16. The First Mother #4
“We’re fine,” Vrathgar answered stiffly, staying in Common, and she laughed.
Perhaps I should have focused on how she acted like she didn’t see me while I was glaringly out of place, or how smug she looked talking with him, or the very many long, curving fangs that adorned the necklace around her throat.
But as Orcish bubbled out of her I noticed how very free she seemed, how confident in her bared shoulders and the wide stance of her hips, the cheery roses in the olive of her cheeks.
This was a person who didn't need to cower or shrink. This was someone who’d never had to beg anyone to love them.
“My wife doesn't speak Orcish yet.” He said it without banter, flat. Perhaps I was delusional to imagine he'd emphasized the word “wife.”
She mock-scowled at him. “Cruel! The man knows a woman's Common is egg-shit.” One of the others muttered something, and she swatted at them. “Bad! It is bad.” She didn't seem bothered that he wasn't laughing. Her eyes finally found me, that smile unmoving. “This is wife.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes slid to my hand in his. “Surprise.”
“Mmhm.”
She went back to Orcish, and I scanned the other faces in this circle, the one from the trial, still glaring, the ones looking at me with expressions ranging from worry to distaste to hate. She was the only one smiling. The more petite, compact one grabbed her arm. “Come on, Rissa, let’s just go…”
This was Rissa. This effortless, capable person at the center of the maelstrom, smiling while they all scowled, acting like everything was fine. A bitter pit tightened in my stomach.
I hadn’t wanted it to be her.
She said something scolding, touched his arm lightly, and the movement was slight but he pulled back.
“I need to go,” he said. His hand tightened on mine.
Her eyes traced from him to me, and for one second I thought there was something else behind that smile. “Right! The human.” She cocked her head at me. “We talk later, maybe? You hunt?” Insincerity dripped off the words.
I bobbed a goodbye. This conversation didn’t need more from me.
Vrathgar dipped his head at the small one over her shoulder, “Larrakh,” he said. “Welcome back.”
The short one looked uncomfortable, looked away.
They were talking behind us as we walked back up the path, the scarred one shouting some last invective after us. Vrathgar didn’t respond.
“So that’s Rissa,” I muttered.
“Yeah.”
All the questions I didn’t have a right to ask flooded through my mind. “She seems…friendly.”
“I would not take her up on that hunting trip. She may be friendly, but she knows her friends are not.”
I fixed on a detail that seemed unimportant. “Larrakh was Khal’s cousin, right?”
He was scanning the trees, just nodded.
“She didn’t seem happy with us either.”
“It’s her hunting cohort. I can’t blame her. I’ve placed her in an awkward position, loyalty-wise.” He found what he was looking for, stepped up on a low boulder. “Through here. Watch your step.” My hand was still in his.
Maybe it would have been normal to ask where we were going, but this day felt better with fewer words between us, with less thinking about what came next.
We climbed down through the rocks, a short slope, another climb.
And how foolish was I, caring about the way he steadied me when I was about to fall, paying attention to the warmth of his hand when he helped me up onto a ladder worked into the stone?
How pathetic was it to notice and think about these things when it was more clear than ever how surely he was going to let me go?
The sun sank rapidly, and I was depending on him more than was safe, but I didn’t want to tell him I couldn't see and be a burden again.
I wanted to pretend for a little while that I could stay beside him.
“We can rest here,” he said, taking my hand at the top of the climb.
“I’ve never had anyone find me here.” The platform seemed wide in front of me, soft moss and soil and stones.
I scooted away from the edge, and sat as close to his silhouette as I dared.
Tiny mushrooms lit on the wall of roots behind him, and as my eyes adjusted I started to see glimmers down below. Swaying trees? Fireflies?
“Thank you for agreeing not to go to the house. I know this day has been…a lot.”
I propped up my chin on my knees. “Being in that empty box wasn’t going to help me either.” Neither would walking longer with Rissa, but I didn’t say it.
“I don’t know how much right I have to ask you questions, but…” His voice was heavy. “There are questions that should be asked.”
There were tiny flowers in the moss at our feet. I plucked one. “I would say you could ask as a husband, but you’re not planning on staying married to me, are you?”
He didn't deny it.
My throat tightened, and I focused on sounding calm. “What would make it seem fair?” I got out, steady.
