Page 6 of Her Orc Blacksmiths

Sarrai waves off my worry. “She will want to see you, I am sure. Uram’s mate is kind, and I like her. We can all go to the baths together after supper.”

I must have heard her wrong. “To the baths? Together?”

I’ve never bathed with another person in my life. The baths at our inn have individual cubicles where the guests can lock themselves in for privacy—but as the innkeeper’s daughter, I’ve always enjoyed the privilege of bathing in my own room, even if I had to carry the water myself. I think wistfully of the large copper tub my father had purchased several years ago, and of how lovely it would be to fill it with hot water and sink inside it.

“The baths are the best place in this Hill,” Sarrai confides. “Well, apart from the fighting rings.”

I can’t imagine how the two would compare, but I don’t want to offend her with my doubts. There’s more I want to know about the baths, but Ritta arrives right then with a platter full of cold meat cuts and bread, and I forget all about it.

Despite having raided my parents’ pantry before departing early this morning, I’m suddenly ravenous. I hadn’t had that much to eat apart from apples, biscuits, and the cured meat the orc women had shared with me, and the food here is delicious.

The meat, a nice cut of wild boar roast, is sliced thinly, juices dripping to the platter below. Ritta mops up the salty sauce with pieces of the crusty bread, and I follow suit, taking big bites of food, too hungry and tired to care about propriety.

“This is good,” I mumble. “Do you think they need help in the kitchens? I can do anything—cook, clear the tables, wash the dishes.”

I’d pitched in at my father’s inn over the years, not just taking over the organizational tasks from him but serving in the taproom and helping the kitchen maids whenever we fell short of employees, like the night my father turned Rose out the door. The memory of that still shames me, because she’d done nothing wrong, of course, yet I couldn’t help her keep her post.

Still, I hope she’s happier here than she ever was in our little village.

“We can ask in the morning,” Ritta says, her tone calming. “There’s no rush. But I’m sure Mara will find you some work to do.”

“Mara?” I ask.

Sarrai cores a juicy pear and hands me a slice. “The Steward of the Hill. She’ll know what to do with you.”

That sounds much better than having to meet the king and queen. I finish up the pear and dig through my saddlebag for the last of the biscuits, sharing them with the two orc women. Rose is still nowhere to be seen, and I worry that whoever was sent to fetch her might wake her and her mate from sleep. I really don’t want to be a bother.

I’m just about to suggest we leave them to rest and just proceed to the baths on our own when the noise of a commotion captures my attention. The raised voices are coming from another corridor leading from the great hall, not the one we’d arrived through. I can’t distinguish the angry words, but the voices are undoubtedly male.

Then a tall orc male appears through the arch of the tunnel, closely followed by another. I stare openly, not even bothering to mask my curiosity, because everyone else in the hall is doing the same.

“I won’t tell you again,” the older orc snarls. “If you can’t work the fucking bellows, leave them alone.”

“How do you suppose I should work, then?” the younger one snaps. “And it’s not my fault you left the dustpan right beside it. I’m not cleaning up that mess in the morning.”

Their quarrel would be enough to have everyone staring at them, but it’s their state that has us goggling at them. Both orcs are covered from head to toe in soot, their clothes ruined, their faces smeared with black and gray streaks. The older orc makes a frustrated grumble and runs his fingers through his long hair, leaving smudged fingerprints on his forehead.

“Oh, it’s these two again.”

I swivel around to look at Ritta, who has returned to her biscuit, nibbling carefully around the blackberry-jam-filled center.

My face must express my curiosity, because she shrugs and adds, “They’re the blacksmiths. They’ve been at each other’s throats ever since Morg returned from his apprenticeship and took up a post beside Torren in the forge.”

I turn back to stare at the two males. Morg and Torren—though I don’t know which is which—have progressed between the tables, still growling at each other. At first, I think they might have come here for supper, dirty though they are, but they appear to be on the way through to the tunnel next to our table. I suppose they’re heading for the baths. Or at least I would be if I was in their state.

But before they stomp out of the great hall into the corridor, the younger orc suddenly stops. The older one, who was following close behind, smacks into him, sending both stumbling.

“Watch where you’re going, fool,” he snarls.

But the younger orc pushes him off, his nose in the air, sniffing. Then the older one freezes as well, an arrested expression coming over his smudged face as his nostrils flare.

A strange sense of foreboding comes over me, half fear, half breathless anticipation.

The older orc finds me first, his dark gaze focusing on me. His lips part, and his expression changes to one of wonder. Then his companion scrambles over the large dining table and lands on the bench next to me. He takes my hand between his dirty palms and kisses my knuckles reverently, his brown eyes wide.

But the older orc slams his hands on the table and roars, “Get your hands off my mate!”

Chapter

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