Page 28 of Swordheart #1

They stayed at a hostel near the temple.

The accommodations were minimalist and Sarkis did not care for the lack of security, but it was free to petitioners of the Rat waiting on the Temple’s response.

And as we are all staying ten to a room, even if I do begin to have foolish thoughts, I certainly cannot act on them.

There was some slight difficulty as the hostelkeeper wished to put Halla in the women’s wing and Sarkis in the men’s. Sarkis folded his arms and glared at the woman. She was a nun, so she folded her arms and glared right back.

They might have stood there until the air ignited from the force of the glaring, but Halla said, “Look, I’ll sleep with the sword right next to me,” and elbowed Sarkis in the ribs.

He grumbled. “You will use it at the first sign of trouble.”

“I promise.”

He suffered the nun to lead him away.

I truly hope she does not decide to go to a nunnery when all this is over. I will probably get her thrown out for arguing with the nuns, if she does not get herself thrown out for questioning them.

Also, it would be a terrible waste of good breas—

He dragged his mind forcibly out of the gutter.

The hostelkeeper showed him where he could leave his belongings, which was a bit puzzling for both of them. “I have none,” he admitted.

“Ah,” she said. And then, to his astonishment, the old nun’s face softened, almost imperceptibly. “I understand. There’s no shame in it, my son. We all fall upon hard times. We must lift each other up, that’s all.”

Explaining would have been far too difficult, and Sarkis did not have it in him to turn down compassion freely offered. The great god knew that the woman was correct. He bowed his head politely, and went to join Halla for lunch.

She had changed into the new clothes—a snug bodice and a full skirt. The bodice did not cover her the way the habit had, and it furthermore was lifting certain… assets… in a way that surely had to be incredibly indecent.

Sarkis looked around a bit wildly, and saw that the nun didn’t so much as blink when she saw Halla.

Apparently this is how they dress in the south. And nobody sees anything wrong with it.

He had an intense urge to rush over and cover her breasts. Possibly with his face.

“Is something wrong?” asked Halla.

No, I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m a ravening animal, not a man.

Then again, I’ve been coming to terms with that since I was fourteen, so what else is new?

“It’s fine,” he told Halla. And then, although it pained him, “You look nice.”

Halla beamed at him. Then she blushed. Sarkis suspected that Halla was not used to compliments and now had proof that the blush went… well, quite a long way down.

Settle down, man. You’re a warrior, not a rutting boar. You’ve seen breasts before.

Yes, but these are really good breasts. And their owner is …

“Are you sure you’re all right? You’re staring off into the distance.”

“Fine!” said Sarkis, a trifle too loudly. One of the nuns looked at him disapprovingly. This was actually helpful. He sat down hurriedly and fixed his eyes firmly on Halla’s face.

Know your place. She is your wielder. You have no rights here. If she chose to wander about wearing nothing but strategically placed lizards, that would be her choice, and you would say nothing. Know. Your. Place.

The hostel served food on long tables. It was plain, filling, not particularly elegant fare, but there was a great deal of it.

Sarkis had not thought about eating, but the server brought him a bowl anyway.

Some kind of thick wheat noodles, with onion and small salted fish chopped over it.

More onion than fish and more noodle than either, but not the worst he’d seen.

He stared at it, then shrugged and began to eat. It wasn’t the worst he’d tasted, either.

“What will you do if the priest cannot get your inheritance back?” he asked between bites, still thinking of the nunnery.

Halla blinked at him. “Uh. I… well, I guess I’m no worse off than I was.” She frowned. “Except for the bit where I can’t hire on as a housekeeper to whoever takes the house. So… well. It could be bad.”

Sarkis frowned. “Bad how?”

She propped her chin on her fist. “Bad enough. I suppose I’ll find a church to take me in.

Without a payment of some sort, I can’t hope to join a nunnery as anything but a servant, though.

Even a bride of the gods requires a dowry.

But… well…” She shrugged. “There’s usually work somewhere for someone who can scrub a floor. ”

He scowled into the noodles for long moments. “You must sell the sword if that happens.”

She looked up, startled. “I can’t do that!”

He shook his head. “You will have to. I will not allow you to be a drudge somewhere merely for my convenience.”

“Sarkis, I can’t!”

“The other alternative is that you and I take up work as mercenaries, and that is entirely too dangerous. If I could go any significant distance from the sword, I would do it, but I will not place you in harm’s way.”

Halla blinked at him, apparently trying to imagine life as a mercenary.

Sarkis tried to picture Halla working a contract and wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or break out in a cold sweat.

We’re supposed to guard this caravan? All right.

Why? Oh. No, I just thought you might have an interesting reason.

I had a cousin who guarded caravans, but then a horse stepped on him and then his foot fell off …

no, no, the two were actually unrelated.

But he got out of the business after that.

Oh, hello there mister bandit, now why did you go into this line of work … ?

No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

“Do… do you want a different wielder?” Halla asked after a moment. There was an unexpectedly fragile look in her eyes.

“No!” He didn’t know if he was reacting to the question or the look, only that he didn’t want her to look like that. “I just don’t want you to suffer because you think you have to keep me around.”

He went back to his meal, shoulders hunching. The thought of no longer seeing Halla was an unexpectedly sharp knife in his gut.

