Page 8 of Swordheart
“Whydoyou have a sword, anyway?”
He looked down at the blade by his side, then up at her. “To fight with. It’s asword.”
“Yes, but you came out of a sword. It seems redundant.”
He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “I can’t very well wield myself, lady.”
Oh. Perhaps he’d go blind.
It occurred to her that this would not be a very good thought to say out loud, so she plastered an agreeable look on her face.
“Where is this place, lady?” he asked.
“My bedchamber,” said Halla.
“Yes,” he said patiently. “I had worked that much out. What land is this?”
“Oh! We’re in Rutger’s Howe. That’s in Archenhold.”
He shook his head. “I do not know that land.”
“Archenhold’s outside of Anuket City.”
“Anuket—ah! The place of the artificers?”
“Yes.” Silas had visited the markets of Anuket City often. She was pretty sure that was where the manticore skull had come from, although he was far too cheap to buy any of the strange mechanical constructs that the city exported.
“I have come far south of the Weeping Lands, then. And the year?”
“1346.”
He shook his head. “It was the Year of the Ghost Sturgeon in the great god’s reign of heaven.”
It was Halla’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t know when that was. I’m sorry. Err… the sword’s been on my wall for years. I think it was here before I moved in. I thought about asking him to replace it with something better—maybe a stuffed fish or a portrait of a saint—but he was being so kind taking me in that I didn’t want to seem ungrateful and then you know how it is, suddenly it’s a decade later and you’ve stopped even noticing there’s a sword on the wall…”
She stopped because the servant of the sword was staring at her again. “Did I say something wrong?”
“A… stuffed… fish.”
“You know, with the fins and the sort of…” She trailed off because he was turning an alarming color. “Look, I didn’tdoit. Your sword stayed on the wall. I thought it was quite pretty. Err, I mean thatyouwere quite pretty.”
He put his hand over his face again. His shoulders were shaking.
“I’m sorry I don’t know what year it is. Or what year it was. Comparatively.”
He accepted this change of topic gratefully. “Well, that is the peril of being a sword. You have no clear perception of time passing. I suppose we will make do.”
“Soareyou the sword? Or do you live in it?” She looked at the naked steel in her hands, then back up at him. “Like a djinn in a bottle? Wait,areyou a djinn?”
“Most certainly not!” He looked offended at the very notion. “I’m a human man, or was before I went into the blade. Now I suppose I’m a bit less human, but not a spirit or a djinn.”
“Or a demon?”
“Definitelynota demon!”
“That’s good!” said Halla. Goodness, he was prickly. She wondered if he’d been like this before he became a sword or if being enspelled in metal made a person grouchy. “Do you have a name?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s writ on the blade, my lady.”
