Page 46 of The Orc's Wife

Holding the knife, I turned. Nat was kneeling by Urzulah, holding a heavy metal tray and bashing Urzulah on the face with it. It wasn’t enough to keep her down, though. Urzulah took hold of Nat’s hand with a snarl and pushed herself up, using her other hand. Nat cried out in pain, and I jumped to Urzulah’s other side. If I made it while both of her hands were still occupied…

I slit her throat.

For a moment, none of us moved. We were a tableau of pale human skin and the orc green, frozen motionless. And then, scarlet blood gushed from Urzulah’s neck. I plunged the knife deeper and pulled it free, and Urzulah made a weird sound, something between a croak and a giggle, and she toppled back, her mouth opening and closing helplessly…

“Move!”

Laya was pushing me away and putting a rag under Urzulah’s bleeding neck, not caring about the claws that were weakly scraping against her arms as Urzulah was bleeding to death.

I understood what she was doing. Blood. It was difficult to wash it off the porous stone floor. If Urzulah had fallen on a rug, that rug could be rolled up and burned, but as she was bleeding on the floor…

“The smell,” I said, my voice sounding muffled in my ears. If an orc entered the bedroom, they would smell Urzulah’s blood at once. And we were one day away from the festival, the pivotal point of the rebellion. If Urzulah’s death was discovered now… I didn’t even dare think what would happen.

It couldn’t be discovered.

“First clean it,” Laya said. “Then worry about the smell.”

I nodded, looking at Urzulah. She was dead already, her empty eyes looking at the ceiling, devoid of expression. I got up, and I wasn’t even shaking.

“Wait,” Laya said. “Don’t touch anything. Your hands.”

I looked down. My hands were covered in the sticky red of orc blood.

“The bath,” I said.

Nat stoop up. She was shaking so bad it took her two attempts before she was standing, but the expression on her face was calm. Tranquil, even.

She went into the bath and turned the valve, opening the flow of water. I washed the blood off my hands and Nat was standing by my side, swaying slightly. When I was finished, I looked at her, but her hands were clean. Then, I noticed her dress was splattered with blood.

I looked down at myself. Blood had soaked through my dress around my knees.

“Undress,” I said, starting to remove my clothes myself. “Put everything in the tub.”

I had only my underwear left, while Nat could stay in her shift. But it would be best if we could wash thoroughly and get completely new clothes that had been nowhere near Urzulah’s blood.

When we got back to Laya, she was standing in front of Urzulah’s open wardrobe.

“I need something else to soak up the blood, but her clothes are all leather…”

Quickly, I dashed back to the bathroom and brought our dresses.

I tied my dress around Urzulah’s neck. We had to move her, and we didn’t want to leave smears of blood on the floor. We pulled her body away from the puddle of congealing blood and put Nat’s dress under Urzulah’s head. Washing our hands as soon as they got bloody, we managed to clear the floor, removing rugs and woven mats.

Finally, pulling and heaving, we dragged her to our room. Before we left her there, I snatched the only thing I had: the small bottle of the Spider’s Tear essence. We would use it.

We pushed a rolled-up rug under the door on the inside of the room to cover the crack as best we could, and we locked the door. She wouldn’t start smelling bad for two more days, hopefully. It was enough time. Maybe we could really hide her death from everyone, I thought. Maybe it would work.

But first, we needed to clean the mess. Laya, the only one whose clothes were still clean of blood, went out and fetched three sets of clean clothes, which we didn’t put on yet. She brought a tub of soap, brushes and rags, and we got to cleaning.

When all the blood was removed, we poured oil over the rags and brushes and burned everything in the fireplace, throwing more and more wood inside to make the fire burn hot and destroy all the smell. The smoke would also do nicely to cover anything we’d missed.

Last, I poured some essence over the spot on the floor where Urzulah had died and in front of the door to the room where her body was hidden. We took the key and threw it down into the shitting hole in the bath.

And then we washed, lathering our hair and bodies in the soap, scrubbing under our nails, behind our ears, rinsing our mouths and noses. We put on the fresh clothes, which fit badly, but at least they didn’t stink of blood.

We shared the essence of Spider’s Tear, rubbing it onto our napes. The only thing left to do was to wait and hope for the best.

And until that moment, I had felt fine. I had had a purpose. My movements had been quick and precise, my thoughts clear.

---