Page 58 of Swordheart #1

Zale met her eyes, frowning. “ That doesn’t sound like Sarkis at all.”

Halla shook her head. “I gave up the sword,” she said quietly.

“He doesn’t have to stay with me anymore.

I always thought he must hold me in contempt, until…

well, until last night, then I thought…

oh, it doesn’t matter.” She could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids and tilted her head back.

“I told him he could belong to himself now. I guess he took me up on it.”

Zale snorted. “And how exactly is he supposed to draw himself?”

Halla blinked at them. “What?”

“How is he going to draw his own sword? If he goes back into it, he’s stuck. It’s like trying to pick yourself up.”

“I… err… but someone else could draw the sword, couldn’t they? I don’t have to draw the sword every time, but I’m still—I was still—the wielder.”

“Right, but he can never be the first person to draw the sword.”

Halla opened her mouth to say that she’d given him the sword so it shouldn’t matter, and suddenly remembered the first night that she and Sarkis had met. I can’t very well wield myself, lady.

“I’m an idiot…” she said, and felt tears start to threaten at last.

“You were angry,” said Zale. “Few of us are at our best when we are angry.” They glanced up at her. “And it is very likely that idiocy saved you a great deal of unpleasantness.”

“What?”

“We are not dealing with good men, Halla. They moved too quickly to have done so in ignorance. If you had not given up the sword, I suspect they would have made you give it up.”

“Yes, but…” This seemed rather less important at the moment than what Sarkis must be feeling. “What if he thinks I hate him? What if he thinks I don’t want to see him anymore?”

“We will go and find him and tell him otherwise.” They got their nails under one loop and managed to tug it upward. Halla winced as the other ropes pulled tighter. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’d rather have my hand go to sleep than marry Alver.”

“He does seem very determined, doesn’t he?” The rogue hair flopped into their eyes again and they blew it out of the way on an aggravated breath.

“Or his mother is. I don’t know why they care,” said Halla tiredly. “Silas wasn’t worth that much. They can’t possibly think it’s worth all the trouble of kidnapping me and a priest of the Rat. Even if they can lock me up somewhere and no one will care, your Temple will come looking for you.”

Zale nodded. “It’s odd, isn’t it? Presumably they’ll have to kill me.”

Halla blinked at them. They seemed very calm about it.

“I wonder if it has to do with the mortgages.”

“Mortgages?”

“Yes. It’s hard to find in the records and I suspect it was quite a shady operation, but I managed to turn it up in the clerk’s office when I was digging around to find Silas’s total worth. Your outlying properties are mortgaged to the hilt.”

“They what ? But Silas didn’t have any mortgages. He always used to brag that he owned everything free and clear.”

“Indeed. And they weren’t taken out in his name, either. The only way to find them was to go through the land records themselves. Which I did as a matter of course, since the property was in dispute.”

Halla stared at them with her mouth open. “Whose name are they in?”

“Your cousin’s. If I were to venture a guess—” They got another loop free and Halla grimaced as the hemp scraped across her wrists. “—your cousin used the fact that he expected to inherit as collateral for a loan from someone with more money than ethics.”

“That ra—I mean, that bastard!”

Zale smiled gently at her correction. “So now he is in a bind. He must lay claim to that property, or suddenly find that he has no collateral for the loan.”

“Him and his mother. I’ll bet she’s in this up to her neck.”

“That would fit with what I have witnessed of them, yes. Such situations can be resolved, of course, if the various parties are acting in good faith, but I would wager a small sum that the sort of person who would make such a loan is not acting in good faith.” They chuckled.

“Ironically, your cousin could easily have found himself petitioning the Rat for mediation in such a case.”

“And they’d take the case?”

“Well, never say never. Let us say instead that imprisoning one of their priests would not incline the Temple favorably to his case. I was holding this information in reserve in case the bailiff did not decide in our favor, but now… well. Can you get this loop past your fingers?”

Halla contorted her hand until the loop slipped over her knuckles.

“Excellent! Give me a minute, my nails aren’t very happy with me.”

“I don’t care about Alver,” Halla said after a moment, wiggling her fingers. “I mean, I care, but we can worry about him later.”

“Well, given that we have to escape, we’ll have to worry about him quite soon.”

“Right, right.” Halla waved her bound hands. “But it’s Sarkis I’m worried about. Bartholomew could take him anywhere. Or sell him. What if we never found him again?”

“The Rat has many eyes. But yes, it would be much easier to catch Bartholomew now rather than later.”

“What if he won’t give the sword up, though?” asked Halla. “Sarkis can’t force him, if he’s the wielder.”

“Then I fear that you and I will have to kill him,” said Zale.

Halla looked at Zale. The silence stretched out until it was intolerably loud.

“Do you remember what happened last time?” said Halla. “When we had to hide the bodies?”

“Yes, but we’re bound to get better with practice.”

“I’ve never killed anyone! You’ve never killed anyone! Sarkis and Brindle did all the killing bits! We stood around and wrung our hands!”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out. People manage to kill each other all the time. How hard can it be?”

Halla suspected that it would be quite difficult, but then again, Sarkis had killed a half dozen bandits in less time than it took to cook a chicken, so maybe the priest was right.

“Anyway, it wasn’t the killing part that was hard, it was dealing with the body afterward. And in this case, they’re a kidnapper, so we’ll just go straight to the constable and explain the situation. Well… part of the situation…”

“Maybe we can get Brindle to do the actual killing,” said Halla.

“Err. I wouldn’t feel right about that. I mean, defending his ox is one thing, but asking a gnole to kill somebody in somewhat cold blood…”

Halla sighed. “You’re probably right.”

“Though I do wish we had a Sin-Eater…” Zale muttered, half to themself.

“What? One of those people who eats food off the dead?”

“Well… no. Not exactly…” Zale lifted their bound hands to scratch awkwardly at their neck. “They’re… a religious order my priesthood works with occasionally. For things like this. You know, murders, assassination, things like that. I mean, we’re practical but we’re not criminals. ”

Halla gave them a look.

“Yes, all right, the law might frown on the hiding bodies part, but the Motherhood started it.”

“They did,” Halla agreed. She was mostly just bemused at how Zale had gone from throwing up in the bushes to coolly plotting murder.

She was even more bemused that she seemed to be going along with it.

It’s for Sarkis. You have to get him back. He’s been kidnapped. If you’ve got to kill the kidnapper, that’s just how it is.

No use dithering. Get to work.

“If you’re still bothered by it,” said Zale, bending back over her bonds, “I’ll take your confession afterward.”

“Who’s going to take your confession?”

The priest gave her a wry smile. “The bishop. And if I did not suspect the bishop would agree with me, we would be having a very different conversation.” They slid their fingers under the loops of rope, tugging another one clear of Halla’s knuckles. This one went much easier.

“And if I find she does not agree,” they added, “then it will all be on my head for leading you astray. As it should be…”