I settled myself into my motionless body. Dwalia mastered her fear and spoke back to Ellik. Was she insane? Or so used to being in command that she did not see the weakness of her position? “Your men are sworn to you. Promised to you, then? And you believe in their promises when you do not honor your own? Promised to you, just as you gave your word to me when we set our bargain? A generous advance on the payment was given to you, that you need not loot. But loot you did, in defiance of my order. You promised there would be no violence beyond what must be. Yet there was. Foolish destruction, breaking doors and slashing tapestries. Leaving signs of our passage that need not have been left. Killing beyond what was needed. Rapes that served no useful purpose.”
Ellik stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and for a moment I saw him as he might have been in his youth, wild and reckless. “No useful purpose?” he repeated. He roared with laughter again. His men were appearing, by twos and threes, to stand in witness. They shared his mirth. I knew that his display was actually for them. “There speaks a woman who knows nothing of her true purpose in the world. But let me tell you, I am certain that my men found those women useful enough.”
“You broke your word to me!” Dwalia tried to put certainty and accusation in her voice. Instead she sounded like a whining child.
He cocked his head to look at her, and I saw on his face that she had become even less powerful in his eyes. So insignificant that he bothered to explain the world to her. “A man has his word. And he can give his word to another man, for both of them know what that means. For a man has honor, and to break his word to another man defiles his honor. The breaking of a man’s word merits death. But all know that a woman cannot give her word to anyone, for women cannot possess honor. Women promise, and later they say, ‘I did not understand, I did not mean it that way, I thought those words meant something else.’ So a woman’s word is without worth. She can break it, and always she does, for she has no honor to defile.” He gave a snort of derision. “It is not even worth killing a woman who breaks her word, for it is what women do.”
Dwalia stared at him, her mouth ajar. I pitied her and feared for the rest of us. Even I, a child, knew that was the Chalcedean way. Every scroll I’d read of them, every time my father mentioned them, they were the ones who always found a way to break their word. They fathered children on their slaves, and then sold their own offspring. How could she not have known the sort of folk she bargained with? Her luriks were gathering behind us, a pale mirror of the soldiers behind Ellik. But his men stood, legs wide and braced, hands on their hips or arms crossed on their chests. Our luriks huddled and leaned against one another, whispering like a wind shivering through aspens. Dwalia seemed drained of words.
“How could I exchange a promise with you? I would give you my man’s word, my word of honor in exchange for what? The thought you held in your silly little head for that moment?” He barked in disdain. “Have you any idea how foolish you sound?” He shook his head. “You bring us all this way, deeper and deeper into danger, and for what? Not treasure or coin or fine goods. A boy, and his serving woman. My men follow me and in return they take a share of all I take. And what could we take from there? A bit of wenching for my soldiers. A few blades of good quality. Some smoked meat and cured fish. A few horses. My men make mock of your raid! That is not good, for they must doubt why they came so far through such dangerous territory, for so little plunder. They must doubt me. And now what must we do when we are so deep in an enemy’s territory? We dawdle and avoid the roads and villages, until a journey that should have been a few days stretches toward a month.
“Now the boy we have stolen dares to mock me. Why? Why has he no respect? Perhaps he thinks me as foolish as you make me seem. But I am not a fool. I have been thinking and thinking. I am not a man to be ruled by a woman. Not a man to be bought with gold, and then commanded like a sell-sword. I am a man who commands, who will undertake a task and do it as seems best to him. Yet, as I look back, time after time, I have bowed to your will. I look back and each time, it makes no sense to me. Always, I give way to your will. Why? I think I have discerned it.”
He pointed an accusing finger at her. “I know your spell, woman. It is that pale boy you keep at your side, the one who speaks as if he were a girl. He does something, doesn’t he? You send him ahead through the town, and we pass through and no one turns to watch us go. It’s a good trick, a very good trick. I admired it. Until I came to see that he has been playing a similar trick upon me. Hasn’t he?”
I would have lied. I would have looked at him in consternation and then demanded that he explain. She gaped like a fish. Then, “This does not happen,” she said faintly.
“Really?” he asked her coldly.