Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  Nolan stared at the place where Sarkis had been. The hilt of the sword in his hand met the scabbard with a soft, final click.

  Halla stood up. She had not dropped the crossbow. It seemed very important that she had not dropped the crossbow.

  “I’m very angry,” she said to Nolan. Her voice was quiet. Her siblings, had any of them been alive, would have recognized that voice and run for the door.

  The scholar, foolishly, did not pay attention.

  “How did he do that?” breathed Nolan. “Did the Saint not prevent the swords from suicide? Why would she not? Was it too difficult, or—”

  Halla shot him, inexpertly, in the leg.

  Nolan screamed and fell down, clutching his thigh. Blood bloomed through the cloth around the bolt. He rolled back and forth, shrieking.

  Zale started forward. Halla handed the crossbow to the priest, her face still extremely calm.

  “Give me the sword,” she said to Nolan.

  “Ahh! No! No! I can’t—not the sword, not one of the Saint’s relics—”

  “I’d rather not torture you,” said Halla. “I’m not really a person who does that. But you’ve killed Bartholomew and kidnapped my friend and I think I could probably figure out how to be that sort of person very quickly.”

  She reached over and plucked a knife from the kitchen table. Nolan’s breath came in gasps as he clutched his leg, staring at her.

  “Well, it actually helps that he killed Bartholomew,” said Zale thoughtfully. “We’ll just say that we came in and found that, and it’ll be the word of a priest against him. Honestly, this will make it much easier.”

  Nolan’s eyes got huge.

  “On balance,” said Halla thoughtfully, “I think I’d rather kill you. Then I don’t have to be the sort of person who tortures people. And I don’t think I’ll feel guilty about it, either.”

  Zale set down the crossbow.

  “Stop her!” screamed Nolan at the priest.

  “No,” said Zale. “But I’ll hold you down for her. I think that will make it easier for everyone, don’t you? It’ll be over faster that way. I don’t think any of us want to draw this out, do we?”

  “You’re both utterly mad!”

  “We are both very practical,” said Zale. “It’s the world that’s gone a bit mad.” The priest caught Nolan’s shoulders.

  The scholar searched Halla’s face, then Zale’s, then Halla’s again. Whatever he saw apparently changed his mind because he sagged suddenly.

  “Take the sword!” gasped Nolan. “Take it, take it!” He pried a bloody hand loose from his leg and shoved the scabbard at her.

  “You release the sword to me? You renounce all ownership?” Halla wasn’t sure what words he had to say to make it official.

  “Yes, yes! All of it! It’s yours, I release it!”

  “Thank you,” said Halla, lowering the knife.

  “I don’t think you have to thank him,” said Zale. “Since he stole the sword to begin with.”

  “Seems rude otherwise.”

  “Well, Rat forbid we be rude.”

  “On the other hand, he did murder a family friend,” said Halla. “Of course, that was after Bartholomew stole the sword, so…I don’t know. Does that one equal out, do you think?”

  “I think I’m bleeding to death!” screamed Nolan.

  “And if you’d do it faster, it would solve a great many problems,” said Zale. “Ah, well. I suppose we should resign ourselves to him living. You seem to have missed the big artery.”

  “You taught me to shoot at trees. You didn’t teach me to hit specific spots on trees.”

  Zale opened the front door. “Excuse me!” they called. “You—yes, with the goat! Excuse me! Will you go to the constabulary and ask them to please come at once, there’s been a murder?”

  Halla didn’t hear the neighbor’s response. She leaned against the kitchen table, watching Nolan.

  “I’m going to lose consciousness,” threatened the scholar.

  “Perhaps we’d have some quiet, then.” Halla’s hands were shaking with adrenaline and she buried them in her skirts.

