Chapter 1 #4
I know he means the villagers and I know he has enough problems with everything else, so I shrug and grin, though ‘oddity’ is putting it lightly.
‘It’s getting better,’ I say, and it’s only partly a lie. ‘Your plan is working.’
Tom and the others have begun to warm up to me since, at Dane’s request, I started helping them with the building of the cottages. But the rest of the humans still avoid me at the best of times, though I’ve been living here on and off for the past five years.
He gives me a pat on the shoulder in commiseration and then disappears back inside, muttering something about Calder’s agenda.
Out in the sunshine, Halsford is beginning to wake, and I already see more than one fearful glance at my large, half orc stature. I almost wish we had another mission and could go back into the Dark Realms for a few months.
I let out a sigh and start walking with Jak back through the village in silence, wondering what the conjure Dane took off us was meant to do.
‘Do you think it was Locke?’ Jak asks as we walk down the center of the wide road.
‘I hope it wasn’t,’ I say quietly, looking up toward our cottage. ‘But Dane said such intricate magick takes great skill and I remember no other conjurers of such fine ilk.’
‘Not even in Dead City?’ Jak asks. ‘It could have happened there. Plenty of magickal cunts in that fucking place.’
I side-eye him. Does he really think that’s true?
‘Perhaps,’ I say noncommittally.
‘Locke is our friend,’ he mutters, and I can hear the fear of another betrayal in his tone.
‘I forget you were in Varrik’s fold for all those years sometimes,’ I say. ‘I imagine it’s not easy to trust after being lied to for so long…finding out that everything you thought you knew was a lie.’
Jak gives a jerky nod. ‘To have your mind altered with magick, to grow up with it, to realize a person you thought cared for you was actually the worst villain you could imagine… I don’t want to have been used thus by someone else I trusted, Morgan.’
‘I know,’ I say with a deep sigh.
‘Find me if anything comes to you? I’ll do the same,’ he murmurs.
‘Fine,’ I reply, and then hold out my hand as we reach the apothecary door.
He stares at it and then looks vacantly into my face.
‘For fuck’s sake, Jak. The cup! I know you won’t bring it home and it will go missing.’
‘Gods, don’t we have a bit more to worry about?’ he mutters, raising his hand where the cup dangles from his fingers by the handle, clearly already half-forgotten.
I shrug. ‘I like to control what I can.’
He places the cup hard in my open palm. ‘I was going to take it back later! And Nora could easily make another if it did disappear.’
I openly sneer at him. ‘They were made as a set. A new one might be a different hue than the others.’
Jak rolls his eyes and goes inside without another word. I put the cup on the doorstep as I go past our cottage. Then, I wander up to the ridge where a few of the other volunteers are already hard at work.
Five more cottages are almost finished. When we’ll need them it’s hard to say.
There are missions going on in the Dark Realms even now, some which yield humans who were taken from the Light Realm.
Many wish to return to their own villages and homes, but there are some who decide to stay here in Halsford to heal from the horrors of their captivity, and some have no homes to return to.
When the human workers see me, a couple of gazes alight with mistrust, but Tom waves at me and asks me to start with the roof on the last in the row.
It doesn’t escape my notice that it’s the only one where no one else is working, but I nod and climb the ladder easily, sitting at the top and taking a moment to look out at the rest of the buildings that I can see. Halsford is growing quickly enough that it could soon be called a town, I muse.
It’s been six winters since the first cabin was built here, surprisingly by two orcs, Drakar and Grim, trying to escape the Dark Realms. They brought the first human here, a former slave named Gwen who they helped to escape the Dark and became their mate.
I haven’t seen them since I came back, I realize, not even Gwen who usually spends much of her time in the apothecary. Perhaps I’ll visit with them later.
I pick up a hammer and begin to lay the clay roof tiles in the battens, nailing them down in neat rows from the bottom, slightly overlapping them to make the roof watertight.
Over the course of the day, I think only of my task, not letting my thoughts stray to other realms, or the fact that one of my oldest friends might have turned on me, and I can’t remember.
