32
IAHIR HAD HARDLY decided to pick up the pen when the door to his room opened again. He looked up, expecting Kinsahad, and said, “That was very quick.”
But it was not Kinsahad, it was a disheveled looking female servant.
“Apologies,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”
Upon further inspection, she was not actually a servant at all.
He remembered from court. She was Findas’s distant cousin or something, and he remembered rumors of her being passed around in men’s spaces late at night—no one fucked her, but they did things to her, things that had ruined her, and this was likely why she was being treated this way now.
With Findas in the court, he could keep things a certain way for women like that.
He liked to have women to give to men he wanted to influence or appease, and he made it so those women were given a certain position at court, allowing them to be present at dinners and balls and other events.
Without Findas’s protection, however, no one would have an ounce of respect for this poor girl.
“I’ve forgotten your name,” he said to her.
“Katil, my lord,” she said. “I am, well, it was easy enough to get here and to undo the lock on the door and I suppose I could… but it can’t be now, because it’s the middle of the day.
Perhaps if I come back some other time, when everyone is asleep?
Of course, how will I get out of the room where I’m sleeping, because there are four of us in there?
Maybe if I wait and creep out after they are asleep? ”
“What are you going on about, Katil?” he said.
“Oh, rescuing you, obviously,” she said. “I’m scheming with Gathren about it.”
He set down the pen and felt so overcome that tears were forming in his eyes. “Gathren knows I’m here. She’s trying to free me?” How could he doubt it, though? Of course she would. He felt overcome. He got up and went to sit on his bed, head in his hands.
“My lord?” said Katil.
He let out a breath. He looked up at her.
“Tell her I have a way out. But it means that she cannot come to Cirlahir to seek me in weeks or years or whenever we were telling ourselves it could happen. If I say that it was her, if I give her the credit for the High King’s demise, they will forgive everything.
So, tell her she need not worry over me, or rescue me, or… tell her she is free.”
Katil furrowed her brow. “Well, that was rather a lot to remember, my lord. Perhaps if I could write all that down?”
He laughed softly. “When will you see her again?”
“Soon, in just an hour or so. We have a meeting place.”
He thought that through. He couldn’t be out of here in an hour, could he?
GATHREN COULDN’T BELIEVE it when she came to meet Katil and she came with Iahir in tow.
He looked haggard, his eyes shadowed, his features hollowed out, and his shoulders sagged.
He came straight for her, though, and he took her and guided her into an alley.
“Best not be too conspicuous,” he said to her.
They walked.
She looked up at him. “You rescued yourself.”
“No, I used you,” he said. “They wanted me to blame it on you, so I did. I was feeling conflicted about it, because it seemed wrong to do that to you, but then I discovered you were out here trying to rescue me, and I decided you would not mind.”
She let out a helpless laugh. “So, then… what? You did not kill the High King? I did?”
He nodded. “That is the way of it.”
“Will anyone really believe that?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. Probably not. I don’t think it really matters, because whatever this sham of the leftovers of the court is here, it’s not very effective, and Larhil is with Marthlis negotiating with the orcs. Do you know anything of this?”
“No, I haven’t… I have not really turned myself back in to my father, I’m afraid.”
“I didn’t think you had a choice. I thought there was some escort who was going to take you right to him.”
“Well, he tried to…” She glowered off into the distance. “I had to kill him.”
“By the dawn, are you all right?” He was horrified.
“You can see I’m all right,” she said.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he said.
“Oh, as if you would have been much help!”
He smirked.
She smirked.
They stopped walking. The alley here was full of piles of ash from fireplaces and crumpled newsprints. Otherwise, it was empty.
She looked up at him. “So, they just let you walk right out?”
“I don’t know if everyone would have been amenable, but I managed to convince Kinsahad I needed a spot of fresh air after nearly being executed, and he let me out with Katil. She was supposed to keep an eye on me, I suppose.”
“That’s foolish on his part,” said Gathren.
“I think he felt bad about killing me,” said Iahir. “Not that he had done it, but about being so close to doing it.”
“But you don’t have to go back,” she said.
“Well…” He squared his shoulders. “My family—”
“Yes, of course,” she said, letting out a breath, and turning to look down at the piles of ash in the alleyway.
“Why?” he said. “You don’t have some sort of idea? Because there’s nowhere we can be together, there’s no place that would welcome us. I suppose I’d had some idea of going north, maybe to one of those keeps held by the orcs, but I doubt they would treat me particularly well.”
“I understand Dathor is holding his keep along with his elf cousin,” she said. “Maybe there, but I don’t think Dathor likes me very much.”
“You did sort of call him names before you put him on a train,” said Iahir. “So, you don’t have any ideas?”
She swallowed, shaking her head. “Well, I suppose I thought that you would be on the run if they were trying to execute you, and that we must get as far away from this place as possible, so I had sort of thought… a ship?”
“A ship,” he said.
“Yes, I think I thought we’d be stowaways,” she said. “Which sounds dangerous and difficult and everything else. But maybe we could disguise ourselves in some way and—”
“Because it’s utterly believable for us to be traveling together, an orc woman and an elf man, if we are but wearing a disguise.”
She winced. “No, I suppose it’s not.”
He shifted on his feet. “I could be your prisoner? Perhaps I have some important information about something across the seas, something I know was buried in the dwarf lands, and you have been charged to take me there, and we could get passage on a dwarf ship. There are some that still come to the harbor. Findas allowed dwarf vessels to dock the last week of the month, and that is… now.”
“Yes, but are any ships docking in the wake of everything?”
“I do not know,” he said.
“It’s a better idea than I had,” she said. “Maybe it would work. What would we do there, amongst the dwarves?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.
“What about your family?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, hanging his head. “I do have a responsibility, and I am concerned about them, but… well, my brother betrayed me and sent me off to be executed, and my father seems to be more lucid than he was, and my mother…” He shook his head. “My mother…”
“You must go to your mother,” she said, reaching up and putting a hand against his cheek. “And I must go to my father. We have known for some time that this, between us, it doesn’t work.”
“Perhaps,” he said, letting out a breath. “And perhaps we are also owed a proper goodbye, warrioress.”
“What does that mean?” she said, smirking. “Does that mean you want to fuck me one last time?”
“Obviously, that’s what it means,” he said, nodding. “We just need a place.”
“Your Kinsahad won’t wonder where you’ve been?”
“Let him wonder.”
“Well, I am staying in a very nice abandoned house with a very nice bed.”
“Are you?” He grinned at her. “How convenient.”
She kissed him. He enfolded her in his arms.