CHAPTER 18 — You Don’t want an Orc to Call You Traxen
JOKTEPITHA
I find my sisterwives in Ulda’s room. All of them.
I’m surprised, but I don’t show it as I saunter in and lay Crushosh belly down on Ulda’s bed. I drop beside him, facing Stephanie in her chair, and I pretend not to see Ulda’s tears, or Namak?ga’s sympathetically swollen eyes.
“I just got back from giving water to the geese,” I announce brightly. I pause for effect, then I let my voice go a mite evil. “They miss you, Stephanie.”
Stephanie growls.
Ulda laughs.
We all go wide-eyed.
Ulda curls her lip at us, her four tusks on display. “What? I’m not supposed to laugh?”
Her eyes are so haunted. But I send her a playful grin. “You should watch Stephanie run from them. That will make you laugh—I guarantee it.”
“Ha ha,” Stephanie utters dryly. “If I’m still here for Christmas, I’m going to ask Roarg for a special dinner.”
“What’s that?” Namak?ga asks, her words subdued.
“Christmas is a holiday where—”
“We know what Christmas is,” Ulda snaps.
Stephanie turns to her, causing Ulda and Namak?ga’s hands to follow her head. Ulda gives Stephanie a deadly glare, but the girl persists. “You do?”
“I’m going to snatch you bald,” Ulda warns, even while Namak?ga drops the braid she’s working on to cover her laugh.
Ulda isn’t laughing, though. She bites out, “What do you mean if you are still here?”
I hate to see that the little lightness she’d gained has disappeared from her face. From Stephanie’s slumping shoulders and pained expression, it’s clear she regrets chasing it away too. She twists and opens her mouth to speak.
“Of course we hold Christmas!” I assure her loudly before she stumbles on anything else that might incite our injured sisterwife. “All the kingdoms worth their gold do. What special dinner will you request of Roarg while you’re spending your first of forever’s Christmases with us?”
Stephanie’s head snaps around to face me—not because she’s turned herself but because Ulda has steered her forward by her hair.
Stephanie winces and smiles at me, wonderfully irrepressible.
Never holding a grudge; she really is a damned fine sisterwife.
“The special dinner is a fancy dish where I’m from, one I have a new appreciation for: Christmas goose. ”
Everyone goes dead still. But then Ulda slowly tugs down on Stephanie's hair until the girl’s neck is pulled back, her eyes staring up into Ulda’s. “That,” she says thoughtfully, “might be the one thing he won’t give you.”
“Nay,” I say lightly. “He’d just buy her a goose from the market. He’d spare yours.”
Stephanie smiles up into Ulda’s face. “Darn.”
Ulda barks a laugh and shoves Stephanie’s head until she’s facing straight again. “I’ll give you one of their goslings.”
“To eat?!”
“No, you thickwit. You’ll learn to love them if you raise one of your own. Now shut up and give me another tres?.”
Stephanie passes her one. “I really think you’re wrong on this.” Her tone is arch, and she’s momentarily distracted as she helps Opkug sway side to side, smiling at the brat.
She’s an excellent honor mother, growing more confident by the day. I bet she’s the one who will be proven wrong about the geese. I’m willing to wager she’ll fall in love with a baby goose just like Ulda did so long ago. They both have soft hearts.
We enjoy an amiable silence and Ulda and Namak?ga work on plaiting Stephanie’s hair until Namak?ga smiles triumphantly and moves to retrieve Ulda’s hand mirrors.
Ulda is just finishing with her half of the braid work. Her fingers brush Stephanie’s arm to signal she should take the mirror Namak?ga is holding out—but then Ulda draws back. “Emerald forge. You’re cold as a corpse.”
Stephanie twists, hugging Opkug, mouth going flat. “I am not. I’m just a bit chilly.”
Namak?ga holds up one looking glass in front of Stephanie and one behind so that she can see her hair’s decoration, and peers at her skin with concern. “You’re covered in chill bumps like you’ve been stuck in a snowbank.”
“She looks like a plucked chicken,” I muse.
“Where I’m from, we call them goosebumps,” Stephanie claims. “And it’s just because I’m sitting still.
Once I’m up and moving around again I’ll be fine.
