Page 17 of Ogres Don't Play

“Who?”

“Rook the Luthier? We were in the middle of negotiations when…anyway, I need to speak with him.” And get him to untie me before I died from not being able to scratch the itch. All the itching. I was going to die from it for sure.

“You stay ‘til scabs heal. Goblin dust get in wound. Itch turn dead. You stay. I watch.” She nodded and then settled back into a chair she’d clearly made her own.

“You’re telling me that if I itch my scabs, I’ll die? That’s ridiculous.”

“Goblin dust kill if bomb fail. Goblins good at deading.”

Deading? I was actually having a conversation with a real ogre, not a pretty little artisan like the luthier. I wasn’t sure if Rook was torturing me for escaping his, ‘protection’ or whether I really would die if I scratched my itch, but either way, I was stuck with an ogre guard who didn’t take her eyes off me, like I’d vanish if she looked away for a second. That boded ill for any escape plans I was going to make, even if I did get my hands untied.

I smiled brightly. “I guess we’ll be here together for some time. What’s your name?” She wouldn’t tell me if she was a competent guard.

“Lanise. I stay with you at hall.”

Ah. This enormous green muscle-bound rock-crusher was Rook’s delicate little niece who wanted to be a musician? That was good. In that case, I should be able to use her love for music to help me get untied.

“Lanise, it’s so nice to meet you. What are your musical preferences?”

She studied me blankly.

After an uncomfortably long silence, I asked, “Do you play any instruments or are you a singer?”

She studied me blankly.

“Because you want to be at the music hall to study music.”

She blinked her big orange eyes once.

I exhaled and slumped down on the bed while my itching skin drove me to distraction. “You’re not very chatty all of a sudden.”

“You stay. No itch. No dead.”

“Sure. Sounds lovely. Hey, Lanise, how about if you scratch my skin? Just in between the scabs. It would be so nice.” I started wriggling around, trying to twist my body so I could rub my right thigh against the bed. It itched so abominably. I was going to die if I didn’t do something to relieve it.

She sat on me.

I gurgled and kicked my legs until she got off, studying me while I struggled to find my breath. I’d almost died from her massive weight. How many hundreds of pounds did she weigh? Maybe it was in the tons.

“You stay. Still. No itch. No dead. No hu-mil-i-ate.” She poked my forehead with each syllable while I deflated and gave in to the inevitable. She was a good guard. Good ogre guards had a single-minded devotion to their task that not even the most diabolical prisoner could distract them from.

Maybe if I hadn’t put Rook to sleep, he wouldn’t have me under such a conscientious guard, who was also my new musichall occupant. I’d definitely expected someone much younger. Apparently, using magic on him had really offended him, although he’d kidnapped me in the first place. Such hypocrisy. Not that I couldn’t respect him for finally taking my security seriously. I wasn’t some demure female who he could lock up without at least a few escapes.

Then again, the last time I’d escaped hadn’t gone so well, what with the whole goblin assassination attempt. There weren’t very many goblin assassination attempts because they were so good at what they did. They weren’t attempts. They were assassinations. Cutter, the music guild’s representative, was dead, and who knew what happened to his body? If I was truly the target of the attack, and I couldn’t see how anyone else would have been, that meant that someone really wanted me dead, which meant that I was safest right where I was, with the ogres. Only a complete idiot would attack ogres, even the small ones. He hadn’t seemed that small when he’d been throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me away.

No, he wasn’t very small at all. I swallowed hard while my heart beat too fast and my skin itched and my neck tingled. Would Rook be an answer to my growing problems, or would he be the biggest danger of all?

Chapter

Seven

“Finally! I’ve been tied up here for days!” I snapped at Rook when he bothered to come in my bedroom, carrying my harp, the small one that he’d repaired flawlessly, at least from the bed it looked flawless, but I’d reserve my judgment until I had it in my hands. My hands were currently busy being tied to the bedpost.

“Lanise has untied you several times.” His low voice was a shock to my system that made me slightly distracted from the helpless paranoia that had been growing for the last several days.

Lanise had also come into the bathroom with me, like she didn’t trust me not to scratch my scabs. Evil creatures, all of them.

“Where were you?” I’d worried about him more than I should have. What if he was attacked out there by his political enemies?

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