Wait…the other one? Does Alver have a whole stable of women here or something?
In practice, Malva did the tying. She wound rope around Halla’s wrists while Alver stood behind her, locking her arms in place. The feel of his chest against her back made her skin crawl.
“And you brought rope, I see. So you knew you’d have to tie me up to get me to the altar. Did you plan on gagging me so I can’t denounce you to the priest? Tying me to the bed afterwards?”
Alver made a pained noise. Malva just glared. “You’ll be grateful soon enough,” the old woman said. “After you’ve had awhile to think about it. I suggest you stop acting like a whore and start thinking about what’s best for you. And your…” her lip curled “…child.”
Halla fumed while Alver walked her upstairs. She thought about making him drag her, but it seemed like that would result in a lot of bruises to little effect.
He opened the door to one of the unused servant’s rooms and pushed Halla inside. “You rat bastard!” she shouted after him.
“I’d rather you didn’t take my god’s name in vain in quite that way,” said a familiar voice from the floor.
“Zale!?”
The Rat priest smiled, lifting their bound hands. They looked a bit mussed, their hair flopped back out of the braid and into their eyes, but none the worse for wear. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this…”
“What happened to you?” asked Halla, sitting down beside them.
They’re the ‘other one.’ Not a stable of women after all.
Pity.
“Apparently, no one warned your cousin that I was in the attic conducting an inventory. They came in and began discussing how to marry you off to Alver. I came down to tell them that they would not do such a thing, certainly not without your consent, and the next thing I knew, your cousin was stuffing me in the back bedroom.” They shrugged. “You were right, too.”
“What?”
“He does have clammy hands.”
“Ugh, I know.” Halla leaned her head back against the wall. The idea of those clammy hands on her body had been bad enough before. After Sarkis had touched her with such passion, coaxed such extraordinary responses from her body…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. Like drinking a fine aged whiskey and then having a dead fish as a chaser.
“And you, I assume, did not feel like consenting to this marriage?”
“Obviously not.” Halla scowled.
“I am a bit surprised they put you in here with me,” admitted Zale. “If they’ve already stooped to kidnapping, I would expect them to spirit you away to a willing priest, have it done as quickly as possible, and then deal with the consequences later.”
“I told them I was pregnant with Sarkis’s child,” said Halla.
Zale stared at her. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t! I mean, I’m not! We haven’t—well, we did—err—well, there was some—he and I—but he used his fingers, we didn’t—”
Halla was aware that she had turned bright red and stopped talking. She put her hands over her face. Her fingers felt cold against her blazing hot cheeks.
“You couldn’t, though,” said Zale. “Even if you wanted to. Could you? He’s dead. Dead men don’t sire children, except in a few very specific cases.”
“They don’t walk around and talk, either, but he manages.”
Zale considered this. “Yes, but…” They frowned.
“That’s why we didn’t,” said Halla wearily. “I didn’t want to get pregnant. I don’t want children. Not his, not Alver’s, not anybody’s.”
Zale gave a very unpriestly snort. “That’s easily avoided. Just sheathe the sword after he…ah…sheathes the sword. As it were.”
“What?”
She stared at the priest so intently that Zale, too, started to turn red. “Look, we did the experiments, didn’t we? You saw them, too. Just…um. Look, his…uh…that is…his seed is like the rest of him, isn’t it? If you sheathe the sword, it should just go back in the sword. Like a severed tongue.” They coughed. “If you’re really worried, you could test it. Have him…um…you know…in a jar…and then…” They trailed off.
Zale and Halla looked at each other. Then they both carefully didn’t look at each other, since they were both beet red.
“So!” said Zale brightly. “How about this weather?”
“Rainy,” said Halla gratefully. “Very rainy.”
“And these ropes! So…uh…rope-like.”
“Yes. With the hemp. And the knots. Very much so.”
“Do you think you can untie it? Or that I can untie you?”
Halla put her wrists alongside Zale’s. “I think you have a little more slack. Aunt Malva was not happy with me when she tied mine.”
“Fair enough.” The priest began picking at Halla’s knots with their fingertips. “Dear me, yes. You know, after the last time, I started thinking that it would be wise to carry a knife in my boot.”
“And?”
“It turns out that is an excellent way to ruin your sock. I got the most fascinatingly shaped blister, too. Now I rather wish I’d dealt with the blister.”
“Men have died of blisters,” said Halla. “At least, so Sarkis tells me.”
“Good heavens. Where is Sarkis, anyway?”
“I wish I knew.”
Zale raised a thin eyebrow. Halla sighed and began recounting the story.
She found herself trying to make excuses for Sarkis as she told it. I’m sure he didn’t mean to lie…It was all a long time ago…
Zale paused in picking at the ropes and glanced up at her. “Did he say any of that?”
She sighed. “No. He said that was a coward’s way out. That he knew what I believed and never corrected me.”
“That sounds more like him.” Zale bent their head over her wrists again.
“He should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“Now he’s gone, though. Alver said that he’d gone off with Bartholomew and Nolan and left me here.”
Zale met her eyes, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like Sarkis at all.”
