Page 59 of Swordheart
It was not until she placed a dish in front of Sarkis and he looked up at her, startled, that she realized this was likely his first meal in…heavens, it could be a century, couldn’t it? Or more?
This was an unexpected amount of pressure on a meal that Halla had whipped up in a strange kitchen. She hoped it didn’t disagree with him. Still, she couldn’t very wellnotfeed him.
He took a bite, delicately, chewed for a moment, then shrugged and started eating.
Bartholomew came in, took a bowl, and went back to whatever he was doing in a back room. Cataloguing something or looking up something. He had books propped up around him. Halla made a mental note to go in an hour later and take the bowl away, because otherwise it would sit in his study for the next ten years, a lesson she had learned the hard way from Silas.
“Acceptable?” she asked Sarkis, as he finished the bowl and went for seconds.
“I have been outside the sword long enough to realize I amravenous,” he said. “I am sure it is very good, but I am currently a poor judge.” Then he had thirds.
Well, she’d take it.
When he had plowed through three bowls, he did the dishes. He wasn’t good at it, but he did his best. Halla leaned against the doorframe and watched, slightly baffled.
“In my land, we use sand,” he said. “For scouring. It does not freeze, unlike water.”
“Well, that would explain it.” She took the bowl away from him. “You said you led a band of warriors. I take it you didn’t lead them anywhere with a lot of water?”
“Oh, frequently enough. But I confess, once I led the war band, I did not do many dishes. And no one wants to eat my cooking. My jobs were to plan our work, study maps, read orders.” He picked up another bowl and tackled it, too.
“And the potatoes?”
“My mother required me to peel many, many potatoes.”
She left him to it.
“Sarkis?”
Halla’s voice came from the dark, slightly above his head. Sarkis had been forced to lie slantwise across the open stretch of floor, although he wasn’t quite under the bed. If anyone did force their way in, they could take him out just by throwing the door open violently.
But they’ll break their legs trying to get past the…whatever that piece of furniture is there…ornamental table thing.He had no idea what it was, but it had five legs and a stack of carved whalebone ships piled on top of it.
A far larger concern was that Halla would try to get up in the night and step on him.
“Sarkis? Are you awake?”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you want Bartholomew to know about the sword?”
“He collects rare antiquities. I am, by definition, a rare antiquity.”
“Oh. Hmm. You think he’d want to collect you?”
Sarkis shrugged, then remembered she couldn’t see it. “He might.”
“But you’re a person.”
“A fact that stops surprisingly few people.”
He waited for Halla to leap to Bartholomew’s defense, but instead she said, “Hmm. He and Silas could get very… oh,focused,I guess. I know sometimes they didn’t always acquire things completely legally.” Sarkis could hear the frown in her voice. “I guess I’d like to think he wouldn’t try to take your sword, but I don’t know if I’d be sure enough to swear he wouldn’t. And if he tried, I don’t know if I could make him understand about you. He might not listen. Silas wouldn’t, when he got in these moods.”
“If he tries to take the sword, you need only draw it. You are the wielder. I will teach him his mistake.”
Halla sighed. “When you say it like that, I assume you mean by stabbing him, and I’d rather you didn’t. He’s being very nice to put us up for the night.”
“I will attempt to keep the stabbing to the bare minimum required.”