Don’t be foolish. You’ve known the woman for less than a week.

She smiled at him abruptly. The knife twisted.

You will only fail her in time, as you have failed all your people. If she sells the sword, perhaps you can avoid that somehow.

“Well, hopefully the Temple will take care of all that,” she said.

He grunted.

“Well,” said Halla, sitting back. “It is somehow only the middle of the day. I have a thought about what we could do next, but… err… I don’t want to offend you…”

Sarkis had a brief, mad hope that she was propositioning him and stared at her. Surely not. “What?”

“There’s a library in Archon’s Glory,” she said. “A pretty good one. I thought we could go dig around in there, maybe find a scholar who’s willing to talk, and maybe we can work out how long you’ve been in the sword.”

Sarkis blinked at her. It had been so long since a wielder had cared where he was from—had even seen him as a person with a history, rather than a weapon—that he had almost lost sight of the question himself.

“Oh,” he said, a bit faintly. “I… Yes. I would like that.”

“Great!” Halla pushed back from the table. “Let’s go.”

The library was a testimony to civic architecture—large, clean, set back off a courtyard with a fountain.

Friezes of scholars engaged in debate gazed down on them benevolently.

Halla had visited once before with Silas, and was pleased to see that nothing much had changed.

She walked up to the attendant just inside the doors and said, just as Silas had years ago, “Is there someone who could assist us with a historical research question?”

She was just congratulating herself on handling this like a competent person and not a yokel from a tiny backwater town when the attendant gave her a weary smile. “There are many kinds of history, ma’am,” he said. “Can you narrow it down a bit?”

“Uh… hmm…”

“Military,” put in Sarkis.

The attendant nodded. “Go straight back and turn right, then take the second left. There’s a woman back there named Morag who can probably put you on the right track.”

The path was not quite so clear cut as the attendant had suggested.

There were about five possible places to turn right, and Halla was briefly distracted by an enormous statue of a minotaur with improbable endowments— my goodness, that can’t possibly be to scale, can it?

— and then Sarkis very clearly noticed her noticing the minotaur and she blushed scarlet while he grinned.

Why did the man make her blush so easily? She was a respectable widow, for the gods’ sake.

This made her think of the fact that he’d been kissing her not two hours earlier. And then that led to other thoughts about Sarkis, possibly in comparison to the minotaur, and that only made her blush harder. She put both hands to her burning cheeks and muttered something about it being hot.

“Well, if our bull-headed associate is any indication, it certainly isn’t cold in here.”

“You are a wretch. ”

By the time they had located their historical scholar, Halla had finally stopped blushing.

Morag was a dark-skinned, heavyset woman with her hair in narrow braids, the whole mass pulled back from her face with golden cords.

She looked from Sarkis to Halla and back again.

“My specialty is military history,” she said. “What can I help you fine people with?”

Halla had been trying to work out the best way to ask questions without revealing Sarkis’s secret. She had had an idea at last, and was rather proud of it.

“This is my friend Sarkis. He’s from… ah… well, a long way away. We’re not sure how far away. His people tell a great many stories about battles, and we’re wondering if you can help us figure out where and when some of those battles took place, so we can work out his people’s history.”

Morag put her chin in her hand. “Now that’s an interesting request. How specific are the stories?”

Halla glanced at Sarkis, who was looking at her with surprise and approval. “Very specific,” he said. “I can tell you at least the local geography and what the people involved called themselves.”

“A good start,” said Morag. She gestured for them to follow and went deeper into the stacks, eventually stopping in front of a map cabinet. “Start with one, and let us see if anything rings a bell.”

“The lord called himself the Leopard…” Sarkis began.

It took hours. There were false starts and false leads. But at last Sarkis was able to point to a place on the map and say, “There. That is where the Weeping Lands must have been.”

“Modern Baiir,” said Morag. “You’re a long way from home.” Sarkis inclined his head.

“And this battle, here…” he said, tapping his finger on the map. “The fortified keep held by mercenaries.”

“Four hundred and fifty years ago, give or take,” said Morag. “A lot of messy battles around that period. The civil war took the kingdom apart, and even the victor only held it together for about five years before it fragmented again.”

Sarkis kept his face blank. It would not do to let this woman see his reaction.

Five years. My troops dead, my captains chained in enchanted undeath … all so a cold, vindictive king could hold on to power for five more years.

Because I failed them. Because I played the odds and lost.

And I have paid for that gamble for nearly five hundred years.

“Thank you,” said Sarkis gruffly. He felt an unexpected tightness behind his eyes, like unshed tears.

“Thank you, Wisdom Morag. I have no money—not even any possessions save the clothes on my back—but you have given me a great gift. If I can ever repay you…” It occurred to him as he spoke that perhaps Wisdom was the wrong term of address, but he did not know any others to use.

The scholar looked up at him, her face unexpectedly somber. She reached out and clasped his forearm, wrist to wrist.

“I know what it is to lose your connection to the people before you,” she said, and he heard the heaviness of that knowledge in her voice. “To come unmoored in history. It’s why I became a historian in the first place. We must help each other find our place again.”

Sarkis did not trust himself to speak. He bowed to her, very deeply, and went to find Halla.