Sisterwives for the Orc

CHAPTER 1 — Off with Her Head

NAMAK?GA

The female keeps raving about a game called “Joomanji.”

I’m in the market buying fresh fish and more flour, when a prisoner’s cart pulls into the town square and begins unloading the poor souls whose necks are about to be slid under the axeman's blade.

Most are bound to be thieves and unreformables, but some are simply unlucky; perhaps they insulted a high member of the Dragonkind court.

At the mere thought of the dragon men, I reflexively turn my head and spit into the street. Curses on all the scale-covered ones!

I shake myself, making the skulls on my necklaces clack, and adjust my purchases in my arms, my eyes going back to the prisoners as they’re unloaded on the beheading platform.

Save for the crying female and a furious-looking Elf, most of them are hollow-eyed and listless, their fates sealed.

Unless someone steps forward to pay their due debt in coin, this lot will pay for their crimes with their heads.

It’s sad to see. Especially if there are those who seem less than deserving of such a harsh end.

Which is why we Orcs reserve the right to buy the lives of prisoners headed for the blade.

The prisoners, usually a mix of folk from all kingdoms, know it too.

Several of them look around the town square, hoping to find sympathetic faces they can appeal to.

The likelihood of being bought though is slim. It’s Orcian nature to hoard coin, and being bought isn’t quite freedom. It’s most often servitude.

The Elf takes his chances. Standing tall, the sharp-eared, broad-shouldered male raises his voice above the market din: “I know a way into the Dragonkind king’s castle!”

Several Orc men perk up at these words.

“I’m heir to the Elven throne, and I vow I’ll kill that Dragonkind bastard if I get free from here!”

Orc men shove forward, jerking purses from their belts, prepared to pay for the chance that this Elf speaks truth.

“Wait,” calls the executioner, a wide grin splitting his face, making the gold bands clamped over his tusks gleam in the sunlight. He claps a hand against the Elf’s back. “Let’s see your birthmark.”

A hush falls over us all.

The executioner turns to us, his tusked countrymen and women, all of us gathered around his platform with curiosity and expectation.

“All royal elves are born with a mark, or my house’s name isn’t Blademan!

If this one doesn’t lie, then he is a prince, and I say the Elven Kingdom will consider turning him loose an act of diplomacy.

If he happens to do as he says and kill the Dragon king, all the better, am I right? ”

The whole square rings with a deafening shout of agreement.

Blademan crosses his arms and raises his brows in challenge. “Show us, Elf.”

Glare sweeping the crowd, the Elf gives us all his back. Stiffly, body rigid with an indignant-flavored rage, he brings his manacled hands to his nape, fists his shirt, and rips it up until the hem rides his muscled shoulders.

The crowd goes wild.

There, high between his strong shoulder blades, is the royal symbol of the fae: a white unicorn. It seems to glow against his skin.

“And you, Elf prince, are a free man!” Blademan cries, spinning him without effort (an Elf, evidently even a strapping royal Elf, is no match against an Orc’s strength), catching his manacles and unlocking them.

Orc warriors have gathered at the steps of the platform, eager to meet the prince as he stalks his way across the boardwalk to the exit. It seems he’ll have a guard and all the help an insurgent could want, judging by the fierce excitement lighting all the warrior Orc eyes.

As that spectacle ends, another one is gaining momentum. The very strange-looking female prisoner is watching the Elf prince stride free with naked hope, and her panicked breaths increase. So do her dripping tears.

My babe kicks the inside of my belly; no doubt my son or daughter senses my dismay. It’s always hard to watch women lose their heads. And this one looks so damn helpless, it’s bound to be doubly hard to stomach.

She’s small, this female—tall and developed enough that she is clearly no child, but she’s more slender-built than any Orc has ever been. I can’t imagine she’ll be a good laborer slave—which is one purpose prisoners get bought for.

“It was supposed to be a stupid game!” she moans loudly to herself, her diction as proper as a lady’s even with her hands bound in front of her by her iron manacles. They’re the smallest prisoner irons I’ve ever seen, yet even they weigh down her slight wrists.

She’s not wearing the rough clothes of a commoner, but neither is she in the silken dresses of the ruling class.

It’s an otherlander garb of some sort, with rugged men’s trousers in purple—honest to the Eternal, they’re dyed a rich, royal amethyst. They must have required the boiling of a hundred snails and cost a fortune—and she’s wearing the shortest kyrtill as her top rather than a proper overtunic.

