Page 34 of Swordheart #1

“Brindle?”

“Eh?”

“Does your ox have a name?”

Zale had gone to buy food at an inn, and Sarkis had gone with them. Halla and Brindle were left sitting on the wagon together, and Halla was attempting to make conversation.

Brindle was silent for so long that she started to fear that asking about names was a terrible faux pas in gnole circles and he was now trying to decide whether to forgive her ignorance or declare a blood feud against her family unto the seventh generation.

Oh dear. That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it?

I embark down this road to get dowries for my nieces and I end up with a gnole family pledged to slay them all, except I don’t think gnoles do that, do they?

“Yes,” said Brindle, giving her an appraising look. “An ox has a name.”

“Ah.”

The moment stretched out even longer. Halla wondered if she was allowed to ask what the ox’s name was.

Then: “An ox is named in a gnole’s language.” Brindle said… something. Halla wasn’t sure if she was even hearing it all. His ears were up and his whiskers forward, and she knew gnole language involved a great deal of whiskers, so probably that was part of it, too.

“Oh dear,” said Halla. “I don’t think I can say that, can I?”

“No,” said Brindle. “Humans don’t have all the parts to talk right.” He patted her arm, much the same way that he patted the ox, and it occurred to Halla that the gnole thought humans were laboring under terrible handicaps and were presumably bravely making the best of it.

Well, he may be right. The gods know I can’t seem to tell Sarkis what I want to tell him. About kissing, for example.

Brindle pointed to the ox. “An ox has very good hooves. See?”

Halla dutifully looked at the ox’s feet. She had never kept oxen on the farm, only an elderly donkey, so she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking for, but the ox did indeed seem to have clean, solid hooves, without cracks or irregularities.

“In a gnole’s language, that’s an ox’s name.”

“Good Hooves?”

Brindle pulled down one corner of his lip in a frown. “No, good ” He arched his whiskers as he said it. “Mmm. Beautiful, maybe?”

Halla stared at the hooves in question, which were brown and muddy. Beautiful seemed excessive, but what did she know?

“Prettyfoot?” she said.

Brindle broke into a smile, canines gleaming. “Yes. Close enough. Good name for an ox.”

Halla agreed, and made a mental note to never, ever tell Sarkis.

They saw the Motherhood riders again the next day, although the men did not speak to them at any length. They merely rode past, giving Zale a hostile look, and kept riding.

“Crying won’t keep them away forever,” said Halla.

“I wish I knew why they were so obsessed with us…” muttered Zale. “Or perhaps this is simply how they treat all religious travelers.”

“Some men do not like defiance,” rumbled Sarkis. “It eats at them like poison.”

“I didn’t defy them that much,” said Zale.

“Has your god?”

The priest opened their mouth, then closed it again, their dark eyes thoughtful.

After a moment: “We have. Whenever they overstep themselves, the other temples stand against them… and I will be honest, it is usually the Rat who supplies the law clerks. I had not thought of our Temple as the face of defiance, I confess, for it is the Forge God who opens their coffers, and the Dreaming God and the Saint of Steel whose paladins often stand guard. I had viewed our position as one of practicality, not of great courage. But it is often the Rat’s lawyers that they see. ”

Sarkis nodded. “The spokesman for the enemy becomes the focus of hate. I would guess they harry you for that reason as much as any other.”

“Ugh.” Zale scowled. “I feel like I should offer you a discount for having to put up with this.”

“You could take a nineteen percent commission instead of twenty?” said Halla hopefully.

“Consider it done. And now let us talk of happier things.”

“Does this end with me pissing in a jar again?”

“I believe we have reached the limit of what we can learn from you and the jars.”

“The great god be praised! Halla, I know you’re laughing, you don’t have to strangle yourself trying to hide it.”

“I’m laughing with you… mostly… and you’re not actually laughing…”

Zale snickered, then sobered. “I have been contemplating how the magic maintains itself,” they explained.

