Rosa grimaced, her gaze inexplicably darting to the huge Simon orc — who, as it turned out, was glaring straight back at her with a fierce, ghastly frown. “Fool woman too proud to learn,” he said, in tones of deep conviction. “Or too stupid. Forget her, little Ka-esh.”
Rosa’s incredulity rose in a furious swarm — she was certainlynottoo proud or too stupid to learn another language — and she felt her weak-kneed body stalk to the table, and drop down onto the chair across from them.
“Of course I want to learn,” she snapped. “What do I need?”
Tristan still wasn’t meeting her eyes, but gingerly slid over a few sheets of rough-looking paper, as well as another sheet covered in carefully written letter forms. A kind of explanatory chart, Rosa realized, and she noticed that across the table, Simon had one also.
“You remember how to prepare the quill, ach?” Tristan asked quietly, in a question clearly meant for Simon, rather than her. “Once this is done, mayhap we shall begin with writing each form, and reviewing its sound.”
Simon was carefully scraping off the end of his quill with a sharp black claw, frowning in intense concentration, and Rosa fought to ignore him as she prepared her own quill and ink, and made a few experimental strokes on the paper. It was a decent quill, surprisingly, and she wrote out a few lines just to test it, to feel the familiar, reassuring certainty of pen and ink in her fingers.
“Braggart woman,” came Simon’s voice from across the table, heavy with dislike. “Tiny hand make easy.”
He was glowering thunderously at Rosa’s paper, and Rosa ignored the unpleasant stutter in her chest as she glared straight back. “I’ve been doing this for most of my life,” she snapped at him, without thinking. “Unlike some people, apparently, who enjoy startingwarsfor fun instead.”
Simon’s sudden, menacing growl made the hair on Rosa’s neck stand up, and beside him Tristan’s hands were fluttering, from his paper to his quill and back again. “Form one,” he said, his voice higher-pitched than before, “is calledsa. It makes a hissing sound, and is drawn from bottom to top, thus.”
His trembly hand drew a surprisingly elegant letter, and Rosa swallowed down an unhappy twinge of what felt almost like guilt as she mimicked it on her own paper, and made a few annotations about the sound, and the way of drawing it.
It took Simon much longer to make his form, his big hand gripping the quill with visible care, the resulting letter large and childlike. But Tristan rewarded him with a quick, quietly stunning smile, and then moved on to the next letter, and the next.
Tristan was a good teacher, Rosa could admit, patient and thorough, without the superiority or condescension she’d always disliked in her own schoolteachers. And Aelakesh truly was a fascinating language, and also quite enjoyable to write, and as they worked, Rosa felt her own prickly unease fading beneath the strength of her rising, nagging curiosity.
“Whyareyou learning to write now?” she heard herself ask Simon, before she’d even noticed her mouth opening. “You didn’t learn your own language as a child?”
Simon’s vicious glare was enough to make Rosa drop her quill, to which Tristan’s hand snapped across the table, and passed it back to her. “Our written language was almost lost in all the warring,” Tristan’s quiet voice replied. “Thus, many of our kin have never had a chance to learn it. Simon learns now at the captain’s behest, to better help he and our Priest John-Ka face these new threats that have now arisen.”
There was quite a lot to unpack in that, and Rosa tilted her head, considering it. “You mean to say that your captain’smakingSimon learn to read, to compensate for that unsanctioned brawl yesterday?” she said, half-smiling despite herself at the baleful answering glower on Simon’s face. “And did you just call John yourPriest? He told me there hasn’t been a Priest in Orc Mountain since Fror died.”
Tristan betrayed an unmistakable grimace, and beside him Simon snorted, his glower shifting into satisfaction. “Only Ka-esh think John Priest,” he said. “All other orcs know better. EvenJohnknow.”
Tristan’s eyes had sharply narrowed, in the first sign of unpleasantness Rosa had seen from him today. But he didn’t speak, which again left Rosa to ask the question, because of course it had to be asked, quite desperately, after a cryptic comment likethat.
“What’s wrong with John?” she demanded, the words sounding unaccountably defensive. “Whycan’the be your mountain’s Priest? He’s been raised to do it, he’s very clever, and he obviously cares deeply about you lot, even if you make a habit of doing incomprehensibly foolish things. Like goading men into brawling with you, when you’re supposed to be bound under apeace treaty!”
It was a clinching argument, really, and Rosa was briefly mollified by Tristan’s glance of bare, warm-eyed appreciation toward her. But beside him Simon snorted again, and jabbed his huge black claw down into the wooden table, deep enough to leave a mark.
“John sway you to say this, foolish woman,” he snapped. “I know you see. I smell you in hidden Ka-esh den. You know I nogoad. Isit. I hone own blade, on ownmountain. This isall.”
Right. Rosa felt herself wince, without meaning to, and Simon surely saw it, jabbing at the table again. “John sway you,” he continued flatly. “Heuseyou. He is hard orc. Cold orc.Selfish. He rail on Skai for our ways, when his own sins are cruel and grave. When” — he shot a dark look at Tristan beside him — “hekillown clan brother’sson.”
Wait, what? Rosa blinked, wholly taken aback — but there was truth in Simon’s glittering gaze, and she didn’t miss the telltale wince on Tristan’s mouth. Pained, regretful, and perhaps even…guilty.
“Johnkilledhis own brother’sson?” Rosa echoed, blank, her eyes held not on Simon, but on Tristan. “Notyourson, Tristan?”
It was appalling, really, how unsettling that thought was, and how powerfully the relief flared when Tristan gave a chagrined shake of his head.
“Not mine,” he said, quiet. “Salvi’s. And” — his eyes flicked back toward Simon, almost stubborn now — “the orcling had not yet been born, and thus it was yet his mother’s choice to make. John only helped her gain her own wishes. He was” — his throat visibly swallowed — “a good Priest, in this.”
Simon growled again, furious and menacing, his claw again gouging into the table. “No,” he hissed back, though his eyes were on Rosa, rather than Tristan. “John turn against his own kind, for whathethink best. He do this to me, this day past, when I only keep safe my kin. And now John scheme with new mate” — he jerked his hand toward Rosa — “to do this toownson. Notfitto be Priest.”
Wait. Simon —knewabout that? Rosa was trapped, suddenly, in the vehemence of his glare upon her, and it took far too much effort to find a response in the mess shouting in her brain. “I’m not John’s — er —mate,” she said, her voice oddly distant. “And he’s concerned for mysurvival, and that’s hardly a bad Priest, is it? Didn’t you know that twenty womendiedlast year, giving birth toyoursons?”
Simon’s answering laugh was immediate, grating. “And how many orcs dead from human swords this year?” he demanded. “Many twenties. This no different.”
“Itisdifferent,” Rosa shot back, inexplicably enraged. “Women like me are onyour side. Wecare. We want tohelpyou.”
Even as she blinked at those baffling words coming out her mouth, and the surprisingly fervent earnestness behind them, Simon’s laugh sent another hard chill up her spine. “Women care not for orcs,” he said flatly. “Some want thrill of orc fuck. Some bored or alone or harmed by men. Some wish for coin or shelter. Almost all caught in bond, as you. There is nocare.”