It seems to be made of an exotic linen, and there is writing emblazoned on the fabric that must be dyed in, because I see no threading.

Yet the dye lines are so precise, it’s mind boggling.

I find myself adjusting my bag of flour and jiggering my fish until it’s flopped over my shoulder so I can get closer and peer better at the female’s clothing. I’m particularly interested because if this slave is artful in the ways of fabric dyeing, she could be a thoughtful gift for my husband.

She’s still babbling nonsense, head whipping back and forth, trying to appeal to everyone who’s assembled.

Incomprehensibly, she complains, “The game voiceover was all, ‘In the Orc’s kingdom you’ll join a handsome husband and become intertwined.

’ And the next thing I know, I’m headed for a chopping block!

This is crazy! I want to go home! I need to get out of this game—”

I interrupt her, shouting loud, “Girl, did you fashion that yourself?”

Startled eyes the color of river moonstones meet mine. “Huh?”

I don’t have a hand free to gesture, so I tip my head to indicate her torso.

Her iron-bound hands come up, and she clutches at a necklace, not the decorations on her clothing. “This? Yeah. I made this.”

Behind her, Blademan is readying his ink pots and needles.

The scarlet pot contains seven-year ink, infused with what little magic Orcs are willing to tolerate from otherfolk outside our realm.

Spelled to last until the seventh year it’s worn, when it erases completely on the very same day it was first poked in, this is the ink of the slaves.

The other inkpot is for wives. It is applied to the faces of women bought to be a man’s helpmeet, and it lasts forever.

The fact that the executioner is readying the inks means he thinks he’s about to give someone a tattoo. His certainty of this has me taking a harder look at the girl. And what I find surprises me: despite being an otherlander, she is pretty.

Ahhh. My eyes move around the bodies pressing against mine, all men. Ah. My stomach relaxes, my progeny settles in my belly—able to rest easy now that I won’t be watching this pitiable girl lose her pretty head. Her debt will be paid as a slave or bride price and all will be well.

Attention returning to the necklace she’s holding up for me to see, my eyes widen.

“You fashioned that?” I confirm in wonder.

Because the chain looks like someone took spiderwebs of sterling silver and wove them together in a rope.

The beadwork hanging from the chain is just as exquisite.

Many of the beads appear to be turquoise stones… and raw copper nuggets.

She’s wearing raw copper.

It’s rare that anyone but an Elven royal or a Dragonkind can afford gemstones—but she’s wearing a fortune in a metal the Dragonkind protect fiercely.

And my gaze narrows as I step forward, squinting at her sleeves. The stitching all along her tunic is impressive, all of it precise, so perfectly spaced apart and uniform in length my eyes can’t detect any degree of perfectly normal imperfection. “Did you make your clothing?”

The woman frowns. “N-No. I bought them.”

My brows rise. She could afford stitching that fine? I glance around, noting that the others present are realizing the same thing I am. She really is a lady. How in the worlds did she end up here?

A breeze teases us, and her scent wafts to me, some sort of perfectly beguiling geranium water, fragrant but not overpowering. In other words, expensive—yet another show of her formerly good circumstances.

“You are highborn like the Elf prince?” I ask her. “Did you know him? Are you a half-Elf of some sort?” I eye her ears. But no, they’re very nearly round. If she’s an Elf, she’s the queerest little Elfborn that’s ever been.

The whites of her eyes show, like a spooked horse. “No, and I’m a human!”

I frown. “And were you saying you were waiting for a husband?” A handsome one, she said. I cast a look around, and see a glut of men present. All Orcs. But no one is clamoring to save their wife from the block.

“I am not waiting for a husband,” the prisoner declares, eyes wide. “I want to go home!”

Blademan steps up behind her and swats her on her bum. “Stop your panicking. You’re in Orcian territory now. Here’s our rules: prisoners get chopped, or they get bought. And you, girl, are too pretty to sever this neck.” He circles her throat with his big hand, dwarfing her—and making her shudder.

He catches her by the jaw and pops open her mouth, checking her teeth.

Then with a hum, he releases her gently and explains, “Slave or wife is about to be your lot. If you end up a slave, serve your master well, and in seven years you’ll be free to return home.

” He raises his great head, decorated in braids and bones, and enunciates around his impressively sized tusks—

(Although they’re nowhere near as impressive in length or sharpness as my husband’s.)