Crooked Words Read online

going to give me away to the most pathetic person who comes in asking for a pathetic sword and expect me not to be insulted by that?”

  “Yes! Yes, I am!”

  “I’m not that pathetic. I’m a real magician.”

  “I deserve better than that!”

  On the positive side, Darius supposed, it talked without the distracting, annoying glow so many magical swords possessed, and, overlooking the insult to his person, it sounded direct and sensible. March liked those sorts of qualities in his students, friends, lovers and flying monkeys. The sheer ugliness of the sword could be overlooked—albeit with some difficulty—if it happened to be everything else Darius wanted. March might not even mind how terrible the sword looked if it happened to be a decent conversationalist.

  “How about I go and nail you in a box? Or how about you go with the pathetic magician boy and stop complaining, or I’ll drop you in the bloody ocean!”

  The sword gave a low, grumpy mutter. “Fine. Boy. Who are you and what do you want from me?”

  Darius stared at it and shook his head. Even with all the experience he’d had—and the first thing he was going to do in his monastery was write a book about magical swords around the world—talking to an object that rested, inanimate, in Safi’s hands never ceased to feel strange. No movement, no expression, nothing that made the sword appear any different to any other less-magical sword, aside from the fact that looking at it made Darius’s eyes hurt.

  “I’m Darius.” He folded his arms behind his back as if he were giving a class presentation. “I’m a fully-qualified magician from Greenstone’s College of Magickery with a specialisation in arcane and eldritch artefacts, and I’m looking for a talking sword for my mentor, the Professor March, who is a notable and world-famous sword collector.”

  “Is it not ‘whom’ is?”

  “It’s ‘who’,” he said, feeling comfortable for the first time in weeks. The Professors Roxleigh made any student who ever got it wrong in an essay clean up after divination class, and one time scrubbing liver and entrails out from under his fingernails had been enough for Darius to make sure he never made that mistake again. “’Who’ is in the subjective case—that is, the subject of a sentence, which usually precedes the verb. ‘Whom’ is in the objective case, which means—”

  “Interesting.” The sword lowered its voice. “Are you saying, however, that I am to be hanged on a gentleman’s wall somewhere and ignored?”

  Darius gaped for a moment before he remembered that the sword, a thousand-odd miles away from Greenstone, would have no way of knowing what went on in the halls of the College. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ll be displayed in his bedroom, which means that you’ll be able to watch, or sense, every time an assassin comes in to kill him, every night he spends with a bodyguard, every time he sends his shoes off to the wrong place, every time someone tries to burn the place down, every time students try and sneak into his room and unwire his swords, and every time the Professors Roxleigh come and drag him out of bed—it’s worth watching.” He gulped and wondered if that sounded—well, just a little bit like he’d been paying too much attention to the goings-on in March’s bedroom? “If he really likes you, he’ll probably wear you. And … it’s ‘hung’, actually. People are hanged; pictures and swords are hung. It’s an important distinction if you’re trying to create an alliteration to put things away … or hang someone, I guess.”

  The sword let the silence hang for a moment.

  “I take it you learnt these things at your College?”

  “You can’t create functional spells without correct grammar,” Darius said, shrugging.

  Safi rolled his eyes and made a few impatient scoffing noises.

  “Indeed. So, then. What sort of bodyguards does this Professor March employ?”

  “Really?”

  “I want to know what it is I am in for.” The sword sounded just a little bit prissy. “Or who it is I am in for.”

  There was a double entendre there, but Darius didn’t really want to think about that one too much. “‘Whom’. Um … well … they’re gorgeous ones, really.” He tried his best to say it without any particular weight, but some amount of envy must have crept in because Safi gave him a surprise smile, one far too sympathetic for Darius’s comfort. “Gorgeous, adorable men. So I’m sure watching, or sensing, or however it is that you’re aware, and if there’s a correct verb and gerund please tell me … anyway, it won’t be a trial to you, unless you prefer women. But then there’s the Professors Roxleigh, so…”

  Swords didn’t have a preference, did they? It wasn’t generalising too much to think that an oversized zweihänder was more likely to appreciate men than, say, a rapier? Or would a zweihänder adorned with gemstones rather watch women? Or people who were neither? Or maybe they didn’t care who was involved, or didn’t care to the extent that human affairs were nothing but exercises in boredom, because they were swords?

