19. The Circle
THE CIRCLE
Iwrapped my arms around his neck, a comfort and a humiliation I was getting used to, and his arms pulled me up to glue me to him.
I intook breath, a habit of freezing, but I’d gone limp on the way up, and the pain was bearable here, my feet on the ground.
He stayed, waiting to see if I was ready to let go of him.
“I think I’m okay,” I whispered.
His hands stayed on my back. Our thighs brushed. I had gotten too used to touching him. There was no other way to rise to stand. “That’s…good.” He let me go.
“If you could turn around.” He did.
Changing clothes had been a nightmare, but it was getting easier. Grezha said I’d injured something at the base of my spine, but it no longer felt like broken glass. I should be grateful. I could walk. I was walking again.
I tilted the water jar, got enough to splash over my face.
“You don’t have to come with me.” His back was stiff.
“I’m not leaving you to do this alone.” A clean shift was hung where I could reach it without bending.
“They won’t let you speak.” That current of anger still ran raw under his voice, but it wasn’t at me.
“They can muzzle me out of their circle as they wish, but they cannot hide me in a corner. I won’t let them pretend I don’t exist.” I maneuvered the shift up above my head.
“They will remember you exist.” It sounded like an oath.
I started to correct my posture, and something like knives stabbed into my back. I gasped. “Vrathgar—"
He whipped around, like he was ready to fight. “If you need—"
I clapped my arms around myself. “Turn around, please.”
He turned. The back of his neck was darkened. “Sorry.” His fist clenched at his side. “I thought…you needed something.”
I’d dropped the shift. “I dropped…my dress. If you could…”
“Of course.” He moved backwards, scooped it up off the ground to hold out, his gaze still forward.
“Thank you.” I managed to dress myself without further humiliation. The back of his neck stayed stained rust.
For someone who’d practically promised to get out of his life, I’d done a terrible job of leaving.
“After this, the trial, they won’t hurt you, right?” I braided my hair haphazardly, so stiff. “So I could leave, if we were ready.”
That muscle in the side of his jaw tensed, visible even from behind. “Yeah. That’s right.”
“This will be the last thing you need me for.” A memory, foggy, surfaced. “Didn’t Khal's mother send for a witness of your kidnapping, to the Droth? Your friend?”
He shrugged. “The party that volunteered didn’t have anyone with a particular urge for speed. None of them care much to help me out. Least of all that snake Sephar.” He rolled his shoulder. “Likely I could use that as an excuse to delay the judgement, but.”
“But?”
“I’m not interested in delaying.”
He must want done with this badly. That made sense, I supposed. That must be why he was so tense, why this black humor rolled off of him. He was ready to be done.
I took a breath. That shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t. “I’m dressed,” I said.
The walk to the circle was not easy, but I didn’t want to be carried. I didn’t want to be seen being, again, toted like a bundle through his people’s home. I held onto his arm, tight, and I focused, one step, another.
At the circle, the moon had risen, full, in that breadth of sky, the only reason I could see.
Larrakh, Khal’s cousin, was there. She looked over me, anxious, before she looked away. Sareet glared across the space, her arms still crossed, like she was still sure she’d done nothing wrong. No sign of Sephar. No sign of Vrathgar’s Droth witness.
Tyralk materialized from the dark next to me. “I can't translate for you this time, sister-in-law,” he said. His eyes were set across that circle. “I'll need to focus, myself. I hope you can forgive me.”
“What should I forgive you for?”
He gave the merest ghost of a smile. “You decide, later.”
Rowena reached my side, shadows on her pale face. She touched my arm, and the sorcery flowed in again, just as I heard my husband mutter at Tyralk in Orcish, “What idiocy are you planning? Leave the recklessness to the grownups.”
“I am a grownup, you miserable ass.”
“I mean it, runt. This is my fight.”
“Far be it from me to keep you from your stupid fight.”
I spoke up then, the twisting magic on my tongue. “What fight?”
Vrathgar clammed up.
I whipped my head to look at Tyralk. “What do you mean, ‘fight?’”
“A lot of trials have a fight in them, little sister.”
“But you won’t need to?” I looked back at Vrathgar, whose mouth had stayed firmly shut. “You’re not going to fight?”
