Chapter 4
HUMAN
The voices around the fire had gone quiet, the orcs' eyes on us. My mind scrambled and spun. Perhaps his jaw was a little more angular than the others, his brow less intense. Maybe he had lighter eyelashes. He was watching me, as if he expected me to say something.
"You were the first orc I'd ever seen," I whispered. "I had no comparison." My mouth was dry, and their eyes were still on us, and I wanted to break the stillness. "I just…thought you were prettier than your friends."
Silence hung. Oh God, had I mistimed this? Had I made them all-
A guffaw rang out, and they were laughing. Relief flooded my lungs, and I realized I'd been holding my breath. One of the orcs yelled something in their language. The tips of Khal's ears tinged a rosy color.
"What are you lot laughing about?" Vrathgar's voice cut the laughter. "Ah, the baron's flesh knows nothing of our people. Hilarious. Maybe she can fail at wearing shoes and almost get us killed again tomorrow. Will that give you laughter?"
I pressed my palms into the dirt.
"What would you have liked her to do?" Khal's voice was flat, some of the growl I heard that first day in the castle creeping at the edges.
"Would you like her to have hunted a deer within the baron's walls, tanned it and made her own boots?
Would you like her to have slit a soldier's throat and stolen his footwear?
How do you see this going a different way? "
"If she'd rutting told us she was kitted out like a lunatic, we could have handled the liability better!"
Khal flooded into Orcish, and Vrathgar interrupted him. "Oh, no, Common. Didn't you say fifty times we had to speak something the deadweight would understand? Gernaz has barely spoken in three days!"
"She didn't know us," Khal hissed through his teeth. "The humans are savages; she wasn't taught to talk about pain."
"Then maybe she should woman up and learn," Vrathgar spat. "Or maybe you could pay the bare minimum attention to the liability you brought on instead of only thinking about how you were going to—"
More of them were shouting. Orcish, Common. Khal was on his feet. I pressed my hands into the earth, feeling the dead leaves break soft under my finger tips. I didn't need them not to hate me. I was getting away. I would run soon, and this would all be pointless.
"Vrathgar," Gnarlak had spoken, still poking the fire. The others stilled. "You are out of line."
Vrathgar stalked into the trees. It stayed quiet, only murmurs and furtive glances. Khal was still standing, an island amidst the crowd.
Parts of this foreign world were starting to make sense, bits and pieces.
Khal was important, but the leadership of this group was diffuse.
Part of his value to the group was that he spoke Common so well, and why had I never questioned that?
So many of them only spoke bits and pieces they'd gotten from living alongside soldiers.
Even Gnarlak was rough. Khal might as well have grown up on the warren streets beside me.
No. Not on the streets. His Old Tongue was better than mine. There were ways he'd fit better beside Thea than I had.
But he wasn't beside Thea. He was here. Leading orcs. Fighting monsters. Getting support from Gnarlak, and derision from some others. Bringing back a hostage who would be useless.
And I had thought about the humiliation of being seen as a tribute to the orcs.
But I had never considered that being bound to me would weaken his standing among his people.
If I'd thought of how I'd appear to his clan at all it had been as a trophy of war, a possession.
But…now I was a fresh challenge to his belonging, a symbol of the other side of his blood.
Losing me would be better for him, too. I thought it, and felt something odd in my gut.
Khal lowered himself back to the ground beside me. "I'm sorry about Vrathgar," he said. "He's a good friend. He's had a hard year."
I nodded my acceptance. It didn't matter anyway. Khal should still have his friend. Friends lasted. Random girls you married under deceptive circumstances generally did not.
"Relations between our people have been…not the best lately."
"I will try to forgive him. Since I am a savage."
He blinked. I smiled.
He let out an explosion of breath, switched to the Ka Morth. "I keep creating new things to apologize for."
"No. You don't. It's fine." The mood was awkward. His eyes were everywhere but me. I wanted to bring it back, that comfortable way he'd spoken before. "So how did your father learn the Old Tongue? Was he a noble?"
"Close. A tinker. He said he dealt in the magic of daily things."
"He has magic, then?"
