Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  “Oh dear.” Halla tried to keep her face composed. She could venture a guess who had administered that beating.

  So Bartholomew is the wielder, then.

  Somehow that made her angrier. Bartholomew knew her. He had been Silas’s great friend. He’d even helped her. He knew how much she hated Alver, he knew what Malva was like, and he’d still abandoned her to their mercies without a second thought to get his hands on the sword.

  She sat on the wagon seat as they drove on, mile by mile, and fumed.

  “Twisting your whiskers, fish-lady.”

  “What?”

  Brindle gave her the annoyed-but-patient look that he usually did when a human was failing to understand something obvious. “Twisting your whiskers. Hurts and doesn’t help, but a gnole keeps doing it.”

  “Oh.” Halla sighed. It did feel a bit like that, now that he said something. “You’re right. I just can’t seem to stop.”

  To her surprise, Brindle leaned over and licked her cheek. “A human will get her mate back. Be easy.”

  Halla flushed, as much in surprise as embarrassment. “He isn’t…I mean, I don’t know if he’s…not that I wouldn’t like him to be, but…”

  Brindle rolled his eyes. “Humans can’t smell.”

  Halla waited politely, but apparently this was a complete thought, and Brindle lapsed back into silence.

  They stopped that night near the Drunken Boar inn, far too late to worry about cooking dinner for themselves. Halla looked up at the sign and thought grimly that she had once been so excited to see that sign, several weeks and an eternity ago. Now it seemed like she was cursed to follow this road back and forth until she died.

  “I’m not dead, am I?” she asked Zale. “This isn’t the afterlife and we’re following this road forever, are we?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Zale. “I must believe that the Rat would intervene. At least on my behalf, and I’d put in a good word for you, too.” Halla grunted, then thought, I sound like Sarkis, and then tried very hard to think of something else.

  She and Zale went inside to pay the innkeeper for use of his pump and fodder for the ox, and to purchase what was left of the evening meal. Potatoes and pork drippings, which were delicious even when lukewarm.

  “Na’ worries,” said the innkeeper. “No rooms tonight anyway, thanks to these gents.” He nodded across the common room, to where three “gents”—one of them a woman—were sitting at a table. They were all tall and well-muscled and they radiated a sense of purpose and something else…Halla couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she felt like she was standing near a stove.

  “Oh, paladins,” said Zale, sounding affectionate and resigned all at once. One of the gents lifted her tankard.

  Halla looked more closely and saw the closed eye symbol on the tabards. Paladins of the Dreaming God. Of course. That would explain why all three were rather relentlessly pretty in a chiseled heroic-statue sort of way. The Dreaming God was well known for His taste.

  Zale approached them as if they were colleagues, which, Halla supposed, they were. The three paladins pushed out a chair for the priest and another for Halla. She took it, feeling a bit embarrassed. Widowed housekeepers from Rutger’s Howe did not usually sit down with demonslayers.

  Zale clearly felt no such compunctions. The priest introduced Halla—”My client”—and then the four launched into a discussion that sounded less theological and more like temple gossip. Halla drank her small-beer and ate her food and did not try to contribute until the talk turned to things she understood.

  “It’s been a mess,” said one of the paladins, leaning back in his chair. “Since the Clockwork Boys got turned off, all the demons that were running the damn things jumped…well, you know. Five years and we’re still cleaning up the mess. The last one got into a swineherd, near as we can tell, and then his own pigs killed him. Then it jumped to the biggest sow and went off and had babies. Of course, nobody called us in until there was a whole army of demon-led pork on the hoof.”

  Zale and Halla both winced.

  “The demon was just smart enough to open doors. Or the sow was, anyway.” The paladin flipped his cloak back to reveal his arm in a sling. “We got her, finally, but she gave as good as she got. Don’t suppose you’re a healer, priest?”

  “Lawyer,” said Zale apologetically. “Advocate divine, technically, but I mostly deal with property cases. Halla?”

  Halla grimaced. “I can take a look,” she said, “but most of the medicine I’ve done was on goats, and that was a decade ago.”

