Page 67 of Swordheart #1

She lasted until that night in a strange inn, before she finally burst into tears.

Zale put their arms around her, as if they’d expected it. Probably they had.

“Shhh…” the priest whispered. “Shhh, it will be all right. He’s only in the sword. He’ll come back.”

“Will he?” she cried. “But he killed himself!”

“And he may have done so in the past as well,” said Zale. “Sarkis has not been terribly forthcoming about his life as a sword, has he?”

That wrung a watery laugh from Halla. “N-no. No, he hasn’t.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “But how can I… I mean… I was so stupid he had to kill himself to save me. How can he ever…”

She trailed off. How could Sarkis possibly think of her as anything but a hopelessly useless burden? She’d come to his rescue, and failed so spectacularly that he had to fall on his own sword to fix the mess she’d made.

Zale took both her hands in theirs. “It will be all right,” they said again.

“You saved him. Dying isn’t the same for him as it will be for us.

It is only a… a temporary embarrassment.

” They smiled faintly. “When you draw the sword in a fortnight or so, I am quite certain that he will yell at you for having put yourself in danger. But I doubt he will even stop to consider that he died himself.”

Halla heaved a sigh. “Will you come home with me?” she asked. “Back to Rutger’s Howe again ? I know you have duties and I’ve kept you from them so long, but…”

Zale smiled. “I fear you’re stuck with Brindle and me until we sort out exactly how much your inheritance is worth. And then you will probably be stuck with us even longer, albeit at a remove.”

“What?”

Their smile grew, although the edges of it twisted. “Bartholomew left everything to Silas and never updated his will. They haven’t read it officially, but the clerk here took me aside and told me. So I fear you’ve inherited his estate, too. I assume you’ll want me to sort that out as well?”

Halla put her face in her hands and began to laugh, and if it turned into tears and back again, the Rat priest was kind enough not to mention it.

It was not the longest fortnight of Halla’s life, but it was close. The only thing she could compare it to was the grim fever season when her twin sisters had died. There was nothing to do but wait and see if tragedy would strike or not.

Tragedy already struck, she thought wearily. He gutted himself to save you. What more do you want?

In the songs, men always say they’d die for you. I suppose there’s something to be said for the fact that you found one who actually did.

Surely he’ll come back. Surely it’s just another mortal wound, and after a few weeks in the sword, he’ll come out again.

She wished that she was certain of that. It seemed like death by one’s own hand should make a difference somehow, as if the magic should cease to work once it had been so used.

They spent three days in an inn in Amalcross, until Brindle and Prettyfoot the ox arrived.

Jorge the paladin was extremely glad to finally hand them off.

“It’s not Brindle,” he said. “A fine fellow, that gnole. I feel we really got to know each other. But I don’t think I’ve ever moved so slowly in my life. ”

“Don’t insult an ox, god-man,” said Brindle, and then grinned at Jorge, who grinned back.

They made the long, long trek back to Rutger’s Howe, blessedly untroubled by either bandits or the Hanged Motherhood. Halla saw the sign for the Drunken Boar yet again and stared at it. “I don’t know if I should simply rent a room permanently or burn this place to the ground,” she said.

“A gnole would object to burning.”

“A priest would, too.” Zale patted her shoulder. “I’ll go in. We’ll stay somewhere else.”

They camped in the wagon at a wide spot in the road. Halla ate the meat pies from the Drunken Boar. The meat had the thin dampness of rabbit this time, but that was the only difference.

“I don’t know, after this is over, if I will never want to leave the house again, or if I will itch to be on the road within a week,” she said.

Zale snorted. “First one, then the other. You will want to be home, but then you may find that your home is no longer quite large enough to hold you.” They shrugged. “You could hold off selling Bartholomew’s house, see if a larger town suits you.”

Halla shuddered. The flagstone floor had soaked up Nolan’s blood. It could be cleaned, certainly, but she’d always know that the spot was there.

And yet perhaps Zale was right. Silas’s house did seem smaller than it should have.

She had been thinking, in the back of her mind, that she would sell the house, buy a small cottage that one woman could keep easily, but she found herself pacing restlessly through the house, wanting to walk and keep walking.

Not to leave, she thought. Not to get away from the house, but to get away from myself. In the open air, her mind did not seem so cluttered. Here, it felt as if her own thoughts echoed off the walls and jangled in her brain like keys.

She took to walking down the lich road, but it was so cold that her nose was frozen by the time she got back. Probably the priest thought she was a bit daft. Then again, he was a priest, and he knew how people acted when they were mourning and troubled and nervous.

But somehow, the days passed, one by one, and then it was nearly a fortnight gone, and then the day was upon her when at last she could draw the sword.

It was a cold night. She sat in the great bedroom with the fire burning, staring at the sword.

It had been… what, a little over a month?

Five weeks since Silas died? Everything was hazy, as if she’d stepped out of time.

She couldn’t fit the last few weeks into the same place as the years before.

The time before Silas’s death seemed as distant as her childhood or her marriage…

a thing that happened long, long ago, to a different Halla, who had been impossibly young.

She ran her fingers down the scabbard. Still the same worn pattern, barely raised under her fingers. She wondered if the scabbard had been old when the sword was put into it, or if the smith had to make it new herself.

Then she’d have to be making scabbards as well as forging swords and trapping souls. Busy woman.

Her fingers closed on the hilt. She had not dared in the last few days to even test the draw. She had been too afraid that it would work, that she would draw the blade and find Sarkis before her, and she did not know what she was going to say.

Nolan’s dead. I’m the wielder again.

I messed everything up.

I’m so sorry.

She had spent days thinking of everything that she could say, or would say, or might say.

She had stripped the master bedroom bare and whitewashed the walls, replaced the sheets and the quilt, evicted dust that had lived underneath the bed for decades.

Words beat in her head: apologies, expressions of love, anger at Sarkis for lying, anger at herself for still caring about that, anger at herself for not caring enough about that.

It was like a wagon wheel in her head going around and around, skreet skreet skreet , carrying her nowhere.

But she had made a decision at last. She would draw the blade and see what happened.

If he was cold or aloof, if he held his death against her—and how could he not?

—then she would give the blade to Zale. The Rat priest would see far more clearly, would take Sarkis back to the Temple and find a way to free him, or to give him work as a Temple guard where he would be treated as a man and not as a convenient enchantment.

Halla herself… well, she would still have her inheritance. Two inheritances, apparently. She would go to her nieces and see them settled, maybe bring one back to stay with her, if the girl was unhappy on the farm.

Or perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Perhaps his lie and her foolishness would cancel out and they could start over again.

Halla swallowed hard and drew the blade.

Sarkis appeared in a cascade of blue light, one hand already going to his sword. He spun around, searching the room for enemies, and then saw her.

His eyes fixed on her face. She held her breath, waiting for whatever came next.

“ Halla, ” he said hoarsely, and buried his face in her shoulder.