18. Belonging #3
I was aware that there were people there, watching us, murmuring, more of them, suddenly, like I was losing time.
Grezha’s face loomed over me. I was still in Vrathgar’s arms, still trying not to use any of the muscles that screamed, the bones I feared were broken.
She was touching my arms, my legs, speaking the sibilant bark that I couldn’t understand.
Somewhere across the sunlit glen, Rowena was running towards me.
Her hand found my forehead, and at first heat I rebelled against the magic flowing into me, recoiled from the power that wasn’t mine.
But no, Grezha was here, and she was trying to help, and Vrathgar was over me, looking so beautiful and devastated, and I had to let it in.
The bonds coiled around my tongue again as I heard Grezha’s voice resolve to clarity.
“What hurts? Girl-child? Tell me what is hurting.”
The magic felt so gross on my throat. “...everything.”
Vrathgar’s grip tightened.
My view of part of the crowd went clear, and Sareet stood there, her stance unworried, relaxed. “So,” she said, the Orcish rolling against my mind like a wave. “The pet failed.”
Vrathgar’s voice snarled. “How dare you?”
“How dare I what?” she scoffed. “I gave her a chance to belong here.”
“Never have the people required the ascension of one from outside our clan!”
“Yes, because anyone we married was proved among their own people. Because any woman marrying from outside the clan was blooded!” Her voice rose, and with it the murmurs behind him.
His voice shook. “You could have killed her.”
“We gave her a chance to earn her place. Like we all had.”
“You think this is fair? You know you crossed the line! You break the ways!”
“You want to talk about the ways? You abandoned them when you brought us a weakling!” She pointed, spat out, “Our children do this!”
“Yes, because we train them for it!”
“Forgive me for thinking she had a chance.”
“I will not forgive you, because you had no place kidnapping my wife!”
Drazha was among the crowd, holding back, watching. Grezha pressed on my hip, and I saw stars.
Sareet was still speaking, still secure with her arms crossed over her chest. “You want to be angry? Your human pet is lucky that Larrakh was soft and stayed.”
“No,” he snarled, “you are lucky. You’re lucky that she lived.
” Grezha was touching my neck, and with her soft oak-colored eyes filling my vision, I heard what he declared over that crowd.
“Because if she died nothing would stop me from cutting your heart out of your chest, whether they let me drag you to the circle or not.”
Grezha moved out of the way, and I could see him again. The bruises my people had left across his jaw were almost faded. It was almost like he never got to heal before the next hit. I wanted to touch his face. I was afraid to move any of me.
“Drazha,” he boomed across the clearing. “Are you going to stand for this? Is this an evil you’ll accept, too?”
Khal’s mother spoke, icy, aloof, while I only watched his face. “I will speak to the young women. We will find out what happened here.”
“What happened here? They threw her in the pit!”
“It will be examined. You have my word, Rootless One. The ways will be upheld.”
Larrakh, on the edge of that circle, flinched.
Vrathgar’s head hung over mine, his breathing ragged.
There were shadows under his eyes. What had he done the last day, the long night?
“Drazha,” he said. “If our ways allow us to oppress the foreigner, to lord it over the weak, what good are they? What good are we?” His voice rose, and it had to, because people shouted in protest, were yelling, and over the crowd he roared, “If the letter of your law is more precious to you than the lives of innocents, then how are you better than the Droth? At least the Droth don’t lie about what they are! ”
Drazha’s voice was cold. “You go too far, Rootless One.”
His lips drew back over his teeth. “And you let your roots rot.”
Drazha raised her staff over the crowd, forcing the throng quiet. “We will reconvene a month’s time from now. We have testimony to weigh. If something must come before the assembly—"
“I object!” Sareet, the one who’d given me the knife.
“He slanders the warriors of the people! Who is my accuser here? I have done nothing wrong!” The crowd murmured.
She raised her staff, pointed it. “He wants to keep his human as a pet, and not an equal. He objects that we gave her a chance to join our people, that we treated her like any one of us! And he’s angry at us that he brought a weakling into our midst?
” She bared her teeth. “I will not be lectured on our ways by someone so lowly he had to take a human to wife!”
He looked so jaded, his face raw, bitter. “Lowly?” he said. “Is that how you want to do this?” His teeth clenched. “That's not what you were saying when your legs were around my—"
I was glad I couldn’t hear. I was glad that they shouted him down, even with the yelling hammering through my skull. The light was too bright, the sounds were too much. I was too much.
