Page 1 of Wed to the Orc Captive

THE CAPTIVE

They had captured two orcs, was the news that rolled in, not during the raid, but in the aftermath.

It was news that rolled over me like rain does when your clothes are already soaked, when as far as you’re concerned, there isn’t any more that the water can do.

My father was dead. Jack Cooper hadn't been a good father, but he had been mine. And his death was going to cause me as many problems as his life had.

I trudged through the town to the guardhouse where Tenithin had set up his tax collecting table. People murmured as I passed. Someone— probably Winnifred— whispered that the overseer had demanded that they take the orcs alive. It was a man’s voice that snorted back, that by the blood on the clothes of the men who’d brought them, those instructions were not warmly followed.

I’d always heard more than I was supposed to, and it didn’t help me. The basket on my arm was heavy, and I focused on that, on pulling against the weight that tried to drag me into the mud.

The guardhouse was open. Tenithin, our resident vulture, hunched at the wide table, leaning over a ledger, and one of the men, Jarreth, lay moaning on a cot shoved against the wall, bloodied rags around his knee. The wooden lattice of bars locking off half this room usually held a few drunks or the occasional gossip, or once, John Creely’s son when he’d tried to steal a sow pig. Now inside that cage a man-shaped creature lounged against the wall near the bars, eyes closed, head tilted back, the sharp, cragged features of the murdering horde. A deep scar cut down his forehead, purple against the olive green of their kind’s skin.

“Ah, Annora!” Tenithin bleated. “I’d expected you.”

The orc’s eyes opened, and for a moment I forgot why I’d come. His yellow irises lit on me, and was this the last thing so many of the people I’d grown up next to saw, this burning color like molten iron?

“Ah, you noticed the orc,” Tenithin chuckled. “A nasty business, that. We’ll see what the overseer wants done with them, soon.”

The orc’s eyes slid over me. They had bloodied him up, clearly. There was a cut on the bridge of his nose, and bruising on his jaw and his cheekbone, but he looked utterly unphased, and maybe that was because of the scars that traced his skin, the way his nose had clearly been broken before. Maybe whatever human peasants could do was nothing to an orc. His eyes came back to mine, that yellow like a snake’s, and his mouth twisted, contemptuous, a smirk.

“Foul-looking things, aren't they? You don’t often see them up so close.”

The orc glanced at the tax collector and spoke in a deep, cynical voice that rippled, his accent rolling foreign from the cell. “We can understand your language.”

Tenithin looked back, sharply. “Well, wasn't no one talking to you, was there?” He put his back to the bars. “Ugly as sin. But we two have better things to talk about, don’t we?” His rheumy eyes trailed to my basket. “A…a piteous business, what happened to your father. I know his honor was sorry to hear it.”

False compassion was a performance I was familiar with. Even drowning, I knew the needed response. “He'll be missed.” The lie was a tang on my tongue.

“Of course, of course. Now the undertaker said there were…two brass candlesticks, a good blanket, and a stew pot, along with the deceased’s clothing?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?” His wet eyes stared. Oh. He thought I was lying. He thought I’d risk judgment to defraud the overseer.

But I wouldn’t be helped by hiding candlesticks. There was no salvation for me in blankets or a dead man’s boots.

“He was…not inclined towards earthly possessions.” Please look serene, please look serene.

Tenithin hummed suspicion, but didn’t argue, and none of this felt real. The tears from my father's burial had dried in my cheeks maybe an hour ago, or maybe that was rain.

“Well then, I assume you’ve brought…”

I drew out the two candlesticks. “Also…” I pulled out a couple jars of mixed greens in vinegar. “As a gift.”

“Ah.” He picked it up, in his broad hand.“The wife will be pleased. You learned this from Bogdanna, I assume, before…?”

I should lie. I should lie. I should— “It was my mother’s recipe,” I croaked out.

“Oh.” Disappointment tinged his tone. “Well. Still good for a bite, then.”

Jarreth groaned on the guards’ cot, twisting that leg. Tenithin was noting things down in his ledger, that he’d received the most valuable leavings of the dead. How much the candlesticks should be worth. That I was unmarried and now, unparented. I spoke, too quick, “Is someone coming to take care of him?”

“Hm? Who⁠—"

I looked at Jarreth.

“Oh, him. Well, Bogdanna would come, but Magdala's having her baby…”