15. Old Ties #2
“Before someone approached me with a spear!” I’d shouted it at him.
“Before anyone came at me with a weapon; I don’t need to know all your secrets and you don’t have to tell me whether you love her, I just need to know if I’m not going to be able to fill a jar with rutting water without being confronted by multiple armed people with no idea which ones want—"
“To kill me,” is what I’d meant to say, but my grip gave out. It was such a stupid moment, my arms weak after too long, the loss of coordination and control, and the water jar fell, smashing in clay shards, spreading a puddle across the floor.
I went down on my knees, started picking them up. “I’m so sorry—"
“No, stop—" He was tying the blanket around his waist, bending down.
“I can pick it up and I’ll find something to trade for a new one—"
“I don’t care about the jar.” And then my hands were both caught in his, and I was trapped, looking up— “I don’t care about the jar,” he repeated. His breathing was a little ragged. He swallowed. “Listen to me, alright? You’re going to hurt your hands.”
A tiny trickle of blood flowed from one thumb, down onto my knuckle. I didn’t let the shard go. “It has to be cleaned up,” I got out, and it sounded like a whisper.
“I’ll borrow a broom alright? Or I’ll make one. We need one anyway. Just…stop. Please.”
I let it go.
A knock slammed on the door. “Vrathgar?” An unfamiliar voice called out. The rest was Orcish.
Vrathgar cursed under his breath. “We’re being summoned,” he muttered. “Sephar has convinced them to hold a council.”
I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know for what, just that it felt like something was broken, something I longed to fix and could not.
Vrathgar yelled some Orcish back at the door, and released my hands. “Let me get dressed.”
The orc at the door had a round, honest face, and Vrathgar greeted him with that same embrace, the dip of their foreheads. And then we were walking down the wooden bridgeway again, words spoken and unspoken hanging between us like an impenetrable wall.
How was it only afternoon when this day felt like a month smashed together?
The crowd at the stone-ringed circle was different now, a hush of focus, onlookers around the edge, children with wide eyes in happy green faces scrabbling up the trees.
In the center of that circle, the woman who’d slammed my face into the floor earlier today, Drazha, stood with a number of others, a petite older woman with small, white pieces of something braided into her hair, a tall man whose frown deepened as Tyralk stepped to stand next to me.
“Don’t stand with us, whelp,” Vrathgar muttered, not taking his eyes off the chieftains in that circle. “Whatever mud they’re slinging shouldn’t be hitting an infant.”
Tyralk didn’t look back at him. “I’m not standing with you. I’m standing with your wife, because you have to focus on what’s going on, and she has no idea what anyone’s saying, you giant ass.”
Vrathgar’s eyes flicked to me, and he didn’t argue.
The old woman with the white shapes in her hair stepped forward, addressed the crowd.
Tyralk leaned sideways and murmured to me. “She says Vrathgar has brought a wife to the people, and concerns have been raised that because the alliance is with people alien to us, the marriage was made not in our ways.”
Vrathgar stepped forward, raised one arm in salute, touched his forehead. His shoulders were relaxed, and the way his weight avoided the still injured leg just looked like mockery. The words rolled off his tongue, and noise rose from the crowd, sounds of disgust, disbelief.
“He’s explaining that your people engaged in Tar Ivan, that they meant to force alliance with the Droth, but captured him instead.”
A man in the crowd yelled out, and Vrathgar fired back, before Drazha stepped up beside the other woman, yelling them to silence.
Tyralk flinched. “They, uh…recommended he stay with the Gol Droth. Vrathgar disagreed with their premise. Drazha wants everyone to stay polite.”
I did not think he’d merely disagreed with their premise.
Oh, she’d said his name. I heard his name. The rest was an unintelligible flood of consonants, but I'd caught that.
“She’s demanding if he has evidence for this. He’s telling her about the orc who was captured with him.”
“She knows about that.”
“Most of this trial is for show, mostly because no one actually cares about Vrathgar. This isn’t about him. It’s about Khal, and Sephar’s faction is trying to bait him out.”
“Sephar?”
A younger woman stepped into the circle across from us. Her arms were flying, an accusing voice. Vrathgar was answering, acid, and she kept speaking over. Drazha let it run—
“She’s uh…” Tyralk winced. “This part doesn’t matter, I don’t think.”
“Doesn’t matter?” I hissed up at him, and he winced again.
“Okay, uh…she’s alleging that the undesirable males are going to start bringing in women they can easily control, because interaction with your people is barbarizing them. There are…a lot of insults. Vrathgar is…debating some points on that.”
“Is that Rissa?”
“What?” Tyralk blanched. “No, she isn’t…Rissa doesn’t care. No. She’s not even here.”
“Has he slept with her?” I gestured to the one in the ring.
Tyralk was blinking really fast. “God, sis, I don’t keep track of that!”
“So possibly.”
She waved her hand at me again, and Vrathgar cut her off with some scathing line of Orcish bombast. Tyralk gathered himself enough to mutter, “This is not about that.”
“Isn't it? She's jealous on her friend's account or her own.”
“It's not that simple— oh, Sajahk.”
Sephar stepped into the ring.
And because I couldn't hear his words, because it was all sounds, I could see with my whole attention how he moved, how he put himself in the circle at almost an equal distance between my husband and the young warrior woman, the supplicating way he spoke to her, the over-acted hesitance as he addressed Vrathgar, overdone concern. He waved an arm towards me.
“Tyralk? What is he saying?”
Tyralk inhaled, too sharp.
“Please.”
“He's modeling himself as your advocate. You spoke to him today?”
“He met me at the stream. What is he saying?”
“You are easily frightened, clearly timid…he’s insinuating that Vrathgar hurt you.”
“He has not!” I hissed.
He inhaled again. “This all looks bad.” Tyralk’s head snapped up. “You have a bite on your arm?”
“Yes?”
“God, sis…”
Sephar hung his head, like sorrow was bowing him down, and hatred spread up from my gut, acrid, like I hadn't thought I could hate again, because Todderick wanted to hurt me, Todderick wanted to use me, but now this…
this twit would to take my body and my voice for this?
For hurting someone worthy of better? And whether or not I was a fool, whether or not Vrathgar would prove me wrong, no one else was going to be allowed to hurt him, not using me.
I stepped into the circle, and I shouted, my voice rising above the rest, “He lies!”