He turned his head, meeting her eyes through dark lashes and the snapped arrows on his shoulder armor. “Is there a knight among us?”
The mere act of meeting his eyes seemed to pierce right through her. Nettle faltered, dipping a few inches in the air. Her first thought was to zip away, to flee back to the safety of the rafters.
No, she wouldn’t be frightened. She had come too far for that.
Nettle steeled herself, crossing her arms over her chest. “I have a job for you, bounty hunter.”
He had a wolfish smile, his tusks looking terribly sharp within it. “Do you, little flea?”
Nettle frowned.
She swallowed down her offense, not just at being called a bug, but that he felt the need to throw ‘little’ on there. ‘Flea’ already implied as much. Redundancy was not the sort of quality she cared for in a companion. Besides, she was much larger than a flea, nearly as tall as his thumb.
Nettle eyed the rest of the pub. Rowdy as it was, it still did not feel wise to discuss her plans out in the middle of the floor.
“Join me for a drink, and we’ll talk,” she said, lifting her chin towards the far end of the bar.
Perhaps it was too forward, too assuming, too bold from her. But she held his gaze, and after a moment, he nodded.
“I suppose one drink is enough for the size of you,” he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched around his tusks. “Do they charge you by the thimble?”
Nettle pressed her lips together, and flitted down to the emptier, quieter end of the bar, taking one of the empty stools for herself. “Unfortunately for me, they don’t. Besides, I don’t know that I trust them to wash the thimbles.”
She watched as he swung a leg over one of the empty wooden stools, a dusting of snow trickling down the folds of his cloak from the mountains of his shoulders.
Then the orc hooked the toe of his worn leather boot under the rung of her barstool. Her seat nearly jolted out from under her as he tugged her closer to him. He settled an elbow against the bar, looming over her and taking up her entire field of vision.
Nettle felt utterly insignificant as his eyes drifted over her, assessing her. She watched a line between his nose and the corner of his mouth deepen as he frowned at her.
“What’s this job, then?” Silver asked, only to be interrupted by the tavern keeper approaching them on the other side of the counter. The bounty hunter rolled his eyes, waving to Erryc, “Bring me a flagon, and…”
“A sparkling pollen wine?” Nettle asked, her voice losing whatever edge it had. She had heard another patron ask for it the other night, and thought it sounded delicious.
“A sparkling pollen wine,” the orc repeated slowly, like he’d never used that combination of words before.
Suddenly, Nettle was all too aware that it wasn’t something a little tougher, like the hops-bitter brews all the brutish adventurers tended to.
“It was on the menu,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. Her cheeks and the tips of her wings flushed bronze.
“Is this your racket? You trick patrons into buying your drink for the night?”
Nettle did not dignify that question with an answer. Even if she did, it wasn’t any of his business. She did not intend to share anything unrelated to her business with him.
Shortly after, the tavern keeper brought over a flagon of ale in one hand, and in the other, her glass of wine.
Nettle was honestly a little surprised that an establishment with as many rough edges as this one could manage to produce a perfectly normal wine glass. But Erryc seemed a little proud, even, that he did.
She wasn’t sure how to go about drinking from this. The high-stemmed glass was taller than she was. She could flit up over the edge to lean down over, that was no way to drink. If she choked or gave herself the hiccups trying to sip her oddly dainty drink, she wouldn’t be able to maintain her mysterious air in front of the big tough bounty hunter.
She needed him to take her seriously, at least a little.
Silver thumbed the scratchy bristles on his chin, clearly he didn’t bother to shave every morning. “So, mosquito. Tell me this job before you bleed me dry.”
Nettle huffed a breath, and tried not to put her hands on her hips like she meant to lecture him. She needed to get along with him until the job was done, at least.
Of course, her self restraint did not keep her from asking, “Do you have to make the same joke over and over? It gets terribly boring.”
The orc lifted his ale to his mouth. “I’m not here to entertain you.”
