Page 32 of Swordheart #1

“Now this is traveling,” said Halla, holding a cup of hot tea between her hands to warm them. Zale had already cooked bacon, and was now frying slabs of bread in the grease. The air was still cold, but she had slept in a bed rather than on the frozen ground.

Sarkis’s lips quirked as he looked at her across the fire. “What, sleeping in hedges and ditches was not to your liking?”

Halla rolled her eyes at him, licking bacon grease off her fingers. Sarkis’s gaze locked on her mouth, and it took her a moment to think why.

Oh. Uh. Licking my fingers. Yes. Men get very interested in that. Should I try to flirt? Or am I supposed to lick something else?

She was out of bacon and probably nobody found licking a tin cup sexy. Licking the wagon was right out.

Dammit, I’m bad at this.

“The company was excellent,” she said to Sarkis. “The hedges, not so much. I like this much better.”

“As do I,” said Sarkis. He looked as if he might say something else, but then Zale began handing out pieces of toast and the moment, if there had been one, was lost.

“So you heal inside the blade,” said Zale, after they had started down the road and the ox had lumbered into what was, for it, a good pace.

“I do.”

“How much do you heal? If we cut your hand off—not that I’m proposing that!—”

“Thank the great god. I would object.”

“—but would that heal as well? Would you have a new hand or a healed stump?”

“A new hand,” said Sarkis.

“Oh. Has it happened, then?”

“Not my hand. One of my wielders liked to cut out my tongue.”

There was a brief, horrified silence. He looked up to see both Halla and Zale staring at him. Zale had brown eyes and Halla gray, but their expressions were identical.

“It grew back.”

“Sarkis…” said Halla, eyes huge with sympathy. “That’s horrible!”

“I did not enjoy it,” Sarkis admitted. It had been a great deal of wet fumbling and gouging pain, with blood and spit pouring out of his mouth, and the knowledge that he would live through it had not been much comfort in the moment.

Zale made a gesture over their chest, whether a benediction or a warding, he did not know.

Halla reached out and took Sarkis’s hand. He looked down at it, then squeezed.

And which of us is comforting the other is anyone’s guess …

“Forgive me,” said Zale. “This is indelicate, but… what happened to your tongue?”

“What?”

“The tongue that was cut out,” said Zale. “Did it cease to exist? Did it go back in the sword?”

“I have no idea. I was not exactly paying attention!”

“Completely understandable,” said the priest in soothing tones. “Who would be? But I must wonder what happened. That might be important to understanding how the blade works.”

Sarkis exhaled. “I… can see how that would be useful. But I don’t know the answer.”

“Hmmm,” said Zale. They looked at Halla. Halla chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully.

Both of them looked at Sarkis.

He groaned, recognizing twin lights of curiosity in their eyes. “Fine. Would you like to cut off my little finger to test it?”

Zale looked genuinely shocked. “Oh dear! No, no, we shouldn’t start there! What about… oh! What happens when you urinate?”

Sarkis’s mouth fell open.

“Oh, that’s a good question,” said Halla. “We could test from there, couldn’t we?”

“Test… what are you…?”

Great god, they were both still looking at him! As if they expected an answer!

He cleared his throat. “Well, I take my cock out in the usual way and aim somewhere and try to relax…”

Zale burst out laughing. “No, not that bit!”

Halla’s shoulders were shaking. Sarkis appreciated that she wasn’t laughing in his face.

“Does the urine dematerialize? Into blue light, as you do?”

“No,” said Sarkis. “Definitely not. I’d notice.”

“Hmm,” said Zale. “And of course, by definition, you’re never around to see what happens after you dematerialize…”

Halla leaped down from the wagon. Sarkis looked after her, not sure what exactly she was planning.

And if I’m being honest, a little afraid to find out.

The wagon door creaked as she opened it. The ox never looked right or left, plodding along. Neither did Brindle.

Halla was back a moment later, holding a crockery jar. Sarkis recognized it as having held the jam they used at breakfast.

“Here!” she said, holding it up. “You can go in this!”

Sarkis stared at her, then at Zale, then back at her.

“It would be a good way to check,” the priest said. “We’ll put you back in the sword, and then we’ll know if it vanishes or not.”

Sarkis looked around for help. Brindle glanced at him, shook his head, and said, “Ask somebody else, sword-man. A gnole isn’t getting involved.”

Defeated, Sarkis took the jar. “I… uh. In front of you?”

It wasn’t that he hadn’t answered the call of nature with his men any number of times, of course, but there was a difference between simply living in close proximity to others and having two people staring at you with intense interest, waiting for…

“I’m not going to be able to do this with you staring at me.”

“You can go in the bushes, if you like,” said Halla.