He let out a breath. “A question for a question?”
I played with the moss. “That sounds good.”
“Your power. What is it that you can do?”
We were filling the time before we didn't belong to each other anymore, and that shouldn’t have hurt.
Beneath us, trees swayed. “I can soothe minor wounds and relieve pains, speed flowers growing a little bit, and put someone to sleep. Though if I do the last one it strains my voice, so I can’t sing for at least a day or two.
And they have to let me finish the song, and it can't stop more than one person, generally.” He was still, not responding.
I shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s more.
Though I guess I can call birds and monsters, now. ”
“You could make a place for yourself here.” His form was wooden, his back too straight. “The healing, of course. You'll get more powerful with practice. But you'd be useful on the hunts too, calling in the beasts. People would accept you, in time. Even having been with me.”
“I'm not like Rowena. I can't talk to them.”
His voice was wry. “Rowena didn't become their sorceress by talking.” He was going to leave me. He was going to leave and I couldn’t forget.
My fists balled against the earth. “It matters though, doesn't it?” I asked, still shaky. “Because if I don't have a voice, people can just…believe whatever they want to think. Say whatever they want to say.”
More of those little flowers opened, along the wall, glowing, so the only piece of darkness was him. “That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it does.” I sounded so brittle, so wrong. “Wouldn’t it bother you?”
The moon started to rise, a little halo of mother-of-pearl in the clouds over the basin’s rim. The wind was cold.
“What do you want?” he said. “If you forget surviving here, assume the best…what do you want?”
“You promised me an answer for an answer.” Did I want to ask, or was I stalling?
He chuffed at the air. “You’re right. Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Why did you and Rissa break troth?”
He stiffened, and let out another breath. “Straight for the jugular.”
I waited, to see if he’d change the rules, if he’d tell me off for asking. But he leaned back against that wall of roots and flowers.
“Alright,” he said. “There was a time around when I came of age when people…started to want me.” He picked up a stone from the ground, turning it in his hand.
“It was just the one way. Just physical.
But being wanted in some way felt…heady.
Good. So I indulged that. If someone wanted to roll with the bastard, who was I to refuse them?
And my reputation already wasn't good, from all the fighting, but that…changed it.” His shoulders were rigid, even reclining.
“And then Rissa came into my life, and she was capable and respected and daring, and it's like I saw a different version of myself reflected in her eyes. She treated me like I was more than a rootless fling to whisper to her friends about. She was…minimally kind, in hindsight, but it was enough. I fell. Hard.” The faint moonlight played over a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I joined a reckless number of hunts, hauled water, stayed up crazy-long nights doing charcoal burns, till I earned my place. And the house, it was falling apart, it was awful, but I made it water-tight. I replaced the flooring where decay had set in. Khal and Hagmar and Tyralk, they helped me. And when she returned from her first war party, when she could claim her place among the mothers of the people, I brought her there. I said, this is for you. This is for us. And she…she laughed.” His eyes were flat.
“She said she didn't know I was serious?
What would her grandmother say? I think her precise words were, ‘You're not the kind of man someone marries.’”
I hugged my legs, the knot cold in my stomach. “How does she have the gall to still speak to you?”
“She wasn't wrong.” He still wore that smile, cold. “No one's mother was going to support choosing the Droth's mistake.” He turned the stone in his hand. Now with the light of the moon I could see the wind through the treetops, the swirls of glow, the peeking lights of fires here and there.
“I had to get away,” he shrugged. “I saw her everywhere, everything was stained with her, and I couldn't…
I couldn't continue. Khal put together a mercenary band, and we left. There were no women, not even Larrakh or Brezha, since the humans only treat with us when we show them men. We were surrounded by humans and monsters. And I…I was a problem.” He took a breath.
“I got into fights, among the humans, among my brothers. I lashed out at people, for a long time. Khal and the others…they didn't give up on me. And then Rowena, she…she forgave me for the asshole I’d become.” There was something raw under his voice.
“My turn,” he said. “The poison in that bag. Was it for me?”
My chest hurt, too much. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you use it?”
I hoped it was dark enough that he couldn’t see the tear track down my cheek. “I couldn't see you as a monster.”
The moon hid behind the clouds.