Page 17 of Arrows

“Now that we’ve made them angry, you mean?” said the General. She was glancing at every person they passed: evaluating her army. Preparing for a fight.

“If I were them I’d be happy about the water,” Lorre said. “We solved their problem. They’re being ungrateful.”

Lorre today had dressed up in myriad shades of purple: mauve, indigo, raspberry, blackberry, lavender, other variations Van couldn’t name. The robes definitely couldn’t’ve belonged to any traditional historian or scholar, given that fitted waist, that plunging tantalizing neckline: a tease, a mockery of tradition, a promise.

He’d piled the golden hair atop his head in a fantastical heap, studded with pins of raw gold and black-and-white sea-pearls. His feet were naked, and he’d pushed the sleeves of the robe-layers up. The folds made his wrists more slender, vulnerable.

“Not everyone thinks the way you do,” Queen Ryllis said. Lorre now looked genuinely perplexed, and protested, “But I know the world best.”

The world in question lurched abruptly. Grasses shuddering. A crack forming. Under Lorre’s shield.

Van couldn’t breathe.

“They can go under,” General Freye said aloud, unnecessarily, but she was making a point. “Lorre, you said they couldn’t—”

“I forgot about tunnels momentarily. I can fix that.”

“They have magicians.” Queen Ryllis’s jaw was tense. “Did you know that?”

“They don’t have magicians,” Lorre snapped. “They have three humans with some talent for guessing how to hum very specific tunes in the dark.”

“What?”

“Most of you are tone-deaf, so these three are better than that, at least.”

“Lorre—”

“Now I’m irritated,” Lorre said, “and I don’t like people hurting my grass. Time to be done with this, I think.”

His hand came up, a slim swoop of elegant fingers. The shield dropped. No more barricade between forces.

The wind ebbed. But the world wasn’t motionless. The earth began to put itself back together, along the newly opened fault-line.

Murmurs rose on both sides, susurrations of wonder, of fear. Lorre took a step forward, trailing Queen and General in his wake. He did not shout, but everyone heard him regardless. “I think you should leave.”

“I think,” said the Chief Minister of Penth, tall and taut as a bowstring in desert-sun robes and practical trousers, “that you altered our land. Our home. Without telling us. An act of aggression.”

“Technically,” Lorre retorted, “you invaded first. You crossed the border. And you haven’t said thank you, about the water.”

“We crossed the border because we needed assistance, and because this land used to be shared land, free to all, before Averene started swallowing up the world.”

“Mostly it’s just the local baronies,” Lorre said. “Don’t exaggerate. You could’ve asked me for help.”

“Would you have come?”

“Probably. If I wasn’t busy. I’d’ve got round to your drought eventually.”

“You are a weapon,” the Chief Minister said, “and you serve the throne of Averene. We needed to show strength.”

“I don’t serve anyone,” Lorre said. “I happen to like living in a palace, for the moment. Tell your little human conjurors to stop muttering about earthquakes and dropping me into deep holes. It won’t work, and I don’t appreciate being called an abomination yet again.”

The Chief Minister glanced at her magicians. They wore blue, a grey-toned dusty hue that stood out against the bronze armor of her people. They stopped conferring with each other, and glared at Lorre.

Van, who sympathized with people wanting to glare at Lorre, nevertheless scowled back. Whatever Lorre was, he was also a lonely young man whom people tended to believe the worst of; he did not deserve that sort of insult.

Milo murmured, “If we’re going to fight I wish they’d get on…”

“I don’t think we’re going to,” Van murmured back. And mentally added a prayer to the Goddess along those lines. With emphasis.

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