And wow,” she breathes as she gets a glimpse of herself in the looking glass.
“Ulda! Namak?ga!” She reaches behind herself to pet her braids. “This is gorgeous. Thank you.”
Ulda ignores the praise, wrinkling her nose, brushing a rough hand up and down Stephanie’s limb to warm it. “Almighty. It’s high summer, and you’re nearly a cube of ice. How are we going to keep you alive in the winter?”
“Roarg will keep her thawed out,” I remind her.
Ulda shakes her head, looking disgusted by the notion—but her lips twitch up in a masterfully masked smile. “I bet he adores this about you, Stephanie,” she huffs, rolling her eyes. “He’s been required to snuggle with you just to keep you alive.”
I smirk. “I don’t think snuggling is what makes her scream like she does.”
“Ugh! Guys!” Stephanie chides, cupping her hands protectively over Opkug’s ears. “Can we just not in front of the baby?”
“She doesn’t understand a word of what we just said,” Ulda grumbles, leaning down over Opkug to drop a kiss to the beloved brat’s crown.
When she straightens, she stops at the look on Stephanie’s face. “What?”
Stephanie is staring at the little girl she’s holding. She starts when Ulda repeats, “What is it?”
She shakes her head, eyes round. “Nothing,” she says quickly.
Ulda’s eyes narrow. Her hands go to her hips. “Tell me.”
Stephanie casts a pleading look to Namak?ga, then me.
But when we make no move to save her from speaking, she focuses on Ulda, not even daring to blink.
“Namak?ga said you’ve…” She winces. “You’ve never had a baby.
.. survive. Then that means…” She brushes Opkug’s springy locks away from her face. “Who does Opkug belong to then?”
You can literally feel everyone’s spirits sour a little. I’m the one who clears her throat and speaks. “G?reen. The dead wife.”
Stephanie squeezes Opkug even harder. “Oh my goodness, she left behind her baby?” She bites her lip and gives Opkug a broken look. “That’s so sad.”
“Only if you didn’t know G?reen,” I scoff. “She was a miserable traxen, and I’m glad I killed her.”
When Ulda’s gaze meets mine, I know she’s thinking of why I did it. I remember it vividly, and my stomach still churns with regret.
That day, you could say the cart met the wall when Ulda had scolded G?reen for being lazy—which she was. And G?reen, unrepentant and always out for blood, had smiled at Ulda with malevolent delight. “I may be lazy,” she’d purred, “but at least I can give Roarg live babies.”
The look on Ulda’s face is still burned in my memory. G?reen may as well have gutted her. Verbally, she had.
And not for the first time, I deeply regretted that I ever thought G?reen would please Roarg.
She did, actually; she was beautiful and she had her charms, but she was destroying us in the meantime.
Which wore on Roarg in different ways as he watched his other wives suffer at the hands of his venomous, baneful little fourth.
I was responsible for bringing G?reen into our family.
So I took the responsibility of taking her out of it.
At G?reen’s nocuous words, Ulda’s face had crumpled, and I’d heard enough. I caught G?reen, looked into her eyes, and I made sure it was the last time she ever made Ulda cry.
Like I told Roarg that night: G?reen got what she deserved.
I sprawl out lazily, tickling Crushosh while watching Stephanie, probably enjoying the dawning shock in her eyes a little too much.
But if G?reen had believed what I was capable of, she would have stopped trying to sink her vitriolic tusks into us.
Perhaps she never would have started, if she’d been a little afraid.
Instead, she ran unchecked for more than a year, wreaking havoc and making everyone under this roof wretchedly unhappy.
“You killed her?” Stephanie breathes.
I smile around my tusks, satisfied at her thunderstruck expression. Somebody will be minding her manners like a non-tusked angel. “That’s right. Snapped her neck.”
Stephanie looks around wildly for help, but Ulda just takes Opkug from her, patting her adopted brat on her back, soothing her from the shock filling the room care of our rattled sisterwife.
Stephanie finally looks back at me. “It’s like looking at your house cat and realizing she’s actually a jaguar. I’m vividly recalling the fanged chicken incident.”
Namak?ga cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
Stephanie mimes dispatching a chicken, then jerks a thumb at me. “I watched her end a bird in the blink of an eye.”
