Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

Malva’s hands were very white against the dark wood of the table. She reminded Halla of a ghost or a ghoul. Mostly a ghoul. Coming along to gnaw the corpse before Silas is even cold. Hmm, perhaps a ghoul would prefer a warm corpse, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s like fresh bread out of the oven, if you’re a ghoul.

“Into the pit, the pit, the black pit, when the souls scream and the worms coil…” Halla seized on the excuse gratefully and rose to her feet. “You’ve upset the bird,” she said. The bird in question was a small, finch-like creature that could have perched easily on Halla’s smallest finger, had she been foolish enough to stick her finger in its cage, which she wasn’t. It had a red beak and red eyes and most of the time it sang a repetitive three-note song that went, “tweedle-tweedle-twee!” Occasionally, its eyes would flash green and it would begin roaring in an impossibly deep voice about the end of the world and the screams of the damned. Great-Uncle Silas had been extraordinarily fond of it. Two priests and a paladin had certified that it wasn’t possessed by a demon, although they also all said that there was clearly something very wrong with it and had recommended a great deal of fire followed by a great deal of holy water. Silas had instead put it in a cage in the dining room, because he was that sort of person.

“Are you asking me if I think I can fight one guard and a group of elderly women with embroidery hooks?” “…yes?” “My lady Halla, I have fought dragons on multiple occasions.” Halla considered this. “Did you win, though?” Sarkis coughed, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, one time.” “What about the others?” “It was more of a draw. The point is that they were dragons, not your cousins.” Halla folded her arms. “How big is a dragon, anyway?” “What?” “I’ve never seen one. Are they rabbit-sized? Cow-sized?” “They’re dragon-sized!” he started to roar, caught himself, and continued in an angry whisper, “They’re the size of a house!” “All right, but a big house or a small—” Sarkis turned around and began to beat his forehead very gently against the wall.

“How did you come to inhabit a sword, anyway?” “The usual way.” “I have no idea what that might be.” “Sorcerer-smith,” he said, dropping her hand. “Forge the sword, quench the steel in the blood of the one you wish to bind.” “Really! How much blood does that take? Do you have to use leeches?” Sarkis stared at the ceiling, his lips moving silently. “I was stabbed through the heart, actually.” “Dear gods! Didn’t that hurt?” “A great deal. Are we ready to leave this accursed house?” “It’s not that accursed. I mean, the fireplace draws very badly, but you get used to it.”

“You were very concerned with the honor of my kinswomen,” said Halla, “but you’re not concerned with being a horse-thief?” He snorted. “Raiding cattle and kine is a fine and honorable tradition. If they cannot hold their beasts, they deserve to lose them.”

“I suppose you’d object to actually setting part of the town on fire?” Sarkis asked. “I most certainly would!” “Pity.” Halla was beginning to question the servant of the sword’s definition of honorable behavior.

“Only a little farther, lady,” he said. “I’m not a lady,” she said wearily. “Gentleman, then?” “No, I mean…” She nearly stepped in a hole and had to grab his arm for support. “Ladies are noble. I’m not.” He shrugged. “Nobility is handed out arbitrarily at best.” Halla thought of the Squire that had owned her mother’s land, and grunted agreement.

If only she’d had some kin to come ride to her rescue. Still, he couldn’t very well leave her to get married off to a man who would drop her down the stairs to save his own skin.

Without a handy wilderness to vanish into, they would probably need a city. Cities were basically wildernesses with too many witnesses anyway.

“There’s a saying about it, or maybe a joke—I can’t remember all of it. About how two people disagreed over a cow and brought it to a priest. Priests of the Forge God would take the cow as a tithe for wasting their time, the Dreaming God would kill the cow on suspicion of being possessed by demons, and the Four-Faced God would wait until the cow died and deliver a sermon about how all of us, men and cows, must pass away. But the White Rat’s priests would take the cow, breed her, give a calf to each of the people arguing, and then sell the milk for a profit.” “That sounds like plain good sense.” “Perhaps there’s so little of that to go around that they had to make it divine.”

I do not always trust goodwill, but greed…greed is usually predictable.”

It was only when he reached down to take her hand that he noticed the deep blue smudges under her eyes, and saw that she was favoring her right foot. I’m an idiot. She’s asking questions to distract herself from how uncomfortable she is. His men had done the same thing, in various forms; not questions, per se, but endless talking. Vetch has told the very worst jokes. Not even dirty jokes, just interminable puns. And Bo, who had a bard’s tongue, would spin out impossibly long stories about everything from the enemy to last night’s dinner, until a simple overcooked bit of venison became a three thousand-year-old victim of a god’s curse, slain at last and sent to its final resting place in the stomach of a dozen mercenaries. Fisher, the crossbowman, had made up his own songs, but the less said about that, the better. Apparently, Halla asked questions. He should have realized that Halla was doing something of the sort. His only defense was that she was a civilian, and you didn’t expect them to cope with things like a normal person.

“She was strong. Strong enough to know what she did and did not want. And there were no children to bind us.” Strong enough to cut the tie and say to my face that love was not enough.

