And as if she’d spoken that aloud, Joarr grimaced again, and lurched a little forward. Both his hands now gripping at the stone bench on either side of her, trapping her in place before him.
“Now,” he continued, clipped, “you shall tell me what more you wish to learn from me. And I shall answer this with truth.”
Gwyn exhaled, her heart skipping in her chest, her eyes still locked to his. To the glinting determination in them, perhaps even the challenge, as if he was daring her to test him on this, to play his latest game, follow his newest pinecone…
And instead of roundly refusing, as she surely should have done, she sucked back more breath, huffed it out again. “I want to know the truth about you and your clan,” she snapped at him. “The entire story of what led you to this. Why the Bautul don’t want you. Why Silfast hates you. And why you needed to make that ridiculous publicstatementto that ridiculous damned goddess!”
Joarr’s throat visibly spasmed, his chest hollowing — but his eyes remained fixed to hers, glinting with that grim determination. As if he would tell her. As if it might even be truth.
“This tale,” he began, with an unmistakable edge on his voice, “began in days long past. With my father’s father, Joakim of Clan Bautul. Joakim was Seer of the Bautul clans, in Tomor.”
Tomor was the small, swampy, mostly uninhabited province south of Sakkin province, on the very edge of the southern sea. And while Gwyn couldn’t recall hearing of orcs there, she felt herself nodding, all the same.
“What’s a… Seer?” she asked, before she could stop the question. “And how did your grandfather become one?”
Joarr shrugged, his eyes sliding away from hers. “It is an old Bautul calling,” he replied, curt. “A leader. Passed through blood, from son to son. But in this” — he drew in breath — “Joakim failed his clan. He failed to see an attack by men, and this led to many deaths, and much strife. So to escape this, he planned what seemed his death, and next fled west. To Osada.”
Osada was northwest of Sakkin, next to Dunburg — and Gwyn nodded again, waiting, while Joarr took another heavy breath. “There, Joakim hid his true name,” he continued. “And found means to hide his true scent, also. And there he whelped a son — my father — and claimed himself a Skai. The clan most like Bautul, mayhap, and with no strong leader, and no books or old accounts to say he no belonged there. Joakim also bore the height and air of a Skai, I ken, with more speed than strength. And thus —”
Joarr broke off there, shrugging again, as though that were the end of it — but that surely wasn’t the end, was it? And despite everything this damned enraging orc had done today, Gwyn found herself sitting up straighter, her attention caught, her eyes searching his.
“And thuswhat?” she demanded. “You were born — up in Osada, or here? And did your father know the truth? Or your mother? And how did you finally learn you weren’t Skai, after all?”
Joarr’s eyes had shuttered, and he shrugged again, even more careless this time. “I was birthed in Osada,” he said coolly. “I never knew my mother, and if my father knew this truth of the Bautul, he no spoke of it to me. I have only now learnt it, these past moons, thanks to the work of our Ka-esh kin, who seek to help all our mountain with their learning.”
Right. The Ka-esh clan, the literary ones, who didn’t stop talking. And who, Gwyn couldn’t deny, were currently sparking an undeniable, jolting indignation in her already jumbled thoughts.
“And the Ka-esh thought it washelpful, to expose you like that?” she said sharply. “To cut you off from the Skai clan you’d believed to be your own for your entirelife?!”
Joarr’s mouth might have winced, but he gave another too-casual shrug, his gaze once more slipping past her. “The Ka-esh are no at fault for this,” he said, voice flat. “And they noexposeme, ach? They only speak of what they learn to me alone, in secret. But” — that was without question a wince this time — “this is no a burden I wish to keep, ach? No a falsehood I wish to carry, for my own son to face alone after me.”
Oh. Of course. Because as little as Gwyn truly knew about this orc, she still knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t choose to live a lie. He wouldn’t choose to pretend that he belonged, where he didn’t. He wouldn’t pass that on to his son.
His…son?
“You don’t,” Gwyn gasped at him, her thoughts flailing in a dozen new directions at once, “havea son. Do you?”
Joarr stared at her for a breath, his brow knitting — but then he choked a laugh, bitter and hoarse. “Ach, no,” he said. “Had I one of these, you no ken I should leave him to go all this time without his father?”
Right. And blinking at his deeply disgruntled face, Gwyn realized that perhaps she’d known that, too. That if one could somehow hold Joarr’s loyalty, it would be a fearsome thing, unshakeable, inviolable.Mine.
An odd, hurtling shiver rippled up her back, but she held her eyes to his, grasped for the next question. “Sowhy,” she said, “doesn’t Bautul want you. I mean, they surely can’t fault you for what your grandfather did, can they? And if you’re truly the Chief Scout of this entire mountain, that’s surely an enviable position, isn’t it? A gain for them? A mark in their favour?”
She couldn’t read the shift in Joarr’s eyes, the jerkiness in his shrug this time. “The Bautul have long ago learnt,” he said, his voice wooden, “to live without this Seer, ach? They now follow their battle-captains, the strongest orcs among them, who flaunt the power they prize. One of these captains is Silfast, who thinks himself the goddess’ voice come to earth, and who no wishes for a rival, most of all in me. And the other is Olarr — he was the first to greet me after this today — who no cares to fight against his brother, or against what he believes is his goddess’ voice. And until this day” — Joarr sighed — “I held no claim to this goddess, ach? No blessing.”
Gwyn fought to digest all that, to search the hard set of Joarr’s face. To pull all the bits together, to find the way through…
“So that whole farce on the altar, back there,” she said slowly, “that washugefor you. It was you striking back at Silfast’s resistance against you. Claiming your rightful place among your own clan.”
Joarr’s mouth clenched, his eyes glinting — but his shrug might as well have been a nod this time, swift and furtive. “It should… help, I ken,” he said, quiet. “For this, I… thank you.”
Well. Gwyn felt something catch, deep in her throat, and somehow she was the one shrugging, her eyes blinking down at his bare chest. “You’re welcome,” she replied, just as quiet. “I’m… glad it helped.”
There was an instant’s fraught stillness, a visible flinch of Joarr’s still-crouching body before hers — and then another choke of a laugh, too close. “Ach, witch,” he said, with a sigh. “Now flood me with your kindness, so I may yet drown in my guilt, and long to make more amends, ach? Mayhap next you speak of the deep joy you found in this? And how your lone regret is that you no found a means to spray my good seed all over Silfast’s limp prick?”
Gwyn twitched to stare at him, while the gods-damned vivid vision of it swarmed through her brain — and then, somehow, she…laughed. Yes, laughed, her shoulders shaking, the mirth escaping her mouth in shrill, irrational gulps.
“Can you imagine,” she gasped, “the look on his face? While it’s…dripping, all onto the floor, and then you could say…”
