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The Language of the Night: Swordheart [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-26

Zale shrugged. “Why not a rat? Rats are smart and they travel with humans, but they are neither our servants nor our prey. They eat the food that we eat, they live within our homes. Who better to understand us?” (p. 178)

Tonight we’re (finally) actually discussing T. Kingfisher’s Romantasy Swordheart, set in the Temple of the White Rat world. Finally because finally I sat down long enough for a reread and have come away without any great observations, other than that it’s a fun story and it lacks demons, unless you count Great-Uncle Silas’ bird, whose “eyes would flash green and it would begin roaring in an impossibly deep voice about the end of the world and the screams of the damned” (p.3); the bird has been certified as demon-free but very disturbing.

Personally, I found the first half of the novel more entertaining than the second, but I tend to do that in Romance: the setup is always more fun than the execution, when all the longing and passion and miscues, mixed signals, and angsty stuff predominates. I’ve extracted bits and pieces of the world-building, which is I think a lot more interesting than the (admittedly realistic) tentative anxieties of new lovers and new relationships, given that we know what the conclusion is foregone — and that I guess makes me officially Old.

So, what can we add to the canon of this world?

For one thing, there was a lot of magic in the old world. I’m not sure it’s the same age as the one in which the Wonder Engines were produced, but the magic of the Weeping Lands produced a Sorcerer-Smith who bounds men’s souls into swords, and that’s some serious magic. There is also magic enough in the sword to provide Sarkis he ability to speak and understand his wielder’s tongue, although apparently that skill doesn’t apply to other languages; witness that the rune still need a translator.

Sarkis’ old world was ruled by one great god, having lived in the Year of the Ghost Sturgeon, whenever that was. And he thinks that the myriad pantheon of his current situation is … less than ideal:

Decadent, damnable civilization. Too many gods and they treated their women like cattle, but mention that their high horse was more like a donkey on stilts and they became furious with you. (p. 51)

We’ve met the Forge God before, although Halla tells Sarkis that they’re known for their love of tithing, and the Four-Faced God is good with sermons, the Dreaming God hunts demons, and the White Rat is known for practicality. She also mentions the Lady of Grass, St. Ursa (a saint, not a god) and the Saint of Steel (a god, not a saint). And then there’s the Hanged Mother (a goddess who hanged herself with her own hair, for reasons unexplained), whose priests serve as a sort of Inquisition in Archenhold, hunting witches. Interesting point, that: there’s a dour priesthood that hunts witches, which implies that at least some in this society believe in witchcraft. Witchcraft would be different from wonder-working

And there’s the White Rat, whose temple reminds Sarkis of a humming beehive. For the first time, we meet Bishop Beartongue, who becomes a recurring character in the rest of the series, and Zale, the lawyer-priest who accompanies Halla and Sarkis on their journey. Beartongue thoroughly examines Halla’s claim and declares Sarkis and the sword as “truly amazing.”

“We are used to artificers coming in from Anuket City, occasionally with marvels, to the occasional relic that someone claims is from the ancient civilizations, but you are something else entirely. A true work of magic.” She leaned back in here chair. “Wonderworkers who can do some small feat are one thing, but this…” She shook her head. (p. 145)

Halla and Sarkis’ first meeting the priests of the Hanged Mother fixes the timeline for us — some five years after the Clocktaur War. And we learn that Brindle, the job gnole who tends the ox, is Grimehug’s cousin. We learn also that Learned Edmund, priest of the Many-Armed God (so there’s another god) did indeed write his book about gnoles (p. 197), which is a nice touch.

There is still magic in the world — the rune possess enough that they offer to free Sarkis from his imprisonment. It’s fairly clear, however, that this world used to be more magical than it is now, and that invites some pondering.

I’m still hung up enough in the world-building project to think that something must have happened, some event that changed the world, even if it left places like the Vagrant Hills behind. The contemporary wonder-workers and artificers are pale imitations of the civilization that birthed the wonder engines. One thing that the long discussion between Zale, Sarkis and Halla about the nature of the sword’s magic does is establish that Sarkis is a genuinely magical being and the power that has made him hasn’t decayed despite the passage of centuries. Inside the sword, time doesn’t pass except as a kind of sleep. Inside the sword, whatever awful injuries (or deaths) Sarkis has endured will be healed. This isn’t a force that’s subject to the laws of entropy.

One of the greatest pleasures of reading Kingfisher is the way she draws characters. There’s nothing stock about them, even if their roles could be considered stock. Halla, for instance, is a delight. We first meet her while she’s hilariously contemplating the difficulties of committing suicide and not letting her breasts get in the way:

I’ve already got far too much in the way there, she thought glumly, looking down at her chest. What a nuisance. Over the top and I’ll have to keep the blade angled well up. It would be humiliating to try to stab myself in the heart and get hung up on my own left breast. Still, I suppose it’s easier than it would have been before I turned thirty and everything began sagging… (p. 13)

Her superpower is her curiosity, and the main reason she considers killing herself is because death is preferable to being married to Alver, a fate she thinks would be both horrific and horrifically boring. But she’s well aware of her status, not only as a widow but a dependent widow, and her only thought is to secure Silas’ estate to ensure her nieces have dowries and can marry decently (i.e., better than Halla did, herself), as least, that is, until she meets Sarkis.

Her survival strategy of asking “unexpected questions until everyone in the conversation starts doubting their senses” (p. 73) is one whose genius Sarkis slowly comes to appreciate. She tells him, after their first encounter with the dangerous priests of the Hanged Mother,

“Hardly anyone kills stupid women...they kick us out of the way, they smack us occasionally, but nobody thinks we’re a threat.” p. 112

Zale says of her “The world tries to break everyone. But sometimes when it fails, it fails spectacularly” (p. 280). Despite having endured a tedious and dull marriage, having tended the eccentric and grouchy Silas (who I suspect would have been rather a great character had he been alive) and brought to contemplating suicide because of Alver and his execrable mother, Halla is a woman who looks forward to every day; she sees what must be done and rolls up her sleeves, whether the job is talking her way through a checkpoint or hiding a couple of bodies. She uses her persona as a chatterbox to conceal a sharp intellect and a backbone of steel.

And Sarkis — the antique barbarian who approves of cattle rustling, counts by eights, and thinks the decadent southern lands should be put to the torch — is a man with an enormous heart, an overdeveloped sense of guilt, and surprising depths.

“I will not go back to the Weeping Lands,” he said. “As long as I do not, then in my heart, they are all still there, still alive, unchanged. If I return, I will se what hundreds of years have wrought, and my heart will know that they are dead.” Halla stared at him, her mouth open. “I find that I would rather be an exile in my heart than the last survivor.” (p. 139)

In the end, with Zale and Brindle and having met Jorge, whom we will meet again, we end with the hint that there are more enchanted swords out there and, although Nolan, follower of the Sainted Smith, has failed, he believes his fellow devotees will succeed, giving Sarkis and Halla reason to leave Rutger’s Hollow.

Meanwhile, Kingfisher’s narrative moves on to the Paladins of the Saint of Steel who is a dead god and whose Temple Paladins are taken in by the White Rat. We’re officially entering the world of the White Rat, with Bishop Beartongue and crew. Next time, Paladin’s Grace.

Zale [said,] “So far as we can tell, the Temple of the Rat originated some eight hundred years ago, in the west. A plague was decimating the cities of the old empire there. They knew that rats carried the plague, and a cult sprang up, attempting to appease the rat spirit. From there, the faith evolved and reformed.” They grinned slyly. “Of course, our understanding of treatment for the plague certainly did not hurt.” p. 178

Oh, yeah — they’re also lawyers.

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