18. Belonging
BELONGING
The robins were singing when I slipped out of the cottage.
I avoided Rowena’s questions. I couldn’t endure talking right now. Not with the tension of last night still in my shoulders, the ache in the center of my chest. She went quiet, and took my hand to push her magic into my skin.
It was still unpleasant, the invasion of power, but it was becoming familiar to me: the cacophony in my head, the strangling slipperiness on my tongue. Walking finally toward Grezha’s, I wished more people were awake, so maybe the assault on my senses could drown out the screaming in my mind.
This wasn’t fair to Vrathgar.
Of course it wasn’t fair to me either, but of the two of us, I was the one who’d come into this with a choice. And he was still mopping up the results of that.
I’d chosen to marry him, I’d chosen him, and I had used the specter of some coming trial as an excuse to stay close when I wanted him and he didn’t want me.
I let my footfalls be the rhythm driving that into my bones.
He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t. And yet I kept hanging around his house like a ghost, creating this false feeling of debt in him, this idea that now he needed to offer me shelter.
As if my success here could ever heal his image.
As if my presence could soothe over the massive wound that was his connection to this place.
I hadn’t meant to be a problem, or a fraud. But that didn’t change what I was doing.
And now he was talking about making oaths to me, things that would block him from finding someone he’d actually love, and I would be hanging around and hanging around until he had to make love to me again, which didn’t mean anything to him, when I should be melting into the darkness like I should as one of his kidnappers and letting him accept the love of someone better suited to a man like him.
I crossed over the stream, moving rock to rock.
Not Rissa. I was not a soft-hearted and forgiving person; I could not bring myself to wish for him to be with Rissa. But maybe one of the other ones. He was handsome and kind and caring and someone would notice. He had options besides me.
I was getting closer to Grezha’s cottage, the path narrowing. I would need to explain everything. She’d been so kind. I should tell her goodbye, before I told him.
I stopped on the path.
What was I going to tell him?
I breathed deep, the seconds with this serpent’s-tongue power dripping away.
I’d tell him that I didn’t want his oath any longer. That he didn’t have to pretend to make a wife of me. And we’d wait till his leg recovered, and he could help me get to Mereborough, and he’d be free. I made myself move, one foot in front of the other, walking again.
That’s when someone grabbed my arms.
I’d never been a fighter. Even with frenzied terror sending power to my limbs, light wheeling in front of my eyes, I wasn’t strong enough.
With a rag over my mouth, muffling my screams, I heard the sorcery twist meaning into a woman’s voice.
“Careful! She’s going to hurt herself. What if she dislocates her own arm or something? ”
“The humans don’t do that,” someone grunted. “She’s like a twitchy little bird.”
“What if her heart stops or something? That happens with small animals.”
“She’s not an animal.”
“She’s afraid.”
“Were you not afraid? We’ve all done this. Don’t coddle her. Do you have the draught? She’s not supposed to know the way.”
Someone unstoppered a bottle, a smell sickly-sweet on the air.
“This is a bad idea. If you break her—"
“Stop being a mother hen and rutting help us. This is for her own good.”
There were faces, some familiar, green skin, necklaces, hair. I was still trying to fight, trying to struggle, but someone knelt on my back, and I couldn’t move.
“Little birds don’t make it in this world. She’ll have to be a woman.” The wet rag went over my mouth.
There was so little light.
That was my first thought, as my eyes opened, my head pounding. My hands were still bound. There was a pocket of sky, far, far above, and the darkness seemed like rock walls, like the bottom of a giant hole.
“You're too worried. It isn't even raining,” someone was saying, huffed out a laugh. “When we did this the rock was slick.”
“Her arms are like twigs. Can she even climb?”
“She's weak; she's not a child. She's a married woman. She'll climb.”
I tried to get my bearings, to find the sources of the voices in the dim light. How much of the day had passed? A cloud moved, and the weak sunlight poured down. Feet stopped in front of me.
“Wake up, birdy.” A woman’s voice again. I should have been more afraid. I knew women could also kill. I just wasn’t used to fearing them, which was insane, with my arms still bound and my head aching from a drug.
“Can she understand us? Is the magic still working?”
“If it isn’t she’s about to have a hard day.”
“Sareet!”