Halla shook her head. “I gave up the sword,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t have to stay with me any more. I always thought he must hold me in contempt, until…well, until last night, then I thought…oh, it doesn’t matter.” She could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids and tilted her head back. “I told him he could belong to himself now. I guess he took me up on it.”
Zale snorted. “And how exactly is he supposed to draw himself?”
Halla blinked at him. “What?”
“How is he going to draw his own sword? If he goes back into it, he’s stuck. It’s like trying to pick yourself up.”
“I…err…but someone else could draw the sword, couldn’t they? I don’t have to draw the sword every time, but I’m still—I was still—the wielder.”
“Right, but he can never be the first person to draw the sword.”
Halla opened her mouth to say that she’d given him the sword so it shouldn’t matter, and suddenly remembered the first night that she and Sarkis had met. I can’t very well wield myself, lady.
“I’m an idiot…” she said, and felt tears start to threaten at last.
“You were angry,” said Zale. “Few of us are at our best when we are angry.” They glanced up at her. “And it is very likely that idiocy saved you a great deal of unpleasantness.”
“What?”
“We are not dealing with good men, Halla. They moved too quickly to have done so in ignorance. If you had not given up the sword, I suspect they would have made you give it up.”
“Yes, but…” This seemed rather less important at the moment than what Sarkis must be feeling. “What if he thinks I hate him? What if he thinks I don’t want to see him any more?”
“We will go and find him and tell him otherwise.” They got their nails under one loop and managed to tug it upward. Halla winced as the other ropes pulled tighter. “Sorry.”<
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“It’s all right. I’d rather have my hand go to sleep than marry Alver.”
“He does seem very determined, doesn’t he?” The rogue hair flopped into their eyes again and they blew it out of the way on an aggravated breath.
“Or his mother is. I don’t know why they care,” said Halla tiredly. “Silas wasn’t worth that much. They can’t possibly think it’s worth all the trouble of kidnapping me and a priest of the Rat. Even if they can lock me up somewhere and no one will care, your temple will come looking for you.”
Zale nodded. “It’s odd, isn’t it? Presumably they’ll have to kill me.”
Halla blinked at them. They seemed very calm about it.
“I wonder if it has to do with the mortgages.”
“Mortgages?”
“Yes. It’s hard to find in the records and I suspect it was quite a shady operation, but I managed to turn it up in the clerk’s office when I was digging around to find Silas’s total worth. Your outlying properties are mortgaged to the hilt.”
“They what? But Silas didn’t have any mortgages. He always used to brag that he owned everything free and clear.”
“Indeed. And they weren’t taken out in his name, either. The only way to find them was to go through the land records themselves. Which I did as a matter of course, since the property was in dispute.”
Halla stared at them with her mouth open. “Whose name are they in?”
“Your cousin’s. If I were to venture a guess—” They got another loop free and Halla grimaced as the hemp scraped across her wrists “—your cousin used the fact that he expected to inherit as collateral for a loan from someone with more money than ethics.”
“That ra—I mean, that bastard!”
Zale smiled gently at her correction. “So now he is in a bind. He must lay claim to that property, or suddenly find that he has no collateral for the loan.”
“Him and his mother. I’ll bet she’s in this up to her neck.”
“That would fit with what I have witnessed of them, yes. Such situations can be resolved, of course, if the various parties are acting in good faith, but I would wager a small sum that the sort of person who would make such a loan is not acting in good faith.” They chuckled. “Ironically, your cousin could easily have found himself petitioning the Rat for mediation in such a case.”
“And they’d take the case?”
“Well, never say never. Let us say instead that imprisoning one of their priests would not incline the Temple favorably to his case. I was holding this information in reserve in case the bailiff did not decide in our favor, but now…well. Can you get this loop past your fingers?”
Halla contorted her hand until the loop slipped over her knuckles.
“Excellent! Give me a minute, my nails aren’t very happy with me.”
“I don’t care about Alver,” Halla said after a moment, wiggling her fingers. “I mean, I care, but we can worry about him later.”
“Well, given that we have to escape, we’ll have to worry about him quite soon.”
“Right, right.” Halla waved her bound hands. “But it’s Sarkis I’m worried about. Bartholomew could take him anywhere. Or sell him. What if we never found him again?”
“The Rat has many eyes. But yes, it would be much easier to catch Bartholomew now rather than later.”
“What if he won’t give the sword up, though?” asked Halla. “Sarkis can’t force him, if he’s the wielder.”
“Then I fear that you and I will have to kill him,” said Zale.
Halla looked at Zale. The silence stretched out until it was intolerably loud.
“Do you remember what happened last time?” said Halla. “When we had to hide the bodies?”
“Yes, but we’re bound to get better with practice.”
“I’ve never killed anyone! You’ve never killed anyone! Sarkis and Brindle did all the killing bits! We stood around and wrung our hands!”
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out. People manage to kill each other all the time. How hard can it be?”
Halla suspected that it would be quite difficult, but then again, Sarkis had killed a half-dozen bandits in less time than it took to cook a chicken, so maybe the priest was right.
