Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  Archen’s Glory. The red-haired man.

  He figured out what the sword was when we were at his home, Sarkis thought. That’s why he agreed to come testify for Halla, when he couldn’t steal it away.

  “If you agree to cooperate,” said Nolan, “when we have returned to my order, I will do my best to make certain that your friend Halla is safe and unharmed.”

  Damn, damn, damn. Great god’s eyes.

  It was the one thing that could have swayed him. He had to find a way back to Halla.

  Bartholomew snorted. “You’re assuming that she wants anything to do with a war criminal. She’s better off with her cousin.”

  The words slipped between Sarkis’s ribs like the blade of a knife. He would almost have preferred to have his hand chopped off.

  Nolan met Sarkis’s eyes, hands still raised before him. “That is, of course, for Mistress Halla to decide for herself. I am certain Ser Sarkis wishes only to be sure that she is well.”

  Sarkis knew he was beaten. If they kept him in the sword, he would have no way at all to get Halla away from her clammy-handed cousin.

  Assuming she can’t get away herself. Assuming that Zale doesn’t find a way to help her.

  He had to believe that the Rat priest was too clever to be taken in by Alver’s machinations. Zale knew exactly how Halla felt about her cousin.

  “Please,” said Nolan. “We have a great deal to discuss. There is much my order wishes to learn from you.”

  Sarkis curled his lip and looked away. “Fine,” he muttered. “If you give me your oath as a priest or whatever you are that you will send word to Halla immediately.”

  “You have it,” said Nolan, without hesitation. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Sarkis grunted.

  After a moment, he said, “What does your order even want with me, anyway?”

  “You’re the only person living who met our founder,” said the scholar. He smiled nervously, tucking his hair behind his ears. “The Sainted Smith. The woman who put you in the sword.”

  Chapter 51

  They heard Alver coming down the hall before the door opened, which gave both Halla and Zale time to snatch their hands back in front of them, wrists together. Hopefully he would not be looking too closely at the ropes.

  Alver stepped inside the room. He looked extremely pained.

  “Let us go, Alver,” said Halla. “You know this is completely ridiculous.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” said Alver. “It was Mother’s. I tried to talk her out of it, but…well, you know what she’s like when she gets an idea in her teeth…”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at them both morosely.

  “You have to let Zale go,” she said. “They’re no part of this. And you can’t just kidnap a priest. You’ll be in very deep trouble.”

  “Ugh…” Alver rubbed his ringed hands over his face. “I know! I panicked. It was very upsetting. I thought the house was empty and you can imagine how shocked I was when your priest friend came downstairs! Mother was yelling to tie them up and…oh, I still have a headache from it all.”

  It occurred to Halla that he was actually trying to appeal to her for sympathy. She didn’t know if she should play along in hopes he’d give in or just kick him very hard in the shins.

  Zale just stared at him, one slender eyebrow slowly crawling up their forehead.

  “Nevertheless,” said Halla, amazed at how reasonable she sounded. “This isn’t the way to start a marriage. You have to untie us both. I won’t marry a man who kidnaps priests.”

  For a moment, she really hoped Alver was that easily led. After all, he’d been under his mother’s sway for forty-some years, surely he couldn’t have that much capacity for independent thought?

  But he shook his head at her sadly. “I can’t,” he said. “You know I can’t. The priest will raise the alarm and then everything will be just a mess.”

  Halla sagged back against the wall. “There are horrible slimy flying things in the Vagrant Hills,” she said conversationally. “They drop out of sky on you and then ride you around while they drink your blood. I don’t know why anybody is worried about marrying anybody else when there’s things like that out there we haven’t dealt with.”

  Alver looked blank. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  It occurred to Halla that possibly Alver would be improved by slime. “Nothing,” she said. “What do you intend to do with Zale?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to kill them. Sorry.” He nodded to Zale. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “I’m afraid I’m taking it very personally, though.”

