He worked the comb through the ends first. The tangles from two days of wind and riding gave way under his hands.
"My mother made the comb," he said. "She carves bone when she can't sleep."
Mab stilled. He'd mentioned his mother before—the three-day labor, the story she told anyone who'd listen. But that had been Drogga's voice, Drogga's teasing warmth. This was different. This was Varek offering something from his own hands.
"Does she not sleep often?"
"She raised two sons who became warriors." The comb moved higher, working through the middle lengths. "She hasn't slept well in thirty years."
Mab tried to imagine it. A mother who worried. A mother who carved bone in the dark hours because her children were out in the world doing dangerous things and she couldn't stop them.
"Will she—" Mab stopped. The question felt too large for the quiet of the pool.
"Will she what?"
"Will she mind?" The comb moved through her hair in long, slow strokes, and she made herself say it. "That you've claimed a human?"
Varek's hands stilled for a moment. Then resumed, working through a tangle near her crown.
"She'll mind that you're human the way she minds that winter is cold. It's a fact. It changes nothing." The comb reached her scalp, and he drew it through from root to tip in one long stroke. "She won't care what you are. She'll care only that you're mine."
Varek set the comb aside and reached for the pot. His fingers scooped out a measure of the pale salve, and he began working it through her hair, starting at the ends where the wind had done the most damage.
Mab stared at the steam rising from the water. At her hands, pale and pruned beneath the surface. At the mineral deposits glowing white on the rocks around them.
An orc war-leader was conditioning her hair.
The thought arrived fully formed and absurd, and she had to press her lips together to keep from laughing. Or crying. She wasn't sure which would come out if she opened her mouth.
Monsters,the stories said.Beasts. Savages who eat human flesh and wear our bones as trophies.
Mab had grown up on those stories. Everyone in Valdara had. The nurses whispered them to frighten children into obedience. The priests invoked them from pulpits to justify the border wars. The lords used them to explain why the taxes were so high, why the levies took so many sons, why the realm must always be vigilant against the green tide from the mountains.
She had believed them. Orcs were dangerous. Orcs were other. Orcs were the thing that waited in the dark beyond the borders of civilization.
No one had ever mentioned that an orc might comb her hair.
"Tell me about Northwatch," she said.
His fingers paused in her hair. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything." She watched the steam curl off the water. "I've only ever heard the stories. Orc fortresses built from human bones. Fires that burn with the fat of the slain. Children stolen in the night to feed the—" She stopped. The words tasted different now, ridiculous and obscene in equal measure. "I don't know what's true."
Varek's hands resumed their work, smoothing the salve through her hair with steady strokes. "The truth is less interesting than the tales."
"Tell me anyway."
"Northwatch is stone and timber. Built into the mountain, not on top of it. The walls are granite. The fires burn pine and oak, same as anywhere." His fingers found a stubborn tangle and worked it loose. "We don't steal children. We don't eat human flesh. We don't build anything from bones except tools and combs."
His voice was matter-of-fact. No defensiveness. No bitterness. Just the plain truth offered like bread.
"The fortress sits at the head of Blackridge Pass. Fifty souls, give or take, who live there year-round. Warriors, healers, smiths, tanners. Families."
His hands moved to her scalp, working the salve in with slow circles that made her eyes want to close.
"Hot springs run beneath the mountain," Varek continued. "Channels carved into the stone carry the heat through the fortress. Even in the deepest winter, the halls stay warm. The children run barefoot on the stones."
Mab tried to picture it. Warmth in winter. Orc children. A fortress that wasn't cold gray misery but something alive, something inhabited by people who had chosen to be there.
