Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  “I’m going to put my pants on and go stab her.”

  “That’s your solution to everything.”

  “It’s worked for five hundred years.”

  “Well, you’ll have to come up with a different one. I thought maybe we could give her Silas’s bird.”

  Sarkis laughed. “Diabolical,” he said. He pulled his wife’s head down against his chest. “The great god has clearly sent me to keep your wickedness in check.”

  “Oh dear. And here I thought I was so very respectable.”

  “It is a very respectable wickedness.”

  She chuckled. He kissed her forehead. “I much prefer you sleeping here,” she said, “instead of in front of the door.”

  “It was not a hardship. I’ve slept on stone with—”

  “Snow coming in the window, yes, I know.” She poked him in the ribs. He laughed again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

  He would not be Sarkis if he wasn’t scowling at everything, but if I can keep him laughing too, I think we’ll manage. Mortal flesh may not last as long as immortal steel, but it will last long enough to be happy.

  “I love you,” she said.

  At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he kissed the top of her head. “And I, you. The great god has sent me a reason to go on.”

  Halla smiled, wrapped in her husband’s arms, with her cheek cradled against the silver scars.

  Epilogue

  Spring was returning to Rutger’s Howe, and Sarkis was more than ready for it. He could smell the thaw in the air and it made him feel itchy and skittish, like a horse too long in the stable. Halla was already talking about visiting her nieces, once the roads were clear.

  Oddly though, he felt a pang at the thought of leaving Rutger’s Howe, even for a few weeks. The great god help him, he had come to like a number of the neighbors. They had no idea what to do with him, but he had married “their” Halla, and that made him theirs.

  He suspected that Halla had vastly underestimated how much the townsfolk liked her. It was also possible that having a large, angry man with a sword glowering at them made them realize just how much they liked her. This was fine with Sarkis.

  Still, it was only a few weeks, then they’d be returning home.

  Home.

  The Weeping Lands would always be his homeland, but for a time, at least, he had a home. Even if it came with a strange bird that screamed evil prophecy (the Widow Davey had declined the gift), and a cook that quit twice a week and then showed up again the next day with meat pies (they didn’t actually need a cook, but the cook needed employment and Halla had a keen sympathy for her situation), and a house where, despite having sold off a number of the stranger antiquities, one might at any moment open a little-used closet and have a manticore skull fall on one’s head.

  The front door opened and Halla came in, looking puzzled. She had a piece of paper in her hand, with a broken wax seal.

  “This was sent to us, in care of the clerk,” she said. “It’s from Zale.”

  “Zale!” Sarkis, who had been sharpening the kitchen knives, straightened in his chair. “How are they?”

  “They’re well,” said Halla, “but that’s not why they wrote. They went back to Amalcross, you know, to deal with Bartholomew’s estate, and…well. Huh.”

  Sarkis had been married long enough to recognize the world of concern contained in that huh.

  “What is it?”

  “They went to see Nolan in prison, and he said something odd.” She read aloud from the letter. “‘Odd enough, my friends, that I felt I should inform you. When I asked if his order had sent anyone to defend him, he said that it was not their way, and ‘It does not matter that I have failed. They will have the second sword soon enough.’ When I pressed him, he refused to answer any more. He died in prison two nights later. I have informed the temple, and they are looking into it, but I wished to see that you knew as well.’” She folded down the page.

  “The second sword…” said Sarkis slowly. “The second one she made? I don’t know who that would be. Or the second one they found? Again, that could be anyone.”

  Halla shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think we know enough. And I wouldn’t necessarily count on him telling the truth, either.”

  “True,” said Sarkis. He set down the whetstone and wiped off his hands. He had a sudden urge to hold his wife and feel real and solid and not like a ghost of a sword. “True.”

  “The Temple of the Rat will tell us when they know more,” said Halla. She put her arms around him, and for a long time, Sarkis could not have said which of them was offering the other more comfort.

  Author’s Note

  It was almost exactly a year ago from the time of this writing that my husband and I were in the kitchen and I was ranting about how much Elric—Michael Moorcock’s Elric—whined about everything. “If you ask me,” I said, “the real victim was his sword Stormbringer. The sword had to listen to him whine and couldn’t leave. But does anybody ever ask the magic sword’s opinion? Noooo.”

  I did not need another book idea. I have too many. But somehow the notion of a beleaguered magic sword saddled with an inept wielder stuck with me. I had already written a short story called “Sun, Moon, Dust” about a gardener who inherited a magic sword with warriors who lived in it and I thought that had been my last word on the subject, but the idea kept nagging me.

  Finally I sat down to write just a couple of sentences, and Halla and Sarkis more or less barreled onto the page in front of me. I churned out nearly a third of the book in that first month, despite deadlines and other projects that I really should have been working on. The book wanted out. Also, it wanted to be a trilogy, and I am already working on Angharad’s book, because…well, apparently I have a lot to say about magic swords.

  Thanks go, as always, to my intrepid proofreaders, Cassie, Jes, and Andrea, and to my editor K.B. Spangler, who puts up with a lot. Huge major thanks to Andrea (again) for lengthy treatises on ox behavior, geography fact-checking, and for cheerleading Swordheart when I was convinced that nobody would want to read it because it wasn’t like Clockwork Boys, my previous duology. And extra thanks to some enormously kind non-binary folks who read through it at the eleventh hour to offer thoughts on how to make Zale ring true.

  And, as always, to the love of my life who keeps me from stepping on bears (and who muttered, at several points, that he was really feeling for Sarkis) my husband Kevin. I could maybe have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun and I would have lived on frozen pizza for several months straight and nobody wants that.

  About the Author

  T. Kingfisher is a pen-name for the Hugo-Award winning author and illustrator Ursula Vernon.

  Ms. Kingfisher lives in North Carolina with her husband, garden, and disobedient pets. Using Scrivener only for e-books, she chisels the bulk of her drafts into the walls of North Carolina’s ancient & plentiful ziggurats. She is fond of wombats and sushi, but not in the same way.

  You can find links to all these books, new releases, artwork, rambling blog posts, links to podcasts and more information about the author at www.tkingfisher.com