Close Kin (24 page)

"Really?" asked Irina
hopefully. She didn't like being scared. It had worn her out.

"Really,"
he growled. "Now, don't cry anymore. A beautiful girl
like you shouldn't ever have anything to cry about."
Irina gulped and
looked
up at the fanged goblin. He smiled broadly at her, but she didn't
faint.

"You
-- you think I'm beautiful?" she sniffled in a tone of wonder.

"I think you're
very beautiful," he assured her.

"Then I'm
pretty?" she asked, wiping her runny nose on the back
of
her hand.

"You're
the prettiest thing I ever saw," he declared firmly.

Irina
sat up a little straighter and forgot to cry for a minute.

"Then I'm not
ugly and clumsy?" she wanted to know.

"Anyone who
calls you that," roared Thaydar, "should be pum
meled and horsewhipped!"

Irina thought about Thorn and Willow
being pummeled and horsewhipped and broke into a little giggle. Then she looked
at her
goblin champion with new eyes. He was
so big and strong and
scary, he could just about do it, too.

"Does that mean I won't have to
do the butchering where we're going?" she asked in a tone of great
discovery.

"A little thing like you, with
her hands all covered with dead sheep?" boomed Thaydar. "You must be
joking!"

"No, she's
not joking," interrupted Seylin. "The men made
Sable
and Irina do all the butchering. They had a rule that the ugly people
butchered, and they said that meant the two women."

The cat-eyed
lieutenant looked at the charming girl he held
and
felt deeply and righteously indignant. "Well, not anymore!" he
promised stoutly. "My wife won't do any butchering she doesn't want to
do."

"Oh!" breathed Irina with
shining eyes. Now,
that
was a good reason to be the scary goblin's wife.

"No wonder
your dress is all covered with stains!" fumed Thay
dar. "We'll get rid of it right away, and you'll
have some nice clothes.
Ten
dresses, twelve, fourteen, as many as you want. I can't wait to see
you
in a nice green satin to match your eyes."

"But it's
winter," protested Irina doubtfully. "Don't I have to
wear
brown?"

"You can wear
any color you want," insisted the goblin. Irina's eyes grew large.

"Can I have a
blue dress?" she whispered in awe. Elves never wore blue, but it was her
favorite color.

"Of course you can have a blue
dress," growled Thaydar, smiling at her.

"Can I -- can I have a
red
dress?"
she faltered. She knew elves would never, ever wear red, but when fresh blood
spilled onto the snow, it was so rich and magnificent.

"You can have a red dress,
too," promised her goblin warmly,
and
Irina was beside herself with delight. All her life, she had hated
her
coarse, ugly clothes. She looked up at those terrifying cat-eyes and gave
Thaydar a happy smile.

"What about a
yellow dress?" she wanted to know.

Thaydar was feeling a little beside
himself, too. He'd sought
Emily's hand in
marriage for the honor of an elf-cross bride, and
he'd left the kingdom intent on the honor of a
pure elf bride. He had been terribly proud of the beauty of his hysterical
captive, but when
Irina smiled at
him, with those lovely green eyes, those perfect white
teeth, and that
adorable little chin, his tough old soldier's heart just turned to mush.
Thaydar's life was never the same again. Making Irina smile became one of the
goals of his existence, starting from that moment.

"You can
have five yellow dresses," he promised. It worked. She
smiled
again. "Make that ten." Her smile grew bigger.

"Now you're just being
silly," she said. He was glad she could
tell
because he wasn't entirely sure. Emily grinned, listening to them,
and Katoo and Brindle exchanged glances. Who would
have thought,
their eyes told each other, that the boss was such an
idiot?

Sable roused
herself to the dreary reality of slavery. She looked at
the
snowy barrenness around them, and a lump came into her
throat. This treeless wasteland was as frightening as the goblins were.
It
made her situation even harder to endure. She stared at the path
before her feet, listening dully to the crunch of
the snow, the growl of
the goblins'
voices, the thump of the horse's hooves, and Irina. Poor
Irina. Sable
looked up with a start. Poor Irina was -- laughing?

"... and we'll have a little
girl and a little boy," Thaydar was dreamily expounding for his giggling
bride. "The little girl just as pretty as her mother is, and the little
boy with fangs. And they'll be pages, and you'll go to court to see them
serving their turn by the King's throne, all dressed up in their uniforms, and
you'll just be so proud -- "

"You'll be
dead," interrupted a clear voice. Irina's face went pale.
Thaydar turned, astounded at the intrusion. It was the
other elf
bride.

"What did you
say?" he roared.

They stopped. All those animal eyes
were staring at Sable now. She flinched and ducked her head nervously, but she
was too upset not to speak.

"You'll be
dead, Irina," she said, "with that very first baby.
You'll die before you even see its face. We both will -- you
know that's
just a woman's life. He's telling you
a lie."

Irina began to
sob, and Thaydar was furious. "Goblins never
lie!"
he thundered angrily, and Sable flinched again at the sight of those blazing
eyes.

"She doesn't know that,
Thaydar," observed Tinsel reasonably.
"That
must be some old scary tale the elf girls told each other about
marrying
goblins. It's not true, Sable. Having a goblin's baby isn't different from
having an elf's baby."

