Since my people knew so little about bog orcs, I figured that bog orcs wouldn’t know much about the Avilet Kingdom either. And I was right, there was no recognition on his face at the sound of my name.
“Khala,” he repeated, as if tasting it on his tongue. “It’s lovely. I didn’t know that wild things had such pretty names. I thought they addressed each other mostly by grunts or with punches.”
That was the notion I’d actually held about the bog orgs before meeting him. Based on that knowledge, his name would be something like Noot or Gruk.
“You?” I asked, pointing at his chest.
“My name?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Grat.” He proudly slapped himself on the chest.
I snorted a laugh. Not exactly a Noot or Gruk but close enough.
“What?” He sounded confused.
“Good name,” I assured him, hiding a smile. “Strong.”
“Strong,” he agreed with a confident grin.
Maybe it was the food in my belly and the warm cup of tea in my hands that made me feel better than ever, but I found his smile rather handsome. Even the crudely healed scar on his face didn’t spoil it. On the contrary, it made his smile look cheeky, whether or not he intended it.
“Well.” He got up after finishing his breakfast and pointed at the pile of logs next to his chopping block. “This wood isn’t going to chop itself.”
“Can I help?” I jumped to my feet, eager to repay him somehow.
“You?” He gave me a skeptical once-over. “No. The last thing I need is you chopping off your leg by accident, provided you can even lift my ax. How about doing the dishes instead? Come here, I’ll show you how.”
He took a metal bowl and splashed some hot water from the tea kettle into it.
“Look, you take a plate like this, then the dishcloth…” He demonstrated the process of washing a plate step by step, obviously believing I’d never seen it done before.
He wasn’t wrong. I never had to wash my own dishes before, but not for the reasons he thought. Not so long ago, I had plenty of servants doing everything for me, including washing the dishes.
Trying to keep downwind from him, so as not to offend him with my smell again, I dutifully watched his demonstration, then diligently scrubbed the plates like my life depended on it, because it really did. If Grat sent me away, I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d last in the Wetlands on my own.
“Good girl,” he rumbled approvingly when I presented him with the clean dishes. “If you learn everything as fast and work as hard, we’ll get along just fine.”
CHAPTER 5
KHALA
Grat and I spent the entire day together, and it was probably one of the best days in my life. After breakfast, Grat took me to check the few traps he’d set and showed me how to reset those that had caught something in them.
We brought some sandwiches with us and had lunch in a small clearing next to a cranberry patch. After collecting the berries, we came back to the cabin to clean the small game that Grat had caught in his traps.
After a dinner of blood sausage, baked potatoes, and sauerkraut from a thick ceramic barrel in his cellar, Grat gave me a long, assessing look.
“All right, here’s the thing, Khala. I understand that you probably aren’t used to bathing…”
A new wave of mortification spread through me. I’d tried to keep my distance and stay downwind from him all day. But the pungent stench of the bear hide was impossible to conceal. The fur hadn’t been perfectly clean even back when I’d stolen it from one of the wagons during my escape. But after six weeks in thewoods, it had become filthy and rancid. My body underneath it didn’t feel much cleaner, either.
If Grat said I stank, it wouldn’t be a lie. But he tried not to offend me, choosing his words carefully.
“I’ll have to give you a bath before letting you into my cabin,” he said. “Of course, if you’d rather stay out here for the night?—”
“No,” I protested quickly. “I’ll bathe.”
