Page 2 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

Gathren gave him a sour look.

“That’s impossible, anyway,” said Iahir. “To see his body, you would have to be brought into the palace. There are no orcs in the palace. None. You would stand out rather badly.”

She grimaced, realizing this was likely true. High King Findas hated orcs, thought them vermin, had tracts made up about how he was purging the land of them as if they were an illness, and he didn’t want orcs anywhere, not even as servants.

“You could bring her in,” said Marthlis. “Of course, it wouldn’t do to have her in there and then immediately—” He snapped his fingers. “Findas dies. You’d have to bring her in a few weeks before.”

“How?” said Iahir. “There are no orcs, I tell you. The High King is insistent on elvish purity, even amongst the servants.”

“I seem to remember,” said Marthlis, looking Iahir over with a faint sneer, “you had a dwarf whore in your quarters.”

Iahir puffed on his pipe and looked at Gathren, smiling. “That could work.”

Gathren grimaced again. Should she protest, or would that mean all of the men in the room looked straight at her bosom? “I must sleep in your quarters?”

“There’s another room,” said Iahir. “It’s really a wife’s room, but I have no wife, and so, I did have a lovely dwarf companion there for nearly six months. You could stay there, and the High King would hate it. That alone would make it worth it.”

“If you blatantly antagonize him, won’t that mean it’s harder for you to get close enough to kill him?” said Gathren.

“Oh, I have been blatantly antagonizing him for the past six years,” said Iahir, leaning back in his chair.

“Trying to get the attention of your father is what you’ve been doing,” said Marthlis.

“You keep saying that,” said Iahir, “but I assure you, there is no getting my father’s attention. That is not why I’m doing this.”

“You, my lord, only do things to amuse yourself,” said Marthlis. “You care about no one and nothing, and you seem to take a certain perverse joy in doing things that repulse others, and because of your high status, no one can stop you—”

“All right, we’ve devolved into this again,” interrupted Iahir, getting up from where he sat. “This is typical, too,” he told Gathren. “I come to these meetings, and we all talk a lot and then ultimately decide to do nothing. The other thing the rest of them do is spend a vast amount of time finding fault with me.” He looked around at the other elves. “You all need me, and you all resent that fact. But do get in touch with me if you ever want to actually overthrow the government instead of just talking about it.” He leaned over to dump his pipe into a little ashtray in the midst of the table and then started for the door.

“Wait,” called Marthlis, ire in his tone.

Iahir stopped in the doorway. He was tall and lithe and golden, the sunlight from the window catching him there. He practically glistened. Gathren had not interacted much with the fair elves here in the south. The beauty of this man… it stole her breath. He turned, a smile playing at his lips. “What?”

“Take the orc princess,” said Marthlis, gesturing to Gathren.

“I’m not a princess,” she said.

“She can’t stay here,” said Marthlis. “I have nowhere to keep an orc hostage.”

“How long am I housing her?” said Iahir.

“Two weeks,” said Marthlis, and he let out a noisy breath as if it cost him to say this. “We will kill the High King in two weeks.”

2

“YOU DON’T LOOK like a whore,” Iahir was saying as they exited the front of Marthlis’s house.

The streets of the capital city of Renegahan were wide and made of white and yellow brick, a strange choice, Gathren thought, for it made all of the horse dung stand out all the more against them. She supposed, if the streets were clean, they might gleam and shimmer, like Iahir himself did.

Everything here, in this part of the country, was sunny and bright and yellow, too cheery for Gathren’s tastes. “I don’t look like a whore, because I am not one,” she said tightly to the elf lord she was now saddled with, apparently.

Iahir looked her up and down, furrowing his fair brow. He waved one hand absently, still scrutinizing her, and a servant scurried up and bowed his head.

“Sir,” said the servant, who was a Cirdan elf, the low elves, from the north. His hair was deep purple, bound in a braid down his back.

“My carriage,” said Iahir, still looking at Gathren.

“I’ll have it brought round, sir,” said the servant, who scurried off.