"No." He was smiling now. "It just seems like it. He'd learned a little bit of everything. Including the Ka Morth, from a renegade cleric."
"I haven't met many clerics."
"They're fascinating people." He stared into the fire, a little of the tension gone from his shoulders. "Less because they're fascinating, and more because they're still people." He looked up. "You'll like him though, anyway, my Da. He's a good man. He'll like you too. He respects bravery."
"Bravery." I traced the word. It seemed so foreign for one such as me. Bravery was for running, fighting, standing up to do things that needed to be done. Not whatever I was, whatever I did. Lying on my back. Saying yes.
"You both married orcs. There has to be a bond in that."
"Somehow I imagine our circumstances were different."
He hesitated, looking at me.
"What? Did I do something wrong?"
He leaned in, slowly, and I froze in place, like a deer, as his lips brushed against my forehead in a single, careful kiss.
He pulled back. "Don't worry," he said. "My father will like you. And my mother…" he tested the words. "My mother will change her mind."
I let myself take the moment, there by the firelight, tried to imagine the life he thought lay ahead of us. The orcs here were rough people, but they were no more brutal than the men I'd met on the warren streets or locked away in Belnor keep. And Khal-
No. No no no. Khal didn't deserve to be married to a lie.
Khal thought he'd stepped out and taken on a burden for an alliance that would help his people.
He wasn't looking for a bastard daughter ready to be discarded when the magic didn't come through.
I'd meant to rescue Thea from a harsh fate, but instead I'd stolen this fate from her, and from him.
Because Thea would have cried when her feet bled, Thea wouldn't draw monsters or bring trouble, Thea was the kind of person Khal needed- gentle and sweet and good at talking and ready to love the people in her life. Thea wasn't broken, and I was.
So it didn't matter what an orc chieftainess thought of me stealing an alliance with her son. I would never meet her. By the time they reached their encampment, I'd be away and gone. I'd be finding an existence where no one would put me in a cage and there was no one to disappoint.
Khal was undoing the straps to his pack, pulling something grayish green out from under a covering of leather. He started examining the earth, pushing the leaves and measuring the soil.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Making a place to sleep. You can't…you shouldn't lay out on the ground like that again."
"Oh. I…didn't know." My mouth was suddenly dry. I wondered if he'd mind if I borrowed his canteen without asking, just…he wouldn't mind. He was Khal. I unlaced it from the pack.
"I only have the one bedroll, but—"
I choked and coughed, water dribbling down my chin.
"Are you alright?"
"Fine. I'm fine." My heart was racing. I must look like an idiot.
"But I have first watch, so you'll—"
"No you don't, you idiot." The one with the heavy forehead rolled his eyes and spat. "You have taken double watches almost every night this trip. Go to bed with your wife before we make you."
Khal protested, "I haven't—"
"Shut up, Khal!"
"My God, Khal, go to bed!"
A chorus of shouts drowned him out. I tightened my fists in the dirt. My face was so hot, it had to be the color of a pomegranate pressed open. My heart was in my throat.
We were so close to the others, they didn't expect us to do something, did they? Were orcs public? Would Khal…
I forced my eyes up. Khal's olive face seemed as flushed as mine, his eyes set on the bedding he rolled out. It seemed like a wool outer layer with a lining of linen. And clearly the size for only one person.
"In the future we'll have something more suitable for you," he said. He avoided my gaze. "This…your addition was not…"
"I'm a bit of an imposition," I finished his thought. "Orcs bring their own equipment."
He switched to Ka Morth. "A lot of planning was put into how to win a marriage to a baron's daughter.
And very little into what to do once we had you.
" His eyes met mine, and my heart stuttered, like missing a step.
"That's a mistake I will remedy." He looked down, gestured at the sleeping bag. "Do you want…"
Could I say no? He didn't seem…though men could be false…
like he would press me if I demurred. But eyes were on us, and he was already the one bound to an enemy.
I didn't want Khal to be the one whose human wife had pulled away in front of them all.
"... of course." Action was better than inaction.
I pulled off my shoes and sprung up, strode over to the bedroll and lay down in a rush.