Targesh exhaled through his nose. Verity had gone still beneath him, her hand trapped between their chests, her breath held.
"Tell them I will be there within the hour."
A pause. "Within the hour, Warchief?"
"Is there a problem with your hearing this morning, Kethrak?"
"No, Warchief. Within the hour." Footsteps retreated.
He looked down at Verity. Her flush had deepened, but she was biting her lip against a smile.
"I have an hour," he said.
"You have duties."
"I have an hour," he repeated.
Her hips shifted beneath him, pressing upward. Her voice dropped. "Then make it count."
He did.
An hour and twelve minutes later, Targesh walked into the council chamber with wet hair and the scent of her still on his skin.
Tormund was already complaining.
He let the words wash over him—weights and measures and accusations of bad faith—while he settled into his chair at the head of the table. His mind was elsewhere. His mind was in his quarters, where he had left a rumpled archivist gathering her scattered clothing and muttering about hair pins.
She would go to the archives today. She would bury herself in Varresh's web, chasing connections only she could see, searching for whatever she had truly come here to find.
He knew she had not told him the full truth. He had known since their first conversation in the archives, when she asked about border conflicts with too much specificity to be idle curiosity. She was hunting something. He did not yet know what.
He would find out.
Not by demanding it. Demands would send her retreating behind her vocabulary, building walls of methodology and scholarly distance. He would find out the way he had learned everything else about her—by watching, by listening, by letting her reveal herself in her own time.
He was a patient man.
Tormund was still talking.
"—and if the Mountain Clan cannot guarantee accurate weights on a simple iron shipment, how are we to trust—"
"The weights were accurate." Targesh's voice cut through the complaint without rising. "Your man measured wrong. This was established yesterday."
"My man says—"
"Your man was drunk." He held Tormund's gaze until the other orc looked away. "The shipment stands as negotiated. Ifthe River Clan has concerns about future transactions, bring them to me directly instead of airing them in my hall. Is there anything else?"
There was not.
The delegation left before midday. Targesh stood at the gate and watched them go, the train of warriors and pack animals winding down the mountain road until they disappeared around the first switchback.
The fortress settled back into its ordinary rhythms. The smithy resumed its clanging. Warriors returned to the training yard. Smoke rose from the kitchens as Kira began preparations for the midday meal.
He should be in the council chamber reviewing patrol reports. He should be meeting with Brenneth about the leather shipment for the southern camps. He should be anywhere except standing at his window, looking toward the archive building, wondering if she had found what she was looking for.
Targesh turned from the window.
He had work to do. A clan to lead. Treaties to maintain and borders to hold and warriors to train.
