“That was odd,” murmured Halla, as they walked away. “Do you think I did something to upset him?”
Sarkis grunted. “Don’t know. Do you have anything else you need to purchase?”
“No, this should cover everything for the trip back.” She looked over at him. “Do you need anything?”
“I have not needed anything for hundreds of years.”
“Well, fine, have you wanted anything?”
Sarkis knew she meant equipment for the road—extra socks or scissors or spices, something of the sort that people carried when they travel—but it still took him a moment to quell his immediate thought.
“Nothing they sell at the market,” he said. Halla nodded, apparently taking that statement at face value, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.
Chapter 23
They stayed at a hostel near the temple. The accommodations were minimalist and Sarkis did not care for the lack of security, but it was free to petitioners of the Rat waiting on the Temple’s response. And as we are all staying ten to a room, even if I do begin to have foolish thoughts, I certainly cannot act on them.
There was some slight difficulty as the hostelkeeper wished to put Halla in the women’s wing and Sarkis in the men’s. Sarkis folded his arms and glared at the woman. She was a nun, so she folded her arms and glared right back.
They might have stood there until the air ignited from the force of the glaring, but Halla said, “Look, I’ll sleep with the sword right next to me,” and elbowed Sarkis in the ribs.
He grumbled. “You will use it at the first sign of trouble.”
“I promise.”
He suffered the nun to lead him away.
I truly hope she does not decide to go to a nunnery when all this is over. I will probably get her thrown out for arguing with the nuns, if she does not get herself thrown out for questioning them.
Also, it would be a terrible waste of good breas—
He dragged his mind forcibly out of the gutter.
The hostelkeeper showed him where he could leave his belongings, which was a bit puzzling for both of them. “I have none,” he admitted.
“Ah,” she said. And then, to his astonishment, the old nun’s face softened, almost imperceptibly. “I understand. There’s no shame in it, my son. We all fall upon hard times. We must lift each other up, that’s all.”
Explaining would have been far too difficult, and Sarkis did not have it in him to turn down compassion freely offered. The great god knew that the woman was correct. He bowed his head politely, and went to join Halla for lunch.
She had changed into the new clothes—a snug bodice and a full skirt. The bodice did not cover her the way the habit had, and it furthermore was lifting certain…assets…in a way that surely had to be incredibly indecent.
Sarkis looked around a bit wildly, and saw that the nun didn’t so much as blink when she saw Halla.
Apparently this is how they dress in the south. And nobody sees anything wrong with it.
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’s fine,” he told Halla. And then, although it pained him, “You look nice.”
Halla beamed at him. Then she blushed. Sarkis suspected that Halla was not used to compliments and now had proof that the blush went…well, quite a long way down.
Settle down, man. You’re a warrior, not a rutting boar. You’ve seen breasts before.
Yes, but these are really good breasts. And their owner is…
“Are you sure you’re all right? You’re staring off into the distance.”
“Fine!” said Sarkis, a trifle too loudly. One of the nuns looked at him disapprovingly. This was actually helpful. He sat down hurriedly and fixed his eyes firmly on Halla’s face.
Know your place. She is your wielder. You have no rights here. If she chose to wander about wearing nothing but strategically placed lizards, that would be her choice, and you would say nothing. Know. Your. Place.
The hostel served food on long tables. It was plain, filling, not particularly elegant fare, but there was a great deal of it. Sarkis had not thought about eating, but the server brought him a bowl anyway. Some kind of thick wheat noodles, with onion and small salted fish chopped over it. More onion than fish and more noodle than either, but not the worst he’d seen.
He stared at it, then shrugged and began to eat. It wasn’t the worst he’d tasted, either.
“What will you do if the priest cannot get your inheritance back?” he asked between bites, still thinking of the nunnery.
Halla blinked at him. “Uh. I…well, I guess I’m no worse off than I was.” She frowned. “Except for the bit where I can’t hire on as a housekeeper to whoever takes the house. So…well. It could be bad.”
Sarkis frowned. “Bad how?”
She propped her chin on her fist. “Bad enough. I suppose I’ll find a church to take me in. Without a payment of some sort, I can’t hope to join a nunnery as anything but a servant, though. Even a bride of the gods requires a dowry. But…well…” She shrugged. “There’s usually work somewhere for someone who can scrub a floor.”
He scowled into the noodles for long moments. “You must sell the sword if that happens.”
She looked up, startled. “I can’t do that!”
He shook his head. “You will have to. I will not allow you to be a drudge somewhere merely for my convenience.”
“Sarkis, I can’t…”
“The other alternative is that you and I take up work as mercenaries, and that is entirely too dangerous. If I could go any significant distance from the sword, I would do it, but I will not place you in harm’s way.”
