14. Drazha #3
“But I have nothing else to offer you.” The words tumbled from me. “If I'm just cooking your meals…you're facing banishment.” I sounded deranged. “This is going to be too much trouble. You're going to get tired of me.”
His eyebrows rose further. “You're worried about keeping me?”
I was getting louder, against all reason. “You're the only person here with a reason to keep me alive!”
Hot shame stained my face.
He drew breath, reasoned, “You will make other friends. And you'll have mine.” He looked away again. “If you don't find a place here, I will get you safely to somewhere else. You have my oath.”
“I was a fool,” I whispered. The pieces were clicking into place, my stupidity choking me. “You were far from your people. You didn't need me to be…to be what you wanted. You're here now. There are more suitable women—"
For the first time he raised his voice. “I am not sleeping with an orc. I am not compelled to fornicate every fourth day. We are not beasts.”
He stopped, his face frozen, and I realized I was shielding my face with my arms.
I lowered them. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He caught his breath. “You think so little of us.” He shook his head. “You think so little of me.”
I had botched this. I had botched everything. And he was never going to touch me again. I choked out, “Can I cover myself, please?”
He grabbed up the blanket, swept it over my shoulders. His weight was on his good leg, and his face was too close, too close for someone who’d just rejected me like the fool I was. His jaw tensed. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I could have almost laughed at that, if I wasn’t, apparently, already crying.
I pulled away, stood, and went to get the shift, the dress. They were harder to get into than out of, especially trying to keep the blanket, and feeling like a fool.
“We don’t have to talk about this now,” he said. “We can find you a place. One way or another.”
I dropped the blanket at his feet. I definitely was not ready to talk to him about this now. Maybe with this level of humiliation, I’d never be ready to talk to him ever again. I picked up the water jar, light, empty. “I’m going to get water.”
“You don’t know where the stream—"
“It’s down the walkway at the second fork. It’s visible from the path. I can hear it from outside the house. I won’t get lost.”
“I should go with—"
“I will be safe at the stream. The people who hate you want me alive, don’t they?” He didn’t answer, and I got out, “Please.”
He turned away, nodded.
I fled.
My legs still wobbled from yesterday's fever, and wooden planks clunked under my feet. And I hadn't lied when I said I'd seen the stream, that I could find the way, but my eyes hadn't been blurred with tears before.
I was a fool. I was a little fool. And of all the outcomes I'd prepared myself for, this wasn't one of them.
Splashing sounded, calling and laughter.
I stopped on the earthen path. Drinking water should be gathered upstream from bathing, and I wasn’t ready to be seen by anyone. But I didn't know which way the stream flowed.
The laughter stopped when I came into view, a group of women as young as me, one washing a garment in the shallows, the others wading with already short skirts hiked higher. They had necklaces like Vrathgar did, intricate knots and beads, pieces of tooth and claw and fur. Trophies.
The water was flowing that way. I turned away, started moving upstream.
“Hey!” One of them was striding towards me through the shallows, an amused twist to her mouth. Her accent was thicker than the others. “You kill?”
I didn’t understand. “What?”
“Married. You kill?” She’d stopped not two feet from me, so much of her body on display in this dress, pulled a spear off her back. I flinched, and the ones in the water laughed. “Married,” she repeated. “You kill?”
I clutched the water jar to me, a foolish stand-in for a shield. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She swung the spear over her head, held it out, like I could take it. I shook my head. Someone snickered.
A deeper voice came from the bank behind me, chiding, and the spear-woman rolled her eyes and bantered something back. When she turned away, there was something like contempt in her face.
“I’m sorry about that,” the voice said behind me. “They haven’t had as much opportunity to speak Common, given the way our peoples interact.”
The stranger had a handsome face, for an orc, an unassuming frame.
He kept his distance, raised his hands, as if he could see me stiffen, see me waiting for something worse, and that brought a flood of heat to my face.
None of those women in the stream before me seemed on edge with him.
Any of them looked able to take him in a fight, and here I was, still shaking like a rabbit. He smiled.
“What was that about?” I asked, if nothing else to divert from the shame. My throat felt a little raw.
“It’s customary for our young women to prove themselves in battle or the hunt before they take a husband. She was asking if you were blooded, as a warrior.”
“I slit a man open on the way here, if that counts.” My entire stomach ached.
A laugh burbled out of him. “Whether or not it counts, it’s nothing to scoff at.”
I surveyed the water. I was used to wells. I was used to springs. Moving water was harder. Should I draw from the middle? I had no interest in getting sopping wet, or in baring my legs to this stranger.
“I’m sorry they were so aggressive. They know Rissa quite well, so it makes sense there’s some friction.”
I leaned out to dip the jar into the water.
“Did he tell you about them? About her?”
At least the water was clear in this place. “No one has told me anything.”
“No one?” He seemed troubled. “Well, that’s not my place.” I didn’t contradict him.
I had to steady the jar as it grew heavier, shoved my sleeves farther up my arms.
“That’s a nasty bruise there.”
“I fell down a ravine.”
“You fell down a ravine and someone bit you on your arm?”
“No, I…” Right. The half-moon of dark bruises still spread where I’d bit into my forearm, that first night. “No, that was something else.”
“Sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s…” Why was I explaining myself to this man? “It’s nothing. It’s been an intense few days. Weeks? Days.” I didn’t want to talk about my arm, about doing that and why. “You speak Common better than the others.”
“Yes. My cousin, Khal, you’ve met him? I grew up speaking Common around his fire..”
Fragments of what Vrathgar had told me surfaced, about his circle, his “kith.” “You know my husband.”
His smile widened. “Yes, more’s the pity.”
“You’re one of the friends he told me about.” Relief loosened my shoulders, the pain holding me straight. “What’s your name?”
He reached past me, and picked up the water jar, hefting it easily. “I’m Sephar.”