Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

This comes of always being the practical one, she thought, a bit wearily. Nobody will comfort you, so you learn to do it yourself.

I’m going to die without ever telling Sarkis that I…what? I want him? I love him? Do I love him? Halla had always found it easy to love. Love was a patient, exasperated emotion, and she knew it well. She had had so many relatives and she had loved them all, except possibly Alver. She loved Zale and Brindle and even slow Prettyfoot the ox because you could not help but love people who had lived through such stupid, terrible things with you. 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. It would be incredibly stupid to turn to him right now and tell him that I was hopelessly in love with him.

Do you really want to make the last seconds of your life unspeakably awkward? Well, given that it’s me, if the last seconds of my life aren’t unspeakably awkward, I’m probably doing something wrong…

It was very comforting to lie in the dark and be stroked like a cat. It was probably not respectable, but respectability seemed increasingly useless. What did it matter, when there were monsters in the hills, not just stories to frighten children, but real, honest monsters that hung in the trees, waiting to land on the unwary?

“And we have survived, and that is as much as the Rat asks of us on any given day.” “Practical,” said Sarkis. “We’re known for it,” said the priest.

Discreet, competent, humorous…Sarkis was still unsure about the Rat, but Zale had been an excellent antidote to some priests of the great god that he’d known in his life.

“But ma’am, if you can, in fact, make people invisible, surely you can see why that is a skill that I would be interested in making use of.” Halla wrinkled her nose. “No,” she said after a moment. “I can’t.” He tilted his head. “I’m a bandit.” “Yes,” said Halla, “but you’re a highwayman. You want people to believe you have superior numbers so that they give you their money without a fight. Making someone invisible would just mean that they were more likely to fight you, wouldn’t it? And you can’t very well have an invisible person stop travelers in the middle of the road. They’d just get run down. And then if there’s arrows flying around and someone is invisible, doesn’t it mean that that person is more likely to be shot on accident?” The bandit leader blinked slowly at her. “Really,” said Halla, “it just seems like a poor idea all around. Even if I could make people invisible, which I can’t.”

The bandit leader squeezed his eyes shut. He looked as if he had a headache. “Do you know,” he said, “this is not the way that I pictured this going?” “Oh, I get that a lot.” He actually winced. “Um,” said Halla. “I’m sorry?” Zale nudged her. “You don’t have to apologize to someone who’s kidnapped you,” they muttered. “Oh.”

“Your sister screws wolves because the men of your clan have dicks the size of grass blades!”

“He cares for you,” said the priest finally. “Never doubt it.” Halla tried not to show the bubble of warmth that rose under her breastbone at the words. “I don’t know why,” she said. “He’s a swordsman and I’m a housekeeper.” “Far more swordsmen have need of housekeepers than housekeepers have need of swordsmen, I expect.”

“Perhaps that’s why you like him. It must be very dreary, being needed all the time.” “Oh god,” Halla heard herself say. “Oh god, you have no idea.”

I am a priest. It’s sort of what we do. Talk to people. Take confessions. That sort of thing.” “I thought you were more concerned with legal matters.” “The law is only talking and confession writ large. With occasional fines and time spent in the stocks.”

Sarkis rubbed his forehead. “She is lovely and kind and generous of spirit and someone has to keep her from walking off a cliff.” “And they say romance is dead.”

I thought her another decadent native of this weak, decadent land. Ah…no offense intended, of course.” “I have added it to all the other offenses I am not taking, given that you are a barbaric northerner and cannot be expected to understand civilized behavior.”

“I admit, I find that delightful. It is so rare that I meet someone who asks questions because they want to know the answers.” Sarkis frowned at him. “What? Why else do people ask questions?” Zale began ticking off possibilities on their fingers. “To be seen asking the question as if they do not know…to get a specific answer which they desire…to force someone to answer the question publicly…to be given a chance to lecture on the subject…to—”

“The world tries to break everyone,” they said gently. “But sometimes when it fails, it fails spectacularly.