When he spoke, it was a mutter. “Fight is not a good word for what I’m going to do.”
I looked back at Rowena, her own shadowed countenance. She didn’t answer. “What is a good word?” I felt like I was drowning in the air.
He rolled his shoulders again. “Execution,” he said, and, as my heart leapt into my mouth, “Theirs.”
Khal’s mother stepped into the center of that circle, some of the faces of the chieftains with her familiar, some not. She held up her arm for silence. “I have made oaths that several grave matters will be considered tonight.”
I couldn’t step into the circle. If I was called to fight, I would simply die.
“One raised as our own has taken a wife from outside our ways.”
The faces were so cold, around the ring. What if something happened to him?
No, what if he killed them? He was already an outsider without blood on his hands. If he stained himself with theirs, it would never wash away.
“Another group of our own hunters has been accused of harming a guest of the enclave.”
The mutterings grew louder. I looked up at him, desperate to draw his eye. I had meant to leave before my presence would hurt him. Now in becoming a victim, I’d managed to be too late.
“I do not want to see blood spilled tonight, but if blood spills, it will be in accordance with our ways. We will not dishonor these stones.”
Vrathgar’s face was smooth, impenetrable. He was going to kill, and how could I stop him? One way or another, his life here would end.
“Does anyone else have pertinent business to bring before the enclave?”
And Tyralk stepped into the circle of rock. “Honored mother, I do.”
Whispers spread across those gathered. Drazha's frown deepened. “What does Svenkha's son have to bring to the assembly?”
“I request sanction to lead a hunt.”
The murmurs were consternation now.
Drazha shook her head, as if the gathered voices were a gnat to push away. “It is the wrong time of year for feats, young warrior. Especially for one with your…” She sealed something back. Her eyes had lingered too long, on his bad leg.
“The wizards’ beasts grow bolder every season.” He put a fist to his chest. “It hasn’t been two winters since Scralghir attacked us at the kael. I would go ahead, and thin the dangers before the migration of our community. Please.”
The tall chief stalked away from the circle in disgust.
“Svenkha recuses himself from the discussion.” Drazha looked grim. “This would be your first hunt led. As such, it is a testing. You would have to leave before the dawn, and you could not return without your object without suffering dishonor. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Then who is your second on this journey?”
“My shield brother, Vrathgar Fenha’s-son.”
Anger spilled forth, from all angles. Vrathgar cursed a stream under his breath.
It was in Drazha’s eyes that I saw the understanding that eluded me.
She raised her voice over the protests “Your shield brother cannot follow you. He would leave behind an injured one whose wellbeing he is responsible for.” They used so many words to avoid calling me his wife.
“His charge leaves with us. We need her. She’s a healer.”
Voices rippled again, consternation to disgust. I found Rowena’s face in the crowd, still pale, her husband, Khal’s, unsurprised. They had planned this. Why it was making people so angry, I did not know.
“Does anyone object to the young son of Svenkha taking up the hunt? Does anyone challenge his right to the test?”
No one entered. Sareet looked ready to kill.
“Then our other matters must hold, till the hunt concludes. But young one,” she raised her staff, that wicked, one-sided blade at the top of it.
“You must rejoin the enclave at the kael. Your hunt resolves there, success or no. At that point, the community will decide regarding your shield brother.”
Tyralk touched his chest, bowed in salute.
Drazha was addressing the circle, requesting other matters.
Next to me Vrathgar was clenched like a fight came.
And we were leaving the enclave? My head spun, and nausea rose.
I was barely functioning when all I did was lie down.
What was I going to do in the wilderness, on the move?
The assembly was dismissed. Tyralk walked back past us, and Vrathgar grabbed his arm.
I’d only seen my husband this angry the once. “What are you doing?” He snarled it.
Tyralk looked unphased, cold. “I'm getting you and my sister-in-law out of here before you ruin your life.”
Horror was a rock in my stomach.
Vrathgar hissed, “That was not your decision to make.”
“As someone you swore brotherhood to? Yes, it is.”
“This is a terrible prospect. You’re going to ruin your place—"
At that the younger warrior’s demeanor broke, anger showing through. “What, did you think I was calling this hunt for glory, and not just to save your ass?”
