THE ORC KING'S MATE

A Political Target

The incident records were not what she expected. Brea brought her three leather folders full of papers that evening and sat across from her at the table while Lira went through them. Some were written in the orc language, which she could not read, but many were in the common tongue, gathered from border reports and scout observations and things that looked very much like testimony from witnesses.

She read for two hours. Then she put the papers down and stared at the table.

"Brea," she said.

"Yes."

"These raids. The ones in the last three years." She picked up one of the papers.

"The descriptions of the raiders. The weapons they used. The way they attacked." She set it down again. "These were not orcs."

Brea said nothing.

"Orcs do not use crossbows," Lira said. "My brother told me that once. He said orcs fight with close weapons because they are strong enough not to need distance weapons. He said it was a point of pride." She tapped the paper.

"Every single raid in this file used crossbows. And the raiding patterns. Orcs raid for resources. Food. Livestock. These raids burned things. Burned crops. Burned storage houses. That is not raiding for resources. That is deliberately destroying them."

She looked up at Brea.

"Someone is burning the border villages," she said, "and making sure the evidence points at orcs."

Brea looked at her steadily. "The king has known this for two years."

"Then why—" She stopped. Thought about it. "Because he could not prove it. And if he tried to say it without proof, it would look like he was making excuses for his own people."

"Yes."

"So the war kept going. Because someone with enough power and enough reason wanted it to keep going." She felt something cold settle in her chest.

"Someone on the human side."

"That is what the king believes."

Lira looked at the papers. She thought about Veld, and her brother coming home thin and quiet, and the way her parents had looked at each other when the news from the border was bad. She thought about twenty years of stories about orc monsters, and who those stories served, and why anyone would want them to keep being told.

She thought about a human king who had suddenly decided to make peace, and whether peace was really what he wanted or whether he was trying to cut someone else off at a move she could not yet see.

She was starting to think she had walked into something much larger than a political marriage.

_______________________

She found Kael that evening. Which was not easy, in a building that size, but Brea pointed her in the right direction and she followed the direction until she found a room that was clearly some kind of working office, walls full of maps, a large table covered in papers, and Kael sitting at it with the look of a man who had been at this for hours.

She knocked on the open door.

He looked up.

"I read the records," she said.

"And?"

"You are right. And you have been right and unable to say so, which must have been extremely frustrating." She came into the room and stopped at the edge of the table. "I have a question."

"One?"

"Several. But I will start with one." She put her hands on the edge of the table and looked at him directly. "Did you push for this treaty?"

Silence.

"The official story is that my king proposed it," she said. "But you are not the kind of man who sits and waits for someone else to solve a problem. Did you push for it?"

He looked at her for a long moment. She could feel him deciding something, the kind of pause that is not hesitation but evaluation.

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

"Because the war is pointless and I have known it was pointless for a long time and I needed an opening to end it." He leaned back in his chair.

"I have contacts on the human side. People who are also tired of fighting. I made it known that I was interested in a real peace. Your king was receptive because his kingdom is starving and he needs the valley."

"And the marriage?"

"A marriage makes the treaty real. Both sides have something to lose if it breaks down." He looked at her steadily. "It also tells whoever is running the raids that this is serious. That both sides are committed. It makes it harder to provoke another war."

"Harder," she said. "Not impossible."

"Nothing is impossible," he said. "But this makes it harder."

She was quiet for a moment. She was looking at the maps on the wall. She could see the border marked on one of them, and the valley he had mentioned, and dots along the border that she suspected were the raid sites.

"Kael," she said. It was the first time she had used his name and the both of them noticed it. "If someone on the human side arranged this marriage hoping the orcs would eventually kill me, then having me alive and well here is a problem for them."

He went very still.

"And if they need the war to restart," she continued, "then having me dead would give them the justification. The bride, killed by orcs. Even if it was someone else who did it." She looked at him.

"That is the play, is it not? That is why someone let this marriage happen even though they did not want peace."

He said nothing for three full seconds.

"Yes," he said.

"So I am not just a political token. I am a target."

"You are under my protection," he said, "Nothing will happen to you here."

She looked at him. She believed him, which surprised her more than anything he had said so far. "I believe you," she said. "But you should know that I am not going to sit in my rooms and wait to be protected. If there is a conspiracy to expose, I want to help expose it."

"You are twenty years old."

"I am also the only person in this building who can move through human social spaces without anyone thinking twice about it. I grew up on the border. I know how these people think. I know what they value and what they fear and how they talk to each other." She met his eyes.

"You need me for more than a signature on a treaty."

He looked away from her and down at the papers on his table, and when he looked back up he said,

"I will think about it."

"That is more than I expected," she said honestly.

"Go to bed," he said. "You look tired."

"That is less diplomatic than everything else you just said."

"I am not a diplomat."

"No," she said, and she almost smiled. "You really are not."

Then she left him, Kael sat at his table for a long time after she left.

He picked up one of the papers on his desk and looked at it without reading it. He set it down again and looked at the doorway where she had stood.