30
IAHIR FOUND HIS brother standing out on the balcony overlooking the sea in the castle.
He’d just come from the stables, where he’d let Gathren’s horse go free. He wasn’t entirely sure why, he supposed, only that he couldn’t bear the horse to be there, a reminder of her, all the time. Best to free the beast, let it seek its own life somewhere.
It would be something if the horse would go to her, of course. But he did not think captured things truly enjoyed going back to their captors in the end.
Anyway, the horse was free, and Iahir sought his brother Adalir. He found the other elf looking out at the water.
Adalir was small and timid, the way he sometimes was. Iahir tried to speak to Adalir about what had happened, but his brother said he didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
It was often like that, really.
While their mother’s sickness meant that she seemed to live in a fantasy world much of the time, Adalir seemed to always be in this world, but simply not to be Adalir much of the time.
Sometimes Iahir was not certain that the same thing afflicted his mother and his brother.
Sometimes, he thought that his brother would have been fine if his father hadn’t used him in his experiments. His father had subjected Adalir to all manner of awful and painful regimens when the boy was quite small, and Iahir thought this was why Adalir was the way he was.
It was pointless to be angry with his brother for something he didn’t remember doing.
“May I talk to the part of you who did do this?” Iahir demanded.
Adalir cowered. “Why do people say things like that to me?”
“You must notice you lose time, Adalir,” said Iahir. “You must realize that you are in one part of the castle and then you’re in another part and hours have passed. You must.”
Adalir stuck a finger into his mouth and began chewing on his fingernail.
“Perhaps if you acknowledged that they were there, it would help in some way. Whatever he is, whatever part of you he is, whatever fractured element of you, he is not all of you, just as this, whatever you are now, is not all you could be.”
Adalir straightened, meeting his gaze.
“Is it you, then?” said Iahir.
“If you’re going to be this way,” said Adalir, “the least you could do is learn our names.”
Iahir sighed. “Fine.”
“I am Magnus,” said Adalir. “The one who took your orc woman, that was Malik. As you say, he is not entirely stable. He has too much of the pain in him. We rely on him to take the difficult parts of life, you see.”
Perhaps Iahir did see. Perhaps that sounded like a refuge.
Perhaps he sometimes wished… well, perhaps everyone did this to a degree, created little personas.
When Iahir was fighting, for instance, he wasn’t the same Iahir who was making love or the same Iahir who was begging his father to understand.
“I am the most together part of him,” said Adalir. “I am aware of everyone and everything. When things need to be kept in check, I am the one who steps in.” He tilted his head to the side. “However, you should understand that your father was correct, that there is no danger of the orc army coming.”
“No, I know. She told me.”
“You went after her.” Adalir looked him over. “But you did not bring her back.”
“How could I? This is no place for her,” said Iahir.
“You could have gone with her,” said Adalir. “Staying here is foolish. Father says—”
“I must stay here,” said Iahir. “Father is not capable of controlling you, and you are not capable of controlling yourself—”
“Staying here,” said Adalir, “is foolish. You will be in danger. You will endanger all of us.”
“I will endanger all of us?” said Iahir, shaking his head at his brother. “You are entirely out of your head.”
“Malik protected the family and protected the city,” said Adalir. “Perhaps it was needlessly, but he will put these things first. You, on the other hand, where are your loyalties, Iahir?”
“Here,” said Iahir.
“How could they be?” said Adalir. “No one in this family has ever prioritized you. Why would you ever think to put us first?”
“No one has put you first either!”
“Well,” said Adalir, “I have never been sent away, either.”
Iahir sighed. He walked away, leaving Adalir to gaze out at the ocean. He could not leave.
GATHREN MISSED HIM.
She had been through this before, though, a broken heart, a lost love. There had been a number of men who had not wanted her the way she had wanted them. This was different, but in some ways it was the same, and she knew how it would go.
She would think of him.
Constantly.
Every time she would think of him, it would hurt, so she would try to distract herself from thinking of him, but she would continue to think of him, and the hurt would go on and on.
She decided it was best to embrace the pain.
