“I’m counting,” he said, with marvelous patience.
“Why?”
“So I don’t scream at you. My lady.”
“Oh. Silas used to do that, too.”
“I am not in the least surprised.”
When he had reached a sufficiently high number—Halla noted with interest that Sarkis seemed to count by eights instead of tens—he said “The woman’s sister? Is she a shieldmaid?”
“She’s seventy-three.”
“I would fear a trained shieldmaid if she were a hundred and three.”
“Oh. No, she’s not. I mean, she can be annoying asking for her tea to be brought to her at exactly the right temperature, but that’s about it.” She frowned. “Are we going to have to go through all those people? Err—are you sure you can?”
“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. “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.”
“Hey! You could just chop my head off and we’d be done here!”
“I will not chop your head off. I will, in fact, defend you to my dying breath. It is what a servant of the sword does.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He didn’t sound as if this made him very happy. “And after, for that matter. If I am mortally wounded, I will return to the blade,” he said. “Should that happen tonight, get away as swiftly as you can and draw it in a fortnight’s time.”
“You’re not going to be mortally wounded,” said Halla. The whole evening had assumed a desperately surreal quality. A man in a magic sword? Really? Probably she was having a dream.
Would that be so bad? Maybe I’ll wake up and Silas will be alive and everything will be back to normal…
“It is highly unlikely, but if I must fight this Roderick to ensure your escape, then there are no guarantees.”
Halla gazed at Sarkis in frank disbelief.
He might be shorter than Roderick, but he was at least as broad across the shoulders. His armor was stained and scarred with use and his gloved hand rested on his sword hilt with the ease of long familiarity. His bare arms were as thick around than her thighs, and Halla was not a small woman. She compared him in her head to her aunt’s guardsman and couldn’t even fit them into the same mental picture. It would be like a wolf fighting an overfed bulldog.
“What?” he said.
“One of us is very confused,” she said. “I won’t swear that it’s not me. Is this really happening?”
Sarkis frowned at her. “Of course.”
“That’s what you’d say if you were a hallucination, too.”
He held out his gloved fingers impatiently. “I am not made of dream flesh, lady.”
She took his hand. It certainly felt solid.
There were machines in Anuket City that the artificers made that felt almost real as well, though. She’d gone to the market there with Silas once and shaken hands with a contraption that had wooden fingers inside a glove.
And would that be more or less strange than a man enchanted into a sword?
“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.”
Sarkis gazed up to heaven again, perhaps looking for strength.
“How are we getting out, anyway?” asked Halla. If I am having a dream or a hallucination or if devils are sending me visions to torment me, it is likely best just to go along with what is happening. And on the remote chance that this is, indeed, happening, I will at least be away from Cousin Alver.
“Through the door. Climbing down from the window will take too much time.”
“But it’s locked—” she started to say, and then Sarkis kicked the door down.
Chapter 5
The lock held. The door itself held. The door frame did not. The door shot open with a sharp splintering noise, the bolt dangling at eye level, scraps of wood still clinging to it. It slammed against the hallway wall and rebounded with a bang.
Sarkis drew his sword and stalked down the hallway. Halla’s sense of unreality got even stronger. She’d had sweet herbs strewn on the floor mats just five days ago, she brought the basket up herself, and here they were, crunching softly under the feet of a swordsman who’d come out of nowhere in a flash of blue light.
Very belatedly, it occurred to her that Sarkis himself might be dangerous.
You were hoping he’d kill you anyway, so what does that matter? Your family will still get your inheritance.
And let’s be honest, he’ll probably make much less of a hash of it than you will. You couldn’t even figure out how to stab yourself with a sword.
Sarkis did not look as if he would have any problem stabbing someone with a sword. He looked like the sort of man who stabbed people all the time, possibly before breakfast.
The sound of the door breaking had woken everyone in the house, assuming they’d been asleep. Doors opened. On the floor below her, she heard Aunt Malva’s querulous voice demanding to know what was going on.
“We should go,” said Halla.
“Stay behind me.” Sarkis led the way down the hall, sword at the ready.
Cousin Alver came up the stairs, wearing a long white bedshirt. He squinted up the steps. “Halla? What are you…”
He stopped.
He stared.
“Is this your relative with the clammy hands, lady?” asked Sarkis.
She peered over his shoulder. “Yes.”
“Halla, what in the name of heaven is going on?” cried Alver. “Why is this person here?”
“And your niece is fifteen, you say?”
“She is.”
Sarkis shook his head in disgust. “She could fight him without my help.”
Halla burst out laughing for the first time since her great-uncle had died.
“Alver?” shouted Aunt Malva. “Alver, what is happening?”
Cousin Alver drew himself up as tall as he could. Since he was still about five steps down, this brought the top of his head even with Sarkis’s shins.