He shook his head. “You were supposed to wait until Khal—"
“This decision was made without you.” Tyralk stepped back, away. “You can be angry. You’re welcome to that.” He glared. “But the rest of the hunt will be waiting at the gates. They already agreed.”
“Who even did you get to agree to this?”
“Hagnar, Dris, Nara, Rorsch, Krashak, Brezha and Larrakh.”
Vrathgar said it like a curse. “Larrakh—"
“You swore to me, when we formed this brotherhood. You gave me your oath.” They stood, face to face, and it felt wrong that the younger one was taller. “So keep your oath, keep it angry, keep it cursing me for an idiot, keep it wishing I’d let you die or let you kill in that ring, but keep it.”
Vrathgar didn’t answer him.
He turned, started walking away. “And bring your wife.”
In our house, Vrathgar packed his gear, unpacked it, packed it again. “This isn’t fair to you,” he growled. “Every time you’re on your feet you get worse again.”
I was on my side on the straw mattress. He’d said he’d pack the blanket last. “It would not be fair to me to have you die, either.”
“I was not going to die.” He started tying pieces to the pack straps again.
“If you kill one of them, that harms you.”
A knot came undone, and he tore the cord off, started over. “Harm against me is not my concern right now.”
“I know. It’s mine.” I was being too bold. I wished I could be stronger. “...and your brothers’, too.”
He yanked the tack into place. “It’s a fairytale that no one has to suffer, that people hold hands and evils go away. If people are allowed to wrong you with impunity, if no one makes them pay for it, they keep going. No amount of me playing nice stops that.”
“You think they’re going to kidnap me again?” He was so focused on the pack strings. “But they can’t. You’re sending me away.”
“I have one thing I’m good at, Annora!” His voice rose. I flinched. He froze again. “Sorry,” he said. He sunk back onto the floor. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” An echo. Meaningless.
He turned away, went back to tugging on the straps, checking each one for give.
When he spoke, it was steady. “I have spent my life unable to protect the people I love, Annora,” he said.
“No amount of climbing walls and stalking their hunts was ever going to keep you safe. No amount of giving my blood and sweat was going to make them see me as someone they’d accept.
I can’t protect. The best I can do is avenge. ”
Maybe this had driven me mad. Maybe these weeks leaning on his arms had pushed me past saving. “Do you?” I whispered.
He slapped the bag closed. “Do I what?”
“Am I someone…that you love?”
He stopped moving, stopped everything. Our gazes locked.
A heavy hand rapped at the door.
“That’s Hagmar,” he said. I didn’t answer. He went to open the door.
We left his house in the chill before dawn. The world was shadows to me, and I held onto his arm, pain already tightening at the base of my spine. The road out of the enclave twisted into the rock.
I'd gotten better at walking in the last week, but I hadn’t done this much of it.
I was still clenching too much of myself, waiting to accidentally use whatever muscles connected to the pieces of me that were broken.
Vrathgar stayed beside me, hovering, his head still swivelling like he expected an attack that wouldn’t come.
When Khal’s smaller cousin appeared from the trees, he bared his teeth.
Just as the sky shed pink, our party walked through what looked like a wall of solid stone.
We were out of the mountain.
Someone gave a whoop ahead of us, and other voices joined hollering, chanting. I didn’t know the words, but Vrathgar let out a breath next to me. Dawn edged the sky above the trees in red.
“We won’t travel far today,” Tyralk called, and I knew he used Common for my benefit alone. “An hour towards the kael, and we rest.”
Vrathgar spoke. “No one will see now.” He still didn’t look at me. “May I carry you?”
You already have the pack, I wanted to say.
You already do too much. But maybe this was for him.
Maybe this would assuage his guilt; maybe carrying me could convince him there was something he was good for other than killing.
I could let myself be baggage for him. “Yes,” I answered.
But as he cradled me up into his chest again, I knew I lied to myself.
I was selfish. I wanted to be against him. To feel safe. To hurt less.
“We'll get through this,” he muttered. “I've got you.”
I didn't tell him that I dreaded every future where I had to let go of him. I just closed my eyes against his chest and dreamed.