“Took a little more effort to kill G?reen,” I say on a sigh, sitting up and patting my belly. “Is anyone else ready for lunch? I’m starving.”
Stephanie sits very still, eyes wide. “You scare the crap out of me.”
Namak?ga wrinkles her nose and pats Stephanie on the shoulder. “What an unpleasant turn of phrase, but that’s really for the best. It’s safest if you keep in mind who the dangerous one is and never cross her.”
Stephanie gives Ulda wide eyes. “I would have pegged you as the dangerous one.”
Ulda snorts.
“Thanks for doing my hair,” Stephanie tells her, giving her and then Namak?ga a grateful smile. “Murder confessions aside, I’m almost getting sister vibes here,” she shares.
Namak?ga frowns. “Almost?”
Stephanie opens her mouth to reply, but Ulda holds up a stalling hand. She licks her lips between her tusks. Then she presses two fingers against the side of her head, like our sisterwife is making it hurt. “This,” she declares, “is why I hit you.”
“Sorry,” Stephanie says quickly. “Seriously, thanks. If you can teach me how to do this by myself, I’d love to braid it this way when I get back home. My hair looks so pretty! I’ve never braided it before.”
Then she glances up and does a double-take at all of us. Particularly Ulda. “Whoa! What have I done now? I thought we were getting along nicely—”
“Shut up. You,” she starts, eyes darkening as they lock on her. “I have told you and told you! Roarg cares for you, you know. Deeply. You came at a time when he sorrowed,” Ulda tells her, face pinched with the memory of Roarg’s hurt after I killed G?reen.
His pain, I regretted causing. Even if I didn’t regret killing his traxen for so much as a heartbeat.
Ulda explodes. “You must cease with making comments that you mean to leave!”
Stephanie’s jaw drops like her hinges are greased. But at Ulda’s withering look, her mouth snaps shut again.
Namak?ga shoots me a brows-raised look.
I tip my head at Ulda in respect. There’s a tool for everything, Roarg always says—and he fondly refers to Ulda as his sledgehammer. In this, she may be the most effective of all of us.
Her words are fervent, her eyes shimmering.
“You are going to destroy Roarg if you leave. If it were up to me, you would stay here, Stephanie. Forever. Not a word of debate on it. You would be forbidden from so much as mentioning your home if it helped you let it go. But it isn’t up to me—it’s up to you.
So. What do we need to do to help you make peace with your new life with us? ”
Hands raising and dropping helplessly, Stephanie says, “My home isn’t here. This isn’t where I belong—”
“What do you mean?” Ulda asks in genuine confusion. “Look around you! You belong as much as any of us first did. And if you don’t think this is your home, what in perdition is a home then?”
The silence between us all is loud as her words seem to fill the space between everyone’s ears.
Ulda takes a deep breath, and her voice is more level, more controlled, when she speaks again.
“You admire this house. You’re always petting the walls.
The iron embellishments. It’s beautiful, there’s no other like it, and it’s yours, to live in and care for for the rest of your days.
” She waves around us, at our achingly beautiful home that Roarg built with his two hands.
Then she gestures at Namak?ga, who is rubbing her belly, and me, who is stroking Crushosh’s back.
“Here, you have friends to share your thoughts and secrets with. Babies to bounce on your knee. A husband to bounce you in bed and growl sweet nothings in your ears. What more can you want? What more can any world give you? Here, you’ll have everything and want for nothing.
You damn well are home—don’t be too stubborn to see it. ”
And with that, she collects Opkug and storms out of her bedroom, stomping down the stairs, stalking for the kitchen, calling bad-temperedly, “I’m starting lunch. If you have a preference for what you want to eat, get your rump out here and help!”
Stephanie blinks after her.
Namak?ga pats her back. “She likes you. She likes seeing Roarg happy again. It bothers her that his happiness is as precarious as it is.”
I stretch, sighing gustily. Then I holler, “Ulda! How do you feel about getting to Stephanie’s surprise right now?”
Ulda’s holler back is definitive. “I’m down here, waiting. Where are the three of you?”
I take up Crushosh and send Stephanie an inviting smile. “Ready for your surprise?”
Stephanie gives me a puzzled look. “What surprise?”