  To Halla’s bemusement, Alver actually looked hurt by that. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “If you’re killing me, then yes, I do think it does.” The priest sounded rather tranquil about it, but Halla was getting used to that.

  “But…” Alver closed the door behind him, a line forming between his eyes. “Look, I’m not a bad person!”

  “You’re plotting to murder me,” said Zale, “and you’re kidnapping a woman who doesn’t wish to marry you, to hold her prisoner until she consents to wed you. I feel this does indeed make you a bad person.”

  “I have to agree,” said Halla, nodding.

  Alver gave her a hurt look. “It was all Mother’s idea!”

  “Yes, and you’re going along with it,” said Halla. “If you were a good person, you’ll tell her to do her own dirty work.”

  Alver stood up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “What an odious little man,” said Zale.

  “Isn’t he, though?”

  “Was your late husband so bad?”

  “No, no. He was just very…vague. If Aunt Malva had demanded he do this, he’d have wandered off to the garden and pulled weeds for a few hours until he forgot about it.”

  Zale’s lips twitched. “Are you telling me that you had to be the focused and responsible one?”

  “Well, you can see why the farm didn’t do well!” said Halla with some asperity. “And I did fine, I’ll have you know. I knew exactly what I had to do every morning and I did it. There was a routine. I do quite well with routines. It’s how I took care of Silas.” She sighed, offering Zale her wrists again. “Unfortunately, things have not been routine since he died and I drew the sword.”

  “Well, there is indeed that. If you pull your hand out here, I believe…be careful…oh, very good!”

  Halla’s wrists were bloody with bits of hemp stuck to them. She suspected that once she had feeling back in them, it was going to be excruciating. Nevertheless, she was free.

  She untied Zale’s ropes. “It’s a damn shame we’re not in my room,” she said. “There’s a knife in the chest at the foot of the bed.”

  “Perhaps why they did not use it.”

  “That, or…” Halla stopped what she was about to say. It was probably true that the sheets on her bed were rumpled and smelled like sex and Alver had taken one look at them and turned gray, but she didn’t need to bring it up. “Well, and the lock on that door is broken. Sarkis kicked it open.”

  “Of course he did.”

  Halla burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. “He is quite magnificent, isn’t he?”

  Zale shook their head, but they were smiling. “I am very glad that you two have found each other. I fear I am too fond of my doors and my locks to be envious.”

  “Have we found each other? It seems like we made a mess of it.”

  “Possibly, but we won’t sort that mess out standing here. Shall we?”

  They opened the door and crept down the hall. Halla cocked her head, listening for voices, but heard no one at first. After a few seconds, she gestured to Zale, and they went down the stairs to the second floor.

  From there, the voices were audible. Alver and his mother were having a row, which mostly meant that Alver sounded put-upon and Malva sounded furious, punctuated by occasional screams from the bird. W
as anyone else in the house? Halla glanced down both halls, but the doors were all closed. Had they been opened recently?

  No, they haven’t. The scattering of fragrant herbs on the rush mats were fresh—Halla had hastily spread another basket—but they had not yet piled up in narrow lines as they did when the doors were opened and closed. No one had been in or out since yesterday.

  “I don’t think there’s many of them here,” she said. “It’s just Malva and Alver.”

  “The fewer family members aware of their deception, the less chance that one will get cold feet.” Zale nodded. “Well. So long as one of us gets out, it should be simple enough. We go out as quickly as possible, agreed? If one of us is captured, the other should go for the constables, not attempt rescue.”

  “Mmm.” Halla glanced at them. She knew that she was valuable to Alver alive, but Zale was not. Zale knew it, too.

  Well, we’ll improvise.

  She was not terribly pleased with the way that her life was coming around full circle. Locked in a bedroom, again. Breaking out of her own home, again.

  And while I love Zale to pieces, I really would rather have Sarkis here with me again. He could rescue whoever needed it and I could just come along and provide moral support.

