Strongladysworld - Lovelymiracles

This advertisement is for Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, a cozy romantic fantasy novel about a widowed housekeeper, keen on surviving her overbearing family who want only her inheritance.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Halla has unexpectedly inherited the estate of a wealthy uncle. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with money-hungry relatives full of devious plans for how to wrest the inheritance away from her.

While locked in her bedroom, Halla inspects the ancient sword that's been collecting dust on the wall since before she moved in. Out of desperation, she unsheathes it—and suddenly a man appears. His name is Sarkis, and he is an immortal warrior trapped in a prison of enchanted steel.

Sarkis is sworn to protect whoever wields the sword, and for Halla—a most unusual wielder—he finds himself fending off not grand armies and deadly assassins but instead everything from kindly-seeming bandits to roving inquisitors to her own in-laws. But as Halla and Sarkis grow closer, they overlook the biggest threat of all—the sword itself.

“You are Korte Marshel and you live in the city of Chort as Marshal. One day your best friend, Kurt Martial, is ordered by a court-martial to be court-martialled for murdering a girl he was courting, Courtney Marcell. You need to make sure he’s caught before he flees to Quart in Marseilles.”

“The office you went to did not exist,” I slapped the book shut, cleared my throat, and put the pen down.

The woman in the turtleneck examined her nails. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

I ran a hand across the brush of my short hair, feeling the stubby ends under my fingertips. “Thank you for your assistance, you may leave now.” The line was well-trodden, and it came across that way, too.

“I didn’t make it up,” she shook her head curtly. “I know you think I’m lying, but I really did go to that office. My dad took me—”

I held up a hand, and the veins popping off its back distracted me for a moment. I didn’t have those when I was young.

“I’m sure you didn’t make it up, miss,” I tried a smile. “It’s just that memories are fickle. Sometimes they’re loyal, sometimes they’re not. I’ve tried to cross-reference your memory with…” I waved a hand at the metre-tall stack of books on my desk. “All these memories. But the office your dad took you to simply does not appear in the mental geography. So what does that mean?”

“What?”

“That it’s a false memory,” I leaned back in my chair. “I’d be happy to lecture you about it, but I really have many, many more people to attend to.”

She pressed her hands on the table and scowled. “So you do think I’m making it up. You think—you think I signed up for this project just to fill it with false data? To fudge your maps?”

I pinched my forehead. “Look, false memories can happen due to trauma, and other reasons. It happens. It’s not your fault. Like I said, I thank you for your assistance—”

“Just because you can’t find it anywhere else?” The woman stood up now, bearing down on my desk. “You’re going to declare my memory invalid just because no one else remembers going to that office? What gives you that right?”

“If only it were that simple,” I lifted a pen and tapped the edge of my lip with it. “In fact, I have several memories attesting to there being a library in the spot you mentioned.”

“Off the market street, past the florist, up the tiny staircase in the building to the—”

I nodded with my hand up. “Yes, yes, I drew the map up. We have all the mental geography ready. Market street, florist, staircase… but at the precise spot you mentioned—at door 34C, there was a library, not an office.”

The woman stood up straight, folding her hands, staring at me as if trying to figure out what to do with an unwanted chicken.

“We respect all memories,” I ran my hand past the spines of the journals. “But sometimes, some memories are just false. We can’t admit them into the maps, or they’d conflict with the other memories. There’s a process.”

“If my dad was alive, you could take his testimony and he’d back me up,” she said.

I nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe, he’d tell you you were wrong.”

“I hope that one day, someone asks you to record your memory of this place, and you remember my face, my clothes, my expression, and you tell them everything just to hear that you made up a false memory.”

With that, the woman stormed out of the room, and I saw the hopeful face of the next volunteer peering for a second through the door before it closed by itself.

I pulled open the notebook I’d closed before, and started a new map. It started with an office off the market street, past the florist, up the tiny staircase in the building to the…

This bookish home in Gothenburg, Sweden features joyful ambiance with cleverly structured bookshelves. The colorful pool of books on the wall are neatly lined-up, forming a healthy contrast against the lighter backdrop. What a lovely arrangement! (Photo by Lina Östling)