“There is an intruder in the house, mother!” he shouted. “Stay in your room!”
“We were just leaving,” said Halla.
“You’ll do no such thing, cousin! If you think that I’ll stand by and let my betrothed be kidnapped—”
“We are not betrothed! I didn’t agree to anything! I won’t agree to anything!” Halla started forward, furious, and Sarkis had to shift hastily to one side to block her advance with his shoulde
r.
“Halla, you are overwrought! And clearly in danger! Go back to your room, and Roderick and I will deal with this…this person!”
Sarkis rolled his eyes, took a step forward, and lifted his sword. “Go back down the stairs, little man,” he said. “With your head or without it, it’s all the same to me.”
Cousin Alver’s mouth fell open.
“May I kill him now, lady?” asked Sarkis politely.
“Yes! No, wait, that’s not charitable of me. Can you just cut him? His mother’s really punishment enough.”
Alver leveled a trembling finger at Sarkis. “I don’t know who you are or how you got in here…”
“I am Sarkis of the Weeping Lands!” roared the servant of the sword, in a voice loud enough to shake the walls. “And you are in my way!”
Cousin Alver let out a squeak and nearly fell in his haste to get off the staircase.
“It is so gratifying when that works,” murmured Sarkis.
“Does it not usually work?”
“Not on actual warriors, no.” He started down the steps, one hand gripping Halla’s. “Normally they just yell back, ‘No one cares, come and die.’ Is anyone likely to come from above?”
“The servants go home at night. Silas wouldn’t pay for them to stay full time. It’s just attics now.”
Cousin Alver hit the landing where the stairs met the second floor hallway and really did fall. He landed at his mother’s feet and crabwalked backward.
“I knew it!” cried Aunt Malva. She held a candle in her hand, casting shaky yellow light across the scene. “I knew I heard a man in your room, Halla!”
“He’s not a man! He’s a sword!”
“I am actually both,” said Sarkis, sounding somewhat apologetic. “First one, then the other.”
“Sorry. No offense meant. It seems very complicated.”
“How long have you been disgracing your dear husband’s memory with this man?!” shouted Malva.
“I haven’t disgraced anybody’s memory! But he’s been here about an hour, I think.”
“What?!”
“You are laboring under a misapprehension,” said Sarkis sternly. “I am the servant of the sword. Lady Halla is under my protection.”
“Are you raving?” Aunt Malva’s dressing gown flapped like wings. Cousin Alver had taken refuge behind her.
Sarkis angled his body as he reached the landing so that both he and his sword were between Halla and her aunt. Clearly he had identified the real threat, and it wasn’t Alver.
Halla could hear the sounds of the other family members stirring in the rooms off the hallway. Two cousins and Malva’s elderly sister. Halla felt no great affection for any of them, but their malice had been mostly in service to Aunt Malva, not to themselves.
“Stay in your rooms!” shouted Alver, trying to sound authoritative but squeaking a bit on the last word. He was still on the floor, which didn’t help. “There’s a madman in the house!”
“Roderick!” bellowed Aunt Malva. “Roderick, where are you?”
“Go past me,” said Sarkis, releasing her hand. “Down the next set of stairs. I’ll hold them off.” His lip curled as he looked at Alver. “Or…well, I’ll hold her off.”
“She’s the dangerous one,” agreed Halla. She hastily fled down the stairs. Moonlight fell in a dozen diamonds across the front hall.
“Roderick, stop them!”
“Mistress Malva?”
Oh damnation, thought Halla. She’d been hoping that her aunt’s guard would be asleep himself.
“Are you in danger, Mistress?” The guardsman’s voice was depressingly alert. He barreled in from the back of the house. Judging by his attire, he either hadn’t been asleep or was an extraordinarily fast dresser.
“Yes!” cried Malva. “Yes, I am! This—person—is trying to abduct my niece!”
“I am not being abducted!” yelled Halla. “This man with a sword is just breaking me out of my room so I can leave and—oh, hmm, when I say it like that, I suppose it does sound a little—”
“Roderick!”
“But I want to go! It’s not an abduction! Really!”
Roderick started up the stairs. There was a bandage across part of his face, probably where the bird got him. Halla hoped he took care of it. The bird’s wounds tended to fester. Then it occurred to her that Roderick was part of the reason she was trapped in her own home and made up her mind not to care if his wounds turned so septic that his nose fell off.
Sarkis muttered something under his breath and went down the steps two at a time. Halla flattened herself against the wall to let him pass, and he halted on the step just below her.
“It’ll go easier on you if you just surrender,” said Roderick. “I’m not looking to shed anyone’s blood.”
“I could say the same to you,” said Sarkis. “But I’d be lying. Bloodshed is beginning to seem like quite a fine idea. Starting with that clammy-handed fellow there.”
