10. Bindings
BINDINGS
My hands were tied.
It was the first thing I became aware of, before the strong scent of fennel and licorice root, the tang of bog myrtle and souring grain. My hands were tied, and my head throbbed.
I must have made some sound, because suddenly there was an arm under my head, and someone was putting a cup to my mouth.
I fought— ineffectually, God I was weak— and a voice, a woman’s voice but deep, clucked in a language I didn’t understand, chiding.
It was a woman, the face that blurred above me, soft and wrinkled, white hair and deep green skin.
I don’t know why I was more comfortable letting a woman kill me. I drank, and it tasted like coriander and mugwort, for fever and for pain.
Her voice was a steady, low patter, like rain— somewhere it was raining, outside, I could hear it— and orange light touched the edges of my vision.
A fire. I was indoors. My dress glued to my body with sweat, and nothing seemed real, the grit of sand still on my neck from falling, the parched cracking of my lips, my throat.
She brought another cup to my lips, a broth this time, and chuckled when I drank without questions. I was so tired.
“Tch, tch,” the voice scolded again. And I felt it, in the river of sound, that I was safe, that I didn’t have to fight.
There was almost nothing left of me to fight with, only animal reflex and precious little strength.
So I trusted the stranger with the coriander and the broth, and I let myself fall back into a fevered sleep, where sometimes I’d see faces, my Father, or the Droth orcs, or the woman with the power.
And when I tried to lunge up, to fight, to run, and fell again, I didn’t know if the arms pulling me back were an enemy or a dream.
Sunlight seared at my eyes.
A room swam into focus in front of me in the window-light, a central fireplace with an ample cauldron, shelves on shelves of clay vessels and bulbs and leaves and roots hanging in bunches from the rafters, lavender, wormwood, mint and more I didn’t know, like the forest was hanging from the ceiling.
“Nayah!” An orc woman approached me, the soft face from my delirium, the one with the coriander. She smiled, a shock of white teeth with only one missing. More words flowed off her tongue, but it was all of it foreign, all of it sounds I didn’t know.
I tried to sit up. My hands were bound behind me.
“Tch, tch!” She dosed liquid out of another kettle— how many little fires were in this house?
— tested it against her lip before bringing it to my mouth, like a grandmother with a baby’s gruel.
Licorice root, coating my throat, soothing the ache of my voice.
It was sweet. She said something, a promise, I think, and hustled from the room.
I managed to sit up, the room only spinning a little before I leaned against the clean earthen wall.
The light was coming in through windows between the rafters, interspersed to help the drying.
I wondered if they’d contracted with a human glassblower, for the window-globes, or if there were orcs heating sand and making glass.
I’d never thought about orcs making anything.
I’d never thought about orcs much at all.
The door swung open again, and the woman from before, with the ink-black hair, strode into the room.
I scrambled back against the wall.
My host was saying something, seemingly unafraid of her, and my head pounded, ready to fight.
“You’re the sorceress,” I croaked, winced at the sound of me.
Her eyes were flat. “Mother Grezha says your fever has broken.”
“Where am I?” Memories rushed back in, and I couldn’t panic, not now. I had to bargain, or battle, or— “Where is he? What have you done with him?”
“With the orc we found with you?”
“With my husband.”
Her eyebrows rose, just a moment. “He’s safe. He’s being cared for.” She gestured to the bindings. “You were in no state to be helping anyone else.” Her brows rose again. “May I?”
I didn’t want her near me, especially not behind me. But I couldn’t stay bound.
She sat and started untying the cords, and I tried not to tense like a knife was coming for my back.
“We don’t usually bind the sick. Your delirium had you threatening people, and we didn’t know what you could do with your powers.”
The orc woman she’d called Mother was moving about, tending the fire.
“A cut on my arm got infected.” I looked down to find my sleeve had been cut away at the shoulder, bandages clean around the cut.
“Grezha said it looked like a claw mark.”
“It was. These giant birds…” My throat constricted.
My bonds loosened and pulled off. She stood, and their language flowed from her lips, the old woman replying back. I couldn’t even parse the sounds, where one word ended and another began.
She came back with another cup, that same draught of licorice and oat straw. “Grezha says to start with this.” It took me a moment to realize she was holding it out to me, and she misinterpreted my hesitation, said, “You can trust her. She’s the ale wife of this enclave. She won’t harm you.”
I didn’t tell her I was far more ready to trust the orcess than I was her. I couldn’t insult a sorceress. I drank.
“How long have you known Vrathgar?”
The liquid was hot, and I had to sip. “I met him the day before our wedding.”
“How long have you been married?”
I tried a scattered count. “Five…five days? Maybe six?”
She looked over to the ale wife, then down at the cup, sat on the cot again, within arm’s reach of me. She did not look at me.
I needed her. She was the only one I could get answers from, and I didn’t even know where I was.
I couldn’t find my way to the Vradi or Bogdana’s sister and I had no idea what state my protector was in.
Likely how unreal the situation was, enclosed with a woman-orc and a sorceress, how very unreal everything felt, was the only thing keeping me from crumbling.
“Apologies,” she said, eyes still on the cup, the cot, everywhere else.