  The paladins laughed. The injured one worked his arm out of the sling and laid it across the table.

  Halla looked at it, eyes going wide, and then up at him. “How are you not screaming right now?”

  “It’s only pain, Mistress Halla,” said the paladin. “The Dreaming God kept me from worse.”

  “He could have done a better job,” she said tartly, bending over the wound. The pig had stepped on his arm, it looked like, gouging the flesh and grinding mud and grime into the injury. The bone wasn’t broken, but it had already swollen and the red taint of infection was starting up around the edges.

  Still, from having treated goats a decade ago, she knew this kind of wound. It did not require any great skill so much as patience. She called for hot water and clean cloths and sat down to clean it out. The paladins called for another round of ale.

  “You’re good at that,” said her patient, watching her.

  “You move less than a goat,” she said absently, picking a bit of gravel out with tweezers.

  All three paladins roared with laughter at that one. Halla grabbed the man’s arm to keep him from moving—here I am, acting like Sarkis again. The paladin’s upper arm was as thick around as her neck and she had absolutely no chance of holding him down by force, but he submitted meekly.

  It took nearly an hour, and her patient was more than a little drunk by the time she finished. He caught her hand as she stood. “Thank you, Mistress Halla,” he said.

  “It was nothing,” she said.

  Her patient tapped her wrist with his finger. She looked down and saw him studying the red scabs where Alver’s ropes had abraded the skin.

  “I think perhaps you have some troubles of your own,” he said, glancing from her to Zale. Halla said nothing. Zale inclined their head, a gesture that agreed without giving away a single word of information.

  He kissed the back of her hand. The number of men who could get away with kissing a woman’s hand, in Halla’s experience, were exactly zero, but now she had to change the number. Apparently if you were six feet tall and chiseled and capable of killing demons, you had the presence to pull it off.

  Unaccountably, she blushed. Dammit, the paladins were pretty, and yet…and yet…

  You’re reading far too much into it. And even if you weren’t… All she wanted was a grim, scarred man with silver lines cut through his skin.

  “Leave off, Jorge,” said the female paladin, elbowing her cohort. “You’re in no shape for it and she’s in no mood.”

  “Can’t blame a knight for trying,” said Jorge. “Well then, I’ll show my appreciation some other way. Innkeeper! Put these gentlefolk’s bill on the Dreaming God’s tab, will you?”

  The innkeeper grunted.

  “That was well done,” said Zale, as they walked away from the inn.

  “He probably wouldn’t have lost the arm, but you never want to risk it with infection,” said Halla.

  “Not quite what I meant. It never hurts to having the Dreaming God’s folk on your side. They’re dumb as posts and single-minded to the point of suicide about demons, but if you want someone with a very large sword to stand between you and the enemy, they truly have no equal.” They paused, then added, a bit dryly, “Relentlessly good-looking, too. It’s almost annoying.”

  “I didn’t do it for that,” said Halla.

  Zale smiled. “I know.”

  Chapter 53

  The morning came
and Sarkis wrote a letter to Halla. It was short and to the point, because he had far too much to say.

  “I am alive,” he wrote, and then stared at the paper, his thoughts clattering in his head like bones.

  What do I say? I’m sorry? You deserve better?

  For the love of the great god, don’t marry Alver?

  That last one made him shudder. She hated Alver, he knew that. But the look in her eyes the last time he had seen her, the resignation…that terrified him. What if she decided that she wasn’t worth more? What if she was so hurt by Sarkis’s betrayal that she simply…gave up?

  The thought of that clammy-handed worm taking advantage of her, of Halla dull-eyed but dutiful in his bed… Sarkis’s fist clenched and he leaned his forehead against it, gut churning.

  And how much of that is jealousy? he taunted himself. Even now, you’re a possessive ass, when you have no right to be. Less than no right. At least he never lied about who he was.

  He stared at the paper some more.

  Nolan cleared his throat. “We must leave soon,” he said.

