Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  “Oh dear.” Halla composed her face to look as innocent as possible. “I’m good with the bird, I could probably get it back.”

  The cousin looked blank. “Do you think we were born yesterday, girl?” snapped Sayvil from the door. “Anyway, the bird’s gone out the door, and good riddance.”

  Halla sagged. Well, it had been a thin hope.

  It was that night, as she sat brooding, that she realized that she was probably going to have to kill herself.

  Halla had no great desire to die, but she had even less desire to remain living among her relatives. This did not leave her with many options. She had run through every possibility in her head and no matter which way she turned it, her continued life was about to get very, very bad.

  If I could just break out of the house and…and what? Be penniless on the street on the edge of winter?

  This was a daunting prospect, but she’d been willing to try. It wasn’t the worst situation she’d ever found herself in. If she could get to a convent, she could throw herself on the mercy of the nuns, like so many other unfortunate women did. It would probably mean a lot of scrubbing floors, but Halla wasn’t afraid of hard work.

  If she could get to a priest, things would get easier. She could throw herself on the mercy of the Four-Faced God, whose priest currently inhabited the village church. He wouldn’t let her be dragged to the altar unwillingly.

  But that assumes I can get out. And that’s the tricky part.

  Well, the windows are right out. Even if they weren’t these stupid diamonds, I’m two floors up. I’d fall in the street and probably break my legs, and then I’d be in pain as well as betrothed. And then I couldn’t run.

  The notion of being at Alver and Malva’s mercy and unable to escape…she couldn’t imagine.

  No, wait, she could imagine it very well, since it was apparently happening right now.

  Once they start locking you in your room, it only gets worse though. I’m going to be kept in an attic like a mad aunt. And Alver seems to think we’ll have children, which… Halla shuddered. Locked in a room, pregnant…gods above and below…

  She didn’t even dare to think about what else could happen. There were rumored to be drugs that could render someone docile or wipe their mind as clean as new snow. Death was undoubtedly preferable to that.

  No, the future is not looking very good at all. Unless I do something…drastic.

  There was a sword over the bed, in a tarnished silver scabbard. One of Silas’s prizes, no doubt. He had collected strange objects and left them scattered haphazardly around the house. She’d found a manticore skull in the pantry once. It had just stared eyelessly at her and eventually she rearranged the sacks of flour and jars of spices to make room. It was still there. The cook had screaming hysterics when she found it the next day, but you got used to things. She’d never been quite sure if Silas had gone senile or just enjoyed leaving things where they would shock people.

  And then, of course, there was the bird. It had been sold to Silas as a dwarf parrot, which it certainly was not, and while you could argue that it did talk, it did so in a way so unnatural that it raised the hair on the back of your neck. Two servants and the cook had quit on the spot. The cook had to be rehired at twice her previous wage and one of the servants had refused to come back for any price.

  Halla took the sword down and stared at it. The hilt was wrapped in leather and the crossguard was plain. The scabbard was the only ornamented part, the metal etched with interlocking circles. The grooves in the etching were black, with paint or tarnish, she didn’t know.

  It looked old. She wasn’t even sure if she could pull it out of the sheath or if it had rusted in place.

  She tried to hold it by the hilt and her wrists immediately began wobbling with the weight.

  How did you kill yourself with a sword? People in ballads and sagas fell on their swords, but what did that mean? If she fell over on the sword, presumably she’d be lying on top of a sword and then what? If it was lying flat on the ground, nothing would happen, and if it was lying on its side, she might get cut up a bit. Were you supposed to wait for infection to take you?

  No, no, don’t be stupid. Obviously you have to prop the thing up on the floor somehow so it goes through you when you fall on it.

  …however the devil you do that.

  Obviously, guardsmen and soldiers killed each other with swords all the time. It was just that it seemed like it would be much easier to kill someone else, when the sharp bits were all aimed away and you didn’t have to worry about whether it hurt. In actual practice, Halla found herself looking at the sheathed sword and thinking that she could probably hurt herself quite badly, but what if she lived?

  Aunt Malva might try to nurse me back to health. Dear sweet merciful gods, please, anything but that.

  And they’ll post the banns while I’m in bed and when I wake up, I’ll be wed to Alver.

  She put the sword on the bed and made another circuit of the chamber, looking for usefully fatal objects. There weren’t many.

  Why couldn’t Silas have left bottles labeled Deadly But Conveniently Painless Poison lying around?

  She could make a rope of blankets and try to hang herself, but there weren’t any exposed rafters. And her bedchamber had quite low ceilings and was stuffed to bursting with furniture that Silas had needed to store somewhere, so even if she’d somehow managed all the rest, she could have just put her feet onto the bed once it got hard to breathe.

  Even in her most dramatic imaginings, Halla didn’t think she could beat herself to death with the chamberpot.

  It was going to have to be the sword. Halla sighed.

  No use dithering. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

  Her mother had always said that, although to be fair, not usually about killing oneself.

  The sword was just so unwieldy. If it had been a knife, she would have had no problem, but the blade was so long that if she held the hilt in her right hand, she had no way to get the point actually into her chest.