“Can’t let you do that,” said Roderick. Halla was probably imagining the note of regret in his voice.
“No, of course not,” said Sarkis. “Your duty does not permit it. Shall we duel, then?”
Roderick groaned.
“Kill him!” Malva and Alver stood at the top of the stairs, neither one quite willing to descend. Unsurprisingly, Aunt Malva was the one shouting for blood.
“Look,” said Roderick in an undertone, “this isn’t the best job, but it pays well. Do we really have to do this?”
“It seems we do,” said Sarkis. “Draw your weapon, man, and defend the honor of your liege’s house.”
“She’s not my liege,” said Roderick. He drew his sword anyway. The sound of steel ringing out of its sheath made Halla wince.
Sarkis took a step forward. Roderick took a step back.
The first swing was clearly a test. The guard slapped it away and countered with a swing of his own. Sarkis didn’t even bother to counter, simply leaned back and let it cleave empty air.
Another exchange of metal and Sarkis drove Roderick down two steps, apparently without effort.
They’re fighting in the dark. On the stairs. This can’t be a good idea. Halla wondered if she should be helping. She had quite a large sword on her back, didn’t she?
And if I try to swing it, I’ll probably accidentally take Sarkis’s head off and that will be extremely awkward for everyone. Does that count as a mortal wound? I imagine it would have to be, wouldn’t it? Or is it worse than mortal? Would he be able to come back from that?
“Sarkis, is beheading just a mortal wound?”
“What?”
“I thought—”
“Great god’s breath, not now!”
Roderick swung again and was easily batted back down the stairs.
“Is this how you defend your liege’s house?” Sarkis growled.
“I told you, it’s just a job,” said Roderick.
“If you were a man in my command, you’d be stripped of rank for such half-heartedness!”
Roderick might have had something to say to that, but Sarkis swung at his head and the guardsman was driven back down the steps. His back struck the front door of the house behind him.
A clammy hand closed over Halla’s wrist. She cried out, partly in surprise and partly in disgust. “Let go of me!”
“Come on,” hissed Cousin Alver. “While Roderick’s got him distracted!”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Halla twisted her arm, feeling Alver’s rings cut into her skin. “You’re a nasty little—little—”
She was trying to think of something suitably nasty and little to describe Cousin Alver when Aunt Malva slapped her.
For all her querulousness, there was nothing elderly about that slap. Halla’s head rang. She stumbled backward, missed her footing on the stairs, and fell. Alver yelped and released her wrist as if it were on fire.
Uh-oh, she thought, and that was as far as she got before someone caught her.
Her weight
knocked Sarkis into the wall, but he kept his feet somehow, holding her up with one arm while she tried to get her footing back. She heard a scrape of steel and a hiss of anger.
“Are you all right?” she said. “I fell on you.”
“I fear that I am going to have to kill your aunt’s hireling.”
“Go right ahead.”
“Hey now…” said Roderick.
Sarkis released her and struck out with sudden fury.
The guardsman let out a squall of surprise and fell over sideways. Malva screamed.
As the echoes faded, the sound of Roderick’s labored breathing seemed very loud in the house.
“Is he going to die?” whispered Halla.
“He may or may not. But he won’t hold a sword again.” The servant of the sword looked back up the steps toward Malva. The candle in the old woman’s hand shook so wildly that the flame looked close to guttering out.
“Is there anything else you require from this house, lady?” asked Sarkis politely.
Halla had an intense desire to run back to her room and hide under the covers. The violence of the last five minutes had been more than she had experienced in a decade.
But then:
“You’ll be hanged!” hissed Malva. “For murder! For abduction! And don’t think you’re coming back here, Halla. You’re dead to this family. Dead!”
Oh gods, please let that be true.
She raised her chin. “Just to leave it.”
Sarkis stepped over the prone Roderick and pushed the door open. The square of moonlight on the other side looked cold and clear and extraordinarily inviting.
“Then let us go.”
Chapter 6
The air outside was chilly. The moon blazed in the sky overhead.
Sarkis took her hand again as they left the house. It felt less like affection and more like a rider tugging on a horse’s reins, but at the moment, Halla was willing to be led. Her ear still felt hot and swollen from Malva’s slap.
“My Aunt’ll rouse the constables,” whispered Halla. “We need to get out of the town.”
He nodded. The cobbled streets were empty as they hurried away from Silas’s house, but Halla knew it wouldn’t last for long.
He pulled her into a narrow alley. The walls rose above them, shutters locked against the night. This part of town was mostly tall, narrow buildings, sharing walls with one another. The tightly canted rooftops fit together like puzzle boxes, following old lines of ownership. The alleys between them twisted and turned like snakes.
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