Halla blinked at him, apparently trying to imagine life as a mercenary. Sarkis tried to picture Halla working a contract and wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or break out in a cold sweat. We’re supposed to guard this caravan? All right. Why? Oh. No, I just thought you might have an interesting reason. I had a cousin who guarded caravans, but then a horse stepped on him and then his foot fell off…no, no, the two were actually unrelated. But he got out of the business after that. Oh, hello there mister bandit, now why did you go into this line of work…?
No, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Do…do you want a different wielder?” Halla asked after a moment. There was an unexpectedly fragile look in her eyes.
“No!” He didn’t know if he was reacting to the question or the look, only that he didn’t want her to look like that. “I just don’t want you to suffer because you think you have to keep me around.”
He went back to his meal, shoulders hunching. The thought of no longer seeing Halla was an unexpectedly sharp knife in his gut.
Don’t be foolish. You’ve known the woman for less than a week.
She smiled at him abruptly. The knife twisted.
You will only fail her in time, as you have failed all your people. If she sells the sword, perhaps you can avoid that somehow.
“Well, hopefully the Temple will take care of all that,” she said.
He grunted.
“Well,” said Halla, sitting back. “It is somehow only the middle of the day. I have a thought about what we could do next, but…err…I don’t want to offend you…”
Sarkis had a brief, mad hope that she was propositioning him and stared at her. Surely not. “What?”
“There’s a library in Archen’s Glory,” she said. “A pretty good one. I thought we could go dig around in there, maybe find a scholar who’s willing to talk, and maybe we can work out how long you’ve been in the sword.”
Sarkis blinked at her. 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 th
an a weapon—that he had almost lost sight of the question himself.
“Oh,” he said, a bit faintly. “I…Yes. I would like that.”
“Great!” Halla pushed back from the table. “Let’s go.”
The library was a testimony to civic architecture—large, clean, set back off a courtyard with a fountain. Friezes of scholars engaged in debate gazed down on them benevolently. Halla had visited once before with Silas, and was pleased to see that nothing much had changed. She walked up to the attendant just inside the doors and said, just as Silas had years ago, “Is there someone who could assist us with a historical research question?”
She was just congratulating herself on handling this like a competent person and not a yokel from a tiny backwater town when the attendant gave her a weary smile. “There are many kinds of history, ma’am,” he said. “Can you narrow it down a bit?”
“Uh…hmm…”
“Military,” put in Sarkis.
The attendant nodded. “Go straight back and turn right, then take the second left. There’s a woman back there named Morag who can probably put you on the right track.”
The path was not quite so clear cut as the attendant had suggested. There were about five possible places to turn right, and Halla was briefly distracted by an enormous statue of a minotaur with improbable endowments—my goodness, that can’t possibly be to scale, can it?—and then Sarkis very clearly noticed her noticing the minotaur and she blushed scarlet while he grinned.
Why did the man make her blush so easily? She was a respectable widow, for the gods’ sake.
This made her think of the fact that he’d been kissing her not two hours earlier. And then that led to other thoughts about Sarkis, possibly in comparison to the minotaur, and that only made her blush harder. She put both hands to her burning cheeks and muttered something about it being hot.
“Well, if our bull-headed associate is any indication, it certainly isn’t cold in here.”
“You are a wretch.”
By the time they had located their historical scholar, Halla had finally stopped blushing. Morag was a dark-skinned, heavyset woman with her hair in narrow braids, the whole mass pulled back from her face with golden cords. She looked from Sarkis to Halla and back again. “My specialty is military history,” she said. “What can I help you fine people with?”
Halla had been trying to work out the best way to ask questions without revealing Sarkis’s secret. She had had an idea at last, and was rather proud of it.
“This is my friend Sarkis. He’s from…ah…well, a long way away. We’re not sure how far away. His people tell a great many stories about battles, and we’re wondering if you can help us figure out where and when some of those battles took place, so we can work out his people’s history.”
Morag put her chin in her hand. “Now that’s an interesting request. How specific are the stories?”
Halla glanced at Sarkis, who was looking at her with surprise and approval. “Very specific,” he said. “I can tell you at least the local geography and what the people involved called themselves.”
“A good start,” said Morag. She gestured for them to follow and went deeper into the stacks, eventually stopping in front of a map cabinet. “Start with one, and let us see if anything rings a bell.”
“The lord called himself the Leopard…” Sarkis began.
It took hours. There were false starts and false leads. But at last Sarkis was able to point to a place on the map and say “There. That is where the Weeping Lands must have been.”
“Modern Baiir,” said Morag. “You’re a long way from home.” Sarkis inclined his head.
“And this battle, here…” he said, tapping his finger on the map. “The fortified keep held by mercenaries.”
“Four hundred and fifty years ago, give or take,” said Morag. “A lot of messy battles around that period. The civil war took the kingdom apart, and even the victor only held it together for about five years before it fragmented again.”
Sarkis kept his face blank. It would not do to let this woman see his reaction.