She needed to grow accustomed to the feeling of his absence, that was all. Once she did, it would hurt less, and then eventually, it would be commonplace, and it would not hurt unless she reminded herself that it was supposed to.
The next day, she was sent off with the letter from Hathrak and with another orc escort.
It was less than a day’s journey back to the capital. So, she wasn’t expecting things to go wrong.
When they stopped to eat their midday meal, the orc escort, whose name was Malrith, leered at her in that way that men sometimes leered at her, and she was tired, so tired of all of that.
“It’s been a while for me,” said Malrith, waggling his eyebrows at her.
“Well, I appreciate that,” she said. “But you must see that, for me, one of the few women in a company of soldiers, I would have more attention than I know what to do with.”
“Oh, well, then, what’s that to mean?”
“Only that I am very tired, and I don’t want to be propositioned right now, and that it is broad daylight.”
Mathrik’s face twitched. “Something wrong with me?”
She groaned, casting her gaze up to the sky. Why was this happening? “There’s nothing wrong with you. It isn’t you. It’s me. I’m a woman, and I don’t like fucking, all right?”
He snorted. “I know that’s not true. I heard things about you.”
“What could you possibly have heard?” She hadn’t even had that many partners.
“I heard things from Gakrod.”
She groaned again. “Oh, please, if you don’t mind—”
“He said you approached him.”
“That’s a lie,” she muttered. “That’s a lie, because he came after me and wore me down, and he was the one who could not keep his fucking prick hard, and I had to stroke him and tell him it was all right and not to worry, and if he’s running around spreading lies about me—”
“You know what I think? I think you think you’re too good for us, because you’re the High Chieftain’s daughter. But you were born on the wrong side of the sheets, so you’re not better than anyone else.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’m not better than anyone else. Are we done? I have to say, after all this, I really could not find you attractive, not anymore.”
His nostrils flared. “That letter? The one your brother wrote? What if I say I’ll tear it up if you don’t please me?”
She gaped at him. He had not just said that. “I would remind you that warrioresses are to be pure, and that if you trespass against me, I am well within my rights to demand your death as punishment. No questions asked. Warrioresses are always believed.”
“They are believed if they are pure, and everyone knows you are not!”
She saw then she was going to have to fight for the stupid letter. “I challenge you, then, Malrith ap Ganck. I challenge you to a fight for possession of the letter my brother wrote. Choose your weapon.”
“I’m not entering into a challenge with a woman.”
“If you don’t want to enter into a formal challenge, we’ll fight without rules,” she said, taking out her dagger.
“You’re some kind of bitch, do you know that?”
She twirled the dagger point against a finger.
“Well. Do you accept or not? If you wish, of course, you could simply hand over the letter and we could avoid all this. We’ll just put this behind us and pretend nothing happened.
I won’t tell anyone you threatened me and tried to force me to fuck you. ”
“Force you?” he said. “You want it.”
“So, you’re refusing the challenge, refusing a fight with honor, and you are leaving yourself open to any attack that I may make? Is that right?”
“I told you already, I’m not entering into a challenge with you.”
She sighed. Then she flipped the dagger hilt up into her fist, leaned over, and drove the blade right into his face. She put it in under his eye. It was the easiest place to get because she was moving so quickly and he was not.
He let out a high-pitched noise.
She twisted the dagger.
He grunted and twitched and bled and then finally, slumped over and it was over.
She pulled the dagger out and her eyes stung.
“No reason to feel sorry for yourself, Gathren,” she breathed.
Oh, but it was awful, wasn’t it, this world, the way she was treated, the way she was never safe, not with her own people, not anywhere.
She swiped at her tears as she cleaned the dagger and went through Malrith’s pockets for the letter.
Oh what was she going to do about his body?
Maybe you shouldn’t have killed him.
No, she had to, because if not, it would have been his word against hers, and it would have been messy, and he had deserved it, and she hadn’t really had a choice. He’d had every chance to take the challenge, after all. It was his own fault. No orc would fault her for what she had done.
She dragged him off under some trees and covered him with leaves. She did not have it in her to bury him.
Then she mounted her horse, missing acutely the unnamed horse she’d left back in Cirlahir, and she took off for the capital, the letter safe in her pocket.