  Sarkis scrawled “I’m sorry. Please stay safe.” and folded the paper in half. “Here,” he said hoarsely.

  Nolan took it from his hand and Sarkis had an immediate desire to snatch it back. Had he really just written, “Please stay safe”? As if she were a chance acquaintance met on the road?

  She’d be in her rights to wad it up and serve it back to me on the point of a dagger.

  What else could I say?

  I love you.

  I will always love you, as long as this cursed steel endures.

  And if he had written that, then…what? They would still be apart. He would still be in Bartholomew’s power. He would still be unable to reach her. He would still have betrayed her and he would still have no power to make amends.

  Except that you would have found a way to reach out and cause her pain one last time. She is probably cursing your name and glad that you’re gone. Leave her with her anger. It will make this easier for her.

  Nolan nodded and went to the innkeeper. “This must be delivered to Mistress Halla in Rutger’s Howe,” he said. “As soon as possible. Is there anyone that will be going that way?”

  The innkeeper frowned. “No mail coach out here,” he said slowly. “Could send it with one of the lads, maybe.”

  “Do that, please,” said Nolan, setting coins on the counter.

  Sarkis looked away. The scholar was keeping his end of the bargain. Honor demanded that Sarkis keep his, and tell him all about the strange, twisted blacksmith he revered.

  At least someone will be glad of my company, he thought bleakly, and then grimaced at himself in self-disgust.

  And here you thought you had gotten over wallowing in self-pity after the first hundred years. No one’s cutting out your tongue, are they? Suck it up and deal with the mess you’ve made.

  Are you a warrior or a worm?

  At the moment, he felt more akin to a worm.

  “That’s all done, then,” said Nolan cheerfully. “I believe Bartholomew is outside with the horses.”

  Sarkis grunted and rose to his feet. Perhaps once Bartholomew relinquished the blade to Nolan, he could convince the man to return to Rutger’s Howe. He had to make sure that Halla had not been forced into marrying Alver.

  Zale will protect her, he thought. Zale knows.

  He knew that it was true, and yet the priest’s slender shoulders seemed too slight to trust with such a weight.

  And yours would be better? How badly have you managed this? All of it? How badly have you hurt a woman you love?

  I must find a way back to her. I must not fail.

  This time, great god, please do not let me fail.

  Halla was deep in a dream where she was trying to do something and Sarkis was not helping—was standing around making completely unhelpful comments, in fact, and it was very annoying, and she still hadn’t quite forgiven him for not telling her that he was a traitor—and then the door of the wagon burst open and somebody dragged her out of bed.

  It was the sort of situation where screaming would have been entirely appropriate, but at first she wasn’t sure if she was really awake, and then there was a lot of blankets in her mouth, and then she was standing out in the cold outside the wagon’s door and it seemed a bit late for screaming.

  There was a strange man wearing the robes of the Hanged Mother and carrying a very large sword. Bigger than Sarkis’s sword. Halla wondered if he was compensating for something.

  Zale was dragged out right after she was, by a pair of men with much less impressive swords. The priest looked as bedraggled as she felt, but they didn’t scream either.

  “Where is your spirit?” roared the indigo-cloaked man.

  Halla said, “Whuh?”

  He pointed the sword at her. It was quite a lot of steel to be looking at at this hour of the morning. “I’ll ask again, woman, and you’d best answer! Where is your spirit?”

  “Uh…” Halla wracked her sleep-addled brain. “I guess…probably somewhere in my chest, isn’t it? Although when I think of me, I usually think of something inside my head…”

  The man stared at her. So did the other two. Zale put their face in their hands.

  “What?” the Motherhood priest said finally. He had an insignia on his collar that probably meant he was a captain, or whatever the theological equivalent was.

  “You know,” said Halla. “Right behind your eyes? That’s always sort of where I thought the soul was.”

  “Not your soul,” said the man, lowering his sword a few inches. “Your spirit.”

  “Is there a difference?” asked Halla. Then, realizing this was probably not the time to be arguing, “I’m sorry! I’m not really very theologically minded. If you say there’s a difference I’ll believe you, of course. You’d know better than I would.”

