14 #2
This was more about his father that he likely wasn’t going to tell her. “Because your father is so awful?”
“Mmm,” he said. “Anyway, the problem with all of it is that we don’t know much about the captives, because they were forbidden from doing it in all the treaties, and they seem to have stopped.
But they might not have, because—instead—they might have simply taken their captives secretly.
And then, if the people never came back, then they might have never been able to tell us that they were captured by dragons. ”
“If I guessed things about your father would you tell me if I was right?”
He glared at her. “It’s not so simple, truly.”
“So, he didn’t take a belt to you or publicly humiliate you or beat your mother in front of you or something of that nature?”
Iahir sighed. “At the time, when I wanted to be taken away by a dragon, I wanted the captives to like it, to be happy there with the dragons. I wanted that rather spectacularly. But that is not the way of being a captive, is it? If people were surreptitiously taken away by dragons, they were probably taken entirely from their families to some smoky dragon’s lair and they were miserable there.
And if they did not come back, it is likely because they died.
Either in captivity or trying to escape. ”
She sat up straight. “You think my mother’s going to die after all.”
He met her gaze for one moment and then looked away again. “I think we must make haste.”
“We can’t go any faster than we’re going,” she said. “I know, in the Vale, one can stop at an inn every twenty miles and change out the horses, but we do not have that luxury.” Nor was she leaving her horse, who she had yet to name. She had grown quite attached to the creature, however.
“No, of course, you’re right,” he said. “But we should reach the foot of the mountains tomorrow.”
She thought so, too. The mountains were definitely closer now than they had been at the beginning of the journey.
“Do you know where to look once we get into the mountains, however?” he said. “Do you have any idea where the dragon’s lair might be?”
“I think in the southern part of the mountains,” she said. “It always seemed the dragon was circling there.”
“Well, that bodes well, since we are heading north and we will come to the southern part of the mountains first,” he said. “But the dragon could have been circling there because it was hunting. Perhaps those were its hunting grounds. Whatever the case, if we see it, we can follow it.”
“Yes,” she said.
But they had not seen the dragon, not in the days that they had been journeying.
There was a long silence, and he stared into the fire, and she tried to think about her mother, who she had always sort of taken for granted, in the way that one takes a parent for granted.
Her mother had always been there, and she had expected her mother to continue to always be there, and the idea of her mother not being there anymore…
Well, she didn’t know if she could bear something like that, not in the end.
She thought it might crush her. Perhaps it was only that everything else in her life seemed to have fallen to pieces recently.
She had spent all that time training for the orc army, and now she was a deserter, and she could not go back, not even if she had helped to kill the High King.
She should have thought it through, should have brought some sort of proof. Maybe then she would have been celebrated and accepted back into their ranks.
Ah, but then she would not have found out about her mother, and she wouldn’t have had the chance to go and get her back from the dragon.
“It’s not as if it’s simple to explain like that,” he said. “My father, I mean. It’s not as if there’s one thing.”
She looked at him, but he didn’t look at her. She waited.
He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for my pipe.”
“Did you not bring it along with you?” she said.
“No, I did, but I seem to have lost it when my horse was stolen by that woman with the broken leg,” he said. “Having a pipe to smoke, it makes it easier to talk.”
“Does it?”
“It does.”
And then, he said nothing further.
IAHIR SAID HE had never been in love, but this was a lie, because he had, a long time ago, when he was an adolescent.
He had been but fifteen and the girl had been about the same age.
She had been the daughter of some merchant, and his family associated with these people, at least enough to invite them to teas and dinners and to go to some of the same dances.
Her father was a quite wealthy merchant, if it came to that.
He couldn’t have married her. This was made plain when it was so clear that he was in love with her.
He was not sure if anyone addressed it directly, because that was not the way with his family.
Things were not discussed directly, but comments were made about the girl, the kinds of pointed comments that carried the message that he must understand that she was not for him.
Which made things difficult, truly.
She was not the sort of girl he could dally with.
This was made plain to him as well, at the time.
If he wanted a woman, he could pay for one.
He could have a courtesan if he liked, one he paraded about, even.
The right sort of courtesan could even be brought to the same dances where the merchant’s daughter attended.
It was all very complicated, he supposed, the echelons of what constituted what sort of person was welcome where, what sort of person could be this or that to another sort of person.
But it was made plain to him.
And…
Well, and nothing. He was disappointed, but he did not fall out of love with her, and he also did not make any plans to have her anyway in some capacity.
He simply kept dancing with her at all the dances and kept calling upon her and kept meeting her for rides in the park and kept spending time with her until…
Yes, what had happened?
He supposed he went back to school. He had been young, still attending university in Cairnil.
He could not write her letters from school.
That wasn’t done, not between a young and unmarried woman and a man.
So, he did not. And the months passed away, and he did not think of her nearly as often, for he did not see her, and then he went back home for the winter holidays, and there she was, but it wasn’t the same anymore.
It simply faded out.
It wasn’t even that he got bored with her, he supposed.
It simply… passed.
At one point, he was in love with her, and eventually, the fire of it burned out.
Iahir had found the business entirely inconvenient and uncomfortable.
He resolved never to do it again. He had not really been successful, he supposed, because he still felt inklings of interest in women, but if it was a woman he could not have, he tended to distract himself from that woman with a woman he could have.
And he knew that if he distracted himself for long enough, that his feelings would fade away.
He had done a very stupid thing coming after Gathren ap Nalreg, however. If he’d had any idea that he was going to fall in love with her, he would have distracted himself.
It had been quite some time since he’d felt anything like that, to be fair. He thought he had sort of cured himself of it.
The thing about taking up with women who he paid was that they were so jaded about all of it that he soon became jaded, too. So, he had thought he was done with the entire business.
Now, he did not know how to be around her.
He found himself looking at her all the time, which really wasn’t different than the way it had been before, except that he used to look at her and take pleasure in looking at her body and now he looked at her in a way that was all about trying to figure out how he would please her.
He wanted to.
And not for any real reason, either, not because he wanted to secure her or convince her to be with him. Only because he wanted to have made her happy.
He remembered this feeling, this stupid madness of simply enjoying the other person’s happiness, the simple jolt of goodness one got from having done something that made the other person smile.
He had not felt it since he was bringing flowers to that merchant’s daughter.
He remembered the way her eyes would light up.
He remembered the way he studied her, looking for ideas of how to make her eyes light up that way again.
And currently, all he could think was that he needed to rescue Gathren’s mother from this dragon if he wished to make her eyes light up. So, he had devoted himself to with a singularity that meant it was all he thought about.
Well, except for when he was bemoaning the fact he had fallen in love with her.
Everything between them was awkward now. They would both go for the matches to start a fire and they would recoil before they could touch each other, and then both indicate the other must move first (No, you go ahead. No you.) And on and on, and everything about that was horrific.
They would have arguments about who was going to bring water to the horses (or who would lead the horses down to the water) and who was going to heat food on the fire and who was going to brew the tea and who was going to pour the tea.
He would offer and she would offer and neither would let the other do it.
Before, he supposed he had not cared, but now he did not want to be a burden on her. He did not want to do anything that would make her feel as if he was causing her any trouble at all.
He wondered at himself for not having cared about such things before. Surely, he should have.
And then he wondered at himself for all these years with women that he paid, and he wondered how many of them had found him utterly insufferable but had pretended otherwise because he was giving them money.