  How marvelously stupid. Give me an enormous piece of sharp metal and I still can’t think of a way to use it. Perhaps I should just wait for Aunt Malva to come in for the night and try to cut her head off.

  Tempting as this idea was, she would merely end up in a prison cell. If she was lucky, they would hang her. If she was unlucky, the family would argue that she had gone mad, take her home, and lock her up somewhere. And Alver would probably still marry her and her nieces would still not get any money out of the deal.

  She left the sword in the sheath while she tried to figure out what to do. With her luck, she’d cut something off while trying to prop everything in place.

  Something not vital enough to kill me, but something I’d miss. A thumb, maybe. I would miss my thumbs.

  Maybe if she braced the pommel on the wall, somehow fixed it in place, and then got a running start…around the night table and the large ornamental chest and the bed posts and…

  All right, the running start was probably not going to work either.

  The pommel on the wall was still the best bet though. Perhaps against the windowsill. She had no idea how to make it stay in one place, though. Could she hold the blade?

  I could try, I suppose…and there would go my thumbs again…

  If I’m dead, I don’t need both thumbs.

  She stripped down to her shift to make it easier to stab. Stabbing through cloth was already a pain. Through the heart? Yes, that seemed best. People in ballads always stabbed themselves through the heart.

  She tugged the fabric down. No sense in getting more cloth in the way of things.

  I’ve already got far too much in the way there, she thought glumly, looking down at her chest. What a nuisance. Over the top and I’ll have to keep the blade angled well up. It would be humiliating to try to stab myself in the heart and get hung up on my own left breast.

  Still, I suppose it’s easier than it would have been before I turned thirty and everything
began sagging…

  Somehow this was not terribly comforting.

  Okay, I brace the end there, and then I shove myself onto the sword. Through the heart.

  Fast. I should try to do this fast.

  There was just barely enough room between the edge of the bed and the windowsill that she thought she could manage it. She was also rather gloomily certain that she would be standing there with a sword in one hand for the next hour and end up not actually stabbing herself at all, but maybe she’d surprise herself.

  What other choice do I have? I don’t want to die, but at least this way, my nieces inherit everything and I don’t end up locked in Alver’s attic.

  Maybe it will be easy.

  She didn’t think it would be easy. She didn’t want to die. She quite liked living. Even when it was bad, it was interesting. There was always something fascinating going on.

  On the other hand, being locked in Alver’s attic for the rest of her life would not be interesting. In fact, it would likely be a combination of horrific and horrifically boring. Surely death was preferable to that.

  “Well,” she said out loud, trying to bolster her own courage. “My mother’s clan were raiding cattle and slaying their enemies only a generation ago. Some of them probably still are. Let’s go.”

  Let’s go did not seem like very good last words, so she added, “I commend my soul to any god that will take it.”

  It occurred to her suddenly that the sword might very well be rusted into its scabbard, in which case she’d feel rather stupid about standing here, bare-breasted, commending her soul to the gods.

  She drew the sword.

  There was a crack like silent thunder and blue light pulsed around the sheath. She immediately dropped the sheath, but the light was faster. It ran over her hands and down her wrists. She clutched the sword hilt in sheer astonishment.

  The blue light shot around the room and coalesced into a figure. It was roughly human-shaped, although man or woman or both or neither, she could not tell.

  It could be a demon for all I know.

  She threw her empty hand up in front of her to ward off the blaze of light. When the light faded, leaving orange afterimages on her eyes, there was a man standing in her bedchamber, in the narrow space between the chest and the night table.

  “I am the servant of the sword,” he said. “I obey the will of the—great god, woman, put on some clothes!”

  Chapter 3

  Halla lowered her hand slowly, her mouth hanging open.

  A man just came out of the sword. I drew the sword and he appeared.

  Oh gods, it’s magic, isn’t it? Something horrible and magicky happened.

  It was possible that she’d gone mad with grief and was hallucinating. Halla had no illusions about her grip on reality. But if she were hallucinating, would she really have included a man coming out of the sword and yelling at her to put on more clothes?

  Well…yes. That is exactly the sort of thing I would do.

  Her possible hallucination had staggered back and thrown his forearm across his eyes, apparently to block out the unexpected sight.

  She pulled her shift up so that her breasts were covered. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Wait, he just appeared from a sword and I’m apologizing for scaring him?

  “I’m not scared!” The man in question was trying to scan the room while not looking anywhere near her. “I’m used to being summoned on the battlefield, not a brothel!”

  “This isn’t a brothel! I’m a respectable widow!”

  “You aren’t dressed like a respectable widow!”

  “I wasn’t expecting company!”

  The servant of the sword looked at her cautiously through his fingers. Seeing that she was at least covered by her shift, he lowered his hand. “Sorry,” he said, sounding as if the word was getting dragged out of him. “Didn’t mean to give offense. I just wasn’t expecting to see that…ah…much of you, that’s all.”

  “I’m not offended,” said Halla. “I think we…errr…” Not scared. He got very prickly about the word ‘scared.’ “…startled each other.”

  “You could still be wearing a bit more,” he said reproachfully, keeping his eyes very obviously above her collarbone.