  “Your demon,” said the man. “Your tame spirit. Your…I don’t know what it is! Familiar! The thing that does your bidding!”

  “Nobody does my bidding,” said Halla, a bit sadly. “I mean, sometimes I ask the cook to make something in particular, but half the time she says it can’t be done and I’ll take meat pies and be glad for it. So we eat a lot of meat pies. She’s very proud of them. Oh dear…” Halla pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to have to see if she’s still available, aren’t I? You know that awful Malva didn’t pay her…”

  The man in indigo was starting to get flushed, although with frustration or rage or embarrassment, Halla wasn’t sure. “Stop babbling!”

  “If I may,” said Zale gently. “Brother, wherever did you gain the impression that Mistress Halla had a tame spirit that served her?”

  “I’m not your brother, Rat priest,” spat the man. He turned a broad glare on Zale. “I have been tasked with finding our brothers who went missing on this road. We encountered bandits two days ago who spoke of you and your witchcraft.”

  Butter would not have melted in Zale’s mouth. “I’m sorry to hear about your men.”

  “The bandits said you undoubtedly killed them.”

  Zale’s eyebrows went up. “And you believed them?”

  The flush climbing up the man’s face grew redder and more mottled. “They described your wagon! They said you were a priest and a woman and a gnole—and a tame devil!”

  “We did run into some bandits,” said Halla. “But I’m not sure about the tame devil bit. We had a guard. He fought like a devil, I’ll grant you that much, but he’s pretty human.”

  The mention of the gnole made her glance around. She couldn’t see Brindle anywhere, which was unusual. She would have expected him to stay close by his ox.

  “Where is he now?” The man turned his attention back to her, holding the sword up again.

  “Uh…” Halla’s eyes nearly crossed as she stared down the blade. “I don’t know? I only hired him to get me back to Rutger’s Howe, and then he did, and then he left. I mean, I wasn’t going to hire him to guard me in my ow
n house. That seemed a little excessive. I wish he’d stayed around, actually, then I could have hired him again for this trip…”

  “We are visiting a close family friend,” said Zale, stepping into the gap. “He lives in Amalcross. He was kind enough to help Mistress Halla with a legal matter, so we were stopping there.”

  “His health isn’t good,” improvised Halla. “And he was so helpful. He was one of the witnesses to the will, you know.” She beamed at the man in indigo, on the principle that it couldn’t hurt.

  His rage was definitely giving way to bafflement. She just hoped that he wasn’t one of those men that became angrier when they got confused. “And you know nothing of these missing men?” he demanded.

  “If they’re the same ones that we saw on the road, we saw them…what, eight days ago? Nine?” Zale looked at Halla. Halla shrugged helplessly. She’d lost any sense at all of how much time had passed. “But I don’t know if those are even the same men. They didn’t leave their names.”

  “The bandits described you,” said the man stubbornly.

  “Yes, but they’re bandits,” said Zale. “I don’t think they’re going to admit to servants of the Mother if they killed their priests, do you?”

  “Where were our men, when you saw them last?” put in one of the other men, with a sidelong look at his leader.

  “Errr…” Halla glanced over at Zale. ‘In a shallow pond under some pine boughs’ was definitely not the right answer. “I suppose if you had a map we could narrow it down. Before Amalcross, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it?” Zale rubbed their forehead. “I’ve been on this road too much, it’s all starting to blur together.”

  “It had to be before Amalcross, because we got that lovely bit of pork in Amalcross, remember? And we had it for the next two nights.”

  “That was a nice bit of pork,” said Zale, clearly willing to go along with the saga of the entirely fictional pork, in case Halla was going somewhere.

  “And I’m sure we couldn’t have had it when we met those Motherhood fellows, because you know I would have offered them some because I made biscuits to go with it and of course I needed to use Bartholomew’s oven to bake the biscuits which is how I know it was Amalcross and you know I always make too many biscuits so we had plenty of extras.”