“The power to fuel the sword must come from somewhere. The power to fuel a normal body comes from the food we eat, whether we are horses or humans or rats, but the process is… not efficient, let us say. I suspect that your process is far more efficient, in its way.”

“It’s magic,” said Sarkis.

“Yes, but even magic does not last forever. It wears away eventually, through use and time.”

“You mean eventually the sword might run out?” asked Halla, her voice rising with concern.

Zale leaned back against the wagon seat.

“In the normal course of events, I would have expected it to do so long since. Few wonderworkers have a power that outlasts their death. I know of very few that might outlast centuries. Whoever your sorcerer-smith was, Sarkis, she was either unimaginably gifted, or she knew how to bend her talent to her will.”

“She was as mad as the mist and snow,” said Sarkis, then paused, as if suddenly tasting the words on his tongue.

Zale looked unconcerned. “As are a great many people,” they said. “Many madmen walk among the sane, and the lines are blurred beyond all recognition. And many people who we would consider sane wreak unimaginable harm in the world, so people call them mad.”

Sarkis grunted, but inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Fair enough.”

“Humans use the wrong words,” said Brindle unexpectedly. “Say crazy when they mean head-sick. Crazy means crazy. ”

“It is a difficult word to translate,” admitted Zale. “The Temple of the Many-Armed God wrote the definitive treatise on gnole language. I fear that Brindle has a much more extensive vocabulary than we do for this, and we are but fumbling in comparison.”

“Eh. Humans can’t smell,” muttered Brindle, with the air of one making allowances.

“ Zeth ,” said Sarkis.

“Beg pardon?”

“ Zeth. Damn, Brindle’s right. Your language is wrong.”

“Told you, sword-man.” The gnole nodded to him.

“Can you explain?” asked Halla.

“Look, I’m speaking your language now. I know it quite well, because of the magic.

If Halla stops wielding me, though, I’ll stop knowing it.

It’s in my head, and most of the words translate automatically, but some don’t, and some are trying to, but they’re the wrong words.

Shit, this is coming out wrong.” He scowled.

“ Zeth. It’s a word in my language, but not in yours, except yours is trying to make it a word, but I don’t think it’s the right word. ”

“I’m with you so far,” said Halla. “What’s zeth mean? Or can you not put a word on it?”

“Ah… a type of wickedness. Your language wants to use ‘insane’ but that’s not right.

To go zeth is to lose all conscience, but zeth people still have all their reason.

” He raised his hands, let them drop. “A madman should not be punished for being mad, and may still feel horror and guilt at what they do, but the zeth know better, they simply don’t care. ”

Halla rolled the word around on her tongue. “So it’s like evil.”

“Well… yes. Except that you can do something evil and know it’s evil and care that it’s evil and do it anyway and feel guilt for it.

If you’re zeth, you just do it and the fact it’s evil doesn’t bother you.

But you’re still sane. If it is a sickness, it is of the soul, not of the mind that houses it. ”

Halla frowned, but Zale was nodding. “Yes,” they said. “That is the sort I spoke of earlier. They do great evil in the world, those people.”

“And was your sorcerer-smith zeth? ” asked Halla.

Hearing a word from the Weeping Lands on her tongue made him smile, even such a word as that. “Perhaps. It is easy for me to say so, now. Who could possibly prove me wrong? But it has been so long, and I knew her for only a day, so I cannot say for certain.”

The conversation was veering toward dangerous places. Sarkis knew that he would eventually have to tell Halla all the truth about the sword and how he came to be in it, but it did not seem like the time.

After she is safe. After she has her inheritance and her own place again, and she can spurn you if she wishes. To do so now would either force her to forgive you when she should not or abandon you when she dares not, and neither option is fair.

And you’re afraid. If she does abandon you, even if it is no more than you deserve, you will lose her.

She looked over at him and smiled, and Sarkis wondered what he would promise her, to keep her from abandoning him, and did not know the answer.