Chapter 28
Eli
I’m not sure why it surprised me how readily exiles of the Lost Clan folded into the ranks of the Red Hand.
At sea, the crew reshuffled some at every port as sailors came and went.
And the orcs who’d chosen to stay were the ones who’d always minded their own business without giving me any trouble.
The hunters. The workers. The pragmatic types who’d had no say in their recruitment but were making the best of a bad situation.
We humans may have stuck out like a sore thumb, but the ones who’d been with the clan a while were perfectly at ease. Even the new cowherd found a home with a fallen soldier’s widower.
A hasty celebration feast was arranged by the new quartermaster—a soldier who was past her fighting days.
It was nothing like the ill-fated pig roast where I’d nearly lost my head.
That nightmarish meal had been days in the making.
Now, a freshly slaughtered cow was seared on an open flame, with plenty set aside to smoke and salt for the leaner months ahead.
Afterward, Archie beckoned for me to join the procession back to the shaman’s caves. Not an order, but a suggestion. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been given any choice.
It would take some getting used to.
Outside the caves, among the clan, there was a formality to the shaman’s retinue.
Once we were safe in the tunnels, though, Droko shrugged out of his feathers and bones, Archie kicked off his boots, and the honor guard relaxed and went about their duties.
But Kof lingered behind, almost shy. When he finally spoke, his words came out gruff.
“You should come with me. To my chambers, I mean.”
I wanted nothing more. “Lead the way.”
He met my gaze with his one good eye and gave me a single nod.
We walked the twists and turns of the sulfurous tunnels in silence until we reached the cavern Kof had claimed for himself.
He looked around as if he’d never seen it before, and gestured to encompass the whole space.
“There’s room for you here,” he said. “But obviously, you are free. Whatever adventure you were seeking, it’s still out there. I won’t force you to stay.”
“Force me?” I took in the massive orc. All of him, from his grizzled dark hair to the cratered scar where his eye had once been.
..from his fierce ivory tusks to the cords of muscle shifting in the gaps in his leather armor…
to his huge, powerful hands twitching at his side as if unsure what to do with themselves… . “Kof—this is where I want to be.”
Kof gave the room a more critical once-over. It was a cave, plain and simple—empty but for a footlocker, a brazier, and his old shaman’s settee. “This is not a place for humans,” he said. “Not…yet. I don’t want you to regret your decision. What can I get for you to make this your home?”
I hardly knew what the word home was supposed to mean.
The farm I’d escaped? The ship that so eagerly cast me off?
The box that was both my armor and my prison?
I did know one thing: I was willing to stay here, among the orcs.
Not only to be with this man, but to grow, and learn, and figure out who I truly was.
For so long, my only purpose had been to sink a knife into Pilgrim’s heart. Though with his head on a pike outside the village gate, I doubted it would be very satisfying.
I was less disappointed in losing this opportunity than I would have once thought.
As I considered what I might still wish for, a few snowflakes drifted down from the overhead shaft.
They eddied a bit, and then surrendered to the cave’s sultry heat.
When I glanced up, the sky overhead was filled not with snow, but with stars.
I knew them at once. They formed a constellation I’d used many a time to navigate in another place, another time, another life.
“You’re wrong about me, you know,” I said quietly.
“I didn’t sail for the sake of adventure.
” I smoothed a hand over the top of his footlocker and considered how far off-course the winds of fortune had blown me.
Eventually, I admitted, “I wasn’t chasing anything—I was trying to leave something behind.
The thing about sailing, though, is that eventually, you’ll always end up back in port.
And, yes, maybe I am free now to go off and do whatever I like.
But you’re here. Why would I want to be anywhere else? ”
When I eased up against Kof, he stiffened, but he didn’t pull away.
My right arm was still bound to my side.
It throbbed…but nowhere near as badly as it had yesterday.
And I only needed one hand to slip around the thick column of his neck and ease him down to brush our lips together.
His tusks framed my jaw and his eyelashes skimmed my forehead as his eye closed.
As Kof relaxed and eased his arms around me, he sighed into my mouth.