Sable looked up at his friendly blue
eyes with a little feeling of relief, but she was confused at his apparent
sincerity.

"It
doesn't matter whether the father's a goblin or an elf," she told
him
in a low voice. "That's just what happens when women have a
child. Women have to die, that's how babies are
born." Tinsel
looked down at her sober face, puzzled as well.

"What a load of rubbish!"
roared Thaydar. "Women survive childbirth every day." Sable winced at
his loud voice and looked around nervously at all those strange eyes again.

"My wife's
still alive after two," observed Brindle helpfully.

"I have both my
grandmothers," added Katoo, his striped tabby face thoughtful. "And
my mother's still alive, and she had quadruplets."

"But I think you cat folk are
different," cautioned Brindle. "It's always quadruplets with you;
that's not really normal."

Sable stared at
the serious faces of the monsters, losing her confi
dence. Why would they try to talk her out of something
so obvious?
It must be a trick.

"Maybe
goblin women aren't like that," she said. "Maybe just elf
women
are that way. But I know it's the truth. I know! I've seen the women die."

"She's
right," said Seylin in the pause that followed. "Elf women
are
different from goblin women. They have a very hard time with
childbirth, and they can't survive it without
magic. I understand
what happened now. Sable has the camp chronicle, and
her great-
great-grandfather's last entry
told of a terrible accident. Almost all of
the women were asphyxiated in
one night. But the elf lord said that something even worse had happened, and
now I know what it was.
They lost the
birthing magic. Only those dead women knew
it. From that day on, the women in the camp were doomed to die in
childbirth.

"I suppose
they just told the little girls that that was the way life
was," he conjectured. "And by the time Sable
was born, they wouldn't
have remembered
anything different. Of course! That's why you didn't want to marry Thorn!"
he said in a tone of discovery.

Sable drew her breath in sharply,
feeling trapped by the revela
tion. Now all
the monsters knew that she'd refused her marriage out
of fear.

"But, Sable," he continued
earnestly, "you don't have to worry
about
that anymore. We have entire books of elvish birthing magic.
I can show
them to you when we get home."

Sable glared at the elf He called
that torture chamber a home! And how dare he play on her weakness like that,
trying to trick her now that he knew she was a coward!

"I don't
want to learn anything from you, you traitor!" she
hissed.
"The goblins' tame elf, going out and finding them fresh
blood. I begged you to leave so the goblins
wouldn't come, and you
promised me I was safe. You've never done
anything but lie."

Seylin's face fell,
and he looked away.

"That's not fair!" cried
Emily. "He didn't know that we were coming!"

"It's all
right, Em." He sighed. "She has a point."

"I don't
think you could call Seylin a traitor," said Tinsel. "Both
his
parents are goblins." Sable stared at Seylin in horror and bewilderment.
That handsome elf, a goblin's son? What other frightful things would they tell
her, and how could she tell which were true? "He's right, Sable,"
continued Tinsel. "We know lots of healing magic. You're not going to die
like that."

"I don't
believe you!" she cried desperately. "I don't believe any of you.
You're just telling us what we want to hear. You're trying to
calm
us with promises that nothing bad will happen because you think we're cowardly
and weak."

"We don't think you're a
coward," protested Tinsel mildly, but
Sable
wouldn't look at him anymore. "Well, we can tell you things,
but you don't have to believe us. Maybe it's
better if we showed you
something. I've been wanting to try this." And
he dropped his pack onto the snowy ground and began to rummage through it.

"Oh,
good," said Seylin, looking up again. "I've been wanting
to
try it, too.

Sable held her
breath. What were they going to try? She refused
to
look at the monsters; she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of
seeing that she was afraid. After a minute, she
felt something wet on
her scarred cheek. She tried to jerk her head
away, but the monster was holding her jaw.

"It's
all right," he said. "It's just a cream."

Now she felt it
on her other cheek. Then both cheeks grew warm,
very warm, as if they were close to a fire. Alarmed, she
tried to raise her hands to rub the stuff off, but he stopped her. Everyone was
star
ing at her with intense interest. She began
to panic in earnest.

"What
are you doing to me?" she cried.

Tinsel
turned her face, studying the cheeks with satisfaction.

"I healed
your scars," he said. "I wasn't sure if it would work on
such
old wounds, but it did very well. There's just a thin white line left on each
side."

He let go of her hands, and she
reached up to touch her cheeks. They were smooth and flat now. She couldn't
feel the scars at all.

"I'm glad they're not gone
altogether," he added quietly. "They must have taken such courage to
make."

Sable's heart was pounding. In a
dream, or in a nightmare, she turned frightened eyes on the others.

"Oh,
Sable, you're so beautiful!" exclaimed Irina happily.

Sable's hands
began to shake. Her scars! They had kept her safe.
She
wasn't safe now. She didn't want those eyes staring at her any, more. She
covered her cheeks with her shaking hands and turned
away. The silver monster put his arms around her, shielding her from
the others, and his sympathy made it harder to be
brave. She moved
her fingers against her cheeks, but her scars were
really gone. She drew her breath in quick gasps, trying not to cry.