Page 4 of Swordheart #1

H alla lowered her hand slowly, her mouth hanging open.

A man just came out of the sword. I drew the sword and he appeared.

Oh gods, it’s magic, isn’t it? Something horrible and magicky happened.

It was possible that she’d gone mad with grief and was hallucinating. Halla had no illusions about her grip on reality. But if she were hallucinating, would she really have included a man coming out of the sword and yelling at her to put on more clothes?

Well… yes. That is exactly the sort of thing I would do.

Her possible hallucination had staggered back and thrown his forearm across his eyes, apparently to block out the unexpected sight.

She pulled her shift up so that her breasts were covered. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Wait, he just appeared from a sword and I’m apologizing for scaring him ?

“I’m not scared!” The man in question was trying to scan the room while not looking anywhere near her. “I’m used to being summoned on the battlefield, not a brothel!”

“This isn’t a brothel! I’m a respectable widow!”

“You aren’t dressed like a respectable widow!”

“I wasn’t expecting company!”

The servant of the sword looked at her cautiously through his fingers.

Seeing that she was at least covered by her shift, he lowered his hand.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding as if the word was getting dragged out of him.

“Didn’t mean to give offense. I just wasn’t expecting to see that… ah… much of you, that’s all.”

“I’m not offended,” said Halla. “I think we… errr…” Not scared. He got very prickly about the word ‘scared. ’ “… startled each other.”

“You could still be wearing a bit more,” he said reproachfully, keeping his eyes very obviously above her collarbone.

Halla looked down, realized that anyone looking at her would know that it was quite cold in the room, and fumbled for her dressing gown.

“I’ll take it you were not summoning me deliberately, then?” the man said, trying not to look.

“No! I didn’t know you were in there! Err—you were in there, right?”

“In where?”

“In the sword. I thought you came out when I drew the sword but it occurs to me that it could have been a coincidence and you just happened to appear as I was drawing the sword…”

“Yes. That’s why I’m the servant of the sword. I’m in the sword.” He pointed to the sword in her hands. There was a look on his face as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or begin yelling.

“This sword here?”

“Yes. That sword. That you’re carrying. Which just summoned me. Because that’s what it does.”

Halla had no idea what to say to that, so she settled on, “That’s very interesting.”

He rubbed his face. “So we’re not in battle, then.”

“No. Err. Sorry?” The dressing gown was proving to be a problem.

She needed two hands to get her arms through the sleeves and tie it and that would involve putting down the sword.

It seemed, for some reason, enormously rude to put the sword down in front of its…

owner? Spirit? Djinn? But she couldn’t very well hold the collar of the dressing gown in the hand she was trying to put through the sleeve.

I don’t think I can hold the sword in my teeth. That would probably be rude.

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” said the man. “A battle’s not… a… oh, for the god’s sake. Turn around.”

She turned around. He held up the dressing gown so that she could get her arms into it, although she had to swap the sword between hands.

“I’m a warrior, not a lady’s maid,” he said. “If you’re summoning me to help you dress, there’d better be assassins in the garderobe next time.”

“Oh, I don’t have a garderobe,” Halla assured him.

“Or assassins?”

“Well, I don’t think there are any. I suppose if they were any good, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

She thought this was quite logical, and did not know why he stared at her for so long.

Finally, he looked around the room again, shaking his head. “Not that I see where you could fit an assassin in this place. Under the bed, maybe. Have you checked?”

“For assassins? No, I—”

He promptly dropped to his knees and peered under the bed. “Nothing,” he said, sounding slightly disappointed.

Halla stared at him as he rose to his feet.

He was only about an inch taller than she was, but the breadth of his shoulders made him look much larger. He had deeply tanned skin and long hair that curled when it reached his shoulders and was gray mixed liberally with black. His close-cropped beard was shot with gray as well.

Not a young man, then.

Sword.

Being.

He was wearing a leather surcoat which left his upper arms bare, heavy leather gauntlets that covered his forearms, and he also seemed to be carrying quite a large sword of his own. That struck Halla as bizarre. Why does a sword need a sword?

He made a circuit of the room. Halla sat down on the bed to give him room. He checked the great wooden wardrobe, lifted the lid on the chest, and then, apparently satisfied that there were no assassins anywhere, turned back to her.

“So why did you summon me, then?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Halla said. “Sorry?”

“Well. I am the servant of the sword. I serve the one who wields the sword.”

