17. An Offer
AN OFFER
The garlic cloves broke under the pestle.
“Nayah, just like that.” The magic brought Grezha’s voice through, encouraging and motherly as she bustled around the low table.
She was sorting the gathered leaves from our haul into piles, wild mustard greens in bunches, yarrow here, a pile of violets and vervain.
Nothing I was doing for her was above the skill level of an average ten-year-old, but it felt good to be here, even when so routinely I lost the ability to understand or to speak.
I tried to memorize the sequences of sounds as she said them, the names plant by plant, but it kept feeling like my tongue couldn’t actually form them, like the sounds were always changing before they could be caught.
“So this will be for pickling?” I asked, trying to ignore the slithering wrongness of my voice.
“Vinegars,” she said, and the word had more meanings behind it than mine had in the Common. “You cannot have too many vinegars put away, going into the cold times. Vinegars and honey-pastes.” She went to check again on the brew in her largest cauldron, the one that smelled of bog myrtle and barley.
“Grezha.” Another orc appeared in the doorway, obscured by the bright light, broad shoulders and a lithe figure. “I’ve come for my grandmother’s tonic.” She turned to look at me.
I was a stranger here. Grezha worked in a position of trust, as Bogdana had, and distrust was a poison. It harmed people the same way oak leaves and water, the way imaginary medicines, could cure.
“You’re helping Grezha,” the young woman said, flat. She had amber eyes in a wide, elegant face. I had seen her once before.
“Nayah, she’s a good help.” Grezha patted my hand on the pestle.
“Only in small things,” I slipped out.
“You’ll attend births?” Her eyes were unblinking. I could not tell what she thought.
“My grasp of the language is not good enough.” She still stared, and I swallowed. “The magic for understanding doesn’t last. No one is help if they cannot listen to the mother.”
“But you’ll learn? Of course you will learn?”
What did she want?
“I am trying.”
“And once you know our tongue, you will attend to our women.”
“If they welcome me. And if Grezha allows.” I looked to Grezha, as if she would explain that I’d never push myself on anyone.
Birth was sacred. It was bloody, and deadly, and sacred. And anyone who wanted to intrude into that space needed to be culled.
Grezha brushed past me. “Here, here. You stop questioning the girl.” She handed a clay jar into the young woman’s arms. “That should do for Bilha’s agues.”
The young woman bowed to Grezha, before her eyes came back to me, expressionless. My mind screamed. What was I supposed to say?
The door fluttered. The young woman was gone.
Grezha mopped sweat off her face with the back of her hand. “Annar-zha, you do not have much longer, yes? With the speaking?”
I tried to feel for the power that had been jammed into my core, weigh it in some way. I winced. “Likely not.”
“Then you listen now and take these home to your love, yes?” She fetched down a jar of something green cut into spears, floating a warm brine that smelled of wild onion and the garlic I was crushing. “I have taken your help too long. You nourish your body.”
I bowed, touched my brow. I was getting used to bowing. “Thank you. I have enjoyed it.”
She clasped my hands. Her forehead brushed mine. And I thought to try to thank her better, for this, for all her help, but the magic ran out, and only Common came through.
Back in the house in the tree, the new water jar fit snugly on the hook from the rafters, the right size for my shoulder. The air was sweet with rosemary and basil starting to dry, savory from a broth simmering over the fire.
“I brought something, from Grezha.” I put down the jar by the hearth. There was still no table.
Vrathgar nodded. He was seated cross-legged by the fire, his hands busy braiding cord. A pile of straw sat beside him.
It had been a week since I woke up with my head in his lap. We had been cautious with each other since.
“She’s been letting me help her more.” I brought down the spoon to stir the broth. “I think some of the others are getting used to seeing me. Though I don’t know what to say to them.”
He kept his eyes on his task. “Are you happy here?”
What kind of question was that?
“I am…content.”
He nodded again. “There’s a conversation we need to have.” The fire crackled. When he spoke again, it was still without looking at me. “The Drashik leave the enclave twice a year. If they put off the trial till then…” He stopped. His fingers paused on the threads.
“That will be better?” I prompted.
He hesitated. Why did he hesitate? “It would be less likely to have heavy penalties for me. But there would be expectations.” His eyes stayed on the fire, on his work. “They will…expect us to affirm our commitments.”
“Like a ceremony?” I lowered myself to the ground to sit. That didn’t sound so very bad. “Like I marry you again?”
“Like bedding each other.”
My mind stumbled. “...oh.” I should have picked up the bowls, from the rafters. I should have found something to do with my hands, instead of sitting here like an idiot. “...oh.”
He tied off the cordage and set it aside. “There’s magic involved, and oaths. It’s not a good idea. To try to lie about it.”
