Chapter 10 #2
“She’s sorry she startled you,” Khal said. “She wants to offer you something to wear.”
I looked down at the peasant’s dress, hesitated. I had been wearing it for days now. Somehow, some way, it would need to be washed. But I didn’t want to part with it.
“A loan,” Khal said. “Till your husband can replace it. Zhana is not asking payment. She’s family to me. And you.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Would your mother like me better if I remained pathetic-looking?”
Tyralk snorted again. Khal didn’t flinch. “She respects strength.”
“Alright.” I stood, and bowed clumsily to Zhana. “Thank you.”
Moss glowed softly on the rafters of the backroom.
I couldn't see well, not more than Zhana's silhouette and shapes of darkness that could be drapes or furniture.
Perhaps she had never had a guest who couldn't see in the dark. I wasn’t about to ask for help, not when she moved so effortlessly. Fabric rustled.
Unfamiliar words murmured from the dark, and something soft pressed into my hands.
A curtain closed us off from the central room and any lingering light.
Which was good; accidentally stripping in front of his friends because I couldn't see was a humiliation I wasn't looking for.
“Thank you,” I said. “If I could…” I didn't want to grope in the dark, but in spite of myself I reached a hand out, to feel for a place to put the clothing.
She led my hand to a shelf, and when I tried to pull the dress over my head, she helped.
The fabric was smooth and cool to the touch, but it was thick, almost heavy against my skin.
The closures were simple, laces and ties.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing if she would understand.
Her hand cupped my face, and she murmured something.
I didn’t know why my eyes pricked with tears, why the kindness of another woman made my throat ache with feelings I didn’t know how to name.
In the front room, Khal and the others spoke in low voices. I heard bits and pieces, “Sephar,” “the rite,” “a clean hit.” Zhana pushed back the curtain, and Vrathgar looked up first, Khal's back to us in this doorway. Tyralk yelled “Hey, you look nice!” and Khal turned.
I was suddenly very conscious of the skirt ending at my knees, of every place the air touched my skin.
The light played across bright patterns, red and blue and black, flowers across the fabric in bold shapes that splashed downwards.
There were little wooden beads sewn firmly at my elbows, for some reason, in the shape of little birds.
It was a bold thing. Khal’s Adam's apple bobbed.
Tyralk smacked his shoulder, and he hissed, “Tell her she looks nice!”
Khal swallowed again. “I…you look nice,” he said.
“Thank you.” It was foolish to feel so shy and too-aware here. What I looked like was the least of our concerns; the people who hated me would not be swayed by frippery. But he hadn't moved from where he sat.
Vrathgar rolled his eyes and raised his cup again. “You should get out of here,” he said.
Tyralk sputtered, “What? Why?”
“Because there's no more he can do by talking about it, so spending the day like a trapped rat will only waste his stamina. Besides.” He glowered at the fire. “He should be seen. The community needs to know he's not hiding, not ashamed.”
Khal cleared his throat, looked away. “That seems wise. If…if Rowena feels up to it.”
I quashed my impulse to immediately say yes, took a breath. “We won't be in danger?”
“No one will dare to harm us before the rite. We're safe till moonrise.”
“Then I'll go. I think…I'm strong enough.”
Vrathgar rolled his eyes again. “Take her through to the village center.
Make an appearance. And then go ahead to someplace you can be alone.
There's no need to stay so tense. And she hasn't seen anything. You should take her around.” He didn't look at either of us, that irritation still foremost on his face. For the first time I wondered if Vrathgar’s meanness was a kind of armor he wore, a way of trying to seem like he cared less.
“I will.” Khal said something long and fluid to Zhana. Her eyes were still tight with worry, but she smiled at him. “Hazanich varat,” she said, and Khal held a fist over his heart.
“Hazanikh varat.”
I blinked in the white of the sunlight, and Khal put out his arms again, like I was going to fall.
“What did it mean, what you said to each other? Hazanikh…”
“Hazanikh varat,” he said. “It’s a little hard to explain.”
We passed more of those earthen homes, many now decorated with shields hung above the doors. People waved at him, and he saluted or nodded back.
“It’s like…may you acquit yourself well. But the feeling…the connotation is warm. It’s like, may you be glad of how you fought.”
“‘Good fight’?”
“Something like that.” His eyes cut over to me. “It can be figurative.”