“Uh. It was my great-uncle’s sword, but he died. And left everything to me.” Did that count as wielding? The warrior was looking at her like it might. She gulped, remembering suddenly what kind of trouble she was in because Silas had left everything to her. “I’m Halla.”

“Lady Halla.” He inclined his head. “Then I’m to be a lady’s guardsman, am I?

” The thought seemed to amuse him, but Halla caught bitterness in the quirk of his lips.

“I’d draw my blade and swear you fealty, my lady, but I’m afraid it would stick in the ceiling.

So we’ll wait on a more convenient moment. ”

“Why do you have a sword, anyway?”

He looked down at the blade by his side, then up at her. “To fight with. It’s a sword.”

“Yes, but you came out of a sword. It seems redundant.”

He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “I can’t very well wield myself, lady.”

Oh. Perhaps he’d go blind.

It occurred to her that this would not be a very good thought to say out loud, so she plastered an agreeable look on her face.

“Where is this place, lady?” he asked.

“My bedchamber,” said Halla.

“Yes,” he said patiently. “I had worked that much out. What land is this?”

“Oh! We’re in Rutger’s Howe. That’s in Archenhold.”

He shook his head. “I do not know that land.”

“Archenhold’s outside of Anuket City.”

“Anuket—ah! The place of the artificers?”

“Yes.” Silas had visited the markets of Anuket City often. She was pretty sure that was where the manticore skull had come from, although he was far too cheap to buy any of the strange mechanical constructs that the city exported.

“I have come far south of the Weeping Lands, then. And the year?”

“1346.”

He shook his head. “It was the Year of the Ghost Sturgeon in the great god’s reign of heaven.”

It was Halla’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t know when that was.

I’m sorry. Err… the sword’s been on my wall for years.

I think it was here before I moved in. I thought about asking him to replace it with something better—maybe a stuffed fish or a portrait of a saint—but he was being so kind taking me in that I didn’t want to seem ungrateful and then you know how it is, suddenly it’s a decade later and you’ve stopped even noticing there’s a sword on the wall… ”

She stopped because the servant of the sword was staring at her again. “Did I say something wrong?”

“A… stuffed… fish.”

“You know, with the fins and the sort of…” She trailed off because he was turning an alarming color. “Look, I didn’t do it. Your sword stayed on the wall. I thought it was quite pretty. Err, I mean that you were quite pretty.”

He put his hand over his face again. His shoulders were shaking.

“I’m sorry I don’t know what year it is. Or what year it was. Comparatively.”

He accepted this change of topic gratefully. “Well, that is the peril of being a sword. You have no clear perception of time passing. I suppose we will make do.”

“So are you the sword? Or do you live in it?” She looked at the naked steel in her hands, then back up at him. “Like a djinn in a bottle? Wait, are you a djinn?”

“Most certainly not!” He looked offended at the very notion. “I’m a human man, or was before I went into the blade. Now I suppose I’m a bit less human, but not a spirit or a djinn.”

“Or a demon?”

“Definitely not a demon!”

“That’s good!” said Halla. Goodness, he was prickly. She wondered if he’d been like this before he became a sword or if being enspelled in metal made a person grouchy. “Do you have a name?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s writ on the blade, my lady.”

She looked down at the sword. The blade had what looked like an entire saga engraved into it, in fine, spidery script.

She squinted. “I don’t recognize this language. I’m sorry. Could you just tell me your name?”

“Oh?” For an odd moment, she thought he was pleased by that. “Sarkis, my lady.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ser Sarkis.”

“Just Sarkis,” he said. “What lands I held are far from here and long forfeit.” He frowned at her, as if realizing something. “So why is a respectable widow drawing swords in the middle of the night?”

“Oh!” Halla waved her free hand. “I was planning on killing myself. By… err… stabbing myself through the heart. On the sword. Which I guess is your sword?”

“You will do no such thing!”

Halla blinked at him. “They’d have cleaned the sword after. I’m pretty sure. It looks like it might be valuable, you see, and Aunt Malva never wastes money.”

“The great god give me patience!” shouted Sarkis. “That’s not my concern! I’ll not have any woman under my protection killing herself!”

“Keep your voice down!” hissed Halla. “They’ll hear you!”

He looked mutinous, but dropped his voice. “Who’s they?”

“My relatives. Well, my husband’s relatives. They—oh, blast…”

Footsteps sounded in the hall. “Halla? Halla, what’s going on in there?”