Draka

I lay curled at the foot of Herald’s bed until she woke up. I was woken by a pitiful groan which made me look up just in time to see and hear a wide-eyed scream, the screech of wood on stone and the flapping of sheets as Herald threw herself out of her bed, eyes wild and arms flailing. She scrambled across the floor until she hit the wall and ended up huddled in the corner in only a night shirt, breathing heavily and staring blindly around the room while she slowly realised where she was.

I approached her carefully, and while she looked in my direction it was like she didn’t really see me. “Just a dream,” she whispered, closing her eyes and pressing herself into the corner. “ I am safe now. They got me out. Just a dream.”

“It is alright, Herald,” I told her in Tekereteki, but she just sat there, taking deep, slow breaths as Mak sat up in bed and Lalia came rushing in through the door. She continued until we were all huddled a short distance from her, giving her some room, and started breathing more normally as her eyes opened and slowly focused on each of us. She sat silent as Mak crept forward carefully and put her arms around her, pulling her in and stroking her hair.

“My head hurts,” Herald groaned weakly over Mak’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I know,” Mak said.

“And I feel sick.”

“You’ve been very drunk for a few days,” Mak told her, ignoring the other things that had happened during that time. “That’s what happens.”

“We’ll get some nice, fatty food in you, alright?” Lalia said. “Some oily fish and some sausages. And some tea for the pain. How’s that sound?”

“Okay,” Herald said, pulling Mak closer, then looked at me as Lalia rose and left the room. “Draka,” Herald said. “You came.”

“Of course I did,” I told her.

“What happened?”

I saw Mak stiffen a little. I’d seen how ashamed she was of her actions, willing or not. It was hard not to pity her. “They captured me,” I told Herald. “Then I got loose and killed every bastard in that house, except the cook and the guy we captured.”

“We captured someone?” Herald asked weakly. “Right. I do not remember much. Just… pain.” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and Mak hugged her tighter.

“It’s alright now,” Mak said. “We don’t need to talk about it now. You don’t even need to think about it. Plenty of time later.”

“Yeah, okay,” Herald said. “Later sounds good. Thank you, Draka. For getting us out. Thank you.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t want me,” I told her flatly. “And I’m sorry for that. All I can do is to promise that this Night Blossom woman, and everyone around her, will regret it.”

Lalia came back in, carrying two bundles of clothes, which she handed over, and announced that she’d told the cook to prepare his best hangover breakfast. “You, too,” she told Mak as the sisters dressed. “Mercies, you’re both rail thin.”

“I’m coming,” Mak said, helping Herald to her feet and handing her over to Lalia. “Get my sister fed, would you, Lalia? I want to talk to Draka first.” She looked at me, and I nodded.

Lalia looked between the two of us, and put her hand gently on Herald’s arm. “C’mon, Herald,” she said. “Food’s waiting.”

“Great,” Herald said, without conviction, then looked at Mak and me. “Go easy on her,” she said, not bothering to specify whom she was talking to. “These are men’s clothes, are they not?” she asked Lalia, who made an apologetic noise as they left.

Once the door closed behind Herald and Lalia, a change came over Mak. She didn’t relax, exactly, now that she was alone with me rather than comforting her traumatised younger sister. But she didn’t have to put a brave face on anymore. She didn’t have to pretend to be more whole than she was. While her expression, the whole way that she held herself, was full of shame and no small amount of fear, some kind of tension had left her.

I waited for her to speak. After a few attempts she sat down on the edge of the bed behind her. Even with me sitting on the floor I had already been looking down at her, and now when she looked up at me she looked so very small. Her face was a masque of pain.

“I won’t ask for your forgiveness,” she said hoarsely. “But I want you to understand what happened, and why.”

I waited impassively for her to go on. I was trying to keep an open mind, but I didn’t see what she could say to change anything.

“Everything that happened was my fault,” she began, her eyes roaming around the room as though searching for the right words. “I recognise that. The Night Blossom was the one who gave the orders, but I gave her the means and the opportunity. I went out and got drunk, because I didn’t trust Herald, or you, to keep her safe, and rather than do anything about it I tried to kill my worries with wine. I used to do that a lot. I’ve been better recently, but…”

She looked at me. I looked back, still waiting for her to say something that would make me care, make me feel a shred of regret for the way I treated her.

“You don’t care about that,” she said. “And why should you? Those are my own failings. I just want you to know that I never told them anything that they could use, never agreed to do anything to help them. No matter how they abused me, not even when they broke my fingers and tore out my nails.”

