Page 3 of Orc’s Hex

The floor between us has developed a hairline crack. Directly between where he stands and where I stand, perpendicular to the hall’s long axis, fine enough to be invisible if the torchlight weren’t catching the raised edge at this angle. The black basalt fractured in a single clean line with no structural cause. The floor was whole when I walked it sixty seconds ago.

I look back up.

He’s watching me watch it. His jaw is set. He doesn’t offer an explanation.

I don’t ask for one yet. I hold it and stay in the conversation.

“Name your price.” Same voice. He speaks about the floor crack the way he speaks about everything: by not speaking about it.

I name a number.

He says yes. Flat, immediate, no delay. Either my price came in low, or what’s in his fortress is severe enough that money stopped being the relevant measure. Given the crack in his floor, I suspect the second.

A warrior steps out of the corridor to my left. Tall, orc, with the bearing of a man who has been running a garrison long enough that it has settled into his bones. He watches me with the frank wariness of someone who doesn’t trust witches and isn’t worried about whether I know it.

“Captain Varek Thorn.” Drazhul’s eyes cut briefly to him and back. “He’ll show you to your chambers. We begin assessments in the morning.”

“Tonight.”

Drazhul’s attention sharpens back to me.

“I need a walk of the space before I sleep in it. Upper floors, nothing invasive. Two hours.” I keep it matter-of-fact. “If there’s an active curse in this stone, it’s already adjusting to my presence. The longer I wait, the less clean my read.”

He’s running the logic. Not in any visible way—nothing is visible on this man—but there’s a quality to the gap that’s different from his usual—a man deciding whether to concede something he’s already concluded.

“Upper floors,” he says. “Tonight. Tomorrow we discuss protocol.”

“Upper floors tonight,” I say.

I start with the upper floors. They will tell me what questions to ask about what lies below.

Varek Thorn’s expression says he knows exactly what I just did. He turns without a word and heads for the corridor. I follow.

At the corridor entrance I stop. Look back.

Drazhul Xorn hasn’t moved from the center of his Great Hall. He’s looking at the floor—at the hairline crack running between us, still visible from here, a single clean fracture across centuries of polished stone. His hands are at his sides. Whatever is happening behind that controlled expression isn’t nothing.

Barely shows. But it’s there.

The stone hums beneath my feet.

I turn and follow Varek into the dark.

The guest chambers are larger than I need. Bookshelves built into the stone walls, windows overlooking mountain dark I can’t see through. Protection runes carved into the bedposts—old Blood Law work, faded to residue. Calibrated against curse structures from two centuries ago.

Either oversight or intention. I won’t know which until I know more.

Varek deposits me here with minimum civility. “Dinner will be sent up. The clanlord’s standing order is that contractors eat.”

“Noted.”

“The catacombs are off-limits without escort.”

“Noted.”

Three full seconds. He’s calculating exactly how much of what I’ve agreed to I intend to observe.

“I’ll post a guard⁠—”