Page 45 of Swordheart #1

“Wait, what ?”

Halla stared at Mina. So did Zale.

“Invisible,” said Mina. “That’s how you did it. You’re a wonderworker, don’t try to deny it! You made your guard invisible so he could attack Brett without being seen. You’re probably making him invisible again right now!”

“You think he was invisible ?” said Halla.

“This is fascinating,” murmured Zale.

The leader was starting to look uncomfortable.

“How else do you explain him coming outta nowhere like that?” snapped Mina, advancing on Halla. “He just appeared, all fiery!”

Halla thought briefly about trying to explain. Then she thought better of it. As long as Sarkis was in the sword, he was safe, and there was a chance that he could get out and free both her and Zale.

“Invisible?” she said, putting as much scorn as she could into the word. “That’s your explanation?”

“It was magic!” shouted Mina. “Don’t you try to deny it!”

“It was n—” Halla started, whereupon Mina punched her in the stomach.

Halla fell over, curled into fetal position.

Zale dropped to their knees and threw their arms around Halla’s shoulders. “Enough!” they snapped. “This woman is under Temple protection!”

The leader of the highwaymen rubbed his forehead and said, to no one in particular, “This is all starting to seem like a really terrible idea.”

Halla sucked in air, trying to get her breath back. The assault had come out of nowhere.

Why is she so angry at me? What did I ever do except try to be nice to her?

“I’m telling you!” said Mina. “It was all fiery! She made him appear! She’s got some kinda magic! Brett saw it, too!”

Halla held up a hand, wheezing.

“Enough, Mina,” said the leader. “She can’t very well answer when you’ve knocked the wind out of her.”

Mina scowled.

“Easy,” whispered Zale. “Breathe. You’ll be fine. The muscles spasm, that’s all. It’ll pass. Just breathe.” Halla could feel the priest’s own breath heaving in their lungs, and guessed that they were not nearly so calm as they seemed.

“I haven’t got any magic,” gasped Halla, once she could breathe again.

“Then where’s that man now? The one who attacked us?” said Mina.

Halla couldn’t think of who she was talking about. “What? No one attacked you! You pulled a knife on me!”

“Your guard!” shrieked Mina. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

Think. What answer takes the focus off Sarkis?

“Him?” Halla feigned disgust. It wasn’t hard, with Mina standing in front of her. “I fired him once I got to Archon’s Glory. He was always grabbing my arm. Why do men always grab you by the arm?”

One of the bandits, a middle-aged woman with iron-gray braids, let out a loud bark of laughter and covered her mouth.

The bandit leader rubbed his face. “I’m going to tie you up now,” he said. “I apologize, priest, but if my people keep pointing crossbows at you, there might be accidents. I give you my word that you, at least, will be released unharmed.”

Zale inclined their head. “I shall include your assurance in my report to my superiors,” they said coolly. The leader winced.

The bandit woman was the one who tied their hands. She gave Halla a gap-toothed grin. “In front, so you can do your business later. Wiggle your fingers there, love, make sure you’re not gonna lose a hand.” Halla obeyed.

Zale, Brindle, and Halla were led into the woods. One of the bandits led the ox and wagon after them, down a track carefully disguised by trees.

“Well, this is unpleasant,” said Halla, as the bandits propped her against a tree. “Although I guess I’m glad they haven’t killed us.”

“A gnole is glad, too.”

“The Temple would be very upset. We have an arrangement with the underworld, you see. We are granted safe passage and criminals may come to us for healing without fear of arrest.”

Halla blinked at them. “I didn’t know that.”

“It is not an arrangement that the Temple advertises very loudly.”

“And they all agree to this?”

“The underworld is remarkably good at self-policing, particularly in the vicinity of Anuket City. I suppose there’s probably places where it doesn’t work.”

“Huh.” Halla considered this. “You don’t really think of criminals as following laws…”

“It’s more that they realize that the other criminals will be displeased at them if they lose regular access to healers. And these are the sorts of people who express their displeasure… pointedly.”

“Was that a pun?”

Zale considered. “More of an observation, really.”

The bandits had a rough camp set up. One kindled a fire.

Halla watched as Sarkis’s sword was tossed carelessly down on the ground, alongside Zale’s knives. She feared for a moment that the blade might come unsheathed, but it stayed in place.

Just let him stay there long enough to heal from the arrow …

Another bandit came through the trees. “Sir,” he said. “We can’t find hide nor hair of the other one.”

“Because he’s invisible!” yelled Mina.

