Crooked Words

by K A Cook

squawking ducks a young girl herded the other way.

  “Oh! Sorry!” He darted to one side and landed on a duck’s foot; he screeched when the duck bit him on the calf and clung on. “Get it off me!”

  The girl just screamed back, her fingers balled into fists. “Stop stepping on my ducks, then!”

  Something pecked at his fingers. He swore, pulled the duck away from his leg, and scrambled to the far side of the street, earning a few more hard pecks and a long stream of curses from the duck herder as the flock passed him by. The closest stallholder glanced at him and broke into laughter. Darius closed his eyes, counted to ten, opened them again, crouched down and rolled up his trousers. Blood smeared his calf.

  “You are not very good at this, are you, boy?”

  What to say to that? Darius stood up and headed back down the street, turning his head about in search for more dangerous livestock. Not answering wasn’t better than answering, but at least he didn’t have to worry about the belt giving him smug smiles. Words alone were easier to ignore.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Darius stepped past a jutting-out table laden with jars of eyeballs and didn’t knock anything over. “If you’re just the belt, why didn’t you say so sooner and get taken off that sword?”

  “Can you imagine what it is to be a sword belt? You spend your time being worn by horrible, sweaty men and women who wield horrible, sweaty swords and spend their days riding and fighting.” The belt let out a deep sigh. “Not a one of them were capable of good conversation. The stall was peaceful.”

  A holiday, then? He supposed that made sense, but why would the belt end its peaceful interlude for Darius—or March? “Why are you leaving now?”

  It said nothing for a moment, and spoke just when Darius thought it wasn’t going to tell him: “You might be capable of interesting conversation.”

  Him? Darius bit back the urge to burst out laughing. “I was the most boring person in my year,” he said. “The only thing notable I did was … well, not be notable.”

  “You can tell me when to use ‘whom’.” The belt paused. Darius managed to spend the next few moments traversing the crowd without being cuffed more than twice. He’d have to note that in the book. “So, what are you going to do about becoming a bodyguard?”

  Darius froze in mid-step only to place his foot down on a suddenly-appearing cat that screeched and bit; Darius flailed, also screeching, at the creature clinging onto his thigh before falling to his knees—knocking several glass jars of fingernail clippings off a stand as he went. One jar shattered, scattering fingernails over the sandaled feet of everyone in the vicinity, which started yet another chorus of shouts, curses and pleas from the vendor and anyone who ended up with a fingernail clipping between their toes. The cat vanished then, of course, leaving the crowd to stare down at him and his clawed, blood-spotted trousers.

  Why, why couldn’t he just walk through a market without making a disaster of it?

  He sighed and babbled out a few apologies and got down on his knees, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he was scraping up someone’s fingernail clippings. At least, unlike the divination classroom, there was nothing squishy, but if he let himself think about the fact that he had no idea where those clippings came from or how long they’d been in the jar—no, he wasn’t going there. He wasn’t. He was just going to pick up as many of the clippings as he could manage and get the hell out of the market. He’d go give the damn belt to March and then go hide in the monastery. Write his book. Suggest that ducks and cats were corporal representations of evil. Live a quiet and unassuming life in the presence of no more than ten other people.

  “I would think it would be much easier,” the belt said, its voice only almost drowned out in the din. “You do not really want to give the Professor a sword. You want him to notice you. You said he notices bodyguards. Therefore, become a bodyguard.”

  “I…”

  “And don’t think you won’t be paying for that jar, boy! You can’t just come along as you please and break a hard-working woman’s stock!”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Folk like you always don’t mean it, but are you ever careful? No!”

  Darius stared down at the mess of fingernails scattered in every crevice, impossible to ever scrape up while people walked through the market—and then shuddered and groped around in his boot for a spare coin instead. There was politeness, and then there was scooping up fingernail clippings. That shouting vendor wasn’t even the Professors Roxleigh, two beautiful women who spent their days torturing students and their nights torturing each other. How could this compare to their long-perfected art of misery-making?

  “Hurry it up! You’re blocking customers!”

