Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  Halla knew perfectly well what he wasn’t saying, about human behavior and human assumptions of superiority. He’s being diplomatic. Because I am, after all, a human, and this is my home.

  And if I try to say much more, I’ll make a mess of it, and it won’t fix Brindle’s problem at all.

  “Tell me if I can do anything,” she said wearily. “Or if anyone gives you trouble. Sarkis’ll set them straight.”

  Brindle gave her a gap-fanged grin. “A gnole would like to see that,” he admitted.

  The other significant problem was the Four-Faced priest’s housekeeper.

  Widow Davey lived across the road from the small church, and came over every evening to do the cooking and the tidying up. She was kind, generous, efficient, and when she learned that Widow Halla was going to be setting up her own household, she bustled over, full of helpful advice.

  “I’ve been keeping house for over twenty years,” said Halla grimly. “I’ve told her that. But she still wants to show me the best way to blacken a grate and how to make chicken stock. I have been making chicken stock since I was twelve.”

  “Do you want me to stab her?” asked Sarkis, who was feeling rather useless now that no one was shooting arrows at them.

  “No. I mean, yes, very much, but don’t actually do it. She means well.” Halla gritted her teeth. “She just won’t listen. She’s seen me at market since I moved here, but now that Silas is gone, suddenly I need all her advice. God’s teeth! Did she think he was making the chicken stock?”

  Sarkis had only the vaguest notion of what chicken stock even was. Something you fed to chickens, presumably. “Well, perhaps Zale will be done with whatever they’re doing soon.”

  “Bartholomew should arrive tomorrow,” Halla agreed.

  “How will they make a judgment?”

  “Oh, they’ll call a triumvirate. Clerk, priest—that’s our host, Zale can’t do it—and the Squire’s bailiff will make the third.”

  “Will they find in our favor, do you think?”

  “The priest certainly will. He’s already told Zale as much. The clerk will probably depend on whether he’s more scared of Malva or Zale. The Squire’s bailiff, I don’t know.”

  The squire’s bailiff, when he arrived, was a large man with the placid air of a contented cow and a mind like a razor. He arrived at the same time as Bartholomew and went to the same hostel, where, ironically, Malva and Alver were also staying.

  “Should I be worried about this?” asked Zale, upon learning of the accomodations.

  Halla shook her head. “I honestly don’t think so. Aunt Malva doesn’t really improve upon close acquaintance.”

  “And your cousin?”

  “Alver will agree to anything, mean none of it, and then do whatever his mother tells him.”

  “A familiar, if regrettable dynamic.” Zale nodded. “Well, it is only another two days and then we shall have our decision.” They smiled. “And I have a trick or two up my sleeve, in case things go very badly indeed.”

  But things did not go badly. In fact, given the sheer chaos of their trip to and from Archenhold, the judgment was almost an anticlimax.

  The judgment was held in the church, that being both a large room and, given the proximity of the gods, presumably a better space for deliberation. Sarkis didn’t know if it would help, but at least the room was large enough that he didn’t need to sit too close to Halla’s wretched relatives.

  He tried to remember what Halla had said. 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.

  The stone floor radiated cold. Everyone was wearing at least two layers of clothes. Only Zale seemed unaffected by it, moving rapidly back and forth, presenting the case methodically to the three judges. The priest was finally in their element, and Sarkis wondered that he had ever thought them weak. Their long-fingered hands moved back and forth, sweeping gestures to underscore their words, their angular face by turns solemn and stern and amused.

  Halla sat in a pew in the back of the room, clutching Sarkis’s hand. He wanted to put his arm around her, shield her from the glare that Malva was shooting in her direction, but he wasn’t sure how she would feel about it, or if it would bias the judgment. A respectable widow. He hated how much that mattered.

  Alver’s defense was…well, even to Sarkis’s biased ears, it didn’t sound good. The old man should have left the property to his family. No, Halla wasn’t family. Well, she was sort of family, by marriage, so yes, maybe he had left it to family, but not the right family.

  He tried to argue that Silas had not been in his right mind, whereupon Zale called Bartholomew up from his spot on the pew, and Bartholomew demolished that argument in a few well-placed sentences. Senile? No, he had not been senile, he’d driven a brutal bargain with Bartholomew for a set of old books and a giant snail shell a month before he died. And anyway, the will that Bartholomew had witnessed was six years old, so even if he had been getting on at the end, it didn’t signify. No, Halla had not had any undue influence over him. She was a housekeeper and a good one. Efficient, kind, respectable, but not what you’d call a seductress, and he meant no offense to her by saying so.

  Halla laughed at that. Sarkis wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to go glare at the man until he agreed that she was beautiful.

  He was braced for a discussion of the way that he and Halla had left the house, but Alver did not bring it up. Possibly the man had realized that it made him look at least as bad as Sarkis and had decided to simply pretend that it hadn’t happened at all.

  That hired man can’t have died, or they would probably try to have me up on murder charges. Perhaps the dreadful woman turned him out after he could no longer guard her.