  In fact, the scholar did lose consciousness a few minutes later, and then the constables arrived. Halla was not looking forward to explaining things, but Zale immediately took charge. The story they told had nothing to do with any sword being missing, but a great deal to do with an elderly friend of the family, a bit befuddled, being taken in by a smooth-talking scholar who planned to kill him and steal the most valuable parts of his collection. It was a greatly embellished version of what they had told the paladins. In this version, after Bartholomew had come to Rutger’s Howe to aid Halla, both priest and widow had been suspicious of the way that Nolan had treated the old man and had followed them back to try and put a stop to it.

  They were aided by the fact that one of the constables had seen them on the way into the city, accompanied by paladins, and that Bartholomew was already cold. The word of a Rat priest carried a great deal of weight as well. By the time that a healer was sent for to bandage Nolan’s leg and remove the bolt, the man was already being treated as a criminal.

  “If he lives, he’ll likely hang,” said the Amalcross constable. “Pretty clear what he intended. I’m sorry you didn’t get here sooner.”

  “An hour or two,” said Halla, wiping away tears. They were genuine enough. Bartholomew had been kind to her, before greed went to work like a poison in his mind. It was easier to think of him as two people, and to mourn the kind one even as she had hated the greedy one. “If we’d only been a little quicker on the road…”

  “Now, now.” He patted her shoulder. “Wasn’t meant to be unkind. You stopped him from robbing the next old man. Sorry you had to shoot him, mistress. Hard thing to have to do.”

  “I hardly knew what I was doing…” she murmured, falling instinctively back into her protective shell of foolishness. “I saw that Bartholomew was dead and all I could think to do was grab Zale’s crossbow. Oh dear! I hope I didn’t kill him.”

  “He’ll be dead either way,” said the constable. “You did a fine job, and don’t you feel guilty for doing what had to be done.” He gave Zale what he probably thought was a subtle look over Halla’s shoulder. Zale nodded to him, face grave, and then when the man turned away, the priest rolled their eyes at Halla.

  And then there was only the sword.

  Chapter 58

  She lasted until that night in a strange inn, before she finally burst into tears.

  Zale put their arms around her, as if they’d expected it. Probably they had.

  “Shhh…” the priest whispered. “Shhh, it will be all right. He’s only in the sword. He’ll come back.”

  “Will he?” she cried. “But he killed himself!”

  “And he may have done so in the past as well,” said Zale. “Sarkis has not been terribly forthcoming about his life as a sword, has he?”

  That wrung a watery laugh from Halla. “N-no. No, he hasn’t.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “But how can I…I mean…I was so stupid he had to kill himself to save me. How can he ever…”

  She trailed off. How could Sarkis possible think of her as anything but a hopelessly useless burden? She’d come to his rescue, and failed so spectacularly that he had to fall on his own sword to fix the mess she’d made.

  Zale took both her hands in theirs. “It will be all right,” they said again. “You saved him. Dying isn’t the same for him as it will be for us. It is only a…a temporary embarrassment.” They smiled faintly. “When you draw the sword in a fortnight or so, I am quite certain that he will yell at you for having put yourself in danger. But I doubt he will even stop to consider that he died himself.”

  Halla heaved a sigh. “Will you come home with me?” she asked. “Back to Rutger’s Howe again? I know you have duties and I’ve kept you from them so long, but…”

  Zale smiled. “I fear you’re stuck with Brindle and I until we sort out exactly how much your inheritance is worth.
And then you will probably be stuck with us even longer, albeit at a remove.”

  “What?”

  Their smile grew, although the edges of it twisted. “Bartholomew left everything to Silas and never updated his will. They haven’t read it officially, but the clerk here took me aside and told me. So I fear you’ve inherited his estate, too. I assume you’ll want me to sort that out as well?”

  Halla put her face in her hands and began to laugh, and if it turned into tears and back again, the Rat priest was kind enough not to mention it.

  It was not the longest fortnight of Halla’s life, but it was close. The only thing she could compare it to was the grim fever season when her twin sisters had died. There was nothing to do but wait and see if tragedy would strike or not.

  Tragedy already struck, she thought wearily. He gutted himself to save you. What more do you want?