“But she thinks you’ll have to fight someone. They all do.”
He shrugged. “More or less.”
I didn’t want to be the person asking a million questions before he had to go do something hard. Vrathgar had said unwinding was what he needed. Grilling him wouldn’t help with that.
I wished I hadn’t used up my meager magic to understand his mother.
He kept a leisurely pace for me, strolling between the homes and courtyard walls that seemed to grow out of the rock and trees, a roof covered in tiny, perching black and white goats, a riot of chickens, a grizzled woman with long white hair and strong arms ladling from a cauldron.
She raised her ladle in greeting, and he bowed a little in his nod.
“She’s the ale wife,” he said. “She brews, but she also cultivates much of our medicine. At least half of us younger ones were born under her care.”
She smiled as I craned my neck to glimpse her, a knowing grin. Almost none of her teeth were missing.
Hers was among the friendlier faces. Many stared in silence, did not return Khal’s greeting as we passed. A gaggle of children crossed our path, shrieking and giggling before they were shooed aside by a woman harangueing in Orcish.
“They will get over it,” Khal murmured. I glanced at him. His jaw was a little tight. “You don’t have to worry. They care about me, many of them. They’ll get over it.”
I wondered what it would be like, to have confidence like that.
He led me through the widened marketplace, down a path that trended downwards and narrowed, between tall trees, till we were off the path, with moss underfoot, the swaying bracken brushing the tips of our fingers.
“Why did Vrathgar tell you to take me here?”
He pushed a trailing vine out of the way, the way through getting even narrower. “He knows this place is meaningful to me. And…he wants the implication, to others. We all know it is better to emphasize your belonging here. With us.”
There were mushrooms here, small and delicate. Gnarlak hadn’t talked to me about these. “How does a place emphasize my belonging?”
He coughed, and when I looked at him, his neck was flushed again. “I…couples often go into the woods alone to…” he trailed off again.
“Oh,” I said. I should feel more about that, but maybe I’d had too much happen, had all the feeling stripped out of me. “Did you want to?”
“No,” he said, too fast, and then, “There’s no need for that. It’s just the appearance. You don’t have to do anything with me, ever again, do you understand? You’re going to be safe. You don’t owe me anything.”
And that wasn’t true. Surely if I owed anyone something it was Khal, and if he made me his wife here…there were too many pieces in play. Khal was making this too simple. But I did feel safe with him, in this random forest inside a mountain.
“Do orcs marry more than one woman?” the path widened, the fungus on the trees glowing slightly.
He was avoiding looking at me. “Only in cases of death, or abandonment.” The soft blue light illuminated the little hairs on the back of his neck.
“But you’re acting like you’re making a life for me here as your wife. You can’t be planning to live the rest of your life with a woman you don’t intend to touch, being alone like some…warrior ascetic.”
“I’m not an animal.” The vines got too thick, and he pulled the blade from his back, started to hack through. “I lived for some time without you. I can live again. And,” he tsked, “it would be a sort of fitting penance, would it not?”
“No,” I mumbled. “But…”
The way ahead had a bit of a ledge, and he climbed upwards, reached to pull me up.
I took his hand. “But you’d want children, wouldn’t you?”
He pulled me up, steadied me with his arm, before quickly dropping it to his side. “There are always other people’s children to love,” he said. His eyes still didn’t meet mine.
“This seems like a terrible deal for you.”
He laughed, the sound tight, tense. “Let’s get the woman I basically kidnapped taken care of, and then we can worry about me, alright, Rowena?” and he had the sound of someone ending a conversation.
The way ahead was a steep drop, some seven feet down. He lowered himself easily over the edge, to jump, and held out his arms. I hesitated, on the edge.
“You’ll be safe,” he said.
I jumped.
The catch was awkward, and he stepped back under the force of me, plastered against him. He set me down. Now I was the one who couldn’t look at him.
What was I doing here?
“Right through here,” he said, and pushed aside a curtain of leaves.
It wasn’t a meadow, because meadows are grassy.
Meadows are hay or soft grass or waving tufts of something.
But the expanse of ground in front of us, all star-moss and flickering light, ringed in by the gently undulating branches of the willow-like trees, glowed, like a field of fireflies, like a little sea of wildflowers had captured the stars.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said. And he didn’t say more.
I sunk down into the forest floor, running my fingers over the tiny leaf-like moss, watching the lights glow and change.