15. Old Ties
OLD TIES
People still stared when I walked with him, but they didn’t glare as much. Sephar waved easily, conversed in a flowing tongue, nodding to the elderly, bantering with the young women.
“They all seem to like you,” I said. And maybe that was an odd thing to tell someone out loud, but maybe I had been dragged to an orc encampment, and nothing seemed real anymore.
He waved to a group of children, bobbing dark heads ducking behind the brambles. “Not everyone. I take my fair share of censure.”
“I’ve been a pariah since I got here.”
“Vrathgar has been on the outs longer. It’s not your fault the way this looks.” His smile was wan. “He can be a little rough, our wayward son. I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with him.”
I shook my head. “He’s been genteel.”
“Of course, of course.” There was pity in his eyes.
I followed him up the winding path. “What did you mean, the way this looks?”
“Has no one explained anything to you?”
“No,” I said bitterly. “No one has explained anything.”
“I’ll try to be concise.”
I realized we were taking the long route back, and we’d be going past that training circle again, the tables with the gawkers. I started to shrink back, but he moved forward, and he was carrying my jar.
“He’s always been jealous of the way Khal fit in.
Seeing that people liked it when Khal brought in a human wife…
childish, but…it looks like he decided to try a shortcut to that same power.
Additionally,” he said, before I could take a chance to speak, “it looks like he could not find a woman who’d put up with his proclivities and his background among the orcs, so he rejected our ways to find easier prey. To upset the order of things.”
“It’s not like that at all,” I said. “My people captured him. They’d have killed him if he didn’t take me.”
“Is that so?” His eyes were appraising. “How interesting. You are the captor, then?”
That lightness was gone from his tone, and I didn’t know why he made me so uncomfortable. I chastised myself. I could not be cringing from every man and orc I met. “Yes. More or less. My people did.”
“Interesting.” There were a knot of people standing by the entrance to the wooden road, and his face shifted back to smiles.
Orcs stared so much more openly than humans, stood closer, fluttered less. At first it had been so foreign and jarring that it overwhelmed the math of my mind, but now I tried to read the faces of these people, the creased foreheads and little tics.
I had been someone people looked away from for so long that it felt odd having people stare.
The older woman by the post, with her broad shoulders, asked my defender some question, and when he answered she turned away to spit.
Some of them pulled away a hair as he passed them. They didn't all trust this man, not entirely. A little while ago I might have conflated that with the distaste that had been shown towards my husband, but that had been open, and this was hidden. Like Vrathgar was a dog, and this man was a snake.
We were headed towards that empty walkway, that long, winding bridge up to Vrathgar’s shell of a house. Had I been threatened so many times these past weeks that I was losing all sanity, to almost walk alone like this with a man? Was I trying to die?
I stopped moving. He turned back to me, that sunny, artificial smile. “Are you alright?
I couldn't ask anyone for help. And what if I was loud, what if I yelled, and I was wrong and I’d make more trouble for his friends and men were so often less dangerous while you pretended you were safe and I—
“Wait,” I said. “I forgot something.”
His eyebrows rose. I scanned the crowd, found a cloud of white hair, a single familiar face. “Grezha!” I shouted, waved. She turned back, confused.
I grabbed my jar. “The water is for Grezha. Thank-you-for-your-help-I'm-going.”
He gripped the jar a moment, unwilling, but there were eyes still around us, and he plastered on a concerned expression. He let go. “If you ever need someone to talk to, or you’re in need of help—"
“Thank-you-so-much I'm fine.” I had the jar back, and I rushed across the square. “Grezha…” I didn’t have any more words, but some people understood more than they spoke, didn’t they? “I’m with you? To help?” I fumbled. “I need to walk with you. …Nayah?”
She laid a hand on my head, like she checked for fever, and I didn’t duck away. Her eyes found Sephar past me, and she wound her arm through mine, soft but clearly still strong. “Nayah,” she said, followed by a stream of words I couldn’t understand.
We walked.
People didn’t shrink from Grezha. When I was on her arm, they still stared, but they didn’t shrink from me.
And then the path was familiar, and we were walking up steep stone steps to a door.
Tyralk blinked from his mother’s doorway. “Grezha,” he greeted her, touched his forehead to hers, comical with how far he was bending down. She spoke another piece, and I looked to him. “She says you found her, and she’s brought you to someone who can help better than her.”