When the light begins to wane, I hear Tom call to the others that he’ll meet them in the tavern. I assume he only means the humans, so I ignore him, instead nailing in the last few tiles, trying to finish before it gets too dark to continue.
It’s a few minutes before I hear a cough and I peer over the edge of the roof to find three of the human men, including Tom, peering up at me.
‘Coming for a pint, Morgan?’
I can’t help my surprised look. ‘Aye. I’ll just finish the last one and I’ll be there.’
They walk off and I stare down at where they were standing for a moment, a small smile playing on my lips. Perhaps the tide is turning.
I hammer down the final tile and slide down the ladder to the ground, putting the tools I’ve been using inside the first cottage with all the others. Then, I head toward the tavern.
The Gray Shrew is at the top of the village. It’s one of the only other stone buildings, a testament to how important the place is to the humans here.
I go inside, stooping down to fit under the door frame. As I do, the dull hum of conversation drops, and I try to ignore it.
‘Morgan!’ Tom calls loudly when he sees me, raising his tankard in my direction and eyeing the other patrons with a determined expression.
I wonder sardonically if Lia and Dane have asked him to publicly acknowledge me as a friend, so that the others warm to me.
But, I go over and gamely greet the other men who’ve been working on the cottages with me. One of them, Ian, I think his name is, sloshes a pint toward me.
I take it from him before he empties it over me and give him a nod of thanks.
‘Got that entire roof done today, did you?’ Ian asks.
I nod. ‘Aye, it’s finished. Won’t matter if it rains now.’
Ian nods, looking over at one of the others and pointing.
‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say it?’ He looks at me.
‘I told ’em when you first started. That’s the Mountain, I said.
He’s built like a giant and strong as twelve oxen.
’ He nods. ‘And you proved me right. Aye, you rightly did. We’d have three cottages, not five almost finished if it wasn’t for you, orc. ’
I say nothing to his words, slightly amused and wondering how deep in his cups my new human friend is.
‘Don’t mind him,’ another one called Holt mutters next to me. ‘Can’t hold his ale, this one.’
Ian splutters and tells Holt to fuck off, and they both guffaw.
I stand with Tom and the others for a while, basking in the camaraderie, speaking with them about the next phase of the build and how many cottages will be planned for the summer.
I notice some of the other villagers eyeing us, but for once not with the fear and distrust I’m used to when I’m here with Jak or Locke.
It’s easy, and, for the first time, I wonder if I will perhaps settle here for the long-term.
After the group calls it an evening to go home to their families, I sit by the fire in a corner as the tavern fills.
I’m alone, but at least no one has left because I’m here, which has happened more than once.
I see Jak enter with a supply pack a little while later and I give him a nod.
He grabs a drink and comes to sit with me, taking a long pull of his pint before putting it on the table in front of him.
He gives me a look. ‘You’re not usually here when it’s so busy,’ he remarks.
‘Tom and the others asked if I was coming for a drink,’ I reply.
He raises a brow. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Get through the supplies?’ I ask, changing the subject.
He nods. ‘I did. Took the whole day though. Whatever healer they had come from the Underhill while we were gone left it in a right state. I thought Gwen would see to it, but nothing was in the right place. Fucking fae.’
I snort a laugh. ‘You are fae.’
He simpers at me. ‘You know what I mean. The Under-born.’ He leans in and lowers his voice. ‘They always act like they’re our betters.’
I rumble my ascent. I had noticed, but I thought it was because I’m clearly half orc, not because I’m not from the Underhill.
‘Do they treat all the fae who came from Varrik’s fold thus?’ I inquire, but Jak just shrugs.
‘Who gives a fuck? We don’t live there.’
‘Aye,’ I mutter. ‘We just go out to the Dark Realms to do their dirty work.’
He shrugs again. ‘You could leave.’
I grunt, taking a long drink and setting my tankard back down.
‘And do what? Go to the Dark Realms? Travel around pit fighting? Do illegal black fights until they lock me up on some Eighteenth Circle backwater for murder? No, thanks. At least you could go be a healer anywhere. You pass for human well enough. You could make a life in the Light outside the village if you wished.’