  Alver fumbled his way through the statement until Malva apparently could bear it no longer, and then she stood up and pushed him out of the way. Sarkis watched the triumvirate’s reactions with amusement. The clerk visibly flinched, the priest’s lips thinned, and the bailiff’s small, bright eyes grew smaller and brighter as he narrowed them.

  “Family comes first,” said Malva. “Silas knew that once. I don’t know what changed that, but clearly that woman had something to do with it!”

  “But she is family,” said the bailiff mildly.

  “Her?” Malva dismissed this with a hand. “No one could believe that my dear nephew would have wanted his wife favored above his blood!”

  “How long has your dear nephew been dead?” asked the bailiff.

  Malva opened her mouth and shut it again.

  “Twelve years,” called Halla. “Thirteen next summer.”

  “Perhaps the deceased thought that he was doing a kindness, seeing that his nephew’s widow was cared for,” said the priest of the Four-Faced God.

  “A pension would have been sufficient,” said Malva. “No one is claiming that she should be turned out into the cold.”

  “This from a woman who shouted, ‘You’re dead to the family,’ as I was leaving,” muttered Halla to Sarkis.

  Sarkis snorted. He might have said something, but then Zale astonished him by saying, “Ser Sarkis, please come forward.”

  “Ah…” He rose to his feet. “Yes, of course, priest Zale, but I am not sure what good that I will do. I know nothing of the will nor the law.”

  “You have been a guardsman for Mistress Halla for some weeks now, have you not?”

  “I have.”

  “You escorted her to Archen’s Glory and my Temple, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  Zale smiled with the air of one going in for the kill. “And did she travel in wealth and comfort?”

  “We slept in hedgerows. She had to sell her jewelry so we could eat,” said Sarkis. “I have nothing of my own but the armor
on my back, or I would have forbidden it, but she insisted.”

  “Not exactly the act of a woman who masterminded an alteration of the will in her favor, was it?”

  Sarkis snorted loudly.

  “Traveling alone with a strange man is not the act of a respectable woman,” said Malva.

  Sarkis turned toward her furiously. “I have guarded her as I would my sisters. No one will offer her disrespect in my hearing, man or woman, or they will answer to me.”

  He put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Malva slapped Alver’s arm. “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.” The bailiff’s lips twitched.

  “Ser Sarkis,” said the priest of the Four-Faced God mildly, “we do not threaten violence within the walls of the church.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Sarkis inclined his head. “I fear I am not native to these lands.” He contemplated how barbaric he wanted to appear. In for a lamb… “In my homeland, duels are fought before the altar so that the god may decide the victor.” Which was nonsense, of course, but hopefully impressive sounding nonsense.

  “That will not be necessary,” said Zale firmly. “Now, if I may draw your attention, gentlemen, to the wording of the will…”

  The process stretched out interminably. Halla shivered in the cold room. But at last, the three judges nodded to Zale and Alver, and everyone filed out of the temple to give them time to deliberate.

  It took less than ten minutes. The clerk was sweating and refusing to meet Malva’s eyes as he delivered their judgment. “The will is upheld. Mistress Halla is Silas’s heir.”

  “What?” said Halla.

  “What?” said Malva.

  “Really?” said Halla.

  “What?” said Malva.

  “Thank you, wise sirs,” said Zale, and bowed deeply, while Halla dissolved into tears of sheer relief.

  Chapter 43

  “Well, there was really no doubt,” said Zale, leaning back in their chair. “Or rather, there was no doubt that the will was valid. And I had a few tricks up my sleeve if they didn’t happen to agree with me. The bailiff was the only wild card.”

  “It was still amazing,” said Halla firmly.

  “Bartholomew’s testimony certainly helped,” said Zale, raising their mug in Bartholomew’s direction. The group was huddled together in the church’s back room, while the priest of the Four-Faced God beamed at all and sundry.

  “Will you all come stay at the house tonight?” asked Halla. “I don’t know what state the house is in, but if I can’t get at least the kitchen and a bedroom or two presentable…”

  “We won’t put you to the trouble,” said Nolan firmly, glancing over at Bartholomew. “You’ve been through a great deal, you don’t need to start cleaning up for us.”

  “I am intrigued, though,” said Bartholomew, glancing at Halla, “by that sword you have been carrying. I fear that I may have undervalued it.”

  “This?” Halla set her hand on the scabbard. “Oh, it’s…um…not available, I’m afraid.”

  “Our agreement included first pick of the artifacts in the house.”

  “Yes,” said Halla, “but it’s not really in the house, is it? And anyway, it’s not mine. It belong to Sarkis. I gave it to him ages ago. He just makes me carry it around so that people think twice about assaulting me. Do you know we got set on by footpads in Archen’s Glory?”

  “Shocking!” said Nolan.

  “It was. But Sarkis ran them off. He’s good at that sort of thing.”

  Bartholomew was undeterred. “Would you be willing to part with it then, sir?”

  “No,” said Sarkis. He wracked his brain for some excuse and took refuge in mysticism. “It is originally a sword of my people’s make. It will be…unhappy…if it spends too long among unbelievers.”