Zale nodded.

Sarkis counted to seventy-two, slid off the wagon seat, and went to go further the pursuit of knowledge.

“Yay!” said Halla, when Sarkis handed her the jar.

“No one,” said Sarkis wearily, “in my entire life, has ever said ‘yay’ when I handed them a jar of piss.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

Zale peered into the jar and wrinkled their nose. “This should do fine. May we sheathe the sword now?”

Sarkis lifted his hands and let them drop. “Sure. Of course. Why not.”

“I don’t think he’s really getting into the spirit of this,” said Halla.

“He does seem a bit dour, doesn’t he?”

“… I’m still right here, you know.”

“Well, we’ll fix that,” said Halla cheerfully. She slung the sword off her shoulder, unpicked the cords, and sheathed the sword the final inch.

Sarkis dissolved into blue fire. At nearly the same time, so did the contents of the jar.

Zale laughed delightedly. “Look!” They flipped the jar over and nothing came out.

Halla let out a cheer. “It worked!”

“It did!”

“That’s amazing!”

“I know!”

“Now what does that mean?”

“I have absolutely no idea!”

They looked at each other for a long, long minute, then both dissolved into laughter.

“Did you see… the look on his face…”

“And when he tried to explain how he…!”

Zale couldn’t finish. The ox flicked back an ear at the strange howling noises coming from the wagon seat, but didn’t turn. Brindle looked at both of them and shook his striped head. “Humans,” he muttered under his breath. “A gnole does not understand humans.” This only made Zale laugh harder.

It took nearly five minutes for the two to get their hilarity under control. When Sarkis rematerialized, he couldn’t figure out why Zale and Halla were carefully avoiding looking at each other.

“Well?” he said.

Halla burst out laughing again. Sarkis stared at her, swung around to Zale, and saw that the priest had put their hands over their face, and was making truly bizarre noises.

“Are you both well ?”

“Fine,” gasped Halla. “Wonderful.”

“Never better,” croaked Zale through their fingers.

“What the hell did you two do with my jar of piss?”

Halla fell off the wagon seat. Sarkis had to go pick her up. She appeared unhurt, but was sitting in the dust, giggling uncontrollably, unable to stand up under her own power.

“I’m fine,” she croaked, when he set her on her feet. “Fine. Perfectly… heh… fine…”

He slapped dust off the back of her skirt. “Are you drunk?”

“No!” She leaned on him as he helped steer her back to the wagon. “Just… ah… heh… look, you had to be there.”

“I was there!”

“You had to be there and not be you?”

He handed her up into the wagon and looked over at Zale. “Are you going to fall off now?”

“I think I’m okay,” said the priest, lips twitching. “Mostly. But oh, Sarkis! This is fascinating! The jar empties itself when you go back in the sword!”

Sarkis narrowed his eyes. “Are you telling me that anything I… err… leave out here goes back in the sword with me?”

“Makes sense,” said Halla. “I bet it normally dematerializes when it gets far enough away from the sword. It’s just nobody noticed. And of course you wouldn’t notice.”

“I don’t often stay out of the sword long enough to have to eat,” he admitted. “But are you telling me that my sword is full of shit?”

Halla opened her mouth to say something, received a death glare from Sarkis, and meekly closed it on whatever remark she was about to utter.

“No, no,” said Zale. “No more than it’s full of severed tongues, I imagine.”

“What a marvelous image,” said Sarkis, putting his face in his hands. Really, he didn’t know why he ever bothered to take his face out of his hands. He should just have them permanently attached to his forehead, the way his life was going.

Zale started to say something else and then their mouth snapped shut with a click. Sarkis looked up.

Two figures in indigo cloaks rode down the road. Sarkis narrowed his eyes, recognizing the Motherhood Priest who had harassed them on the way from Archon’s Glory.

“Priest,” said the first one, nodding to Zale.

Zale inclined their head, all their amusement gone. Their face looked as cold and angular as a hunting fox’s.

“Have you had any trouble on this road?”

“Not so far,” said Zale acidly. “Am I going to, do you think?”

Sarkis wondered how great the Motherhood’s sins were, to rouse such ire in the mild-mannered priest. Halla had stilled, her large gray eyes the color of a clouded sea. Brindle drove on, not looking at any of the humans, eyes fixed on the ox’s ears.

“Only the Mother knows the future,” said the Motherhood priest. He had short reddish hair and an angular, sallow face. His companion was heavyset, with a scarred complexion, and he carried a sword with the ease of a man comfortable with its use.

Red looked over at Scar and tapped his gloved fingers on his reins. “I am curious as to what you are carrying in your wagon.”

“Food,” said Zale. “Bunks. Clothes. The sort of things that go in wagons.”