6. Tokens
TOKENS
Iwoke up to golden eyes above mine, yiped and scrambled back, hitting the earth wall.
“Good morning to you too.” My husband looked amused. Tendrils of hair fell around his face.
Soft, golden light filtered in through the branches.
I sat up, carefully this time. “I slept too late.”
“Well, we ran too hard.”
I thought to leap up, to make a show of dedication to the road, but I’d have to climb over him, and he seemed relaxed, lounging there on one arm. He reached for me, and I flinched—
“What is this?” He lifted Bogdana's pouch between his fingers. “You always carry it.”
My heart was pounding. “A good luck charm. From my mentor.”
“Your chieftain with the white hair? She seemed like one of the better ones.” He still examined the sachet. I wished I had the gumption to snatch it back.
“She’s a healer.” I swallowed.
“I didn’t know humans gave such things.”
“I had people who cared about me too.” The words had come out too fast, and he froze.
He put down my pouch. His eyes had shuttered. “I’ve put you on your guard. You think I’m insulting you, every time I speak.”
I wanted to say, “Aren’t you?” but horror was still ice in my stomach. I’d already offended him, while we were running for our lives— my life— and I’d offended him, like a foolish harridan.
He reached to his chest, and lifted one of the effigies on that dark webbing of twine.
“My brother Khal’s father made this for me,” he said.
“It's a badger. He used to say I was like a badger dragged from its den, all fury and claws.” The tiny, pale bead was made from a soft wood, intricately carved, the little snout turned up, the little paws. He spoke again, and he was doing a voice, a deeper accented Common. “‘But this is supposed to be your den. We're supposed to be your badgers. Why are you biting?’” The side of his mouth was curled up. He lifted another carving, and another. “A bear, for Khal. Peaceful till provoked. And a fox, for Tyralk.” A red stain shone on that one. “He’s an idiot. You’ll meet him.” His fingers lingered on the beads.
Most of the necklace’s web was covered in claws, but I saw several long, predatory teeth.
“Are all the tokens you carry gifts?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“No,” he said. “Most of this I took for myself.” His hand clenched, and he dropped it. “We decide what we carry.” That didn’t sound like an invitation for questions. I stayed quiet, and he said, stiffly, “We are not so very different.”
No, not different at all. Because he carried a few dozen trophies of lives he’d taken, and I only carried the means to take his.
He stood. “We should get moving.”
Vrathgar was more at ease as we moved farther. We stopped at a brook for water. He scaled trees to look behind us less often. When he bartered and paid a lone ferryman to paddle us across the wide expanse of the Vradi, it was like weight dropped off his shoulders, and he finally breathed.
That night he stopped to build a fire.
“We can live like human beings again,” he said, that lightness still in his voice.
A metal cook pot came out of his pack, not large, like a kettle.
“As a figure of speech.” He started cleaning the red grouse he’d killed with a sling at the gilding of the evening, fast, easy twists and snaps.
“Not enough flesh on it for much, but it’ll make soup.
If you could find anything to add, I don’t have much by way of spices. I usually pack better but…”
I lost the thread of what he was saying. The orc cookpot gleamed beside the yet-unkindled fire.
We had crossed the river. I could find my way back to the ferryman. The ferryman could direct me to the road. The road could lead me to Merryborough. The powder could—
“Annora?”
I flinched. He was staring at me, over the gutted bird in his hands.
“Are you alright?”
It took me a moment to gather. “I’m…fine. I think…I saw some wild carrot, back on the way. I’ll see what I can find.”
He frowned, but he didn’t comment. “Don’t go far.”
In the woods, out of view, I leaned over and caught my breath.
Why was I making excuses? It wasn’t because I was weak, like my mother.
It wasn’t because I was sentimental. I had been present for deaths before.
I’d watched my father bleed out from his gullet, days ago, the images still painted on my mind.
I’d just…I’d never actively chosen to kill someone before.
Was this who I was? Someone who was too weak to kill?
Was I going to wait till Bogdana’s tonic wore off and my belly swelled with child, till there was another creature in this world that I couldn’t protect?
I needed to hate him. I shouldn’t need to. I should be able to just do it, but I needed hate. I needed spite to stay alive, now. Love had been wrung out of me, drop by drop, and there was nothing left.
I gathered shelf-mushrooms in my skirt, the bright yellow splashy against the brown, found a flush of carrots in a sun-dappled glen.