  In the songs, men always say they’d die for you. I suppose there’s something to be said for the fact that you found one who actually did.

  Surely he’ll come back. Surely it’s just another mortal wound, and after a few weeks in the sword, he’ll come out again.

  She wished that she was certain of that. It seemed like death by one’s own hand should make a difference somehow, as if the magic should cease to work once it had been so used.

  They spent three days in an inn in Amalcross, until Brindle and Prettyfoot the ox arrived. Jorge the paladin was extremely glad to finally hand them off. “It’s not Brindle,” he said. “A fine fellow, that gnole. I feel we really got to know each other. But I don’t think I’ve ever moved so slowly in my life.”

  “Don’t insult an ox, god-man,” said Brindle, and then grinned at Jorge, who grinned back.

  They made the long, long trek back to Rutger’s Howe, blessedly untroubled by either bandits or the Hanged Motherhood. Halla saw the sign for the Drunken Boar yet again, and stared at it. “I don’t know if I should simply rent a room permanently or burn this place to the ground,” she said.

  “A gnole would object to burning.”

  “A priest would, too.” Zale patted her shoulder. “I’ll go in. We’ll stay somewhere else.”

  They camped in the wagon at a wide spot in the road. Halla ate the meat pies from the Drunken Boar. The meat had the thin dampness of rabbit this time, but that was the only difference.

  “I don’t know, after this is over, if I never want to leave the house again, or if I will itch to be on the road within a week,” she said.

  Zale snorted. “First one, then the other. You will want to be home, but then you may find that your home is no longer quite large enough to hold you.” They shrugged. “You could hold off selling Bartholomew’s house, see if a larger town suits you.”

  Halla shuddered. The flagstone floor had soaked up Nolan’s blood. It could be cleaned, certainly, but she’d always know that the spot was there.

  And yet perhaps Zale was right. Silas’s house did seem smaller than it should have. She had been thinking, in the back of her mind, that she would sell the house, buy a small cottage that one woman could keep easily, but she found herself pacing restlessly through the house, wanting to walk and keep walking.

  Not to leave, she thought. Not to get away from the house, but to get away from myself. In the open air, her mind did not seem so cluttered. Here, it felt as if her own thoughts echoed off the walls and jangled in her brain like keys.

  She took to walking down the lich road, but it was so cold that her nose was frozen by the time she got back. Probably the priest thought she was a bit daft. Then again, he was a priest, and he knew how people acted when they were mourning and troubled and nervous.

  But somehow, the days passed, one by one, and then it was nearly a fortnight gone and then the day was upon her when at last, she could draw the sword.

  It was a cold night. She sat in the great bedroom with the fire burning, staring at the sword.

  It had been…what, a little over a month? Five weeks since Silas died? Everything was hazy, as if she’d stepped out of time. She couldn’t fit the last few weeks into the same place as the years before. The time before Silas’s death seemed as distant as her childhood or her marriage…a thing that happened long, long ago, to a different Halla, who had been impossibly young.

  She ran her fingers down the scabbard. Still the same worn pattern, barely raised under her fingers. She wondered if the scabbard had been old when the sword was put into it, or if the smith had to make it new herself.

  Then she’d have to be making scabbards as well as forging swords and trapping souls. Busy woman.

  Her fingers closed on the hilt. She had not dared, in the last few days, to even test the draw. She had been too afraid that it would work, that she would draw the blade and find Sarkis before her, and she did not know what she was going to say.

  Nolan’s dead. I’m the wielder again.

  I messed everything up.

  I’m so sorry.

  She had spent days thinking of everything that she could say, or would say, or might say. She had stripped the master bedroom bare and whitewashed the walls, replaced the sheets and the quilt, evicted dust that had lived underneath the bed for decades. Words beat in her head: apologies, expressions of love, anger at Sarkis for lying, anger at herself for still caring about that, anger at herself for not caring enough about that. It was like a wagon wheel in her head going around and around, skreet…skreet…skreet, carrying her nowhere.