He tasted of the caves—of moss and smoke and mineral—and he felt like home.
The open sea, with its endless expanse and unpredictable tides, seemed far less alluring than his steady embrace.
Kof was my anchor in the storm—but my journey hadn’t ended.
It had just begun, moored in a different kind of harbor.
We broke the kiss without the urgency of the stolen moments we’d shared before, but the luxury of time didn’t dampen the flame. It allowed me to bank the happiness and bask in its warmth. I pulled back and said, “Actually, there is something you can get me.”
“Anything in my power,” he said. “I haven’t saved much coin, but what I do have is yours—”
“A mirror. Some red pigment. And a needle.”
The needle was the most difficult part—apparently, orcs have no fine linens to embroider or sails to mend. But eventually we found a stash of porcupine quills among the old shaman’s things that would do.
I set myself up in Kof’s chambers. Bronze mirror, glowstone lantern, a pot of fresh red ink. As Kof patiently watched, I outlined the chieftain’s bloody handprint with a sliver of charcoal, then carefully dabbed off the cow’s blood.
One thing I’ve learned in all the hours I’d endured the needle: the first jab is the worst. I jabbed, and welcomed that old familiar sting.
In the mirror, Kof winced. Not at the sight of fresh blood—he was perfectly inured to that—but from seeing my fragile human skin yield to the quill.
When he’d given his own arm an experimental jab, the quill broke.
There’s a reason orcs mark their flesh with brands, not needles.
I worked in silence, concentrating on the jab-jab rhythm of the quill. Red ran down my ribs, some blood, some pigment and sweat. I kept my eyes on the outline, and after an hour, maybe two, the red hand began to take shape.
“It doesn’t cover the others,” Kof observed.
The hand did overlap much of the existing ink on my chest, including my very first tattoo—the compass star.
“A new tattoo might obscure what’s beneath, but it won’t cover it up completely,” I explained.
“I could never hope to obliterate the old ink. Those marks are part of my history now—part of my skin.”
Kof considered this, then finally said, “That’s as it should be. The things you go through shape the man you become.”
Finger by finger, I worked my way around the tattooed hand, until eventually I came to the place I'd started at the base of the palm. Once it healed, I would need to touch up the line. But for now, my task was nearly done.
I sank the final jab. Now, I hadn’t chosen my allegiance by the chieftain’s hand, but by my own.
My gaze fell from the mirror to my chest. Whatever pale skin still showed between my existing tattoos was flushed blotchy pink, and the old ink felt raised, as if the marks had swollen in sympathy with their latest addition.
I dropped the porcupine quill into the brazier, where it landed with a hiss and gently smoldered, and I took up a fresh cloth to clean the bloody ink-sweat from the new design.
“Here,” Kof said. “Let me.”
I must have expected him to be gentle. But he wasn’t—he was deliberate. I liked that he didn’t treat me as though I might break. My resilience was something I could be proud of. And he saw it, too.
Even with only one eye, he saw plenty.
As Kof daubed away the ink and the blood to reveal the permanent handprint beneath, his nostrils flared.
Before, knowing that I was being scented, I’d dreaded that sight and wished I could make myself disappear.
Now, it stirred something else low in my belly—anticipation—and I had no desire to be anywhere but exactly where I was.
“And now the mark won’t come off?” Kof asked.
“It’s part of me now.”
A slow smile spread across Kof’s face, framed by his tusks. Not just happy for me—but proud.
And that feeling? I was starting to feel it, too.
I was no one’s property anymore. And while some might see the red hand etched into my skin as some form of a slave brand, that's not what it was to me.
This mark was a promise: to Kof, to the clan, to myself.
I belonged with the Red Hand now. And after so many years of searching, I'd finally found my home.
Kof opened his arms to me and I stepped into his embrace.
One of his tusks skimmed my jaw and the other nudged my collarbone as he bent his head to the crook of my neck and inhaled deeply.
The gravity of the orcish ceremony earlier hadn’t been lost on me.
But nothing could bind me to the Red Hand any more than the breath now playing across my pulse, and the strong arms that held me.