Page 132 of Swordheart
“Oh dear! Are you certain? How long are you staying?”
“Until the matter of the will is sorted out.” Zale smiled warmly, the icy legal demeanor gone as if it had never existed. “But if we may eat with you tonight? I fear I will bore you senseless, since all my chatter is of the capital and the temple politics there, but if you will grant me your patience…”
“Not at all,” gasped the priest. Halla realized with a pang how desperate the poor man was for news of the wider world. Was Rutger’s Howe really such a backwater? Well, perhaps it was.
She would think so again, several times in the next few days. It was familiar and comfortable and she was glad to be home, but she kept thinking how much smaller it seemed, compared even to Amalcross. People walked by the stableyard and stared at the painted wagon as if they had never seen one.
They stared at Brindle, too, and that really annoyed her. There were gnoles in Rutger’s Howe, for the love of the gods, it wasn’t like they hadn’t seen one before. But somehow the local gnoleswere unremarkable, while Brindle, calmly going over the wagon, fixing harness leather and replacing nails, merited staring.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why people are being so… I’m sorry.”
The gnole gave her a look, ears down and back, in what she had learned was wry amusement. “A gnole is a job-gnole, not a rag-and-bone gnole,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means, Brindle.”
He turned back to his work. “Rag-and-bone gnole works in gutters, takes trash. Works hard. Not insulting a rag-and-bone gnole. But a job-gnole works on wagons.” He put his claws across his chest. “Fixes. Drives an ox. Human sees a job-gnole, maybe a human doesn’t expect it.”
Halla knew perfectly well what hewasn’tsaying, about human behavior and human assumptions of superiority.He’s being diplomatic. Because I am, after all, a human, and this is my home.
And if I try to say much more, I’ll make a mess of it, and it won’t fix Brindle’s problem at all.
“Tell me if I can do anything,” she said wearily. “Or if anyone gives you trouble. Sarkis’ll set them straight.”
Brindle gave her a gap-fanged grin. “A gnole would like to see that,” he admitted.
The other significant problem was the Four-Faced priest’s housekeeper.
Widow Davey lived across the road from the small church and came over every evening to do the cooking and the tidying up. She was kind, generous, efficient, and when she learned that Widow Halla was going to be setting up her own household, she bustled over, full of helpful advice.
“I’ve been keeping house for over twenty years,” said Hallagrimly. “I’ve told her that. But she still wants to show me the best way to blacken a grate and how to make chicken stock. I have been making chicken stock since I wastwelve.”
“Do you want me to stab her?” asked Sarkis, who was feeling rather useless now that no one was shooting arrows at them.
“No. I mean, yes, very much, but don’t actually do it. She means well.” Halla gritted her teeth. “She just won’t listen. She’s seen me at market since I moved here, but now that Silas is gone, suddenly I need all her advice. Gods’ teeth! Did she thinkhewas making the chicken stock?”
Sarkis had only the vaguest notion of what chicken stock even was. Something you fed to chickens, presumably. “Well, perhaps Zale will be done with whatever they’re doing soon.”
“Bartholomew should arrive tomorrow,” Halla agreed.
“How will they make a judgment?”
“Oh, they’ll call a triumvirate. Clerk, priest—that’s our host, Zale can’t do it—and the Squire’s bailiff will make the third.”
“Will they find in our favor, do you think?”
“The priest certainly will. He’s already told Zale as much. The clerk will probably depend on whether he’s more scared of Malva or Zale. The Squire’s bailiff, I don’t know.”
The Squire’s bailiff, when he arrived, was a large man with the placid air of a contented cow and a mind like a razor. He arrived at the same time as Bartholomew and went to the same hostel, where, ironically, Malva and Alver were also staying.
“Should I be worried about this?” asked Zale, upon learning of the accomodations.
Halla shook her head. “I honestly don’t think so. Aunt Malva doesn’t really improve upon close acquaintance.”
“And your cousin?”
“Alver will agree to anything, mean none of it, and then do whatever his mother tells him.”
“A familiar, if regrettable dynamic.” Zale nodded. “Well, it isonly another two days and then we shall have our decision.” They smiled. “And I have a trick or two up my sleeve, in case things go very badly indeed.”
