Page 24 of Ogres Don't Play

“Arrook said?”

“Yes, Rook the Luthier, your uncle, said.”

She blinked at me. “Then true. Arrook always right.”

“Wait, so you don’t actually want to learn music?”

“Arrook say, is true.”

I sighed heavily and went to my bed, pulling on a nightshirt with ‘Thinking outside the Bach,’ on the front. Anna had given it to me a few months ago, and I’d never had anyone ever give me clothing before as a present, so even if the pun was seriously bad, I loved the shirt.

Lanise frowned at me for a moment, and I thought she might say something about me trading the elven light armor for cotton, but she only sniffed and returned her focus to the possibleattack routes. Good. She could protect the armor while she was at whatever she was doing. Guarding me. She was obviously guarding me, but that wasn’t her actual role here, was it?

I slipped into my blankets, snuggling into a bed that was much too big to be in by myself, but I didn’t have too much time to listen to my heart play the sad song of loneliness before I fell asleep, the deep sleep of one still recovering from a goblin assassination attempt. I would make them regret it, I thought before I was swallowed up in dreams of ogres and orchestras. I would make them pay for it in money and music.

Chapter

Ten

Iwoke to the sound of chisel against stone, tap, tap, tapping. The hall had been quiet for the last six months since I’d run out of my grant money. Stone workers were expensive, particularly stone guild members.

I sat up, forgetting to be careful, and there was Lanise, sitting in her chair. She nodded to the tray on my bedside table.

“Eat. Now.”

The scent of buttery garlic infused potatoes had me focusing on the food instead of her. I ate, like I hadn’t eaten in a year. I finally threw back the blankets and got up.

“Wear armor,” she said, pushing the elven light armor at me.

I pushed it back at her. “I can’t wear that.”

“Wear armor,” she repeated, pushing it at me so tenaciously.

I sighed heavily as I studied the ogre. “Look, Lanise, we need to work on your tone. If you’re going to learn music, you’ll have to learn enunciation and intonation, and you aren’t going to get that by repeating the same thing in the same way, particularly when there’s nothing musical about it. Try again.”

She frowned at me, confused, and I took that moment of distraction to duck around her and lunge for the door, getting through it while I held my last piece of toast. I munched it whileLanise followed me, the ogre steps heavy behind me as I floated down. I felt really, really good. My heart sang its happiness, the world so bright in the reflection of my sweet, beautiful love.

I jerked to a stop for a second. My heart was singing what? An image of Rook the Luthier holding me in his arms through the night hit me hard, and I almost slipped down the steps and to my death. Instead, I pulled my shoulder painfully, holding onto the rail before I shook my head and continued down the stairs.

I followed the sounds of the tap, tap, tapping, until I got to the hall that had been so festive and full of people the night before, but was now emptied out, with large scaffolding up one wall to the very top of the room. Ogres were working on the wall, from enormous ogres like the biggest battle ogres I’d seen to smallish, but still much bigger than Rook the Luthier. I stared at one of the biggest ones who worked, clinging to stone with his toes while he chipped out an old slab of stone that was in particularly bad shape. There was something so familiar about those raw, muscular shoulders. Could he possibly be the ogre who had covered me with his body to save me from the falling rocks?

I think he was. I watched him blatantly, trying to match the memory of the guy climbing the city hall with this ogre in my music hall, until he must have felt me staring at him, because he turned around slowly to meet my eyes. His eyes were definitely the same as before. How convenient to have the ogre I wanted to pay back, working in my hall.

His gaze traveled from my head, down my night shirt, to my bare knees and down to my toes. They curled at the attention, and I wished I’d taken Lanise’s advice and worn the light armor. How could anyone take me seriously in a nightshirt, particularly one with such a bad pun?

He slowly pivoted, handed his chisel to another ogre and then dropped, loose and easy, to the ground like it wasn’t atwenty-foot drop with his massive muscled frame. He didn’t even make a resounding crash when he hit, and then he walked towards me slowly, head cocked as he studied me and my nightshirt. And bare feet.

“Thank you,” I said hastily, once he was close enough to hear.

He frowned, hairless brows drawing together. “We have barely started. No need to thank. We are paid well.” His deep, low bass made my bones throb. What would it be like to hear him sing a duet with an elf?

I beamed at him. I had an entire hall filled with ogres. They were definitely going to sing for me. “I meant thank you for saving me from the stones falling on top of me. I’m trying to think how I can repay you for saving my life, but I don’t know what ogres want.”

He studied me, then his gaze fell to my shirt before he raised his head and frowned again. “Think outside the Bach? What is that?”

“It’s a pun, a play on words. Do ogres not have puns?”

“Play on words…No. Speaking one word for a different truth is not the ogre way. Lies do not come easily to us.”

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