27
GATHREN HAD PUT away the ice and eaten her breakfast, both of which had been left at the front doorstep without so much as a knock, when she heard the front door opening.
She had thought that Iahir might be gone a long time, though his note had promised otherwise, and she had been thinking about what it was that she might do instead of staying here. As it was, she was not sure if she should even be out reading on the beach. She had stayed inside all day.
But when she came to the top of the stairs, it was not Iahir coming through the hallway toward the stairs. It was some other elf, one with long pale hair that hung in strands in his face.
She paused at the top of the stairs, gripping the railing. “May I help you?” she said.
The elf raised his gaze to her. “There you are. The orc princess.”
“I’m no princess,” she said.
The elf laughed. “Oh, I heard all about you. I did, hiding inside. Grann was at the helm, but I was watching.”
That seemed an odd thing to say. “And who are you?”
“My name is Malik,” said the elf. “Are you armed?”
She was not, in fact. She realized now this was very stupid of her. Had Iahir not said that people wanted to kill her? And here she was, wandering around the house without even a knife in her ankle holster inside her boot. Nothing at all.
She made a split second decision to go for her weapons. She turned and rushed up the stairs.
Behind her, Malik pounded up the stairs.
She glanced over her shoulder.
He had a sword. The tip hit her back, just between her shoulder blades.
She froze.
Malik was laughing. He kept the sword where it was as he climbed three steps and closed the distance between them. His other hand roamed all over her, crawling like an insect, looking for weapons. It was odd, and a bit repulsive, but he sort of smelled like Iahir. Maybe… maybe he resembled Iahir?
“You’re Iahir’s brother,” she breathed.
“No,” said Malik at her ear. “I’m not. His brother is here with me, though.
He’s intact, but fragile. He doesn’t know about the rest of us, and he can barely handle what little amount of time we leave to him.
He doesn’t like to come out. When he does, he is afraid and he cowers, and he needs us. We are here to protect him.”
That was very, very odd. Her breath came in gasps as Malik decided she was no threat, that she had no weapons.
He poked her with the tip of the sword. “We’re going down the stairs, all right?”
She was in no position to argue. He could skewer her if he wished. “Fine.”
They went, though they had to maneuver and turn to face the other direction.
He guided her into the sitting room and he tied her to a chair, telling her conversationally that Adalir, who she gathered was him—was his true name—had been too frightened to learn to use a sword, and so—during every practice—he had taken over for Adalir, and he had learned all about swordcraft, all about fighting, all about strategy, all about war.
“No one knew it was me and not him. I can be quite good at concealing that.”
Gathren found this sort of horrifying. She had never encountered someone who was so entirely mad in this way. She bit down on her bottom lip and tried to think of what she was going to do.
Stall, she thought. Iahir must come back, and when he finds this, he will know how to get his brother under control.
Yes, but Iahir might not come back until as late as he had yesterday, and it was not even time for luncheon. She was not sure if stalling would be enough. However, she could not actually hurt Iahir’s brother, so her moves here were limited. She would need to simply subdue him.
Malik left and came back with her bag, all packed up with whatever clothes she had in it—not that she had much—and he fitted a dagger—her own, to add insult to injury—to her throat as he untied her.
“We are going to go somewhere together,” he said.
“You will do as I say, because you are well aware that people on the streets will be happy to tear an orc to pieces right now. You’ll recognize that even with a dagger to your neck, you will be safer with me than with them and you won’t try to escape me. ”
She swallowed. Perhaps he was right.
They left the house and went through the streets of Cirlahir, and he did keep the dagger at her throat and if people looked at them, they quickly looked away. But then, of course, he was the heir to the envivtainship of this region, so people would not dare to cross him, mad or no.
He guided them to a cavern on the shore. There were chains on the wall, and he said he was going to chain her up, and that was when she tried to struggle.
He was armed, and she wasn’t.
She managed, however, to tangle up their legs and knock him down. If she could have killed him, it could have been all over, because she would have kicked him in the face, driving his nose backward, breaking it and putting a shard right in his brain.
But she could not do that, so she had to try to get a weapon, and she didn’t manage it, because he was stronger than she was.
It was a fact of life, something she’d come to accept.
Men, even men who didn’t work at their strength, even elf men, were sometimes in possession of superior upper body strength than she was.
No matter how hard she worked at those muscles, her body simply didn’t take to it in the same way a man’s body did.
But there were men who weren’t as strong as she was.
She was not weaker than all men. There were a number of weak and sedentary men who she could have bested easily.
It so happened that Malik spent too much time training, however, and he rolled them over and captured both of her wrists and held her down.
She wrapped her thighs around his legs and she tried to buck him off.
He slammed his forehead into hers, and the pain dazed her even as he laughed over her, even as his eyes danced with his madness as he held her down.
He had the dagger in his hand and he let go of her hand and put it to her face, the blade hovering just over her eye. “I think he would still take you without an eye.”
She knew, then, that he meant to keep her alive. It made her bold. She slammed her palm into his face.
He wasn’t expecting it, and he let go of her, though his body was still settled against hers.
She snatched at the dagger, but he held it fast.
She drove her head into his sternum, and that hurt because her head was already sore.
He turned the dagger and stabbed her. He caught her forearm, but it hurt, and it bled, and she lost whatever momentum she had.
He did not chain her up. He settled for tying her up, knee on her back, her face in the sand. He tied her arms to her ankles and left her, trussed up like that.
She was alone.
For some time, she lay there, just coughing and bleeding.
Eventually, she tried to get her fingers on the knots at her ankles. She lay there, swearing, working at the knots, and she watched as the tide came in, all the way in. It did not come into the cavern, but it filled in everything in front of the cavern, and she was trapped here.
He would not be back, then, not until the tide receded.