Five years. My troops dead, my captains chained in enchanted undeath…all so a cold, vindictive king could hold on to power for five more years.
Because I failed them. Because I played the odds and lost.
And I have paid for that gamble for nearly five hundred years.
“Thank you,” said Sarkis gruffly. He felt an unexpected tightness behind his eyes, like unshed tears. “Thank you, Wisdom Morag. I have no money—not even any possessions save the clothes on my back—but you have given me a great gift. If I can ever repay you…” It occurred to him as he spoke that perhaps Wisdom was the wrong term of address, but he did not know any others to use.
The scholar looked up at him, her face unexpectedly somber. She reached out and clasped his forearm, wrist to wrist.
“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, and went to find Halla.
Chapter 24
She was sitting on a bench near the front of the library, leaning back against the wall. She was obviously napping, so he sat down beside her and waited for her to wake up.
“I’m not asleep,” she said thickly.
“Of course not.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I did. More than I expected to find.” He had also learned the fate of the Leopard’s valley, and though it was a tiny thing to set against nearly five hundred years of failure, he took a small comfort from it. They had known peace there for many years, and even now, absorbed into a larger empire, it was a prosperous place. The Leopard’s daughter had not drawn the blade because she had had no need to do so.
“And did you learn how long…?”
He told her.
Halla’s eyes went round, and the last traces of sleep fled her face. “Four hundred and fifty years!”
“Yes. And I would not have known where to look, if you had not thought of such a clever way to ask.” He reached out and took her hand. “That was well thought of.”
“Oh,” said Halla. “I didn’t…well, I mean, you and Morag did all the work. I just thought how I’d do it, without explaining about the sword, and…you know.” Sarkis saw that she was blushing again.
He had a strong urge to kiss her again, but the taste of centuries spent in a sword lay on his tongue, and he knew it would be a mistake. “Come on,” he said instead, tugging her to her feet. “We should get back to the hostel before it gets too dark.”
It was already late evening. There were lamps lit around the courtyard, but the shadows were very thick. Sarkis saw several women leaning against walls, in a pose that hadn’t changed much in five hundred years.
“Halla? Mistress Halla?”
Sarkis heard the voice from an alley and turned, putting one hand on his sword. Who could be calling Halla’s name here? Did she have friends in the city she hadn’t mentioned?
Halla looked as puzzled as he did. “Yes?” she said.
The speaker stepped forward. He had been standing at the corner of a building that faced onto the courtyard outside the library. He was tall and pale, with a seamed face and a short shock of red hair. “Most recently of Rutger’s Howe?”
“Do I know you?”
“I’ve been sent with a message,” he said, beckoning to them.
“Oh!” Halla stepped forward. “Did the Temple send you?”
“Indeed. It’s a somewhat sensitive matter, so if we could…ah…” He glanced at the open courtyard, then back at Halla, raising his eyebrows.
Sarkis’s danger senses twinged. There was something suspicious about the situation, but Halla was already walking toward the red-headed man.
&nbs
p; He seems respectably dressed, but what do I know of clothing in this land? And fine clothes may still conceal a blade.
“Is something wrong?” asked Halla.
The red-haired man took a few steps back. “Yes, but this isn’t the place to discuss it.”
The space between the buildings was barely more than a glorified alley. It was much darker. Sarkis put out a hand to catch Halla’s arm, while his eyes adjusted to the gloom.
That pause saved him a great deal of trouble.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw that there were three more men in the alley, including one that was trying to lurk behind a chunk of the decorative façade. Unlike the redhead, these men did not look particularly respectable, and they also had weapons in their hands.
“…um,” said Halla, her eyes growing wide. “What exactly is the problem?”
The redhead tried, Sarkis would give him that. “I’ll be happy to discuss it once we’re somewhere more private.”
“I think we’ll discuss it now,” said Sarkis, drawing his sword and pushing Halla behind him.
The redhead sighed. “Dammit,” he muttered, to no one in particular. And then, “Mistress Halla, please hand over the sword and you won’t be harmed.”
“Err…why don’t you leave instead?” said Halla. “And then neither of us will be harmed?”
“I’ve no desire to shed blood,” he said.
Sarkis rather suspected that the men with him did not feel the same way. There was a fourth coming from the end of the alleyway now.
“Oh good,” said Halla. “Because I don’t want bloodshed either. So if you leave, we could both get what we want.”
That’s a novel negotiating tactic, I’ll give her that…
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Hand over the sword and we can be done here.”
Sarkis decided that negotiations had gone on long enough and simply threw himself at the redhead, shouting “Halla, run!”
He was half-afraid that she’d stay to discuss the problem of running, where exactly to run, and perhaps relate an anecdote about a cousin who had run somewhere and dropped dead of running-related causes, but Halla bolted like a hare. Thank the great god for that.
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