Page 55 of Swordheart #1

It took some time to dress afterward. The tendency to look at each other and smile foolishly slowed things down. Eventually, though, Sarkis’s stomach growled like a bear and they both went down to breakfast.

“I have spent too long out of the sword,” he said. “I am starving.”

“Well, hopefully my dreadful aunt left some food in the house. If not, we’ll go rummage something up.”

There was not a great deal, in truth—mostly bread and cheese and the remains of last night’s dinner.

Zale was already awake, making notes on their ledger.

The priest looked up at the pair, a smile tugging at their lips, and Sarkis suspected that they were quite aware of what had happened the night before.

Well, Halla had not been entirely silent. Probably he hadn’t been, either. Or perhaps it was the single love bite he hadn’t quite been able to resist leaving on the side of her neck, or that they sat too closely together to be anything but recent lovers.

He regretted nothing.

No, that wasn’t true. He regretted that he had not done it sooner. Why had he wasted so much time?

Because you wanted her to have a choice. Because you needed to tell her what the sword says.

The bread in his mouth was suddenly as heavy and tasteless as clay.

The sword.

She still didn’t know.

Halla looked over at him, her water-gray eyes alight, and suddenly Sarkis could not take another moment of deception.

I have to tell her. I have to tell her now, before there’s any more between us. If I don’t, if she finds out—when she finds out—it might poison everything. I have to tell her now, before it goes any further.

He was afraid that if he didn’t tell her now, he would soon do something utterly mad. Fall to his knees and beg her to marry him, perhaps. He had nothing to offer, less than nothing, but that mad part of his mind was crying out that she was his, that they belonged together…

He stood abruptly, catching her hand. “Is the scholar here yet?”

“Nolan?” Zale looked up. “Yes, I believe so. He and Bartholomew came over this morning. Nolan is in the front room, I think?”

“What’s wrong?” asked Halla, climbing to her feet.

If he had been able to explain, he would have done it weeks earlier. He led her through the house until they came to Nolan, in the front room, who was writing in a book.

The scholar looked up from his work and shut the book. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Can you read ancient tongues?” asked Sarkis.

Nolan blinked at him. “Depends on the ancient tongue, I suppose. There’s a great many of them. I know a few. Why do you ask?”

Sarkis took the blade off Halla’s shoulders, and drew it all the way out. The words on it were etched in his memory as deeply as they were etched in steel, but he could not trust himself to read them aloud.

Coward.

Yes. I will see her face as I recite the words and I will break and I will not tell her all the truth. I know it.

Even in this, I will fail.

“Read these,” he said gruffly, tossing the blade down on the table in front of him.

Nolan blinked at him, then at the sword. “This is… oh, hmm, I do know this one. It’s an archaic form, but… let me see.” He licked his lips, taking the hilt in his hand and tilting it so that the light caught on the blade.

“This is… no, wait… Here is… the prison and… judgment? Punishment? of Sarkis of the Weeping Lands. Faithless in life, he will be faithful in death, until steel crumbles and all sins fade away.”

The scholar stopped and looked up, his eyes wide. The moment seemed suddenly trapped in amber. Sarkis saw the sunlight coming through the window, the dust motes dancing in it, the fall of Halla’s pale white hair over her face as the color drained out of it.

She snatched up the sword, turned, and looked at him. Waiting for the denial or the protest or the explanation.

Sarkis met her eyes and said nothing at all.

That was enough.

I can’t believe I’ve been such a fool.

No. No, that wasn’t true. It was all too easy to believe it.

A man who took you away from your troubles. A man who said you were beautiful. Of course you were a fool.

Only a fool would believe such things could be true.

“Halla—” he said finally, when the silence between them had become agony.

“Why?”

“I led a mercenary troop,” he said. “I’ll not pretend we were good people, because we weren’t. There was a war, and we became… well. Indispensable. But our side was losing. At the height of battle, I changed sides.”

Halla stared at him.

Sarkis shrugged. “My loyalty was to my men, not to my employer. I was holding a citadel that I knew could not be held for long. The enemy offered me money. I saw a chance for us to survive.”

“And?”

“And if I had held out another two days, I would have been a great hero.” He smiled humorlessly. “Our allies arrived. They overwhelmed our position. Most of my men were slaughtered. I and my two captains—the Dervish and Angharad—we were dragged before the king who had trusted us.”

Halla put her hand over her mouth.

“He had the rest of my men hanged as traitors. A mercenary stays bought, that’s what separates them from murderers. But for the three of us, he had a more fitting punishment. Our deaths were bound to the swords, and the will of any who wielded us.”

“That is… quite a punishment,” said the scholar. Halla had forgotten that the man was even there.

Sarkis sighed, not looking at him. “For me, perhaps, it was just. But the Dervish and Angharad deserved a clean death, not to be bound into magic steel and forced to fight until the end of time. They followed my orders. Angharad told me it was a poor idea, but I overruled her.”

“I see,” said Halla. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him. He was a liar and a criminal and apparently a traitor.

She could all too easily feel sorry for Angharad and the Dervish. They had trusted him, too, and look where it had gotten them.

Look where it got any of us.

“So there you have it,” said Sarkis. “The whole sordid tale.”

“I suppose you didn’t lie, did you?” she asked. “You just let me believe whatever I wanted.”

Sarkis shook his head. “That’s a coward’s way out,” he said. “I knew full well what you believed.”

“I believed in you, ” she said softly. “I thought you were a hero.”

“I know.”

“I trusted you. I let you…”

She cut herself off. The night they had spent had been like nothing she’d ever felt, and now it was tainted. Everything was tainted.

“Halla…” He reached for her hand.

She yanked it away, shaking her head. She didn’t want to look at him. She was going to cry soon and be damned if she was going to cry in front of him.

“You could have just told me,” she said miserably. “You didn’t have to lie. I wouldn’t have cared. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She made the mistake of looking at him, and saw that his face looked as anguished as she felt.

“Because for hundreds of years, I have died for wielders who thought that I was nothing but crowbait. An inhuman weapon or at most, a traitor who deserved a traitor’s death, over and over again.

And then you came along and you… you were…

” He lifted his hands and let them drop. “You were you,” he said finally.

“I was a fool.”

“ No. You were kind and you were in a very bad situation and you wanted to believe the best of the man who saved you.”

“I should have known.” Her voice was as dull as a dying woman’s. “I should have known better. My fault for thinking a hero would have anything to do with someone like me.”

“Halla…”

“Go away,” she said tiredly. “Leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I am bound to you until you die or sell me or give me away.”

“So that part was true?”

He nodded.

“Then you’re free,” she said. “I give you to yourself. You don’t need to serve me any longer.” She flung the sword down on the table.

“Halla, I—”

The pommel struck the table and the blade slammed into the scabbard. Blue light splashed around Sarkis and tore him away, even as he reached out a hand toward her.

“It’s real,” breathed Nolan. “He’s really one of them. He’s a servant of the sword!”

“Later,” she said. “Later.”

“But—”

“Later.” She turned on her heel. She had to get out of the room right now or she was going to cry and she didn’t want to cry in front of other people. She had her pride.

Really? And what do you possibly have to be proud of?

You’re nothing but a woman past her prime with a dead husband. You can’t take care of yourself. You had to hire a priest to get your own inheritance back from your grasping in-laws.

So you had a lover for the space of a night. So what?

Did you think he truly wanted you? Did you think he wanted anything, except to slake his own thirst?

“But Mistress Halla!” said the scholar, rising to his feet. “I have so many questions!”

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. Her voice betrayed her and she clamped her teeth down on her lip and stalked away.