  He stood up and slammed the coin in the woman’s hand. “There.”

  She glared at him from underneath a witchy-looking broad-brimmed hat. The cat sat perched on one shoulder and stared down at Darius with an equally smug, imperious glare. “That’s all you have to say? When you damaged my property?”

  “Yes!” Darius threw his hands up in the air, tired of it all. “That’s—no, how about not putting jars on the edges of tables? Didn’t your mother or father or parent ever teach you that? Don’t put stuff on the edges of tables in busy walkways! And tie up your blasted cat!” He turned around and glared at the crowd. “And stop pushing! Stop shoving! Give people space!”

  The crowd fell silent for one wonderful, amazing moment. Darius brushed the fingernails off his clothes and turned around to stride off into the souk. There. That would show them. He’d now walk through the crowd like the kind of person who didn’t get shoved and jostled and called ‘boy’. He’d be a man, a magician, the kind of person feared by the masses. People would, for the first time in his life, respect him—at least just enough that he could make it to his rented room without earning another bruise.

  He made it five steps before someone shoved him in the back and he fell headlong into a basket of grapes.

  “Especially if you want to get in his bed, as I understand it,” the belt said. “Have you ever considered the fact that your search for a sword is nothing more than an extended metaphor?”

  Darius pulled himself up and spat out a grape skin. A saucepan sailed over his head and he scrambled for cover behind a passing donkey cart. “That’s gross.”

  “The grapes or the metaphor?”

  “Both.”

  “I gather that the thing you are truly hunting…”

  Darius put his hands in his ears and hummed for several moments before he risked lowering them again.

  “Are you listening? Boy? Good. Turn left at the next street, and then head north until you get out of the souk. I will take you to a fencing school, one renowned throughout the Empire. Even just learning the basics here will attract the Professor’s attention, I think. You could offer to pay your way through by doing whatever magic the sword master needs doing, although if I were you, I would offer to sleep with him. You could use the experience.”

  He drew in a deep breath and said, through gritted teeth, “I am not … I have had … I don’t need…”

  “Yes, of course,” the belt said, lightly. “I think it is interesting that you respond to my commentary with regards your virginity first. Humans are such odd little creatures. In any case, turn left just up there. Give me a year. You will be…” It paused again, as if considering; it made an odd, high-pitched whistling noise as it did so, sounding rather like an annoying tea-kettle. “Well, a little more capable than you are now. At least you have a brain. That gives you more prospects than most.”

  “I’m not going to be a swordsman. You’re a gift. And I can’t use a sword!”

  The belt gave a rather life-like snort. “Really? If you believe that you cannot do things like make your mentor fall in love with you, why are you a thousand miles from home scouring the marketplace for a talking sword—and not just any talking sword, but that rarest of rare things, an interesting talking sword?�
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  Darius hesitated right at the corner. The left-hand turn led to a quieter-seeming corner of the souk, the lane winding between fruit and vegetable sellers. “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I got drunk one night and it seemed like a good idea.”

  “You got drunk? You actually got drunk?”

  “Yes, I got drunk!” Darius stepped sideways to let a cart go past. “What do you think I am?”

  “I am not going to answer that. Well. If you, boy, think that I am going to spend my time wondering across the country holding up a boy’s trousers, you are mistaken. If you think that I am merely going to be handed over to hold up someone else’s trousers, you are also mistaken. I am an artefact of great historical significance, to be used with a sword by someone who has the skills, knowledge and intelligence worthy of my company. So, I ask: does your professor ever use any of the swords in his collection?”

  “I didn’t know that magical sword belts gave bloody speeches.”

  “It is a hobby of mine,” the belt said with a rather breathy sigh. “Answer the question.”

  Darius sighed, afraid that this revelation was going to do nothing but ruin the entire thing. “Well … they hang on the wall. They look pretty.”

  “No.”

  “They’re symbolic?”

  “No.”

  He threw out his hands in frustration. “We’re magicians! We alliterate! We don’t—fight, or poke things with metal.”

  The