  The sword said nothing to indicate interest, just a bland, bored-sounding question: “And I will travel with you to this College?”

  “Yes.”

  The sword’s silence lingered long enough that Darius broke out in a nervous sweat and rubbed his palms against his trousers.

  “Oh, very well. But in that case, you cannot give this blade to this young man. Not that someone will want to steal it, mind; I just doubt that he can carry it. Unwrap me and give him that … no, perhaps that … hmmm. Let me think on the matter.”

  Darius felt a little grateful that he wasn’t the only one staring in confusion: Safi blinked as if he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next.

  “Just unwrap me,” the sword said finally. “That will do nicely.”

  “Unwrap you?” Safi continued to blink. His arms began to shake from the effort of holding the sword upright. “I don’t…”

  “Do you specialise in being moronic? Good grief. Do you really, truly think that a talking sword would look like this wretched thing? I am the belt, numbskull!”

  Darius stared at the belt, which looked as inanimate as the sword. It could have been true for all he knew: it wasn’t as though enchanted objects had some kind of ‘Here Lies an Enchanted Object’ signifier, which would have made his life so much the easier. A belt would certainly be easier to carry home, however. He wouldn’t have to worry about someone mistaking him for someone capable with a weapon. He could even just go and wrap the belt around some pretty-looking elfish sword from the marketplace back home, and who would know the difference?

  After a moment’s thought, he rather liked the idea. It wasn’t what he’d been looking for, but the belt seemed a good sight more personable than those screaming swords embedded into blocks of stone, and wasn’t that what counted?

  “You.” Safi held the zweihänder out at arm’s length as though the belt were about to loosen itself and bite his head off. “A talking belt? What kind of good is that?”

  “Unwrap me,” the belt said with just a touch of petulance. “I would like to go with the boy.”

  “Magician.”

  Safi blinked again—Darius wondered if he had something in his eye—and then sighed. “Are you sure you don’t want the sword?”

  “Very.”

  The belt had even more enthusiasm on the matter: “Yes!”

  “Fine.” Safi unwound the belt and dropped the sword onto the display bench. “It’ll be easier to sell the damn thing without you yabbering, anyway.”

  The belt, when Safi placed it in Darius’s diploma-free hand, was a plain, common thing smelling of leather polish, sweat and horse. The buckle was smooth and just a little tarnished. Nothing about it suggested sentience or magic.

  “You can take those tassels off, boy.”

  “I have a name.” Darius wedged the diploma under one arm and pulled at the closest tassel, dropped it onto the bench. “It’s Darius.”

  “Yes. Boy.”

  Safi gave a throaty little chuckle that made Darius quite suspicious of his supposed genero
sity. Just what had this belt done while in Safi’s care?

  “Now, you said that your master is a well-known sword collector? I have some examples—non-magical, of course—of exquisite work and such historical significance that any collector would be proud to display them, and, as you’re doing me a favour, I’d be quite glad to offer you a discount.” Safi winked. Darius glanced up and down the alley and wondered why there were no opportune cows or crowds ready to save him. “Anything to put a smile on your lover’s face, hey? I have a lovely rapier that was once wielded by the queen of—”

  “No.” The belt’s voice sounded loudly enough that Darius jumped and almost fell over. “He doesn’t need a sword. You, boy. Wrap me around your waist. We will leave. Farewell, sword seller.”

  Darius tucked the diploma back under his shirt and wound the belt. It was far too big for him, and he wondered if the zweihänder had been intended for a giant, the belt a giant’s baldric. “Goodbye. And—thanks. I think.”

  “Should you ever need a blade, you know where to find me. Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell everyone of my unending generosity!”

  The belt didn’t need to tell him to get out as fast as he could; Darius waved, smiled, and then turned and almost ran out of the stall. Safi called out something after him, but the jostling crowd drowned out the words. Darius sighed and headed south toward his rented room, barely making it twenty steps before running headlong into a flock of