“Anyway, it wasn’t the killing part that was hard, it was dealing with the body afterward. And in this case, they’re a kidnapper, so we’ll just go straight to the constable and explain the situation. Well…part of the situation…”
“Maybe we can get Brindle to do the actual killing,” said Halla.
“Err. I wouldn’t feel right about that. I mean, defending his ox is one thing, but asking a gnole to kill somebody in somewhat cold blood…”
Halla sighed. “You’re probably right.”
“Though I do wish we had a Sin-Eater…” Zale muttered, half to themself.
“What? One of those people who eats food off the dead?”
“Well…no. Not exactly…” Zale lifted their bound hands to scratch awkwardly at their neck. “They’re…a religious order my priesthood works with occasionally. For things like this. You know, murders, assassination, things like that. I mean, we’re practical but we’re not criminals.”
Halla gave them a look.
“Yes, all right, the law might frown on the hiding bodies part, but the Motherhood started it.”
“They did,” Halla agreed. She was mostly just bemused at how Zale had gone from throwing up in the bushes to coolly plotting murder.
She was even more bemused that she seemed to be going along with it.
It’s for Sarkis. You have to get him back. He’s been kidnapped. If you’ve got to kill the kidnapper, that’s just how it is.
No use dithering. Get to work.
“If you’re still bothered by it,” said Zale, bending back over her bonds, “I’ll take your confession afterwards.”
“Who’s going to take your confession?”
The priest gave her a wry smile. “The bishop. And if I did not suspect the bishop would agree with me, we would be having a very different conversation.” They slid their fingers under the loops of rope, tugging another one clear of Halla’s knuckles. This one went much easier.
“And if I find she does not agree,” they added, “then it will all be on my head for leading you astray. As it should be…”
Chapter 50
Sarkis materialized outside the sword again in a room filled with packing crates.
Some kind of storeroom, he thought. Not one he’d seen in Halla’s house, certainly.
He eyed the men across the room. Bartholomew and Nolan.
“Throw down your sword,” said Bartholomew.
“No,” said Sarkis.
There was a packing crate in the middle of the room, about waist high, with a lantern on it. He could not throw the lantern at Bartholomew. Nolan stood too far back.
The fingermarks on the scholar’s neck were livid purple, going green around the edges. It had been at least a day, then.
How far could Bartholomew have traveled in a day?
How much damage could Halla’s cousin Alver have done in that time?
He had no idea how to get a message to Halla, or even where he was in relation to her. He could be five miles away or fifty.
Sarkis had tasted despair a hundred times in his life, but only a few times like this. He felt as if he stood on the battlements of the keep again, looking down at his men, outnumbered, outmaneuvered, doomed…
“Throw down your sword,” repeated Bartholomew.
“Come and take it,” said Sarkis.
“Perhaps I shall. You can’t very well use it on me.”
Sarkis curled his lip back. The man was right, loathe as he was to admit it.
He stood grimly while Bartholomew relieved him of his weapon. Even knowing that Sarkis couldn’t attack, the other man inched around him as if he were a wild beast on a chain.
“You will behave in a civilized fashion,” said his wielder, stepping back. “Or else.”
Sarkis spat on the floor.
“I don’t want to have to punish you.”
“Better men than you have tried.”
Bartholomew retreated around the packing crate and looked at Nolan. Nolan leaned over and whispered into his ear.
“If you do not cooperate,” said Bartholomew, sounding strained, “I will cut off your hand.”
Sarkis slammed his left forearm down on the packing crate. “Do it. Do you think I’m afraid of pain?”
“Fine!” snapped his wielder. “I’ll cut off something you’ll miss a lot more!”
Sarkis didn’t even hesitate. He yanked his trousers open and slapped his cock down on the packing crate. “Do your worst. It all grows back.”
Bartholomew’s mouth dropped open. So did Nolan’s. Sarkis had seen men who were holding their guts in with both hands who hadn’t looked nearly as appalled.
Honestly, he was a little surprised himself. Apparently he was much angrier than he’d realized.
The two men retreated to the other side of the room and had an urgent whispered conference. Sarkis wondered if he should put himself away or if it was more menacing if he just stood there with his good bits on the packing crate.
The relatively cold temperature of the storeroom decided him. Some gestures lost their effectiveness when your balls were trying to crawl back into your body to keep warm. He tucked himself back into his pants and stood with his arms folded, glaring.
It was going to hurt like a bear if they took him up on it, but at least everything grew back.
After a moment, Nolan stepped forward, hands raised. Behind him, Bartholomew held the sword in both hands, clearly ready to sheathe it at a moment’s notice.
“Ser Sarkis,” said the scholar warily, “I feel we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. I am not your enemy.”
Sarkis didn’t bother to dignify this with a reply.
“I don’t approve of how this was handled,” said Nolan, glancing back over his shoulder. “You have every right to be angry. My order wanted to purchase your sword legitimately. We did not intend for this deception.”
Bartholomew rolled his eyes. “If my procurer in Archen’s Glory hadn’t failed so spectacularly to acquire the sword, you would have been able to do so.”
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