When November’s wind clawed at the plank walls of the old wooden barn where Mha lived, when it set the flames in the rusty coal stove of the grooms’ quarters to flickering, when the hard-used joints between her ancient orcish bones swelled enough to make every motion torment, when her crumbling guts refused to release the giant turd-brick wedged inside, Mha couldn’t help asking in the secret pit of her heart: why hadn’t her children eaten her?
She already knew the answer, even on this bitterest of days.
Mha had borne two sons for her Uraz-n’Tass. One son died in the Great War; the other, crushed beneath a falling crane at the Port of Detroit. Other clans had claimed her three daughters.
They had done right by their children.
Even if it left them alone.
Even if a son had survived and k