“These’ll do, right?” I spread my skirt out, tapping the soil off the roots.
He nodded. The fire had been built. The water he’d sacrificed hadn’t started to bubble yet.
“So those were your family?” I stabbed out, the first question I could think of. “Those orcs we met.” I needed him to snark something ugly, or at least to snarl at me. Show me I’m right and you’re the monster.
“My father’s side.” He picked up a flat of mushroom from my lap, started breaking it into pieces.
“Will we meet your father?”
“No. He’s dead.” No grief passed over his features, no feeling at all. I could handle this if he had no feeling at all.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, rote.
“Don’t be. I hear he was a piece of work.” He waved a hand at his brow. “Apparently this was a parting gift.” That deep purple scar. “One less in-law for you to worry about. Though I’m told you can thank him for my striking good looks.” He threw the pieces into the pot.
I swallowed. I should stop, but this wasn’t about keeping him happy for survival. This was about my own sanity after I’d finished with him. “And your mother?”
“She’s not a bad person.” He said it immediately, like he was ready to strike.
“I didn’t say she was.”
He pulled out his knife, and my heart stuttered, for the second before he pulled a piece of wood from his pocket. “You’ll meet her. At the enclave. With the rest of the Drashik.”
I let myself return to breathing, let my pulse stop pounding behind my eyes. “Do you often visit your father’s people?”
“Not when I can avoid it. Drazha— one of our chieftains I owe a favor to— sent me to make nice this time. They don’t usually come this far west, and they have people nervous.”
I thought of the men we’d lost to the last raid, of Meryl Potter’s wails over her son. “They had us ‘nervous,’ too.”
“Yes, well, when humans get nervous, we tend to all look the same. Case in point.” He took a chunk off the soft wood with a brutal twist.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “You speak like your chosen tribe are different from them.”
“We generally are.”
“What makes you better?”
His eyebrows rose. It was the only sign of temper, besides his hands moving faster. “We haven’t personally murdered anyone in your town? Our record on kidnappings is lower? What do you want me to say?”
“Isn’t that only because of range?” He might hit me for this. I was pushing too far, and I knew it. But I needed that reaction. I needed to know. “They’re close enough to hurt us. You’re far away. If you were closer, wouldn’t you do the same?”
He snorted. “A man I worked for, fought for, paid our fee in colored water and counterfeit goods at Belnor. Do all humans do that?” He shook his head, disgust still twisting his mouth, at me, at a far-off employer, at his own words.
“My father’s people value one kind of strength,” he said, and his voice was cold.
“They value meat-headed cunning, physical prowess. The kind of thing that comes easily to me. Fight, hunt, kill, live.Their strong rule over their weak. They take what they want. It’s a privileged existence, or it’s a hellish one.
” He looked up at me, his eyes twin flames.
“The Drashik…they value other things. People like my shield-brother Khal. People like his father, or your white-haired healer. People better than me. They make room for their weak, and they find more ways to be strong.” His eyes dropped back to the blade.
“That’s why they’re different. So don’t worry.
You’ll have better people around you than me. ”
“You lump yourself in with the orcs we left behind.”
His lip curled. “When I’m with the Gol Droth, I’m Drashik. To the Drashik, I’m Gol Droth. And to you.” He gestured with the blade again. “...I’m just an orc. Isn’t that right?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, like warmth could solve this. Like I could hold myself together and find the courage I’d need to do this, because how do you make someone show you they’re a monster? How do you make them hurt you so it’ll be okay? “What…do you expect of me?” I got out.
“Expect of you? What are you talking about?”
I squeezed. “What…is my role? As your wife?”
He was frowning. “I don’t know. What do people do when they’re married?
” The knife moved, firm strokes. “They fuck and fight and help each other when they can. Sometimes they live together. If there are children, they take care of that.” The knife twisted.
“What do you want me to say? What do humans do?”
I bit my cheek till I tasted blood, trying to stay even, keep my mind clear. “The same. I’d bear your children, do as you told me, serve your dinner, serve at your bed. The same.”
“So why are you angry?”
“I’m not.” I wasn’t. There wasn’t anything left inside me to be angry anymore.
The furrow between his brows deepened. “Is this a test? Did I miss a custom?”
“No.”
“Was I supposed to tell you you were beautiful? Or is it something else?”
“No.”