I caught her hand as she pulled away, warm in mine. “Thank you,” I said. Tyralk translated.
She smiled, touched my forehead. Tyralk translated. “She says you will be the strong shoulder one day. For now be the leaning sister without shame.”
I bowed, the only thing I could think of. She left.
Tyralk hid worry badly, despite all his nonchalance. “What happened?”
“Can you walk me back?” I said. “Please. I went out for water and…I got lost.” Close enough to the truth, and as much as I felt right revealing.
He nodded, and took the jar.
“Can we go the long way? Not past the sparring ring and the marketplace. Please.” I wasn’t ready to face Rissa, whoever she was, or her cohort, or any of the crowds right now.
He nodded again, didn’t question how I knew the way while claiming to be lost.
The path was long. By about halfway through, my heart was racing.
I was weakened by the fever, damn it. The bandage on my upper arm would need changing, to make sure the ill humors didn’t fester.
But Tyralk was patient, and we made it to the bottom of the walkway, past the stream, and then down the dead-end path to the house in the tree.
“Thank you,” I said.
Tyralk— he hadn’t talked all this time— shook his head. “You don’t need to say thank you so often,” he said. “We’re not counters of debts here.”
I didn’t know what there was to say to that.
His step lurched, and he grimaced.
“Are you hurt?”
“Just an old injury. It acts up sometimes.” The limp wasn't pronounced, but his face set, like he was handling pain.
We reached Vrathgar’s door.
“Annora,” the young one said, handing my jar back, “I can be an idiot sometimes, but I care about my brother, whatever he says. If you need help…” he wavered.
“I will ask,” I said. “I’m not too proud to ask.” I tried for a joke. “I’d rather ask you than pull a knife on your chieftess again.”
He huffed out a laugh, looked relieved. “Whatever your husband thinks, he’s not alone here. Even if he may wish it.” He cleared his throat. “Anyhow. Thanks for putting up with him, nayah? We love the old codger.”
He started walking away, but curiosity stabbed me. “How old is he?” I shouted.
He called back over his shoulder, “Twenty-four!”
Twenty-four. We were almost the same age.
I took a steadying breath, and pushed through the door.
Vrathgar pulled a blanket over his lap, the mess of bloodstained bandages around his thigh.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll knock next time.”
He grunted, went back to unwrapping the wound.
“Did you want help?” I said.
“Got it.”
I was just nodding, like a simpleton. “I got the water.” Was there a hook to hang this, or should I sit it on the floor?
“Were you alright?” he said. His voice was still clipped, short.
“Yes, I was fine.” A little flare of testing, rebellion, uncoiled in my stomach. “Your friend helped me.”
“Tyralk?” He undid another knot. “I hope not Khal.”
“No. Sephar?”
His head snapped up, nostrils flaring. My instinct had been right. “Sephar?” he spat the words. “What did he try? Did you speak to him?”
“Not about anything important—"
“What did he ask you?” he demanded. His wound was forgotten, his relative state of undress was forgotten, interrogating me.
I tried not to get my back up. “Just, was I alright, did I need anything, nothing.”
“It’s never nothing, not with that lying snake.” He was so angry, and I was the one dealing with his “cousin,” I was the one getting accosted by women in rivers, and he growled, “if he comes near you again, you walk away, do you hear me? Don’t give him an inch, slithering into ears, that foul—"
And somehow that was a step too far. “I wouldn’t have met him at all except he defended me from a paramour of yours, actually—"
“Defended you?”
“Yes, defended, because apparently there are forces at work that no one has been interested in telling me about: who is Rissa?”
He looked like I’d slapped him, the same rage, the same disbelief. For a second I measured the space to the door, thought about if I’d run. “Rissa?” he said, his voice suddenly velvet-y calm, and that was more frightening.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yes, Rissa,” I said, hoping the tremor in my voice sounded as angry as I felt. “The reason the young women hate me. The reason they’re mocking me at the stream. Your…lover, I assume? Rissa.”
“Sephar told you this, yes? Of course he would.”
“This is not about Sephar.”
“Oh, pardon, yes, this is about my love life.” His voice rose.
“Pray, tell me, when in our long and storied relationship did you want me to put that on the table?
Was this conversation supposed to be before or after our wedding at knifepoint?
Before or after we consummated our marriage inside a cell?
Before or after you decided whether to poison me or someone else—"