  But she had made a decision at last. She would draw the blade and see what happened. If he was cold or aloof, if he held his death against her—and how could he not?—then she would give the blade to Zale. The Rat priest would see far more clearly, would take Sarkis back to the Temple and find a way to free him, or to give him work as a Temple guard where he would be treated as a man and not as a convenient enchantment.

  Halla herself…well, she would still have her inheritance. Two inheritances, apparently. She would go to her nieces and see them settled, maybe bring one back to stay with her, if the girl was unhappy on the farm.

  Or perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Perhaps his lie and her foolishness would cancel out and they could start over again.

  Halla swallowed hard and drew the blade.

  Sarkis appeared in a cascade of blue light, one hand already going to his sword. He spun around, searching the room for enemies, and then saw her.

  His eyes fixed on her face. She held her breath, waiting for whatever came next.

  “Halla,” he said hoarsely, and buried his face in her shoulder.

  Chapter 59

  “You’re alive,” Sarkis said, against the side of her neck. “I thought I’d never see you again. I was so afraid I’d lost you.”

  It occurred to him, belatedly, that he had lost her. He’d been a fool and she’d cast the sword aside. She’d been right to do so. He should let go, step back, accept the judgment that he had due.

  He did not seem to be doing any of these things. He seemed to be holding her so tightly that he had lifted her a little off the floor. And she was pressing herself against him, her body molding to his, and if he had lost her, she did not seem to know it.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m fine. Are you—have you—”

  “Healed,” he said. “It’s nothing. It’s fine. Are you safe? Alver, Nolan, are they…?”

  “All dealt with. We’re back home.”

  He leaned back then, arms still around her waist, so he could search her face, terrified of what he’d find. Fear? Anger? Impatience? Is she waiting for me to stop mauling her so that she can tell me she’s giving the sword to her niece and I can go to hell?

  She smiled at him, and his heart turned over.

  “Halla…” he said, and pulled her mouth to his.

  He kissed her hungrily, still not quite believing it was real. All the fear that had been coiled in his gut shuddered into passion. He wanted her here and now, on the floor in front of the fire if need be. He wanted to sink inside her and feel her h
eat around him and know that she was his, as surely as he was hers.

  Can’t. Can’t do that. It’s the one thing she really is afraid of.

  “Halla,” he said, his voice thick. “I need you. I know we can’t—but—”

  “No, it’s all right,” she said, surprising him, and then she was off on a complicated tangent about being tied up in a room with Zale and telling Alver she was pregnant and how Zale had worked out that if he just went back in the sword afterward…

  He tried to follow this, but his mind got stuck on the bit where Alver had tied her up. He would kill the clammy-handed louse. He’d use his bare hands so as not to waste good steel on him.

  “Oh dear,” said Halla. Apparently he’d said that out loud. “I stabbed him, you see, and…oh, not very well!” She held up her hands, as if apologizing. “In the arm. He screeched like a chicken laying a particularly large egg, and then I know I was probably supposed to stab him again, but there didn’t seem to be much point.”

  Rage at Alver had dampened his libido somewhat, but Halla’s cheerful expression, and the mimed stabbing, woke it again. Great god, but he loved her. She was so absurd and so dear, and also it seemed she was capable of stabbing kidnappers and then being matter-of-fact about it.

  Also, he could apparently make love to her without fear.

  Sarkis picked her up in his arms—she squeaked—and carried her to the bed. “Yes?” he said, searching her face again.

  She reached up and pulled him down beside her. “Yes,” she whispered in his ear.

  He knew that he should go slowly, that it had been a very long time for her, but he couldn’t. He tugged at her clothes, slid his hands across her breasts, and then he was lost to a kind of frenzy. Her warmth and her softness filled his senses. He needed her desperately, needed to take her and be taken until all the fear and horror of the last few weeks was a faded, distant memory.

  It was not until he had entered her on one hard thrust that he fought clear of the haze. “Halla.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Am I hurting you? Is this…?”