  They slunk down the next set of stairs. The arguing grew louder.

  “…tell me you don’t want to marry her! You’ve been trying to see under her skirt since your fool brother took her to wife!”

  “Mother!”

  “Oh, that’s disgusting,” whispered Halla to Zale. “I am disgusted.”

  “I can quite see why.”

  “They’re in the dining room,” said Halla. She pointed toward the back stairs. “Through the kitchen. Mind the third stair, it’s loose.”

  The two of them almost made it. They were so close that Halla wanted to scream in frustration. But Zale was clumsy from most of a day spent tied up and they didn’t know the layout of the house. The priest tripped on one of the flagstones—the one with the deep cleft in it, she’d been meaning to have it mortared for years but everyone had just gotten used to stepping over it—and went to their knees.

  “Who’s there?” shouted Malva.

  “Oh blast,” said Zale. Halla helped them to their feet.

  “Alver, they’re loose!”

  Alver was a great deal quicker to try to apprehend them than he had been trying to protect Halla the first time she’d left the house. Halla couldn’t help but feel a little bitter about that. He grabbed Zale’s arm before the priest had even reached the kitchen.

  Halla, for lack of any better ideas, grabbed Zale’s other arm and hauled. The priest stretched between the two of them, eyes wide. Then they got their feet under them and yanked themselves loose.

  Unfortunately, in the time it took to free Zale from the strange tug-of-war, Aunt Malva had barreled into the kitchen.

  “The door!” shouted Malva. “Alver, get the door!”

  Alver shoved Halla into the kitchen table as he ran to obey.

  Malva stood in one doorway, Alver in the other. Zale and Halla stood in the middle, looking from one to the other.

  “Halla, how could you?” asked Alver reproachfully.

  It took Halla a minute to realize that he was actually trying to scold her for trying to escape. She didn’t know whether to laugh at the sheer grotesque hilarity of it or just begin screaming and never stop.

  “Alver, you’ll have to kill them both,” said Malva angrily. “It’s the only way.”

  “Kill me and my nieces inherit everything,” said Halla, inching toward Alver. Perhaps if she and Zale both charged him at the same time…

  “Then Alver will marry your nieces!”

  “What, both of them?” said Zale.

  “You keep your nasty clammy hands off my nieces, you slimy, weak-willed little shitweasel!”

  “Don’t talk to my son like that!”

  “That goes for you, too, you horrible screeching harpy!”

  “Alver, are you going to let her talk to me like that?”

  “Halla, you shouldn’t…” Alver trailed off, looking so uncomfortable that she was amazed he didn’t curl up and die on the spot.

  “Ugh!” said Halla, and then, completely out of other ideas, she grabbed the knife off the butcher block and stabbed Alver with it.

  She was aiming for his heart, but it turned out that hearts were difficult targets, particularly when one is in a hurry. She ended up stabbing him rather messily in the upper arm, a situation made worse when he shrieked and tried to yank back and dragged the blade much farther through his flesh than he otherwise might have.

  “Mother!” he screamed, clutching at the wound, while blood poured down his arm. “Mother, she—”

  “I saw, you useless sponge!” snapped Malva. She snatched up a frying pan and charged forward.

  I am going to die fighting with kitchen utensils, thought Halla. It seemed dreadfully ignominious. She ducked the first swing and then Zale punched Malva in the nose. They did not seem much better with their fists than Halla was with a kitchen knife, but perhaps it was the thought that counted.

  Malva reeled back, dropping the frying pan and grabbing her face. “Alvhgher! Arh you goingh to let them doo thgat?”

  “She stabbed me! I’ve been stabbed!”

  “Perhaps now would be a good time to go and fetch the constables,” murmured Zale.

  “Yes, let’s,” said Halla. She bolted out the door with the priest hard on her heels, took the deepest breath she could, and yelled, “Murder!” at the top of her lungs.