  (This was purest refined sheep-shit. Sarkis’s people saw swords as tools, not sentient objects, and found the notion of swords having emotions or preferences faintly insulting, as if a human smith had taken on the role of the great god. He was exceptionally conscious of the irony.)

  Bartholomew looked as if he might argue the point, but Nolan said, “If it is acceptable, Mistress Halla, we’ll come over tomorrow and begin attempting to catalog the artifacts?”

  “Your assistance would be most welcome,” said Zale.

  “Yes, of course,” said Halla. She threw her arms around Bartholomew and he staggered back a step. “Thank you so much! I know Silas would be so grateful.”

  “Oh, well…” Bartholomew snorted. “Probably he’d be rubbing his hands together in glee that he made me come all this way. But I’m glad to have helped.”

  After he and Nolan had made their way back to the inn, the priest of the Four-Faced God turned to Halla. “I…ah…have something for you,” he said. “I did not want to announce it before the case, because had you lost, I knew that it would belong to that dreadful woman, and…well…”

  Halla rose to her feet, puzzled. “Oh?”

  “Yes. If you’ll follow me…?”

  He led the three of them to a tiny cell off one of the side chambers. “Used for meditation,” he said. “At least…normally…”

  He opened the door and a voice bellowed “Prepare for the coming of the worm!” Then it sang, “tweedle-tweedle-twee!” and whistled.

  “What the hell is that?” said Sarkis, reaching for his sword.

  “Oh dear gods,” said Halla, sagging against the doorway. “You found the bird.”

  “I found it in the nave the day of Silas’s funeral,” said the priest. “It was badly chilled, so I thought I would warm it up, and then it began saying all those dreadful things, and I realized it had been that awful pet of his.”

  “Rat’s blood,” said Zale, staring at the little finch, who was hopping about inside a wicker cage. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s not a demon,” said Halla. “We had it checked. Silas thought it was probably inhabited by a ghost, but the ghost would have had to be a cultist or something.”

  “The dead are bound beneath the earth and their tongues stopped with clay but the day will come when they are free to sing the praises of the worm!”

  “Perhaps a very tiny god,” said Zale, tapping the bars.

  “A very tiny angry god,” said Sarkis.

  “Tweedle-tweedle-twee…”

  “You’ll take it back, won’t you?” said the priest hopefully. “I’ve been keeping it in here, but it scares the novices.”

  Halla sighed heavily. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” Sarkis looked at her as if she had agreed to keep a tame manticore in the house. “Well, I can’t leave it here.”

  “Prepare for the coming of the day of hellfire!”

  “What does it eat?” asked Sarkis.

  “Anything. It likes chicken. We mostly gave it cracked corn because that was a normal bird thing to eat.” She picked up the cage by the handle. The bird whistled happily and then told her that the dead were waiting, and Halla began to feel like things were returning to normal at last.

  Zale offered to stay in the wagon again that night, but Halla wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re not a guest,” she said. “You’re family. Which means that I can put you up in a room with a fireplace that doesn’t draw and not feel guilty about it.” Zale laughed.

  “A real bed would be nice,” they admitted. “I’m completely out of sheets, as you very well know.”

  “We have sheets. Acres of sheets. They may be mended within an inch of their lives, some of them, but we’ve got them. And the bird goes to sleep once you put something over its cage.”

  To give Malva what credit she deserved, the house was not in bad condition. The compost needed turning and the chickens were indignant, but the garden was asleep for the winter anyway. Halla found the bedrooms largely untouched. Only Silas’s room and the two best guest bedrooms showed signs of recent use.

  That awful old shrew took Silas’s roo
m? Halla found that she was chokingly furious about that. It was one thing to be evil and grasping and lock your potential daughter-in-law in a back room, but stealing a dead man’s bed? That was just petty.

  Presumably a number of the family entourage had gone home after the will was read. One of the guest bedrooms smelled vaguely of lavender water and had no fewer than five quilts piled on the bed, which Halla knew from experience meant that Malva’s sister had been sleeping in it.

  I suppose she’s back at the inn, then. Well, she wouldn’t have been much good at the trial, particularly if Malva was trying to convince everyone that her side of the family was a bastion of sanity and Silas was moving to senility.

  “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.”

  It took several hours of work, but Halla scrubbed the tables, swept the floor, appeased the chickens, and put fresh sheets on the beds. She was just strewing fresh herbs on the rush mats when she heard the front door open.

  “I have brought wine,” said Zale. “In celebration. I also had wine that would work for consolation, but fortunately it wasn’t needed.”

  Sarkis emerged from the scullery, looking soggy. “I have defeated the dishes.”

  “Were there any survivors?”

  “The only casualty was some kind of monstrous serving plate with pears on it.”

  “Oh, that,” said Halla with relief. “Dare I hope it’s broken past any possible mending?”

  Sarkis considered this for a moment, then went back into the scullery. Sounds of breaking crockery drifted through the open door.

  “Yes,” he said, returning.