Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

“The great god is punishing me,” he said softly, “for my crimes. I cannot go to his hell, and so he has sent a woman to torment me.”

He did not at all appreciate learning that said woman was looking for a way to kill herself to escape said vindictive relations and had picked his blade to do it with. The world had few enough good women in it, it needed to keep hold of the ones it had.

“I try not to be stupid,” said Halla. “But I have made so many poor choices in my life, so perhaps I must be, after all.”

“I’m not completely useless, you know,” she said, picking at her skirts. There was a long silence, and then out of the dark, his voice said, “I never thought you were.” She was glad that he couldn’t see her blush.

The urge flared again to go after the people who had done this and kill them. Or possibly just burn the entire world that was so unkind to people like Halla.

There is no honor in embarrassing an easily flustered woman. Control yourself.

That Halla had absolutely no idea that men would find her attractive was either a sign that she was just as naïve as he thought or that men in the decadent south had no taste whatsoever.

Perhaps it was this decadent land, or perhaps she had simply never had anything that anyone wanted before.

“No one,” said Sarkis wearily, “in my entire life, has ever said ‘yay’ when I handed them a jar of piss.” “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

This makes hard listening. I should have thought.

“Necromancy is anathema in every civilized nation,”

Call me uncivilized then!

What she felt for Sarkis was something wildly different, as if a branch had been grafted on a familiar tree and had grown a bizarre and unexpected fruit.

Halla laughed from her perch on the wagon seat. Sarkis knew that it wasn’t a sexy laugh, it was neither low nor throaty nor any of the things that men generally liked in women’s laughter, but that didn’t matter. It was sexy because Halla was the one doing it, and he was hopelessly enamored. Befuddled.

I must have done something wrong again. Or failed to do something right, anyway.

As it is, she has learned to be quiet and agreeable and to appear quite stupid when it is convenient. But the curiosity still comes through.”

“Alver! Are you going to let him talk to me like this?” Alver eyed the sword and Sarkis and said, “Yes, mother, I believe I am.”

“You are beautiful, and if you deny it, you are insulting my good taste and I will be terribly offended.”

In the songs, men always say they’d die for you. I suppose there’s something to be said for the fact that you found one who actually did.

“But everyone watches the one they love age. At least I can know that you will not be alone. And I would rather be here, for as long as you live, than out in the world, worrying about you.”

He suspected that Halla had vastly underestimated how much the townsfolk liked her. It was also possible that having a large, angry man with a sword glowering at them made them realize just how much they liked her.