“It won’t draw a great deal of comment. If I were younger or better looking, someone might care. As it is, they might think I’m being foolhardy, if anybody notices me at all.” He scowled at her. “You are a fine looking woman. If your countrymen cannot see that, it is the fault of the decadent south, not you.” Halla blinked at him, then felt a smile spread helplessly across her face. “That’s…that’s very sweet. Thank you.” “I am not sweet. Did I mention that I’ve fought dragons?” “Yes, but you also mentioned that it was mostly unsuccessfully.”

Perhaps tomorrow we can steal a horse.” “How about socks?” asked Halla hopefully. “A better sock would fix things.” “Great sagas are not written about successful sock raids upon a rival holding.”

“When I led warriors, good shoes were considered as essential as a good sword. Moreso, in fact. If one has a bad sword, one can still run away.”

“Well, if we weren’t in a hurry, then I could feed us just fine,” said Halla with some asperity. “It’s autumn. You’ve got to work to starve in the middle of autumn.”

Everyone’s got their own troubles and nobody wants to get involved in yours.

It was not the first time that he’d held someone who was crying their heart out. His mother had done it when his father died. And his troops…well. Fisher was notoriously tender-hearted for a man who put crossbow bolts into people for a living. He bawled after every single battle. Nobody said anything about it because Fisher had saved all their lives twice over. You just patted his back and said, “There, there,” until he was okay again. Angharad had done it once—and only once—when the man she loved had turned out to be worthless. That had been awkward, since she was a head taller than Sarkis and also he had been battling his desire to take a fast horse after the man and gut him like a hog.

Sometimes Sarkis hated arguing with himself. He kept being right.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. He kissed her forehead. “You don’t have to be. They’re the ones who did wrong, not you.” Now why in the great god’s name did I just do that? He didn’t know. He hadn’t even thought before he kissed her. It doesn’t mean anything. He’d only brushed his lips across her forehead, like a brother might. It didn’t have to be anything more than that.

They went to the room. It was a narrow strip of bed and a narrower strip of floor beside it.

She could hear the smile in his voice. “You’d be the best of yaks.” Was that a compliment? An insult? She wasn’t sure, and at the moment, she didn’t much care. “Yaks complain, but they’re smart. As smart as horses. And curious. And they don’t suffer fools.” Halla sighed, rolling over. Her back screamed. “I wish I didn’t suffer fools.” “You needn’t suffer them any longer.” She opened her eyes. “What? Why not?” “Because I will dispose of them for you.”

“There are few sins that should chase a man beyond death. I do not think yours qualify.”

There were so few people who kept a sense of humor when they were miserable, you learned to appreciate it.

The picture she painted of her childhood was not an easy one, although she remembered it fondly. Her mother had been a fierce, flawed woman who loved her children very much but was hard-pressed to care for all of them.

“I’m sorry. I’m not presuming to tell you the Mother’s business, of course. But that’s why we were hiding. It’s my nerves. It runs in the family, you see. Mother’s nerves were—not the Mother, I mean my mother—I mean, not that the Mother isn’t everyone’s Mother, obviously—” The armored man made a swift ritual gesture at that, and the priest followed suit, looking faintly annoyed. “—but my mother, the human one, she had terrible nerves. Why, a thunderstorm left her completely deranged. She’d take to her bed for days and call for brandy. And cauliflower. I mean, I don’t know why she wanted cauliflower, I’ve never thought cauliflower was a particularly soothing vegetable, but it certainly made my mother happier, so we’d cook it up whenever the weather started to turn. Do you have any cauliflower?”

“Why would priests of the Mother carry cauliflower?” asked the priest, sounding exasperated. “Well, you never know your luck. I mean, my mother carried it, so I thought maybe since the Mother is everyone’s mother—” The two men grimly made the ritual gesture again. “—maybe She knew you’d be here and She’d send you with cauliflower. But I don’t expect that!” Halla raised her free hand in front of her. “I’m certainly not important enough to merit the Mother’s attention! Or Her vegetables.”

Sarkis liked watching her. She waved her hands a lot and her face was never still. It was an odd performance to find pleasure in, perhaps, but he found himself wanting to smile.

Sarkis, who had negotiated mercenary contracts with kings, did not scream ‘Always read before you sign!’ and shake anyone by the neck. He was rather proud of that.

She turned even redder. Sarkis didn’t know whether to feel smug or guilty about that. There is no honor in embarrassing an easily flustered woman. Control yourself.

One of the grimmer realizations of Sarkis’s youth had been the discovery that knowing you were being an ass did not actually stop you from continuing to be an ass.

“Well,” she admitted, looking at the pile of potatoes, “you’re good at that.” “I have a great deal of experience skinning my enemies,” he said, deadpan. “Do you have many enemies among the potatoes?” “Not any longer.”

Of course, there’s probably not a lot of single combat here… In truth, there wasn’t much in the Weeping Lands either. Some decisions were much too important to rest on who had the superior strength of arms. In practice, everyone pretended that it was an option and then the clan lords arranged matters so that hardly anyone ever actually did it. There was a lot of posturing and holding one’s fellows back. Indeed, one of the slang terms for “brother-in-law” translated as “arm-holder.”