I could see her hands twitch with remembered pain.

“Not until they brought in Herald. Do you know what they did, Draka? They sat her across the table from me. Let her get a good look at what they’d done to me. They put a healing potion on the table, and then they stabbed her in the gut. And while she screamed and bled on the floor, they told me that if I told them how to find you, they’d let me give her that potion.” She looked up at me, her eyes as empty as the night she’d betrayed me. “I still held out. I held out until she stopped screaming, and just cried. I think I did pretty well, don’t you?”

She gave me a hollow smile, and a little voice inside me actually agreed with her. Yeah. That was pretty impressive.

“They didn’t touch me after that,” she said. She was speaking easily now, like she was retelling a story she’d heard, not something that happened to her and her sister. “But the next day they manacled me to that table, and they brought her back in. She was drunk, and pale. They must have kept feeding her more potion, or just wine. Hard to say, but the torturer really made a mess of her with his dagger, so she would have needed a lot of healing. She said something nasty, I don’t remember what, and he broke her nose, then kicked her around a little. It was almost comical, really. He’s such an angry little guy, with a squeaky voice. You remember, from the forest? Anyway, then he put a healing potion on the table. And he took out his dagger. And when she was screaming and bleeding again, he told me that they wanted me to write a message. So I did.”

Her eyes had become completely unfocused at that point, her voice slipping into a droning monotone.

“They’d grabbed her off the street when she went looking for me. They wanted me to know that. That she was only there because of me. So, the next day, or at least I think it was the next day, it was hard to tell down there, they manacled my arms to that table. And they put a potion in front of me. I promised them that I would do anything. It didn’t matter what they asked. I’d do anything they wanted. And then while Herald was screaming and begging on the floor, the little man said that they needed my help to bring you in. I agreed. I tried to be helpful. I made suggestions. And it worked pretty well, I think, until you just walked out of your chains and turned the place into a slaughterhouse. I didn’t expect that. If I’d known, I would have warned them. Because the little man told me that, from then until we returned, he would make sure that Herald kept screaming. And if you didn’t show up, we’d just have to try again the next night, and the next.”

She turned her eyes towards me, but stared right through me.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you showed up that first night.”

Then she blinked, and a shiver ran through her before she said, “That’s why I betrayed you. And if they had me back at that table, with a potion in front of me, I would do everything in my power to help them again.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ, Mak,” I said, though it didn’t feel like it was me saying it. I believed every word she’d said. I’d expected tears, begging, and excuses. Not this. I knew that the bastards had tortured them, but what the hell did I know about torture? Intellectually I understood the idea. You do cruel things to someone to make them tell you what you want to hear, or make them do what you want them to do. It sounded pretty straight forward. But sitting there with Mak, seeing how she just went somewhere else as she talked about it…

“I understand,” I told her. “I might even be able to forgive you, someday. But you understand that I can never trust you completely again? If it’s between me or Herald?”

“I do,” she said, and slid down from the bed so that she was on her knees in front of me. “And I’ll do whatever I can to earn back whatever trust you can spare for me. I swear on my life. But… you understand?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And as long as Herald is safe, we shouldn’t have a problem, right?” she said, with a glint of hope in her eyes.

“Probably,” I said, though if it was Tam instead, or someone else she loved, who knew?

She inched forward until we were barely a foot apart. She had to lean her head all the way back to look me in the eyes. “And you think it’s possible that, one day, you might forgive me?”

“Yeah. Maybe. One day.”

She reached out tentatively with one hand. I noticed that her fingers, for all the healing, were still nailless and a little twisted. When I didn’t pull back or reprimand her she put her hand on my chest, then silently stood and put her arms around me, pressing her face into the scales of my shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispered. "Please don't kill me. Not until you've forgiven me."

I didn’t know what to say to that. I just defaulted to what I felt. "Please don't make me," I told her, and I felt her nod into my shoulder.

I curled my neck around her. It felt natural. For all the anger that I was still holding on to, I needed that hug almost as much as she did.

After I let Mak go and eat I thought that I’d be alone for a while, but it didn’t take long for Garal to slip through the door, closing it behind him.

“Would you like to get out of here?” he asked, jerking his head towards the exit. “I could tell the soldiers to clear out again.”

Outside I could hear people bustling, talking, laughing… pretty much the sounds of several dozen men and women having breakfast and getting ready for the day.

