Page 58 of Swordheart
“Err… I’ll send the girl,” said Bartholomew, wringing hishands even harder. “It’s no trouble. I just… err… I’m not sure what to send her for…”
“Leave that to me,” said Halla. “I’ll cook something. If you don’t object tothat,Sarkis?”
Sarkis inclined his head. “I have no objections.”
“Good. You can help me peel the potatoes while we wait, then.”
If she expected him to balk at this chore, she was disappointed. By the time she had given the maid instructions on what to purchase and soothed Bartholomew’s nerves, Sarkis had peeled more than half the potatoes.
He knew she was annoyed with him. He was already annoyed with himself, so at least this made two of them.
I am not her lover. I am not her kinsman. I am certainly not her mother. I am being an ass.
One of the grimmer realizations of Sarkis’s youth had been the discovery thatknowingyou were being an ass did not actually stop you fromcontinuingto be an ass.
She can just sheathe the damn sword at any time, you know, and the great god knows what trouble she’ll get into if she’s afraid to draw it again for fear you’ll growl at her. Stop bristling like a damned boar and apologize.
“Well,” she admitted, looking at the pile of potatoes, “you’re good at that.”
“I have a great deal of experience skinning my enemies,” he said, deadpan.
“Do you have many enemies among the potatoes?”
“Not any longer.”
The corner of her mouth crooked up, although she clearly tried to suppress it. She picked up a potato and a knife and sat down next to him.
“So whatexactlyis your problem with me going to the market dressed like this?”
“Men will stare at you,” muttered Sarkis, hunched over the next potato.
“Well, that’d be a first.”
“And then I will be forced to beat them.”
She nearly cut herself with the knife.“What?”
“I am your guardsman.” He eyed a dark spot in the potato and wondered whether it was worth digging out. “Lady.”
“Sarkis, I’m a widow, not the local warlord’s virgin bride. We don’t evenhavea warlord. And the Archon’s like eighty. I mean, we’ve got the senators in Anuket City, I guess, but they can probably afford a better class of virgin anyway.”
He scowled at the potato. “Humor me.”
She gave him a dubious look.
“… please.”
She sighed. “All right, since you ask so nicely. But you’re peeling the rest of these while I try to figure out where the pots are in this wretched kitchen.”
“As you command,” said Sarkis, and went to battle against the remainder of the potatoes.
CHAPTER 18
Halla was forced to give Sarkis credit. He did not balk at any kitchen chores she set him.
He clearly had entirely ridiculous notions about beating men up in the market, but he scrubbed pans without complaint.
Still, between settling Bartholomew—“It’s all right, I know we’ve descended on you and made a mess, cooking is theleastI can do, no, no, go back to cataloguing,please,we don’t require you to play host!”—and dealing with Sarkis’s unexpected surliness, she was not feeling charitable toward men in general or either of them in specific by the time dinner was ready to eat.
