Salvi, who had indeed fished out a curved needle that looked much like Rosa’s book-binding one, huffed an exasperated sigh, but accordingly dug in his pack and pulled out a small bottle, yanking the stopper free before thrusting it toward Simon. And to Rosa’s vague surprise, Simon took it without complaint, using his good arm — which still seemed slightly shaky — to dump it full down his throat.
“Ach, that is better,” Simon said after a moment, his voice thick and gravelly. “Thank you, sweet teacher.”
There was a beat of stillness, during which Tristan faintly winced, and Salvi shot Simon a dark, irritated glare. “Oh, stop it, you great ass,” Salvi snapped, as he rapidly threaded his needle, and then dunked it into another bottle Tristan had produced from the pack. “You don’t think I haven’t noticed you macking on Tristan for weeks now? He’smine, you prick, and he’s just too damn nice to tell you off, and I’m getting fuckingsickof it.”
His voice wavered at the end, suggesting that maybe he wasn’t quite as composed as he seemed, and he jabbed the needle into Simon’s thigh with surprising force, enough that Simon’s entire body jolted with visible pain.
“Teacher notyours,” Simon said, through laboured-sounding breaths. “You lie. You betray him. Leave him to make son. Then you allow false Priest tokillson, and betray ownkind!”
Salvi’s shoulders visibly stiffened, though his eyes stayed intent on his work, on his hand pulling the thread through Simon’s raw, bloody flesh. The movement gentle, careful, at total odds with the furious look on his face.
“Oh, fuckoffwith this shit, Skai,” he said, his voice again wavering, a shade too high-pitched. “That isnotwhat happened.”
“Then what happen,” Simon said, between breaths. Giving Rosa the distinct impression that talking was a distraction, a welcome one, to counter the pain of his wounds, and what Salvi was doing to his leg. “Tell metrue, liar Ka-esh.”
Salvi actually snarled, though his hands kept carefully stitching. “You want some truth, asshole?” he hissed, toward Simon’s thigh. “Okay, here’s some truth. John didn’t betray his own kind when he did that, because I fuckingaskedhim to do it. Hell” — Salvi drew the thread tight, making Simon grimace — “Imadehim do it.”
The room seemed to snap back into silence, sudden and quavering — while both Tristan and Simon stared at Salvi, Tristan’s gaze wide and unblinking, Simon’s hazy, disapproving.
“YoumakeJohn kill son,” Simon repeated, his voice slurred. “How.Why.”
For an instant, Rosa thought Salvi surely wouldn’t answer — but then he sat back on his heels, his threaded needle still carefully poised in his fingers, while he rubbed at his face with the back of his other hand. His eyes held not on Simon, but onTristan.
“Look, I know all orcs are supposed to — to want sons,” Salvi said, wooden. “Our people are dying. Ourclanis dying. So we’re supposed to give up everything for sons, right? But” — his chest expanded — “I didn’t want a son. I didn’t want my mate.Noneof it. Atall.”
The silence skittered thicker, deeper, and no one spoke, or moved, apart from Tristan’s wide, rapidly blinking eyes. And now Salvi was blinking too, his sharp white tooth visible against his lip.
“I just wanted you back,sæti,” he said, in a whisper. “Fuck, I missed you. The way youlookedat me, when I was with her. Gods, it wastorture. And to see you turn to fuckingJohn—”
Tristan’s eyes shut, briefly, and Rosa could hear Salvi’s inhale, rattling in his throat. “And sheknew,” he continued, hollow. “She told me she didn’t want to have a son with someone who didn’t love her like that. I could have tried to convince her, hide it better. But I didn’t. I was just so fuckingrelieved.”
The silence kept spinning out, wider and wider, until Salvi audibly swallowed, his throat convulsing. “So I went straight to Efterar,” he said, quieter, “and of course, the asshole refused. Wouldn’t even consider it. Because sons are everything, right? So then I went to John, and when he refused too, I pushed it, I pushed him. I told him it was either that, or he loses me.Youlose me. Permanently.”
Tristan’s face spasmed, but he still didn’t speak, and Salvi barked a laugh, low, bitter. “And John probably would’ve even let me off myself, if it came down to it — but we both know the way to make him doanythingis to fuck with the people he’s taking care of. To fuck withyou,sæti. So he managed it all for me. Managed the captain, Efterar,her. Took all the heat for it, probably burned all his chances of becoming Priest for good. Because ofme.”
There was more stillness, broken by an odd gulping sound in Salvi’s throat, his gaze snapping back down to his own slightly trembling fingers, again carefully drawing the thread through Simon’s thigh. “And I hid it from you,sæti,” he said, so quiet. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’teverwant you to think it was your fault. It wasn’t. It wasmine.”
Tristan still didn’t answer, though there was visible wetness streaking down his cheeks in the lamplight, and Salvi still wasn’t looking at him, his fingers pulling the thread through again, again.
“So there’s your truth, Simon,” he said, his voice bleak. “John was just taking care of our kind, beautiful,incomparablelittle teacher. Just like he’s always done. Even if” — he barked another bitter laugh — “it means he has to take it up the ass from Skai pricks like you.Again.”
The stillness felt different, suddenly, even heavier than before, as if that last statement had been some kind of —challenge. A challenge Simon didn’t seem to want to meet, somehow, his eyes dropping to Salvi’s slow, methodical stitching on his thigh.
“Ach, don’t pretend you didn’t know, Simon,” Salvi continued, rough, raw. “It was the Skai scouts’ favourite secret stop foryears. The far eastern camp with the three weak, pretty, fatherless Ka-esh, with their smooth faces and easy words. Almost like women, weren’t we?”
Rosa had almost felt somewhere else, someone else, as Salvi’s voice had spoken — but with those last words, so pointed, sobroken, it was as though the horror had smashed through the blunted distance of her thoughts, coiling deep in her gut.
That couldn’t be true. Not about Tristan and Salvi. Not aboutJohn. But he’d said — hadn’t he said —wait—
“Skaiwrong, to do this to you,” Simon said finally, forcefully, his gaze still on his thigh. “I never allow such wrong. Not since I am Enforcer. I maim any Skai who havewhisperof this. Whether this wrong done now, or many summers past.”
Salvi barked another brittle laugh, and bent to bite off his thread, spitting the loose end onto the stone floor. “That’s true,” he said, as he again grasped for the waterskin, pouring it out over what now appeared to be a small, clean red line across Simon’s thigh, a vast contrast from the bloody gash it had been before. “I’ll give you that, Simon, for free, because youhavedone all that. But what about theactualwomen? What about the women hidden in your own camps? The women you pretend don’t exist, who keepdyingbearing your sons? Many of them with no fuckingneed, just because you’re too fucking stubborn and stupid andparanoidto let us give them any proper medical care that isn’t fuckingmagic?!”
Salvi’s voice had risen as he spoke, bellowing through the room. Enough that even he looked shocked, and in a single shaky movement, he hurled away the rag he’d begun scrubbing his hands with, and leapt to his feet.
“Fuck,” he gasped, whirling toward the door. “Fuck, I need a run, a hunt, I just —”
But behind him Tristan had jerked to his feet too, bodily lurching toward him — and Salvi whipped around, just in time to catch Tristan, to fold him close into his heaving chest.