Why do you not say something to her?” Sarkis groaned. “Because I have too much power over her fate right now.” Zale raised an eyebrow. “You’ll have to explain that one for me.” “For a number of years, I was a mercenary captain. And there were jobs where I could say yes, and jobs where I could say no. And then there were jobs where, if I said no, I made sure that we were on the way out of the country when I said it.” The priest had never been slow on the uptake. “You don’t think she’ll feel safe saying no to you?” “I am not willing to risk it.” He poked the fire, raising a flare of sparks. “A few more days, and she is safe in her own home, and a wealthy woman. Then I’ll know that she is not weighing whether I will still get her home safely if she rejects me.” Zale nodded slowly. “It would be the same for me, I admit. A breach of professionalism, until the job is done.”

Zale grinned like a shark that had eaten the cat, the canary, and several innocent bystanders.

The priest who served in this church did not necessarily belong to any specific god, as he recalled. That probably explained why the stained glass windows were generic scenes of the seasons rather than any particular deity. The wooden pews were sturdy rather than elegant, with marks on the legs where either small children or dogs had gnawed on the edges.

“Can I help?” said Sarkis. “Dishes,” said Halla. That was the one thing that had been neglected. The scullery looked dismal. “I know it’s a lot…” “Have I mentioned that I fought dragons?” “Not recently, no.” “Well, I have. The dishes hold no terror for me.”

“I am certainly not letting you go traipsing about the countryside by yourself.” His skin crawled at the thought. Halla would probably trip and fall on a bear. She would undoubtedly then ask the bear questions until it forgot to eat her, but he didn’t think his nerves could take it.

He smiled as he handed her the cup. “It’s important to celebrate the victories. They are too few in life.”

“I don’t blame any man for not enjoying bedsports, but why marry and condemn his wife to the same?”

ANYONE LISTENING outside the bedroom door might have heard the following conversation over the next few minutes. “Sarkis?” “Do you not like that? I’ll stop if you don’t.” “No, it’s lovely. I have a question.” A sigh. “Of course you do.”

He had badly misjudged the shape of her fears. Which should probably not surprise me. If I have learned anything about Halla at all, it is that she never comes at anything from the direction I expect.

He had been braced for tears if they happened. Halla was not a weeping sort, but southerners mixed shame with their sex like they were making a particularly foul brew. If lust had fallen over the edge into fear or shame, he would have been ready to stamp down his own desires and soothe whatever hurts he’d caused. Delightfully, it had not been necessary.

“Leaving your great god already?” “The great god, I fear, has no use for a man who cannot please a woman. Or a man, as he prefers.” She had to prop herself up on her elbows for that. “That’s…actually a tenet of your faith? Really?” “Of course,” he said, as if it was obvious. “Really.” “Failure to make the marriage bed glad is valid grounds for divorce in the Weeping Lands.” “I don’t understand why there’s so much weeping, then.” He gazed skyward. “Well, we also murder each other a great deal.” “Why?” “A question that you would not ask if you had ever seen the Weeping Lands.”

“I’m willing to call it grace,” said Zale, who was standing behind her in the doorway to the dining room. “Whether divine or simply human kindness, which is its own form of grace.

Halla made an apologetic sound. “Please don’t move. I’ve never shot at anything but trees, you see, and while my aim’s not bad for an amateur, if you move, I don’t really know where I’ll hit you. It could be anywhere. And then what if it wasn’t fatal?” “I don’t want it to be fatal!” yelled Nolan. “Oh, but you do,” said Halla. “You really, really do. Because if I hit you somewhere that doesn’t kill you, but it just hurts a whole lot, then I’ll have to finish you off, right? And I don’t have any idea how to do that, so I’ll just be stabbing you in random places with a knife until I hit a good one.” Nolan’s jaw dropped. The great god have mercy. She’s found a way to weaponize ignorance.