recently, I’ve noticed.” He sighed.
“You’re not explaining. Explain, and then we will leave this topic foreverafter and never speak or think of it again.”
He laughed a sort of pained laugh. “Yes, quite, we can control our thoughts.”
“Explain.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Erm… well, I suppose it has to do with choice. You see, when you are of a certain status in the kingdom, you do not get to choose who you marry. Even if your father dies and there is no one to force you, you really cannot choose it, because it’s all decided for you.
And you have to marry for all sorts of reasons, but none of them are about love or cherishing or anything else.
They’re all very complicated, and they affect all manner of elements of things.
For instance, assuming I actually become the envivtain of Cirlahir—”
“You will, after your father dies, will you not?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
What did he mean by that? But before she could ask, he was talking again.
“At any rate, as the envivtain, there are likely three acceptable choices of wives for me, and I should probably pick the daughter of the Envivtain of Acquithil because if I do so, that would mean that I would get the estate she will inherit, the one that borders our land, and this would mean that a number of disputes that happen over that borderline would be wiped out and it would make life much better for all the tenant farmers there and likely increase production of the crops and increase the profitability at the markets, and this would be a boon to both of our families, both of our envivtainships, and all the people who live there. So, if I don’t marry her, I’m essentially making the lives of hundreds of people worse, so… ”
She supposed she hadn’t entirely thought of it that way, assuming that all of the decisions that the nobility made were frivolous, of their own design, made up simply to make themselves look as if they were important.
She had not considered that there might be something to the idea of arranged marriages.
“But,” said Iahir, “of course, if you do not have such responsibilities, if you are amongst the common people, you sort of belong to yourself, and you can choose whatever it is you wish—”
“Belong to yourself?” she repeated. “Absolutely not. You do not. You belong to your liege lord, who owns your land and your house and everything else.”
“All right, perhaps,” he said. “But you can choose who it is you wish to marry, that is all that I am saying.”
“I am not asking you to marry me, my lord.”
“Well, obviously, the two of us could never get married.”
“Never,” she agreed.
“So, there is no question of that,” he said. “Of course, it doesn’t matter, because people of the nobility don’t marry people they love.”
“Right,” she said.
“But they do have love affairs,” he said. “And everyone knows how they go, which is badly. They all end up badly.”
“Well, that is because they are conducted between two people who are not married to each other.”
“Partly, I suppose, it is,” he said. “But it’s also because love is a temporary state of being. It’s something that people fall into and fall right out of, rather quickly, in fact. It lasts three months, maybe six, maybe nine, but never longer than a year.”
“Never?” she said, mocking him.
“Never,” he said
“And you’re an expert, I suppose, having had a number of these love affairs?”
“Well, no, I have washed my hands of the entire business and decided not to get into it. Which is why I pay whores. Love affairs are very messy, as you say, because falling in love with another man’s wife is a good way to get yourself badly wounded in a duel.”
It was her turn to snort.
“You seem to be taking a very dim view of everything I’m saying, warrioress.”
“I take a dim view of you, my lord,” she said in a sickly sweet voice.
He sighed. “Well, if that’s so, why have been saving my life so regularly over the past two days?”
“I can take a dim view of you and still not want you to die,” she said.
“I suppose,” he said.
“Perhaps I disagree with your opinions on love.”
“Oh?” he said. “So, you’re going to tell me all about your sainted grandparents, who were devoted to each other until the very end, I’m certain?”
“No, my grandparents died before I could ever meet them,” she said. “But I suppose I was going to say that I don’t think love is temporary, and that it can certainly last longer than nine months.”
“Can it, though? Really?” he said. “Because, certainly, people stay together for longer than nine months, for decades upon decades. But I can assure you that they aren’t experiencing that same ecstatic attachment to each other as they experienced at the beginning.
Everyone knows this. Feelings like that fade. ”
She supposed she’d heard that sort of thing, too. “But they strengthen in other ways.”
“They turn into something else,” he said.
“People can be friends, I think, or they can care about each other and want to be good to each other. They can learn to tolerate each other. They can learn to co-exist. But all of that is work, unpleasant work. It’s not like being in love, it’s not like that. ”
“You know, I’m beginning to think that someone hurt you, my lord, that someone hurt you very badly.”