“Enough!” Drazha roared over the assembly. “Enough. You fight like children. And Sareet, you are too old for children’s pranks, and not too young to be held accountable for them with your sisters.”
On the edge of the crowd, my kidnapper snapped her jaw shut. Hatred was in her eyes.
“Rootless One, tend to your wife. We can discuss your challenge at the assembly. I will ignore your execration as a moment of high temper under this stress. Do not let it happen before me again.”
He didn’t answer. His shoulders were hunched.
The crowd was dispersing. Larrakh stepped forward, pulled back.
Grezha spoke to him. “If you’re going to carry her, you need to move. She needs better than this open earth.”
He stood, a little unsteadily, kept me cradled against his body. “I’m taking you to Grezha’s,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. Just a little longer.”
The sun wheeled through the leaves, glowed and dappled over his face, and I focused on it, to ignore the horror. “You said the Drashik valued something other than strength,” I said, that frustrating, twisting magic on my tongue. “They seem to want me strong or dead.”
“It seems there’s a lot I was wrong about.” His voice was rough. “Maybe we’re all really monsters.”
I was too sick to have this conversation, shouldn’t be making him sad, not when I was the one who’d failed to climb the wall. “I’m sorry,” I got out. “Compared to the Droth, they’re still kind.”
He was limping, I could feel, but he didn’t ask for help, and he didn’t set me down. “I guess a lot of evils slip out of notice, when you’re always comparing to the Droth.”
The world would come together, come apart, pieces of fragmenting space, binding agony. Grezha, her fire, hands on my skin, draughts down my throat. Horror, relief, in and out. I think the last of the Orcish I understood before the spell ran out was “...not her spine.”
I woke, afraid to move.
The lying still ached, but I didn’t know what movement would provoke the razor blades in my hips, my pelvis. Could I move my arms? Turn my head? Rolling was out. I knew I couldn’t roll.
“You need sleep.” Khal was speaking. In the dim glow of the coals banked under the cauldron, I made them out by the door, the sorcerer’s husband and mine. Vrathgar’s profile was harsh against the night.
“I’m not leaving my wife.”
“You know Grezha. You can trust her.”
His mouth was a bitter sneer. “I thought I could trust a lot of people.”
I could maybe leverage fingers under my hips, take some of the ache away for sleep. But if I accidentally tensed…stupid tears pricked at my eyes. Exhaustion should help me sleep. I needed it to. I didn’t want to cry where he would hear it.
Vrathgar’s voice was heavy. “I went to your mother. I asked for the Vil Srith.” I didn’t know the words, but I knew the shock in the way his friend inhaled. He pushed on. “She said it was for the saving of our people. And fuck that, when I’m saving from our people—"
“Did Grezha say she wasn’t going to live? Will she be able to walk again?”
He fumbled on the answer. “She’s in pain. I can’t…help her,” he hissed. “I did this and I can’t help.”
“You did not do this.”
“I brought her here. I told her she’d be safe. I brought her here and they threw her in that rutting pit. And you want me to go home and sleep while she’s suffering, and they still breathe?”
Khal was trying to soothe. “It was wrong. They were wrong. It won’t happen again—"
“You're damn right it won’t. Because I’m going to slit their bellies open in that circle and leave them bleeding out. Let your mother decide if that deserves to use your wife’s dowry.”
Khal was quiet. I got my fingers positioned, relieved the sharpest focus of the pain. Maybe I would sleep. Maybe this could go away, for a few minutes, an hour. When he spoke again, his voice was gruff. “You have a right to be angry. But bloodshed is not going to help either of you.”
The sound Vrathgar made was disgust. “There is one thing I’m good at, Khal. Don’t tell me not to do it. You know if someone laid a hand on Rowena—"
Why was it comforting to hear him, even when he was angry? Was it because no one had been angry for me before?
I didn’t want Sareet or Larrakh sliced open. I didn’t want anyone dead. I was just tired. So tired.
“Vrathgar,” Khal said, low, “you are my friend. And I am telling you as your friend that your wife in there, she needs you to rest, because she needs you strong. And she needs you sane.” He shook his head, put a hand on Vrathgar’s shoulder.
“Put a blanket on the floor and sleep like a dog if you have to. Just close your eyes, please, do you hear me? You cannot help her like this.”
“I’m going to kill them,” he spat.
Khal sounded tired. “You are not killing Larrakh’s stupid friends.”
It was like Vrathgar wanted a fight, needed it, even here, even with him. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because it does not help who you want to help.”
His voice shook. “How do you know she wouldn’t sleep easier?”