"No," he said. "I don't suppose you would."
He led her back through the corridor, up the worn stone steps, through the door into the night air of Northwatch. Verity followed, her mind already cataloguing questions about the archive's organization, about Varresh's systems, about the border skirmishes that would be recorded somewhere in those clay tubes and bound volumes.
About one skirmish in particular. One date. One location she had memorized years ago from the last letter her brother ever sent.
But those questions would wait. They had to wait. She had three months, and she had just been granted access, and the warchief was watching her.
She would be careful. She would be patient. She would do her official work and build trust and wait for the right moment to look for what she had actually come to find.
Chapter 4
Targesh had eaten ten thousand meals in the great hall of Northwatch.
He had eaten here as a young warrior, sitting at the far end of the long tables where the newest fighters were placed. He had eaten here as a captain, then as a commander, moving steadily toward the high table as rank and years accumulated. He had eaten here the night his predecessor died, the weight of the clan settling onto his shoulders like a yoke he had not asked for and could not refuse.
Ten thousand meals. He remembered almost none of them individually.
He would remember this one.
The great hall was not full, but enough of the clan had gathered that the long tables held perhaps thirty orcs. Targesh took his usual position at the high table, which was not elevated but simply placed where he could see every entrance and mostof the room. A warchief who could not see threats coming would not remain warchief for long.
Verity Dunmore sat at the end of the nearest long table.
She had not asked where to sit. She had simply assessed the room with those quick dark eyes, identified the least obtrusive position available, and settled into it as though she belonged there. As though she had been sitting in orc great halls her entire life and this was merely one more.
Targesh had known humans who performed confidence. Who puffed themselves up and spoke loudly and took up more space than their bodies required, trying to compensate for their smallness among larger beings. The archivist did none of this. She simply... was. Present in a way that did not demand attention but gathered it through sheer, unselfconscious absorption.
She had pulled out her journal before the food arrived.
Of course she had.
Targesh watched her write, her quill moving in short decisive strokes across the page. She was recording observations, probably. The layout of the hall. The arrangement of the tables. She had the look of someone who was always recording, always filing, always building a map of the world inside her head.
He understood that impulse. He did the same thing, though his maps were tactical rather than archival. Every room was a potential battlefield. Every arrangement of bodies was a formation that could become a problem.
The archivist was not a problem. She was barely a presence, utterly unthreatening by any martial measure.
And yet.
He kept looking back at her. The way she bent over her journal, hair escaping whatever arrangement she had attempted, that quill tucked behind her ear like a talisman. The ink stains on her fingers. The focused intensity of her attention.
The softness of her.
He noticed it the way you noticed a fire in a cold room. Not because you meant to notice. Because warmth drew the eye whether you willed it or not.
She was abundant, this human. Full through the hips and thighs, soft through the belly, her breasts straining against the fabric of her travel-worn dress. In the world of stone and iron that Targesh had inhabited for forty-seven years, she was incongruous.
He filed the observation away.
He was very good at filing things away.
The kitchen workers brought the first platters out from the kitchen—roasted meat, root vegetables glazed with honey, bread still steaming from the oven. The clatter of dishes and the murmur of voices rose as the clan began to eat.
The archivist did not look up from her journal.
Targesh watched her accept a plate that young Torgun pushed toward her. She acknowledged it with a vague nod, eyes still on her writing, and continued to make notes.
She did not eat.