  Chapter 52

  “The constables were very nice about the whole thing,” said Halla. “At least, I thought so.”

  “I still wish that they’d arrested Malva, too.”

  “Well, yes, but she had a broken nose and it doesn’t look right if you’re arresting old ladies who’ve already taken a beating. Even a richly deserved one.”

  Alver was now in a holding cell, due to be taken by the bailiff to face the Squire’s justice. His attempt to claim that Halla had set upon him and stabbed him without provocation had floundered to a halt when Zale had silently presented their wrists to the bailiff, rope burns and all, and told him, in grim, precise terms, about the mortgaged properties.

  “I regret we cannot stay and testify,” the priest said, “but we are very concerned for our friend Bartholomew. Alver mentioned him several times and we fear that his associate may have led him into a difficult situation. He is…well, very sharp in the field that he is interested in, but not at all worldly, if you understand me.”

  The bailiff laughed. “I know the sort very well, my legal-minded friend.” His gaze flicked from Zale to Halla. “And the large, dour fellow who was with you before?”

  Halla silently cursed the intelligence of the bailiff, but Zale never faltered. “Accompanying Bartholomew and the associate in question. He is why we are hopeful that no attempt will be made on Bartholomew’s life, but we still do not wish to dally.”

  “Then good luck,” said the bailiff, and the next morning they were on the road at cock’s crow, sitting behind Brindle, who was tapping the ox’s flanks with the goad and murmuring gnolish encouragements.

  Zale waited until they were out of the town gates to say, “They weren’t being nice about the whole thing.”

  “What?”

  “Halla, my dear client, they were waiting for you to become extremely angry about the fact that they hadn’t protected you from your relatives. The clerk should have spotted the issue with the mortgages, the priest and the bailiff should have realized that they might not let things go so easily, and they should have at least had a constable make sure they left the town. Failing that, they should have closed up the house and not let those two make free with your inheritance and familiarize themselves with the layout of the house. They have, in fact, failed you rather dismally. You’d be well within your rights to complain to the Squire.”

  “Oh,” said Halla, rather astonished by th
is. “I…oh. Hmm.” It hadn’t occurred to her to be angry. “Well. I’m sure they meant well.”

  “You are sure that everyone means well,” said Zale, clearly amused. “Which is why I think you are perhaps well matched with Sarkis after all. He’s sure that everyone is determined to kill everyone else in their sleep. Between the two of you, you average out to a nicely functional outlook.”

  “Assuming we get him back,” said Halla.

  “I have faith. It is, by definition, part of what I do.”

  The trip to Amalcross…again…was slow. Again.

  “Can’t we go any faster?” fretted Halla.

  “Faster!” said Brindle scathingly. “A human always wants an ox to go faster. Ox goes as fast as an ox goes. Like to see a human pull a wagon any faster.”

  “They do not know that they are being pursued,” said Zale soothingly. “Indeed, they have no reason to believe that you will be capable of pursuit, or even that you might wish to do so.”

  “But they’ve got horses!”

  “Horses are not magical and they cannot run for hours at a stretch. Particularly not when ridden by an elderly, sedentary scholar.”

  Halla was forced to acknowledge the truth of this. They had stopped at an inn, asking for information, and found that, while three days ahead of them, Bartholomew and Nolan had stopped very early in the day.

  “Three of ‘em,” said the innkeeper, when Zale had pressed her. “Old fellow and a young guy, and their bodyguard. Face like thunder on that one.”

  “But unhurt?” asked Halla. Oh, it’s a stupid question, he can’t be hurt, at least not for long.

  The innkeeper cocked an eyebrow at her. Halla could read her thoughts easily enough—is this woman a jilted lover, come looking for the man who did her wrong?

  “He’s an…uh…family friend,” said Halla. “The older man. We heard he got into some trouble with bandits, you see, and I worried…”

  The woman’s face cleared. “He looked fine. Young fellow had taken a beating recently.”