“No,” I told him. “I can wait until they’ve eaten, at least.”

“As you wish,” he said, sitting down on one of the beds. “I was hoping that we might talk,” he continued after a short silence.

“About what?” I said, with more snap than I’d intended. I didn’t mind talking to Garal. Other than his inexplicable love for Lalia he seemed like a decent guy, and besides that I just liked looking at him. “Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t had a great time, lately.”

“Tam told me about your adventure in the north,” he said with an easy grin, deflecting my irritation. “That sounded like a decent experience. Lucrative.”

I snorted. “True enough.”

“And there was something about you killing five trolls and eating their hearts?” he went on.

“One troll. I killed the one troll and ate her heart,” I protested. “I was just part of the team for the other four. If you want to be really picky I think Tam got the killing blow on two, Val on one and Mak on the last one.”

“Congratulations all the same,” he said. “Five of you going up against five trolls and all coming out alive is a real accomplishment. And as much as I love those four, I doubt that they could have done it without you.”

“Flatterer,” I told him, my anger softening somewhat. “Go on. Keep telling me how great I am.”

“Lalia told me that you wrestled a monstrous bear.”

“I did! Probably would have eaten me if your girl hadn’t come back to help me, though.”

“She made sure to tell me that, too,” he said, still smiling.

“I’m sure she did.” I said, then, “Garal, you know her better than anyone else, right?”

“Better than anyone you know, for sure. Yes.”

“What the fuck is wrong with her?”

Garal’s smile faltered and he looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Would you like to elaborate on that?” he asked.

“She’s been an unmitigated bitch to me since the first time I met her,” I told him, and he turned his face slightly with a pained look. “We’ve had moments where we kind of got along, sure, but last night the first thing I got from her was a thinly veiled accusation. Does she just not have a survival instinct, or what?”

“She’s very protective. But you wouldn’t have hurt her,” Garal said, though he didn’t sound entirely sure of himself.

“Garal,” I told him flatly. “I was literally seconds from killing Mak yesterday, and I’ve spent weeks learning to like Mak.” That made him slowly lift his head and look at me. “If I hadn’t had hours to cool off before I came here,” I continued, “I might very well have killed Lalia just for talking to me the way she did. I’m not telling you this as a threat or anything, though you probably should let her know. I’m telling you this because I honestly want to know: What the fuck is wrong with her? She knows what I am. She must have heard from Rib and Pot and the others what I did to the slavers and the valkin, and the troll for that matter. What does she think would happen if she actually came at me again, or if she pissed me off bad enough at the wrong time?”

“You wouldn’t kill anyone over some insulting words,” he said confidently.

“Are you sure? You may be the first person I met here, but you don’t really know me.”

“No. Sadly, I don’t. And I’d like to change that. But I know Tam, and Val, and Herald, and they all vouch for your character. Even Mak, who has always been very careful in how she speaks about you, doesn’t think that you’re a monster, or some thin-skinned thug. When I say that I don’t think that you’d kill, or even harm someone without good reason, I rely on their judgement. As for offering you violence… well. She did it before, and you restrained yourself. I can only hope that she never does it again, or that you are as strong then as you’ve been before. I truly do love her, Draka, and I would hate for you and I to become enemies.”

“Me too,” I told him honestly. “So please talk to Lalia before she does something we’ll both regret.”

He nodded, then said, “Did you mean what you said? About almost killing Mak? Were you serious?”

“Completely,” I told him.

“Mercies, Draka. Why?”

“You said that you didn’t think I’d kill anyone without good reason,” I told him.

“I do.”

“I had a good reason. If you want the details you can ask her, and she’ll tell you if she wants to. Her shame is her own.”

Garal shook his head. “I’m not sure that I want to know. Can I ask why you didn’t?”

Because I made her so terrified that something in her broke, I thought. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. “For the Herald,” I said instead. “And for Tam and Val and you, and for the good times we shared. And because I could use her.”

“I never expected this side of you,” Garal said, but the look in on his face wasn’t fear or disappointment. It was a kind of dispassionate appraisal, something I hadn’t expected from him.

“Me neither,” I told him. “But I guess crucibles form character, or whatever the quote is.” I wasn’t sure where I’d heard that, but it came to me like it should have been familiar. “Or maybe that sledgehammer to my head shook something loose.”

Whatever it was, I hadn’t been quite myself ever since I was captured. Or maybe I was more myself than I’d been for months.

I wasn’t sure which, and I wasn’t sure which possibility worried me more.