THE ORC KING'S MATE

The Red-headed girl

In the weeks before Lira arrived, Kael had told himself this was simple.

The treaty made strategic sense. The war had been on for thirty years and it had produced nothing but dead men on both sides and borders that moved back and forth like water and settled nothing. He was tired of it.

When the human king's proposal arrived, his war council had been divided. Half of them thought it was a trap. Half of them thought it was worth taking. Kael had listened to both sides for three days before he made his decision.

He would take the treaty. He would take the marriage. And he had told himself, again, that it was a simple political arrangement. A human woman he would likely see at formal occasions and otherwise leave to her own life. He had no interest in a wife, he had interest in peace, and she was the price of it.

He had been very certain about all of that.

Then she had walked into his hall covered in road dust and looked at him with dark eyes that had fear in them and something else too, something that did not flinch. Kael had looked at her and thought, I know you.

He had not said that. He would not say that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But he knew her face.

He had known it for six years.

______

Six years ago there had been a battle near Veld. It was not a large battle by the standards of the war, just one of a hundred engagements along the border that season, a clash that left men from both sides bleeding in a field while the rest retreated.

Kael had been there himself, because he still went to the border when things were bad enough, and afterward he had stood on a rise above the field watching the aftermath while his healers moved among the orc wounded.

He had seen the girl then. She was young, maybe fourteen, small enough that she had to drag men twice her size to move them. She was moving through the field without any apparent fear, stopping at every fallen man she found, checking if they were alive, doing what she could. She was not just helping the human soldiers. She was helping everyone she found. Orc and human alike.

His second in command had said, "Who is that?"

"A girl from the town," one of the scouts had said. "She does this every time there is a fight nearby. Comes out after. Does not seem to know she is supposed to be afraid of us."

Kael had watched her for a long time.

He had thought about her occasionally after that day. A beautiful young brave girl with her red hair moving through bodies twice her size, looking after them.

Humans feared orcs, it was the result of thirty years of war, and he had learned to accept it. However that girl had not been afraid.

And then the proposal had arrived, and the name on the letter had been Lira of Veld, and he had read it twice and then gone very still for a moment.

He had taken the treaty for many reasons. He had taken it a little faster than he might have otherwise.

_______

Lira's second day in the orc capital was different than her first.

She woke up in the big bed with the actual blankets and lay there for a while looking at the stone ceiling and doing an inventory of how she felt.

Not well, exactly. But not as badly as she had expected. She was not in a cell. She was not hungry. No one had been cruel to her.

She got up and found that Brea was already in the outer room, sitting in a chair ready to be commanded.

"I want to see the city," Lira said.

Brea looked at her. "Today?"

"Today."

A pause. "All right," Brea said, and stood.

They went out into the streets and Lira tried to look at everything at once. The city was different from the outside than from the carriage window.

It was more real. Orc men and women moved around her and almost all of them looked at her and she had to keep reminding herself that looking was not the same as threatening.

The buildings were well-built and the streets were clean. She saw a market with stalls of food and goods. She saw children running between adults' legs the same way children anywhere ran between adult legs. She saw old women sitting outside a building talking the way old women at home sat and talked.

"They are not what I expected either," she said, mostly to herself.

"What did you expect?" Brea asked.

Lira looked at her. "I do not want to say it out loud because it will sound terrible."

"Say it anyway."

"Something less..." She searched for the word. "Less ordinary."

Brea was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "We have been told things about your people too."

"I imagine they are also terrible."

"Some of them."

They walked a little longer in a silence before Lira continued.

"Brea," she said. "How long have you served the king?"

"Twelve years."

"What is he like? Actually like, not what people say."

Brea looked at her for a long moment. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because I live with him now," Lira said.

"And I would rather know the truth than spend the next however many years being afraid of the wrong things."

Something shifted in Brea's expression. It was small and she covered it quickly, but Lira caught it. "He is fair," Brea said finally.

"He is harder on himself than he is on anyone else. He does not ask for things he would not do himself." She paused.

"And he has not slept a full night in years. The war costs him more than most people know."

Lira thought about that. She thought about the man in the hall with the worn armor and the gold eyes and a deep calm voice. She thought about how he had said she was not a prisoner. And she was starting to think her list needed more than rebuilding. She might need to throw it out and start over.