Something lurched in Geva’s chest, and she felt herself nodding, her feet tripping toward him. Not thinking, not questioning, not refusing. Because this was still just a job… right? Still just one month, and then the sea…
“I do not know,” Rathgarr said, his big hand clasping hers, “all that awaits me at Orc Mountain. But I yet know” — he cleared his throat — “I do not mean to stay long. I have no wish to steal the place of captain. And I have sworn to care for you, and keep you safe there, and Ishall.”
His voice was smooth, his words very careful — but glancing at his face, there was yet more awareness swarming Geva’s thoughts, more sweeping swirling mess. “But you also just told me,” she replied, her voice wavering, “that orcs can smell falsehoods. So I’m sure it’s all part of yourplanto keep telling me what you think they’ll want to hear, right? To make sure I won’t give you away?”
Rathgarr didn’t immediately reply, and Geva’s frustration was already surging again, escaping out her mouth. “Even though I’ve already proven to you,” she continued, waving sharply toward the clearing behind them, “that I can do this. I can begoodat this. My parents were ambassadors, I know politics, I know diplomacy, I knowalltoo well how to deal with multiple spoiled arguingchildren! And if you could just be honest with me for once” — her voice was rising, harder and shriller — “and tell me therealreason why you’re dragging me all the way across the realm to Orc Mountain, maybe I could actuallyhelpyou!”
Rathgarr was still frowning at her, not speaking, but Geva was too caught in this now to stop. “You said I could earn more, the better job I do at this,” she hissed at him. “Do you think that’s meaningless to me? This is mylife, Rathgarr. This is mysurvival. I will work myself to thebonefor you, and make your enemies believe whatever the hell you want, if you’ll just give me a chance, like you damn wellpromised! I’m supposed to be yourhelpmate, remember?!”
Her voice had gone far too loud, surely risking far too much, and Rathgarr clearly realized it too, his eyes darting at the forest all around them, his hand clenching tighter on hers. And without another word, he tugged Geva away, back toward the road. Back toward Orc Mountain, toward all his refusals and his secrets and hislies, and —
“I have… a brother there,” he said, abrupt and low. “A blood-brother. Kesst.”
He…really? Geva’s feet faltered at the edge of the blessedly empty road, her eyes blinking uncertainly toward Rathgarr’s profile. Catching on the tightness in his jaw, the deep crease in his brow, the thick swallow of his throat.
“I have not seen nor scented Kesst in sixteen summers,” Rathgarr continued, even lower. “For half his life. I… wish to see him now. I have stayed away” — his throat convulsed again — “too long.”
Oh. He’d been away forsixteenyears?! And Geva could feel the strain in his voice, the hesitation, the… shame. The suggestion that this, suddenly, was truth, and it was truth he hadn’t wanted to tell.
“Kesst is my highest aim in going home again,” Rathgarr added, his voice hardening, as he drew Geva to a walk again, his hand still gripped to hers. “Above all else.”
Geva was still eyeing him, studying his grim mouth, the bitter, betraying set of his jaw. “But there’s obviously still…moreto your trip home, right?” she tentatively asked. “Beyond just your brother?”
Rathgarr huffed a heavy sigh, his eyes briefly closing. “Yes. No. I do not know. I need” — he sighed again — “I must see how Kesst fares. What he says. What he wishes from me. And then…”
He jerked a shrug, surely suggesting that there was little he wouldn’t do, if his brother asked. That this entire visit home might still very well be about politics, about…revenge. About that position of captain.That foul usurper.
“So whyhaveyou stayed away from home for so long, then?” Geva asked slowly. “You couldn’t have gone back for a visit now and then, even just to see your brother?”
Something spasmed in Rathgarr’s cheek, and he shook his head. “No,” he replied, clipped. “No. I could not.”
He clearly wasn’t keen to elaborate, and perhaps Geva should have pushed it, demanded more explanations and answers. Because there was obviously so much more to this, Rathgarr might have done something truly awful, he might be genuinely loathed or feared by his people…
But he clearly cared about his brother. Missed his brother. And Geva had asked for the real reason for his return home, and he’d given it.
“So what’s your brother like, then?” she asked, quiet, into the taut silence. “Do you two have much in common?”
There was a twinge of surprising softness on Rathgarr’s face, a wry little smile curling on his mouth. “Naught at all,” he replied. “But Kesst is… a delight. Quick, and clever, and bright. You shall like him, I ken.”
Oh. Geva felt oddly caught in that warmth on Rathgarr’s face, enough that it took an instant to digest what he’d said. He thought she wouldlikehis brother? And wait — something flipped in her stomach — had he meant that as acompliment?
She made herself glance away, back toward the still-empty road ahead. “So… can you at least tell me what’s changed, then?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “To make you return home now, after so long? Or, wait” — she felt her eyes widening, darting back toward Rathgarr again — “when you saidtheysent for you… was it actuallyKesstwho sent for you?”
The softness had rapidly drained from Rathgarr’s face, and he barked a curt, hollow-sounding laugh. “Clever, poppet,” he said, in a jovial voice that wasn’t jovial at all. “Ach, this was theonesummons that should have dragged me back there. And with Kesst’s message, they sent a vow from thecaptainhimself, swearing my warm welcome upon my return.”
There was a heavy thread of sarcasm in his voice, suggesting just what Rathgarr thought of this so-called vow, and Geva considered that too, adding it to the rest of the churning mess in her thoughts. “So are you thinking,” she ventured, “that Kesst might have been… compromised, somehow? Or” — she winced, shot Rathgarr a regretful look — “that he might have been convinced to… betray you?”
She braced for Rathgarr’s certain retaliation, for the abrupt and angry end of this conversation — but to her distant astonishment, he only laughed again, still too loud and cold. “I have wondered this each day since,” he replied flatly. “I wonder this each time Killik comes to me, and pretends I am his brother, and not his target. And now thatUlfarrhas joined him” — he paused, and actually spat on the road at their feet — “I wonder this even more, for of all the orcs in that curst mountain,heis mayhap the one who should laugh loudest at my downfall, and I at his!”
A chilly, unpleasant shiver snaked up Geva’s back — soshouldshe have been more concerned about her safety, all this time? — but Rathgarr’s eyes angled toward hers, his hand’s warm grip tightening against her fingers. “I cannot believe Kesst would eagerly ally with an orc like Ulfarr, or wish me real harm,” he continued, with a grimace. “I should not now be going back there, if I feared this. But I yet cannot afford to be careless in this, or a fool, ach?”
Right. And as Geva kept walking, considering it, his hand still clamped in hers, she felt something much like understanding, or perhaps even commiseration, coiling in her chest. Of course Rathgarr would want to be careful about this trip, then. And of course it made sense for him to appear harmless and settled, only there for a short, innocuous visit to his brother, so he could gain the space and time to evaluate the situation. To evaluate his brother’s choices, perhaps, and make his own choices from there.
“So how much of your plan,” Geva began, “is meant forKesst, then? Some of the plunder you’re carrying is meant as gifts for him, I presume? And you bringing me with you… should I be particularly…”
Targeting Kesst, she might well have said, but her wince surely conveyed it, all the same. And beside her, Rathgarr gave a dismissive-looking shrug, together with a rather betraying twitch of his fingers.
“Ach, mayhap,” he said, too casually, with another unconvincing shrug. “Kesst always liked women. Our mother doted upon him, and he worshipped her.”
