Page 1 of Orc’s Gallows

ONE

ISMERIE

The bell tolls, and my stomach clenches.

Not from fear. From hunger.

I hate that about myself. Hate how my body responds to the deep iron clang rolling across Blackhook City, how my pulse quickens and my mouth goes dry. The enchanted bells send waves of ending magic through the cobblestone streets, rippling outward from the Bell Towers.

The crowd surges toward the Grand Gallows, and I let myself be carried with them. Another body in a sea of bodies. Another citizen eager for the morning’s entertainment.

Gods, I’m going to be sick.

I pull my dark cloak tighter, keeping my gloved hands pressed against my sides. The sigils tattooed on my palms itch beneath the worn leather—self-inflicted marks designed to help me channel power without losing myself to it. Without becoming what I feed on. I carved them myself at sixteen, using a knife heated over a candle flame, biting down on a leather strap so my screams wouldn’t wake the neighbors. The scars healed wrong, the way they always do when you brand yourself with intent. Now they throb with each execution, reminding me what I am.

The execution square opens before me, a vast stone plaza dominated by the Grand Gallows. Three stories of iron-and-oak construction rise against the bruised morning sky, rune-carved beams casting long shadows across cobblestones stained rust-brown from generations of blood runoff. The stains never fully wash away. I’ve watched servants scrub at them after particularly messy hangings, watched the brown slowly creep back no matter how much lye they use.

The city bleeds. It takes its time about it.

The platform floor is stained so dark with old blood that the wood has turned black. Death wards cover every surface, carved deep into the ancient timber in patterns that make my skin crawl. They’re meant to contain supernatural activity, to prevent the condemned from using magic in their final moments. The ropes are braided with witch-hair for the same reason—thick coils that suppress magical resistance, that keep practitioners docile as the noose drops around their throats.

I count the nooses hanging ready. Six today. Only one will be used this morning, but the city likes its options. Blackhook executes efficiently, the pamphlets say. Blackhook maintains order.

The crowd presses closer, and I catch fragments of conversation. Bets on how long the drop will take. Speculation about whether the condemned will cry. A vendor pushes through with a tray of meat pies, shouting prices that seem obscene for a hanging. A woman near me laughs at a companion’s joke, the sound bright and careless in the iron-tinged air. Two men argue about whether today’s witch is prettier than last week’s. An old woman clutches prayer beads, her lips moving in silent petition—though whether she prays for the condemned or against her, I can’t tell.

This is entertainment to them. A morning’s diversion before returning to shops and trades and the comfortable rhythms of their ordinary lives. They’ll go home after and eat their noon meals, maybe tell their families about the hanging over roasted vegetables and fresh bread. Did you see how she trembled? Did you hear the sound when the rope caught? Their children will learn that this is normal. That watching people die is what citizens of Blackhook do on fine mornings.

I should judge them for it. I don’t have the right.

The drums begin.

A ripple runs through the crowd as the Execution Hall doors swing open. Guards emerge first—humans and orcs in matching black armor, their faces blank with professional detachment. Then the prisoner.

She’s young. Younger than me, barely twenty if I had to guess. Ash-blonde hair hangs lank around a face pale with terror, and her hands are bound before her with suppression chains that glow faintly with active magic. She stumbles on the cobblestones, nearly falls, catches herself with a grace that speaks of training. A practitioner. A witch.

Like me.

The charges are read from a scroll as the guards march her toward the gallows. Cursing a merchant’s crops. Causing blight through malicious magic. Evidence presented to the satisfaction of the City Council.

The evidence is horseshit. I know because I’ve seen the real curse-worker—an older witch with gray-streaked hair and a permanent sneer, one who paid off the right officials to ensure someone else took the fall. I watched her leave the courthouse three days ago with a smug smile and a purse considerably lighter than when she’d entered.

The girl climbing the platform stairs didn’t curse anyone’s crops. She’s dying for another woman’s crime, another woman’s malice.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

The Gallows Warden takes his position.

I’ve seen Brannok Redrope a hundred times from this same spot, watched him perform his duties with the same brutal competence he brings to everything. But today my gaze catches on him and holds in a way it hasn’t before.

His skin is dark green, weathered by years of standing on exposed platforms in all weather, marked with pale scars that coil around his forearms like serpents. Rope-burn marks, I realize. From executions gone wrong. From condemned who fought the noose. Every scar tells a story of someone who refused to die quietly, and he wears them without shame. Badge of his profession. Proof of his experience.

His tusks are polished and fitted with iron caps etched with death wards. The caps glint in the morning light as he moves, as he takes his position beside the lever that will end a young woman’s life. His black hair is cropped brutally short, practical for a man who works with rope and trapdoors. A crimson sash crosses his chest—the symbol of his office, marking him as the city’s chosen instrument of ending. His eyes⁠—

I look away before I can catalog his eyes. I don’t need to know what color they are. Don’t need to notice the way they sweep the crowd with cold assessment, cataloging threats and witnesses with equal dispassion.

He’s the enemy. The hand that pulls the lever. The man who kills people like me for a living.

He’s also keeping me alive.