“Because you shot him, so he ran away!” Halla yelled back.

It occurred to Halla that this was not a good thing in what was supposed to be a hired guard, so she added, “And anyway, he’s fired! What kind of guard runs away because he’s been shot? What was I even paying him for?”

The bandit leader rubbed his forehead wearily.

“Didn’t see him running away,” muttered the one who had been scouting. “Didn’t see any trail.” He scuffed the ground with his foot.

“Thought I saw some shiny light over by them, before,” volunteered another one. Halla’s heart sank. “But I don’t know for sure.”

The leader came and sat down in front of Halla and Zale.

“I am very sorry for all of this unpleasantness,” he said to Zale. “But ma’am, if you can, in fact, make people invisible, surely you can see why that is a skill that I would be interested in making use of.”

Halla wrinkled her nose. “No,” she said after a moment. “I can’t.”

He tilted his head. “I’m a bandit.”

“Yes,” said Halla, “but you’re a highwayman.

You want people to believe you have superior numbers so that they give you their money without a fight.

Making someone invisible would just mean that they were more likely to fight you, wouldn’t it?

And you can’t very well have an invisible person stop travelers in the middle of the road.

They’d just get run down. And then if there’s arrows flying around and someone is invisible, doesn’t it mean that that person is more likely to be shot on accident? ”

The bandit leader blinked slowly at her.

“Really,” said Halla, “it just seems like a poor idea all around. Even if I could make people invisible, which I can’t.” She shook her head. “It’s all moot anyway. I think you’ve listened to a really unpleasant person and gotten entirely the wrong impression.”

Mina started forward with an oath. The bandit leader twisted around and said, “If you don’t want to end up in a shallow grave alongside Brett, I suggest you sit down.”

She sat down.

So Brett’s dead, then. I wonder if this man killed him, or if he got himself killed doing something stupid.

Halla didn’t feel guilty over the man’s death, but she found that even as angry as she was at Mina, she could feel a pang. The poor woman was obviously distraught over her friend’s death and looking for someone to blame. Maybe she’d latched on to Halla and this wild tale of invisibility.

Which, ah, is not that wild, when you think about it. She’s got things wrong, but she did see Sarkis appearing out of nowhere. It’s not a completely far-fetched theory.

The bandit leader squeezed his eyes shut. He looked as if he had a headache. “Do you know,” he said, “this is not the way that I pictured this going?”

“Oh, I get that a lot.”

He actually winced.

“Um,” said Halla. “I’m sorry?”

Zale nudged her. “You don’t have to apologize to someone who’s kidnapped you,” they muttered.

“Oh.” That did make sense, but apologizing was ingrained in Halla’s nature. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and wondered what to do next.

“So,” said the leader, still not opening his eyes, “if I am hearing all this correctly, my men have shot at a priest of the Rat, in order to take a prisoner who is not actually a wonderworker, and who as near as I can tell, thinks that the entire idea would be stupid even if she was.”

“Not stupid,” said Halla hurriedly. “I mean, if you were a different sort of person, I can see invisibility being useful! If you were a burglar, say.”

She peered up through the leaves of the tree. It was starting to get dark. Had Sarkis had long enough to heal?

I suppose any amount of time I can buy him is useful …

“Invisibility might be very useful for a burglar,” she added, nodding to the man. “Or an assassin. Or even a pickpocket. I just think that highway robbery is perhaps not a field where invisibility is called for.”

The bandit leader looked over at Zale. “Under the protection of the Rat?” he said.

“I fear so.”

“They’d be upset if I kill you both.”

Zale somehow managed to look tranquil despite having their hands tied and a man hinting at their death.

“I fear there would be dying curses, yes. And then the Temple would be forced to withdraw their services from the underworld until you had been dealt with. Every man’s hand turned against you and so forth.

” They paused. “Nothing personal, you understand.”

“No,” said the leader, “of course not.” He stood up and walked away.

“Do you think he’s going to kill us?” asked Halla.

“I’m not sure he knows yet.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Could go either way.” Zale’s pewter hair had come loose from the braid and fallen into their eyes. They tossed their head irritably, which fixed the problem for perhaps thirty seconds, and then it fell back down again.

“Oh dear.”

Shadows crept under the trees. Halla studied the ropes in front of her. “Are we supposed to try to get out of these?”

“People usually try, I think,” said Zale.

“A gnole could chew through them,” volunteered Brindle, who had been keeping very quiet.

“It’s just that we’re in the middle of their camp and I think they’ll notice. And that awful Mina person keeps glaring at me.”