  Halla looked down, realized that anyone looking at her would know that it was quite cold in the room, and fumbled for her dressing gown.

  “I’ll take it you were not summoning me deliberately, then?” the man said, trying not to look.

  “No! I didn’t know you were in there! Err—you were in there, right?”

  “In where?”

  “In the sword. I thought you came out when I drew the sword but it occurs to me that it could have been a coincidence and you just happened to appear as I was drawing the sword…”

  “Yes. That’s why I’m the servant of the sword. I’m in the sword.” He pointed to the sword in her hands. There was a look on his face as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or begin yelling.

  “This sword here?”

  “Yes. That sword. That you’re carrying. Which just summoned me. Because that’s what it does.”

  Halla had no idea what to say to that, so she settled on, “That’s very interesting.”

  He rubbed his face. “So we’re not in battle, then.”

  “No. Err. Sorry?” The dressing gown was proving to be a problem. She needed two hands to get her arms through the sleeves and tie it and that would involve putting down the sword. It seemed, for some reason, enormously rude to put the sword down in front of its…owner? Spirit? Djinn? But she couldn’t very well hold the collar of the dressing gown in the hand she was trying to put through the sleeve.

  I don’t think I can hold the sword in my teeth. That would probably be rude.

  “You don’t need to apologize for that,” said the man. “A battle’s not…a…oh, for the god’s sake. Turn around.”

  She turned around. He held up the dressing gown so that she could get her arms into it, although she had to swap the sword between hands.

  “I’m a warrior, not a lady’s maid,” he said. “If you’re summoning me to help you dress, there’d better be assassins in the garderobe next time.”

  “Oh, I don’t have a garderobe,” Halla assured him.

  “Or assassins?”

  “Well, I don’t think there are any. I suppose if they were any good, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

  She thought this was quite logical, and did not know why he stared at her for so long.

  Finally, he looked around the room again, shaking his head. “Not that I see where you could fit an assassin in this place. Under the bed, maybe. Have you checked?”

  “For assassins? No, I—”

  He promptly dropped to his knees and peered under the bed. “Nothing,” he said, sounding slightly disappointed.

  Halla stared at him as he rose to his feet.

  He was only about an inch taller than she was, but the breadth of his shoulders made him look much larger. He had deeply tanned skin and long hair that curled when it reached his shoulders and was gray mixed liberally with black. His close-cropped beard was shot with gray as well.

  Not a young man, then.

  Sword.

  Being.

  He was wearing a leather surcoat which left his upper arms bare, heavy leather gauntlets that covered his forearms, and he also seemed to be carrying quite a large sword of his own. That struck Halla as bizarre. Why does a sword need a sword?

  He made a circuit of the room. Halla sat down on the bed to give him room. He checked the great wooden wardrobe, lifted the lid on the chest, and then, apparently satisfied that there were no assassins anywhere, turned back to her.

  “So why did you summon me, then?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Halla said. “Sorry?”

  “Well. I am the servant of the sword. I serve the one who wields the sword.”

  “Uh. It was my great-uncle’s sword, but he died. And left everything to me.” Did
that count as wielding? The warrior was looking at her like it might. She gulped, remembering suddenly what kind of trouble she was in because Silas had left everything to her. “I’m Halla.”

  “Lady Halla.” He inclined his head. “Then I’m to be a lady’s guardsman, am I?” The thought seemed to amuse him, but Halla caught bitterness in the quirk of his lips. “I’d draw my blade and swear you fealty, my lady, but I’m afraid it would stick in the ceiling. So we’ll wait on a more convenient moment.”

  “Why do you have a sword, anyway?”

  He looked down at the blade by his side, then up at her. “To fight with. It’s a sword.”

  “Yes, but you came out of a sword. It seems redundant.”

  He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “I can’t very well wield myself, lady.”

  Oh. Perhaps he’d go blind.

  It occurred to her that this would not be a very good thought to say out loud, so she plastered an agreeable look on her face.

  “Where is this place, lady?” he asked.

  “My bedchamber,” said Halla.

  “Yes,” he said patiently. “I had worked that much out. What land is this?”

  “Oh! We’re in Rutger’s Howe. That’s in Archenhold.”

  He shook his head. “I do not know that land.”

  “Archenhold’s outside of Anuket City.”

  “Anuket—ah! The place of the artificers?”

  “Yes.” Silas had visited the markets of Anuket City often. She was pretty sure that was where the manticore skull had come from, although he was far too cheap to buy any of the strange mechanical constructs that the city exported.

  “I have come far south of the Weeping Land, then. And the year?”

  “1346.”

  He shook his head. “It was the Year of the Ghost Sturgeon in the great god’s reign of heaven.”

  It was Halla’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t know when that was. I’m sorry. Err…the sword’s been on my wall for years. I think it was here before I moved in. I thought about asking him to replace it with something better—maybe a stuffed fish or a portrait of a saint—but he was being so kind taking me in that I didn’t want to seem ungrateful and then you know how it is, suddenly it’s a decade later and you’ve stopped even noticing there’s a sword on the wall…”