Chapter 4 #2
He tells me about Gorrath Venn. Stone Cradle, in his language.
It has cold air that tastes like snowmelt, mountains older than the gods.
Their days are three hours longer than mine, so the light in the afternoon goes on and on.
The Stormbreak stronghold in the caves and terraces of the Ironspine range, halls lit with stonemoss, an amber glow that runs along the walls and makes the rock look warm.
His house, which he built, every rock read and placed.
A warm kitchen. A bed he built too long for anyone human and never once shared.
“There are other human women,” he says. “They gather. They are loud in a way my people enjoy very much. My shieldmate married one of them.” The eyebrow adds a footnote.
“Brokk. He talks like a rockslide. He found his wife here in eleven days. Eleven. I stood in his wedding line two years ago, thinking it would never happen for me, or thinking that if it did, she would take one look at all this silence and ask for a louder one. I applied anyway. And then I waited.”
“Valdrek.”
“It’s what I thought.” He shrugs. “Humans read silence as a locked door. One hundred and six times, I saw the look on the women’s faces. They didn’t want me, even if they had been the one.”
He’s one hundred percent wrong, but he continues before I can say it.
“And then a court reporter was in the corner of a hearing room, and my whole life caught fire. When I looked at what was burning, it was every plan I had for being alone.”
If this weren’t such a serious moment, I’d toss this blanket off and show him exactly how much he’s also caught my life on fire.
“And if I go with you,” I say carefully. “What would I do? There’s no court. No depositions. This is what I do. I have ten years into this and a machine.”
“You bring it with you.” He reaches into the pocket of his coat and sets a small object on the desk between us, and my heart trips hard enough that he can probably hear it.
It’s a flat, orc-palm-sized stone. Deep gray shot with a vein of white.
Carved into its face, in details so fine it must have taken days, is a steno machine.
My machine, the actual model, the little folding stand rendered in granite down to the latch I have to jiggle.
Above it, arced across the top, runs a line of orcish runes.
“Stormbreak protection custom,” he says. “A warded stone. Carried, or set over a doorway.” His ear tips. “The carving took three nights. Your machine has many small parts, and my hands are not small.”
I look at those hands. Last night, they spanned my whole waist and lifted me as if they were entertained by the idea that I weigh anything. My body buzzes in delight.
Down, girl. He just gave us a protection stone. This is a serious moment.
I pick it up. It’s warm from his pocket and heavy. My thumb finds the runes and traces them slowly, and I can’t read a one of them.
“What does it say?”
“Her words are kept here.”
I close my fist around the stone and hold it against my chest. I don’t say anything because every word seems too small. He watches me not say it.
“The ferry is Tuesday,” he says.
“I’m not asking you to answer tonight,” he says.
“The transport for Gorrath Venn is Thursday. Whatever you choose, the stone is yours. And Wren.” He waits until I look up.
“If you go home, I will not haunt you. But know this. I want all of it. Years of you. Your voice in my house. Small, loud children who never learn to be quiet, who talk over everyone and are always, always answered.” His voice roughens.
“I have thought about the sound of your machine in my hall. You working by stonemoss light. I would build you a room for it with my own hands, my heart, and I would carry the case.”
My heart. There it is again, warm and slightly out of dialect, like shall. Maybe thess’venna means my heart. I could ask Diane or try to look it up, but I won’t. He said I’d earn it, and someday I’m going to figure out where the mountain learned its love language.
Tonight I get up, cross to him, and lean into seven feet of orc heat and let him hold the whole impossible question. Under my ear, his heart keeps time, slowly, like it’s in no rush.
I stay there a long time. Then I ask the question the pamphlet dodges.
“The claiming bite,” I say, into his chest. “The binder says it’s permanent. Tell me about it.”
The rumble under my ear turns into words.
“It’s a mark. My teeth go here.” One enormous finger finds the ache at the base of my neck without hunting for it, which answers a question I hadn’t asked yet.
“It opens the bond in both directions, and it does not close. We would have all of the joy, temper, and dark days, whether you want them or not. Distance thins it, but will never cut it. If you stood on Earth and I stood on Gorrath Venn, you would know what kind of morning I was having, and your body would count the miles. The distance hurts. I will not pretend otherwise.”
When he’s quiet for a moment, I say, “Is that everything?”
“That is everything.”
“Good.” I snuggle closer to him. “The court appreciates a complete record.”
This transcript isn’t going to finish itself, and Valdrek stays while I work.
He settles into the corner chair, which vanishes beneath him, takes a battered IMA tablet out of his coat, fits a single earbud into one pointed ear, where it looks like a grain of rice.
He keeps me company for three hours without producing one audible word.
At one point I overheard the betting pool talking about the tablet. He’s had it the entire time he’s been here and he only uses one earbud with it. The consensus theory is he’s listening to Stormbreak battle chants. I don’t know about that. Valdrek doesn’t seem the type.
Around eight in the morning, I glance over, and my mountain is smiling, faintly. Both ears are forward, his eyes are down, and one finger is moving across the tablet like he’s pushing a back button.
“What are you listening to?”
His finger freezes. The earbud comes out, and the tablet goes face-down against his thigh. His ears sink slowly to half-mast while their tips flush that deep telltale pink.
“Stories,” he says. He’s obviously not going to elaborate.
Twice before, he didn’t tell me something. I let the first one go to get the second, and I’m letting the second one go because it’s 8 a.m. and he spent three nights carving my steno machine into a rock. Some questions can wait.
“Good stories?” is all I ask.
“Instructive,” he says with tremendous dignity and puts the earbud back in.
He decides to stop distracting me so I can finish the last part of my transcript, and I walk him to the door. He pauses in the doorway and takes my face in both hands. He tilts it up and studies me for so long my chest starts to ache.
His mouth is right there, and so is mine. We both know that if he kisses me now, neither of us is going to stop. His thumb moves once across my cheekbone, and I tempt the mountain by turning my face in his hands and kissing his palm.
I hold it there, and I wait. I want to watch him decide to leave, though I half hope he doesn’t.
His breath is ragged, and the mountain doesn’t move.
“Let me know when you choose, Wren,” he says.
Then he’s gone, and I lock the door, and I sit back down at the desk with the last pages of two worlds agreeing to keep talking to each other.
I look at the last page, the certification page, the little block of boilerplate that has been the truest sentence in my life for ten years.
I certify that the foregoing is a true and accurate record of the proceedings.
Next to the keyboard, a carved stone holds down the corner of the stack, keeping my words from blowing away in the draft from my room's vent.
I pack up the transcript. The ache at my neck settles every time I picture staying and flares every time I imagine stepping on the ferry.
I don’t know why I’m pretending I’m even considering the stupid choice, but I need to get the job finished before anything else.