I caught my breath. That slithering wrongness was still on my tongue. “I understand,” I grated out. Someone laughed.
“See? We picked the right time.” A figure squatted in front of me, tilted up my chin.
I winced. My head hurt. But I didn’t want to cause trouble before it would help.
A wide, grinning face smiled down at me, that long scar down her neck.
“Wakey wakey. Welcome back.” Behind her waited others, including one, smaller figure.
“The council are wavering on letting you in, so we’re going to give you a little chance to show everyone that you belong,” the one touching my face said sweetly.
There was a menace under her words. “The trial is simple. We’re in a hole.
You have to get out of it. You start at the bottom of the crucible.
You reach the top.” She called over me, to someone on the other side.
“Keesah, how old were you when you passed the trial? Thirteen?”
“Twelve.”
“See? Our children do this.” She leaned close. “We’re not asking more of you than we’d ask of a weakling child.”
“Come on, Sareet.” Larrakh, Khal’s cousin, shifted behind her. “Just tell her what to do and let’s go.”
The scarred one ignored her. “You humans keep your women weak. It’s why our lesser men are drawn to you.
You make them feel so strong with your little, breakable bones, don’t you?
You’re so used to bowing and scraping.” She switched to a high, mocking falsetto.
“‘Oh orc, please don’t hurt me! I’ll do all the dirty work.
Just be a big strong man and keep me safe from the other big, mean men.
’” Her pretty mouth sneered. “You come here and quiver and whimper and make more little babies and teach them to be good little criers. And people are so kind. They don’t want to throw out the little victim, not when you remind them of an awful past. They say what’s the harm?
It’s a choice. Maybe some men like that.
The humans have trade. The humans have potions.
And we trade and we trade and we push our warriors into smaller arenas and the men go out and they come back with women like you, raise little babies like you, and eventually the ways are dead and our girls learn scut work instead of war, simpering instead of the hunt, and our granddaughters’ daughters don’t know to hate us for what we let go. ”
“Sareet, drop it,” one of them muttered. “She’s becoming one of us.”
“Yeah. One of us.” She let go of my face.
“I’m nice. I’ll even give you a knife. Each of us had to make one.
Here. Now it’s easier than what we give children.
” The blade dropped in front of me. It wasn’t steel; some kind of napped stone.
“You’re in the bottom of the crucible. You climb to the top before the sun goes down and the creatures of the night come.
That’s it. That’s all. You’re inside, and you get out. ”
My voice still slithered. “What’s the knife for?”
Her smile was wicked. “For if you’re not fast enough.”
“Sareet!” Behind her, Khal’s cousin started to step forward, stopped.
The one in front of me clicked her tongue, straightened. “Larrakh is so worried about what her cousin will think. It took convincing to get her to help, didn’t it?” Her mouth sneered. “But she knows the truth, like I do. She knows it’s better to die with a knife in your hand than to live as prey.”
If those were the only options, I was well and truly screwed.
My hands were still tied, behind my back, the fingers losing feeling.
“The Drashik don’t raise weaklings. We don’t adopt them, either. You can decide, in the next few hours. Decide if you’re going to survive as Drashik, or if you’re going to die.”
My head still pounded. She walked away in front of me, and after a moment Khal’s cousin and the others— three more— behind her followed, other footsteps, a scuffling against stone.
I wrenched myself up in time to see the last one scaling the wall, swift as a fish up a stream, a rope pulling up behind them. Cold air whipped down into the basin.
Their children did this.
Were they drugging and binding children in a pit?
Was that more or less brutal than letting someone grow up to be human?
The walls stretched, pitted and scratched and rough overhead. Cave mouths pocked the murk of the basin surrounding me. From what I remembered through this pounding headache, whatever night creatures my kidnappers had referenced would likely come from there.
I was not going to find another way out through a cave.
The blade Sareet had left was in front of me. I crawled to it, and managed to get it in my bound hands, start fumbling with the ropes. I was taking too long. While I struggled, the tether of Rowena’s magic snapped, and my fingers went numb.
Then finally I was free. I was free, surveying the rock in the morning murk, with only a knife.
There had to be somewhere that was an easier path, but my eyes were already struggling with only a few clouds. Some part of this would be blind luck.
I chose a piece of wall and tried.