“That would be problematic,” I said, and I hoped I sounded calm and not stupid. “Since you don’t intend to stay married to me.”
His face didn’t respond. “I could. If you wanted to stay.”
There was a moment of crystalizing focus, of surprise, of something very foolish deep inside of me.
And then he kept going.
“You don’t need to be chased out of here.
I brought you to this place. I can follow through to give you…
” he shook his head. “...whatever legitimacy my troth entails, while you need it. And it would only have to be the once, coming together. Not every marriage has people that want to be physically involved.” He picked up a handful of straw, started binding it in his hand.
“It’s not a problem to share this house, especially with how much I’ll be gone, with the mercenary work.
If you didn’t mind the gossip, once you were entrenched in the community, I could find somewhere else to stay. ”
Oh. So that was what he meant to offer me. I nodded along. He kept speaking. I wondered if he knew it felt like he stabbed under my ribs.
“If you want to stay here, instead of seeking out your mentor’s sister, I will seal that with you. To grant you the legal standing. It would only be the once. And we’ve already…” he went silent.
My throat was an entire knot. “How generous,” I got out.
“It’s practical,” he said. “But I don’t want to cause you further…” He still hadn’t looked at me.
“Further what?”
He blinked, and twisted the straws. “...discomfort.”
“Oh. How very kind.” My voice was higher than it needed to be.
He looked up for the first time during this discussion, seemed to realize something was wrong with my face. I tried to breathe. Saints and devils, could I not hold my stupid self together for one handbreadth? “Annora—"
“I should get water,” I said, still high-pitched.
I stood, unsteady, pulled the jar down, hoped he didn’t hear how the bottom still sloshed.
“This can wait, yes? I don’t need to say I’m going to make love to you today?
” I sounded ridiculous. I was going to be fine.
It didn’t matter that this didn’t matter to him.
“...of course. Annora—"
“You owe me nothing besides the protection you’ve shown thus far. Please do not worry yourself. I will not be twice dragging you to bed.” I had lived without his love before and I would do it again.
“Annora, that isn’t what I meant—"
I reached the door, worked around the heavy jar to unbar it. I’d have to dry out my eyes before I got back, splash my face in the stream, something. It wouldn’t do to have him see me crying.
“Annora.” He’d stood. His injured leg thudded as he reached the door beside me, and his hand found the doorframe, braced himself against that wall. “Are you alright?”
No. No, I wasn’t. No, because I wanted him, and the one man I cared for was offering me that our bodies didn’t have to mean anything, that we didn’t have to mean anything.
“...I need to get the water.” My whole throat hurt. “Please.”
He pulled away, another step. “I’ll never keep you when you want to go.” His voice was hoarse.
“Thank you.”
“Annora—"
I was through the door and away.
The sun set so quickly inside the mountain that by the time I reached the stream, everything was murky and dim. Not that my traitor-tears made my vision any clearer.
The only voices were further downstream, the darkened bank blessedly empty, and I bent over, gasping at the air, trying to drag myself together.
He was trying to help me. He was offering me sanctuary. How many women married for some kind of legal status? A husband who offered a life without having to go to his bed, without even having to live together…this was a good offer. I should be grateful for the offer.
Did it make me a terrible hag, to be crying here instead?
The thought stabbed. What would Vrathgar think, when I ran away at the mention of bedding him once? It shouldn’t matter so much what he thought, when he made it clear he wanted nothing from me. I didn’t want it to matter, and it did. My whole chest ached. It did.
I filled the jar.
Now what? Going back and facing him sounded terrible, but if I took too long and he came for me—
“You are good?”
Khal’s younger cousin, Larrakh, stood in the shallows. More voices moved down the way.
“I’m fine.” My voice was rough.
She watched me. “Water.”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders swung. They moved differently, the orc women. Was it because they grew up learning to fight, and run, and hunt? Was it that I’d been raised for a cage, and they hadn't?
I’d never belong here.
“You help Grezha. Mornings.” She ignored the tears on my face.
“It’s not much.”
“Tomorrow, too?”
I had to. I could not imagine staying in that house tomorrow, after his offer. “Yes.”
“The sorceress, then Grezha.”
“...yes.”
She nodded. “It’s good.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how to talk.”
“You learn.”
My breathing had steadied. My heart wasn’t racing anymore.
The water sloshed. She strode towards the bank. “I see you.” Was it my imagination that she hesitated? “Hazanich Varat.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She did not meet my eyes, but my vision was still so bad compared to theirs. If her sistren were watching, and I would put her in trouble by speaking… “It says good luck.”
When I got back to the cabin in the tree, Vrathgar made no move to discuss anything, to speak at all. So neither did I.