Page 14 of Orc’s Harvest

Kalthor doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. He doesn’t tell me I’m right either, and for once I don’t need him to. Some silences are their own kind of mercy.

“Duty doesn’t require punishment.” His hand finds mine under the blanket, warm and certain, threading fingers through mine like he’s done it a hundred times before, not never. “You can love her and still let her have been wrong about one thing. Both of those get to be true too.”

The knot that’s sat behind my ribs for three years loosens, just enough that I feel the difference in how I breathe.

We stay like that a long while, his hand still wrapped around mine under the blanket, the fire burning low with nobody moving to feed it. When I finally look up at him, he’s already watching me, and nothing careful is left in his stare.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since the wheat field.” No hedging in it anywhere, his free hand coming up to brush my cheek with a gentleness that doesn’t match anything else about him. “Since before I knew your name. I’ve been waiting for a reason good enough to stop myself, and I’ve run out of ones that hold up.”

“I’ve wanted the same thing since you tore that Hollow Man off me by the throat.” Rougher than I intend, and I don’t bother softening it. “I didn’t think either of us was going to say so out loud.”

“I’m saying so now.”

This isn’t a maybe anymore. His hand curves warm along the side of my throat, and my whole body leans into it without asking my permission first. This is a when, and we both know it, and neither of us sees much point in pretending otherwise for one more second.

He’s near enough that I can feel his breath against my mouth when the scream cuts through the rain outside.

We both move before the sound finishes, the blanket falling away, Kalthor’s hand already on his axe as we clear the shelter door into the wet dark.

One of the warriors posted at the lean-to — a young one named Ellis, barely past his eighteenth summer, more spear than sense but steady enough in a fight — is down on his knees in the mud, both hands clutched over a wound in his side that shouldn’t be bleeding gold instead of red. A thread of light leaks up out of him, thin and bright even through the rain, and Fenn’s already got both hands pressed over the wound, trying to hold in something that has no interest in staying.

“What happened?” Kalthor’s already crouching on Ellis’s other side, one hand braced against the boy’s shoulder to keep him upright.

“Came out of the dark. Didn’t make a sound.” Fenn’s voice is tight, his own hands slick to the wrist. “Went straight through him and gone before I got a blade up.”

“Stay with us.” I drop to my knees in the mud beside him, hands already glowing faintly with everything I know how to do for a wound like this, though nothing I know how to do has ever looked quite like this before. “Ellis. Look at me.”

His eyes find mine, glassy and frightened, and for a moment I think we might actually hold him here.

Then the thread of light leaving his chest stops drifting loose and starts bending instead, curling itself into shapes too deliberate to be anything but intention, gold letters strung one after another in the rain above his failing body for every one of us to read.

BRING THE WITCH TO THE GRANARY.

Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Rain keeps falling through the gold letters like they’re not even there, and somewhere behind me one of the warriors mutters a prayer to a god I didn’t know anyone in this patrol still believed in. Kalthor’s hand finds my shoulder, and even through the rain I can feel exactly how hard he’s gripping it.

NINE

KALTHOR

The message is still burning behind my eyes when I give the order that ignores it outright.

“Circle of Seasons.” I don’t slow the pace to say it, Ellis strapped unconscious across a second horse behind us, his breathing gone shallow enough that every mile feels like a gamble I’m losing regardless of which road I choose. “Not the Keep’s granary.”

Zalie doesn’t ask why, riding close enough beside me now that I don’t need to raise my voice for her to hear it. She already knows why. Whatever wrote those words into the air over a dying boy doesn’t get to decide where I take her next — not toward it, not away from it, not anywhere at all. It made the mistake of asking, which means it’s already lost the only leverage it had.

Varok falls back long enough to ride at my other side, voice low enough that it doesn’t carry past the three of us. “You’re certain about this, my lord. Our own granary’s a straight ride. The Circle’s a gamble on a ward nobody’s touched in living memory.”

“The granary is exactly where it wants us.” I don’t look at him. “I’d rather bet on stone that’s waited twenty years to be used properly than walk into a trap with her name already written on the invitation.”

He lets it go. He’s fought beside me long enough to know when my mind’s already made up, and long enough to trust the reasoning even when he can’t see all of it yet.

“Two of Varok’s best stay on you once we reach the ward.” Final, the way orders come out of me whether I mean them that way or not.

“I already have one excessively large guard with obvious personal motives.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it, but I catch the smile she’s trying and failing to smother. “Doubling the number doesn’t make his motives any less obvious.”

“My motives don’t enter into it.”

“My motives have everything to do with this, and we both know it, so I don’t know why we’re still pretending otherwise two days in.” She adjusts her grip on the reins, far too satisfied with herself for someone lecturing a clanlord in front of his own patrol.