Page 160 of Swordheart
Well, we’ll improvise.
She was not terribly pleased with the way that her life was coming around full circle. Locked in a bedroom,again.Breaking out of her own home,again.
And while I love Zale to pieces, I really would rather have Sarkis here with me again. He could rescue whoever needed it and I could just come along and provide moral support.
They slunk down the next set of stairs. The arguing grew louder.
“… tell me you don’twantto marry her! You’ve been trying to see under her skirt since your fool cousin took her to wife!”
“Mother!”
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” whispered Halla to Zale. “I am disgusted.”
“I can quite see why.”
“They’re in the dining room,” said Halla. She pointed toward the back stairs. “Go through the kitchen. Mind the third stair, it’s loose.”
The two of them almost made it. They were so close that Halla wanted to scream in frustration. But Zale was clumsy from most of a day spent tied up and they didn’t know the layout of the house. The priest tripped on one of the flagstones—the one with the deep cleft in it, she’d been meaning to have it mortared for years but everyone had just gotten used to stepping over it—and went to their knees.
“Who’s there?” shouted Malva.
“Oh blast,” said Zale. Halla helped them to their feet.
“Alver, they’re loose!”
Alver was a great deal quicker to try to apprehend them than he had been trying to protect Halla the first time she’d left the house. Halla couldn’t help but feel a little bitter about that. He grabbed Zale’s arm before the priest had even reached the kitchen.
Halla, for lack of any better ideas, grabbed Zale’s other armand hauled. The priest stretched between the two of them, eyes wide. Then they got their feet under them and yanked themselves loose.
Unfortunately, in the time it took to free Zale from the strange tug-of-war, Aunt Malva had barreled into the kitchen.
“The door!” shouted Malva. “Alver,get the door!”
Alver shoved Halla into the kitchen table as he ran to obey.
Malva stood in one doorway, Alver in the other. Zale and Halla stood in the middle, looking from one to the other.
“Halla, how could you?” asked Alver reproachfully.
It took Halla a minute to realize that he was actually trying to scold her for trying to escape. She didn’t know whether to laugh at the sheer grotesque hilarity of it or just begin screaming and never stop.
“Alver, you’ll have to kill them both,” said Malva angrily. “It’s the only way.”
“Kill me and my nieces inherit everything,” said Halla, inching toward Alver. Perhaps if she and Zale both charged him at the same time…
“Then Alver will marry your nieces!”
“What, both of them?” said Zale.
“You keep your nasty clammy hands off my nieces, you slimy, weak-willed little shitweasel!”
“Don’t talk to my son like that!”
“That goes for you, too, you horrible screeching harpy!”
“Alver, are you going to let her talk to me like that?”
“Halla, you shouldn’t…” Alver trailed off, looking so uncomfortable that she was amazed he didn’t curl up and die on the spot.