“I’m not the best at speaking, and the questions are delicate.
” She picked at the blanket, worrying a loose thread in her fingers.
“How did you come to marry Vrathgar One-Eye’s Son?
And has…” she hesitated. “Has anyone hurt you?”
While I tried to figure out what kind of answer she wanted, another shape loomed in the doorway, a male-shape, not as tall as Vrathgar, with awful mottled pink scars over his arms and shoulders, close-cropped hair, and the same, olive-green skin.
There were more of them, then. This was an orc village. She belonged to them. They were sending this girl, this sorceress, in to feel me out, to ask the questions they thought I’d lie about. They were trying to see if I could be re-sold. I held the clay cup so tightly I thought it would shatter.
“We are married,” I bit out. “We were married by a priest, the right way. My village witnessed it. He took me to his bed. He hurt me the usual amount. I am married, I am his, and you can’t anger him, because he’s very close to the Gol Droth, and they’re killers, and he has friends across the orc tribes, and all of them will kill you if you try to hurt him or me.
” My voice quavered, with anger, with rage, with utter wretchedness, I didn’t know.
The haunted look on her face only strengthened it. “You will get nothing from me.”
She looked over her shoulder at the man in the door, the man with the same doleful expression she was wearing. They must have hoped for good coin from my sale, and now instead they had threats and risk.
He was speaking to her, their rolling, slithering language again, and she shook her head.
When she turned back to me it looked like she was struggling.
“No one…no one is going to hurt you,” she said.
“You’re with our people, and you’re safe.
” She cleared her throat. “If you have any other questions, I can answer them. Since Grezha doesn’t speak the common tongue. ”
The man’s figure wavered in the doorway.
“Where is he? Where have you taken him? My husband.”
“He’s with family. You don’t have to worry.”
“You’re lying,” I spat. “He doesn’t have family. He told me he doesn’t have kin.”
She stuttered. “He’s with friends who are like family. You don’t have to see him till you want to.”
“What if I want to see him now?” I swallowed bile.
She looked at Grezha. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Then how do I know you’re not lying to me?”
She looked perplexed. “What would I gain from lying to you?”
I hated that she was right, hated that I had nothing to threaten, nothing to bargain with. I tried not to curl in on myself, tried not to show how afraid I was.
“Your…your husband, he was very injured, when we found you. Can you tell us anything about that?”
I met her eyes. “Everyone who hurt him is dead.” At least in this, I could speak the truth, could let that pity turn to horror in her face. “All of them.”
She withdrew. “Mother Grezha says you’ll be weak for a bit, that you need to keep drinking water, and the medicine she gives you.
I’ll…I’ll come back, when I can, in case you need someone you can speak to.
” Her hand by her side was shaking. The orcs were likely threatening her, but I couldn't summon any sympathy for a pawn. She said something else to Grezha, who answered in a long stream, clearly urging her to go. She dipped a bow. Maybe ale wives held more status here. The orc in the doorway didn’t make room for her as she passed, just stood there, and his hands casually touched her body, her arm. My stomach rebelled.
They left, and I curled up on the cot, into a ball, the horror crawling under my skin.
But my ears didn't stop, and the path must have wrapped around the building. The window far above was left ajar. I shouldn’t have been able to hear them speaking, as far as they’d gone.
I shouldn’t have, but it was in Common, and I could.
“You don’t have to come back here.” A low voice, the orc’s.
“We can’t leave her alone in a place with no one she can understand.” The sorceress’s voice shook, and I almost felt bad for not caring what they threatened her with.
“Gnarlak could come sit with her.”
“What if she needed to ask for help? What if she’s hurt? We are not making her talk about this to a man!”
I shrunk in on myself. Even the sorceress was a better person than I was.
“Blenna could come.”
“Blenna knows maybe twenty words; she cannot translate for Grezha.”
“We’ll find someone. I’ll ask around.”
Her voice got more squeaky, more shrill. “I am not broken. I can talk to her.”
“I know you’re not broken. I know you’re strong. I just want you to be okay.”
I wished that it wasn’t alien, the care in his voice. And then the sound was just sobbing, and I curled in, tighter, on the cot, feeling lost, feeling numb.
The sobs ended, and her voice was muffled, and it shook. “I want to kill him. What was he thinking?”
“I don’t know. We’ll ask him.”
“I can’t even look at him right now—”
Their muffled voices faded. I looked up at Grezha regarding me over the cauldron, her soft face creased in worry.
She smiled, the way you do to soothe a child.
“Nayah,” she said, and started speaking again, going to a cabinet painted in bright floral patterns.
She pulled out a quilt in blue and ochre, and brought it over to wrap around me.
It was warm, like it had been resting near an oven.
She pointed to the cauldron again and to the window above, her stream of steady chatter unintelligible to me, but clearly meant to be comforting.
And that was nice, that someone wanted to be comforting.
I let her ease me down onto my side and cluck at me, pantomiming sleep, pointing and promising something with the cauldron and the hearth.
And I was sick to death; everything inside me was aching.
I was hurting people, all the time. I didn’t deserve her care, but I let her tuck the quilt over me, and I slept.