“Wise girl. In the steading, they said the foolish girls sighed after warriors, but the smart ones married the farmers.”

“I will not go back to the Weeping Lands,” he said. “As long as I do not, then in my heart, they are all still there, still alive, unchanged. If I return, I will see what hundreds of years have wrought, and my heart will know that they are dead.” Halla stared at him, her mouth open. “I find that I would rather be an exile in my heart than the last survivor.

I’m here because my youngest needs to get out of the house and learn a trade. You two appear to be either enchanted or desperately insane. And in either case, I’d rather you weren’t standing behind me.”

“Oh no, no. Sarkis would never do anything like that. He’s really very kind. I mean, he mutters about burning my civilization to the ground a lot, but that’s just his way. Although I don’t know that he likes me very much. He counts to very high numbers sometimes.”

SARKIS KNEW that the kiss was a mistake the moment he did it. He kept doing it anyway, at first because stopping a kiss so quickly offended his sense of craftsmanship, and then because it felt too good to stop.

He had an intense urge to rush over and cover her breasts. Possibly with his face. “Is something wrong?” asked Halla. No, I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m a ravening animal, not a man. Then again, I’ve been coming to terms with that since I was fourteen, so what else is new?

It had been so long since a wielder had cared where he was from—had even seen him as a person with a history, rather than a weapon—that he had almost lost sight of the question himself.

“I know what it is to lose your connection to the people before you,” she said, and he heard the heaviness of that knowledge in her voice. “To come unmoored in history. It’s why I became a historian in the first place. We must help each other find our place again.” Sarkis did not trust himself to speak. He bowed to her, very deeply,

“I see,” he said. “And if I told you that I was her guardsman, that I only wanted to keep her safe…?” The woman folded her arms. “Then I’d say that’s all very nice, but I don’t know you and I don’t trust you and I won’t hand over a woman just on your say-so.” Sarkis lifted his hand, unthinking, to rub his face and the woman flinched back, almost imperceptibly. She expects to pay a price for her silence. And she’s standing up to a man with bloody hands and a bloody sword nevertheless. He was not impressed with the warriors of this decadent southern land, but their women were tearing the heart out of him with their courage. And their compassion. Sarkis bowed to her and said “I respect your reasons.”

Consulting the maps had been kind. He had not thought to do it. He was used to being displaced in time, over and over. He was used to being thought of as nothing more than a weapon, not a man who might wish to know the fate of his country. He had almost come to think of himself as such as well. Right now, with the memory of the fight still singing in his blood, he still felt very much like a weapon. And a bit depressed at how much he enjoyed being one, from time to time. It had taken Halla and her endless questions and inability to take anything at face value to see him as a man again, and then to search out how such a man, isolated in time, might find a marker. It had been kind. Yes. Kind and soft and damned decent of her to do, when she had her own troubles to worry about.

Her initial surprise had warmed into something else entirely, as if her veins were full of…oh, not fire, but something kinder. Melted butter, perhaps. Yes. She’d felt as if she were melting against him.

She’d felt like her insides were turning to honey. She hadn’t wanted it to stop.

But after bedding came the consequences of bedding. Like pregnancy and childbirth and assuming she lived through that—her family’s history wasn’t great—suddenly the thin shield provided by being a respectable widow would vanish. She didn’t quite dare. But oh gods, how she wanted to…

The priest was dressed for travel this morning, their hair pulled back, and had exchanged the white robes of the Rat for more sensible dark brown. There was still a line of white embroidered rats on the sleeve, rather more charming than religious, but Sarkis wasn’t going to mention it.

“Your god. Why a rat?” Zale shrugged. “Why not a rat? Rats are smart and they travel with humans, but they are neither our servants nor our prey. They eat the food that we eat, they live within our homes. Who better to understand us?” Sarkis raised an eyebrow at that. Zale chuckled. “That is a priest’s answer, at any rate. Would you like a scholar’s answer as well?” “I would!” said Halla, to the surprise of no one. Zale nodded. “So far as we can tell, the Temple of the Rat originated some eight hundred years ago, in the west. A plague was decimating the cities of the old empire there. They knew that rats carried the plague, and a cult sprang up, attempting to appease the rat spirit. From there, the faith evolved and reformed.” They grinned slyly. “Of course, our understanding of treatment for the plague certainly did not hurt.” “A moment,” said Sarkis. “You know the origin of your faith? You can point to it like this? And yet still you worship this rat as your god?” The priest laughed. “Why does knowing the origin of a thing make it less holy? Do you know your grandparents?” Sarkis gave them a narrow-eyed look. “I did, yes.” “And did you love your parents less for knowing where they came from?” “I did not worship my parents.” “Some parents practically expect that, though,” muttered Halla. Sarkis started to say something, then frowned. “There are places I have been,” he admitted grudgingly, “where one’s ancestors are worshipped. One of my men came from such a place, and she...

Zale tapped the pen against their teeth. They had excellent teeth. Sarkis had observed the priest scrubbing their teeth with salt and sage nightly, which was undoubtedly a factor.