Page 125 of Halfling
“Had to be,” agreed Connor. “Nothing else makes sense. She’s the only one taken, and no one sees anything.”
“I think it was Jerrod.”
The room went still with Sorcha’s admission. She said it to the tabletop, the nail of one finger picking at the cuticle of her thumb. Orek squeezed her thigh under the table, and she leaned into his touch.
Ciaran made a strangled sound, face going ruddy. “No,” he spluttered. “Jerrod wouldn’t do that.”
“He made…advances not long before I was taken. And I wasn’t…” Sorcha sucked in a long breath and pushed the hair back from her face. “I wasn’t very kind about turning him down.”
Connor snorted. “He doesn’t deserve kind. He’s had eyes for you for years, but you’ve never encouraged him.”
“But he’s Darrow’s son. His heir,” said Ciaran.
“He’s a toad,” argued Connor. “Always has been. And I’d bet he’s spiteful enough to do it.”
“After being humiliated like that? Sure he would,” agreed Niall, who’d once been friends with Jerrod before he became too loathsome.
“He’d know I was meant to visit Aislinn that day,” Sorcha added. “He knew I’d be alone and where the best place on the road would be.”
The father thumped his fist on the table. “Enough. I won’t hear more about Jerrod. There’s no proof. Until we have that, I won’t have you going around accusing the lord’s son. We need facts.”
His eldest children fell into a sullen silence. Orek, for his part, concentrated on keeping the rage locked inside him. A snarl pushed at his mouth, but he bit it back.
Shaking his head, Ciaran drew the map closer to him, running his finger along the river they’d followed north.
“What can you tell me about the towns here?”
Sorcha and her brothers exchanged looks, and it seemed they silently agreed to let the matter go. So, she told of her experiences in Birrin and the slavers they’d faced outside it, how the southern towns seemed beset with slavers and other criminals and therefore were wary of outsiders.
“The murky borders may work for Gleanná and its politics, but those people are suffering,” Sorcha concluded.
The information obviously troubled Ciaran, his fair brows drawn low over his eyes. “Indeed.”
When Sorcha ran out of information, Ciaran turned to Orek next. “Will you tell me of the lands to the south? We know sadly little of the territory there, even ones we claim.”
Orek detailed the rivers, the great lake to the south, the dense mountains that ran even further west, where scores of orc clans were reported to live. He spoke of the hills and valleys where he hunted, of the tributaries that fed the river. He described the southernmost places he’d been, and the last human settlement that seemed to be that far down.
As he spoke, the father scraped notes and marks across the map with a quill, eventually sending Niall to fetch more paper. With Orek’s help, they created a crude map of the southern regions the orcs claimed, as well as much of the borderlands that ostensibly separated humans from orcs.
And although it hurt to do, he also spoke of his mother. He told how she’d been stolen twenty years ago and eventually made her escape. The men thankfully had the tact not to ask what happened to her, nor why she didn’t take him with her. Orek wouldn’t have answered if they had.
Though Ciaran hadn’t risen in Orek’s esteem tonight, he was thankful at least for that, as well as for the man’s troubled feelings over the news of so much slaver activity.
“It took us so long. Every den we raided, every ring we arrested took years to suss out and plan for.” Ciaran rubbed his eyes with thumb and finger, every year he’d spent fighting to end the slave trade showing on his face.
With a sigh, he rested his face in his hand. “Well, at least we’ll have something to tell Darrow. He’ll have more connections, so we can find the ring that took Sorcha. They’ll lead us back to whoever targeted her.”
The brothers looked across the table to find Sorcha resting her head on Orek’s shoulder, fast asleep. She’d dozed off while Orek described the great southern lake, and he’d been careful not to jostle her.
“We’ve an early morning,” her father said, his eyes gone soft as he watched his sleeping daughter. “To bed with you.”
The brothers stood quietly from their seats and wished them goodnight. But before Orek could stand and carry Sorcha up to bed, her father asked simply, “What are your intentions with my daughter?”
Orek met the man’s serious gaze. It wasn’t just a knight staring back at him, but her father. He may have his own misgivings about Sir Ciaran Byrne, but he could at least respect a father’s worry for his daughter.
Even if that worry was unfounded.
“To be hers,” Orek answered. “However she needs.”
