“Might you have a rag?” she asked, glancing around. “Or my old dress?”
There was an odd glint in Natt’s watching eyes, and then a deliberate, unhurried glance downwards. “No,” he said coolly, “I do not. I had your frocks burnt, remember?”
Right. Ella’s mouth opened, and closed, and Natt gave a smug little pat to her cheek. “If you are a good lass,” he said, “I shall clean you later. With my tongue.”
Ella’s gasp was loud and shameful and utterly betraying, but Natt only grinned back, and made a show of licking his lips with his long, lascivious black tongue. “This shall please you,” he said. “Yes?”
The heat in his eyes was asking, seeking, speak truth — and Ella swallowed her instinctive rebuff, and took a deep, fortifying breath. Truth. She could do this.
“Yes,” she whispered, humiliating, true. “That would surely please me, Natt.”
His broad, wicked grin was reward all its own, as was the approving grip of his clawed hand at her breast beneath her cape. “Good,” he said. “Now come. Do you wish to see my rooms?”
His rooms? The sudden spark of interest was genuine, easy to speak, and Ella eagerly nodded, and belatedly glanced around the room. “Yes, of course. Is this one of them?”
Natt nodded too, suddenly looking almost — shy, and Ella blinked at that, and then at the room all around. It was a bedroom, surely — they’d been lying on a large, square bed, covered all over with furs, and boasting tall steel poles at each corner — and there were shelves along one wall, piled with a haphazard array of what looked like clothing and tools and trinkets. And on the other walls — Ella’s head tilted, and she stepped closer to look, keeping Natt’s hand in hers — there were carvings. Beautiful, impossibly detailed stone carvings, of orcs, and women, andbabies.
Ella could see where they started, on the far right of this wall, and how they seemed to follow a path, from one group, to the next. The first depicted a huge naked orc with hair that beamed out like a sun, and in one clawed hand he held what looked like a pickaxe, wielded against the wall’s corner. And in his other arm he grasped an equally naked woman, small but smiling, and the woman’s hand — Ella flushed — was clenched around his huge, dripping cock.
And from that cock, a gorgeous spray of delicate carved lines led over to five more orcs, each one markedly different than the others. The first was huge and bare, with equally huge genitalia, his muscled arms crossed over his broad chest. The next wasn’t quite so tall, but broader, with a sword gripped in both hands. The third was tall and slim, with wild hair and oddly arresting eyes, and the fourth was shorter, and held a book and a quill in his clawed hands. And last in the line — Ella’s eyes studied it in the flickering candlelight — gently cradled a pointy-eared, black-haired babe in his powerful arms, while lines of beautiful, curling, unreadable script soared from his open mouth.
It was Grisk. The Speaker.
“What does he say?” Ella whispered to Natt’s silent body beside her. “Can you read it?”
Natt’s replying nod was quick, immediate. “It reads, I am Grisk,” he said. “I Speak for my kin. Should you not grant me your truth, I shall draw it from you, and speak it for all to hear.”
They were the same words Natt had spoken earlier, the same vow, and Ella’s hand on his had gripped tighter, drawing him closer. And then she moved to the next grouping, connected by more of the delicate carved lines, drawing from the Speaking orc’s bare cock.
“His son, right?” she asked, with a smile up at Natt’s face. “You orcs are not subtle, at least.”
Natt grinned back, and then began to lead Ella down the row of carvings, following the lines from one orc to the next. These orcs all had women by their sides, some tall, some short, and they were almost all scantily clad, like Ella was, with short capes and skirts. And in their arms there were always children, usually one, but sometimes two or three, and from one of the children would come the next grouping, and then the next, and the next.
“This orc,” Natt said with pride, gesturing at a tall, dangerous-looking orc, with an equally tall, topless woman by his side, “was my father’s father. Thrakfarr. He and his mate Joya bore two sons. One of these was my father” — he tapped at the taller of the two children, standing beneath them — “and the other fathered Thrain and Thrak, who you have met. And thus…”
Natt’s voice trailed off as he led her to the next carving, the last one in the row. “My father,” he said, quiet. “And my mother. And me.”
Ella stepped closer to the wall, studying it, searching first the depiction of Natt’s tiny face, the adorable pointed ears and snubbed nose, the already-sharp teeth. And then, Natt’s father, tall and scarred and powerful-looking, with Natt cradled in the crook of his arm — and beside him, a lovely, smiling woman with long, curling hair.
“Her name was Sonja,” Natt said, quiet. “My father said this is a good likeness of her.”
His clawless hand had reached out, stroking reverent and gentle at the woman’s stone face. And blinking at her, at him, Ella realized, again, that the clothes this woman was wearing were again almost identical to her own. A short skirt. A fur cape. And mismatched jewels hanging from her ears, and hernose, and — Ella twitched — even a long chain dangling out from under her cape, just where a nipple piercing might be.
Ella was still blinking, digesting that, when Natt followed the curving lines from Rakfarr, to — nothing. A blank wall. Emptiness.
It was startling enough that Ella twitched, her eyes darting up to Natt’s beside her, and he gave a grim smile, flattening his hand against the smooth stone. “They are not yet carved,” he said. “Not until I have lived long enough to gain a mate, and a son, to carry on this gift for my kin. If I fail in this” — his mouth tightened, his eyes sliding away — “it shall be Thrain or Thrak, if the gods see fit to bless one of their sons as Speaker.”
Oh.Oh. Ella’s eyes were fixed to the blank wall, suddenly, because once again, she hadn’t eventhought. Natt wanted a mate. Natt wanted ason. Not an illicit, secret liaison as an already-wedded lady’spet.
And he’d spoken to her of that truth, that first night, hadn’t he? I longed to claim you as my mate, he’d said. I should have whelped so many sons upon you, I would now have a wholebroodto my name.
But this could not be.
Ella had to rub at her eyes, at the sudden heat prickling at her face. Dear gods, she’d been foolish, and so superior, so presumptuous. Twelve generations of Natt’s lineage carved into a gods-damnedwall, just waiting for him to pass on his rare, impossible magic to his own son — and she’d wanted him for apet.
“Your portrait will be lovely, Natt,” she said, through the tightness in her throat. “And you’ll have an entire brood, I know it. You’ll set a new record, and all your descendants will admire you, and wonder at your shocking virility.”
Natt was still for a moment, but then smiled again, if rather halfhearted this time. “They shall give me the largest prick of them all,” he said lightly. “And mayhap they shall carve it spewing seed, all over the floor at my feet.”
