Sword Born

TWELVE

Guests, we had been given the run of the place. Servants tended the household assiduously, all kilted, all quiet, all perfectly courteous. I didn’t know where Nihko and his captain were, but I did know where to find Del. She intended, she’d said when I left her to see the metri, to drown herself.

She meant in a bath, of course. So I went to the chamber housing the tub.

It was far more than a tub, actually. The builders had dug a large, shallow, square hole in the ground, plastered it, laid out tiny tiles on the sides and bottom in an elegantly precise pattern of waves and clouds, blue on blue of every shade. Overhead arched the ceiling, very dark blue with a spray of silver and gold stars painted to mimic the night skies. Squares and slots were cut into the deep walls through to the exterior, then covered against wind-born dust and debris by membranes, opaque but scraped thin enough to let in the light. The shelf around the pool itself was stone as well, pale, worked slabs fitted together into an almost seamless array. Through some builder’s trick with pipes the water was warmed and let in and out from beneath the surface. I had enjoyed myself immensely earlier, forgoing a shared bath only because if Del and I had shared, I’d never have answered the metri’s request to attend her.

Now I was finished with that, and Del was still in the pool. Alone.

Perfect.

For the second time in three days I stripped down for a woman, leaving borrowed clothing heaped upon the floor, although I confess this time the experience was much more pleasurable. Del, floating easily, challenged me to dive in, which she knew very well I couldn’t and wouldn’t do. Instead, the best I could manage was to bend down, catch my balance one-handed against the stone shelf, and slip over the edge.

The water came to mid-chest even in the center of the pool; I was in no danger of drowning. Unless Del had some nefarious plan to rid herself of me.

The closest she came to it was to hook a hand into the thong holding the claws and tug gently, urging me closer. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"What did the metri say?"

The metri. I sighed, dipped down to wet myself to my chin, stood up again. Soaked hair straggled down well onto my shoulders; I really needed to cut it. Del’s was slicked back against her skull, baring all of her face. The Southron sun had not been kind to her Northern skin, incising a faint fan of lines at the corners of her eyes, but with a sheen of moisture over her face and the dissipation of habitual readiness, she also shed years. She looked maybe eighteen. At the most.

I felt a stab of some unnamed emotion: more than ten, possibly as many as fifteen years separated us. Before me there had been only Ajani, the Northern borjuni who had, with his men, slaughtered her family, save Del and her brother, and burned the caravan. Who had utterly altered her life, making a sword-singer out of the girl who would have been wife and mother, instead of living vengeance.

Before Ajani, she had been fifteen. And innocent of men.

Those days, those years were past now. She had slain her demons, the living as well as the dead. She was as much at peace as I had ever seen her. And young again. So young.

"Well?" she prodded.

The metri. "She wants to be certain."

"That’s understandable."

"And she doesn’t know how."

Del was silent a moment. "No," she said finally. "There is no way to be certain. It must be taken on faith."

I shook my head. "I’m not the man for it."

"To be her grandson?"

"To be trusted. To be taken on faith."

She stood before me, facing me: a tall, strong woman of immense will and purpose. Unsmiling, she put a hand on either side of my head and stripped my hair back, combing it behind my ears. "You are the most trustworthy man I have ever met."

"Not for this. This is — important." I recalled the metri’s expression as she examined my hands. "This may be more important than anything in my life, because it’s her life."

Del stared hard into my eyes. "And do you see why, now, I say you are the most trustworthy man I have ever met?"

"It’s only the truth, bascha. Nothing more."

"And nothing less."

I turned my face into her hand, kissed it. "I don’t know why, bascha. I think she wants me to be the one, but she’s afraid."

"Why would she be afraid? Surely she has prayed to have her grandson returned to her."

"Returned for how long?"

Del frowned. "What do you mean?"

I shook my head. "I can’t stay here. Even if I am this grandson. This isn’t my place."

"You could make it your place."

I recalled how comfortable I was in Akritara, how very much at home I did feel, despite never having been here before. I had never in my life felt so at ease in an unknown place. Skandi fit me. Somehow, some way, it fit me.

"Why not?" Del asked.

I turned and pushed my way through the water. At the side I hooked arms over the edge, spreading elbows along the stone, and settled chin on wrists layered one atop the other. Frowning even as Del came up next to me and mimicked my posture, one elbow lightly touching mine.

"It… I’m —" I sighed, ducking my head to scrub forehead against hands. "I don’t know. I guess I’m still just a Southroner at heart."

"No. Not since I taught you wiser ways."

It raised a smile, as she meant it to, but I couldn’t hold it. "I think I will always be a Southroner. Even if I meant not to be. Too much of it is in my blood."

"And if your blood is Skandic?"

"It’s more than blood that makes you of a place," I told her. "More than blood, or bone, or flesh. It’s as much spirit, and heart, as anything else." I turned my head to look at her, even as I leaned my temple into my hand. "You are a Northerner, born and bred of its customs, its people. The rituals." She nodded slightly. "And no matter if you never return there for the balance of your life, it’s what you will always be."

Del’s expression was sober now, almost severe as she considered. I had stripped away the youth with my words. Now the woman was back, the tough-minded woman who stepped into the circle and danced.

Or killed.

"But I am who I am no matter where I am," she said at last. "As you would be."

"Bascha, I don’t know — don’t understand…" I shook my head again. "I have never belonged to anyone. Never been of anyone. Owned, yes, by the Salset. Trained, yes, at Alimat. And that was the closest thing I had to a family, those men at Alimat who learned as I learned the rituals of the dance, but there was always competition. Never friendship; we all knew one day we might meet one another in the circle. And now…" I set my forehead against my wrists, spoke into the stone. "Now there’s — this."

"Yes," Del said quietly. And as quietly, "Would it be so bad if you became what you would have become anyway?"

I turned my head. "What do you mean?"

"If you are this woman’s grandson, then what she offers is what you would have had."

"If."

"Toss the oracle bones ten times," Del said, "and you will win, and you will lose. That is the only certainty in the game."

"In other words, the odds are about as good for me being her grandson as against." I reached out and cupped the back of her skull in my palm. "Or is it just that you want to benefit from the wealth?"

"Of course," she agreed. "I am selfish."

I ruffled slick hair, disarranging it. "I wouldn’t have had it, Del."

"What do you mean?"

"The metri’s daughter fell in love with an unsuitable man. He was not of the Eleven Families, not even remotely acceptable. He was a molah-man, responsible for carting the Stessas around the island, making certain they never soiled themselves by touching unblessed ground." I smiled sadly at her perplexity. "The metri’s daughter asked that he be adopted, raised up by the metri herself, so he would become acceptable. And her mother refused."

"They left," Del said, seeing it now. "They left Skandi together, and sailed away to a place where they could be man and wife with no concerns for such things."

"She was pregnant," I told her. "Due to give birth in a month. The metri intended to give the child away."

Del’s eyes closed. I knew she remembered her daughter, Ajani’s daughter, the child of rape. The child she gave into others’ keeping, because she had a task. A vow. An obsession. And no time, no room, for a baby in her life.

I continued. "But the only daughter — and only heir — of the Stessa metri left Skandi with the molah-man, and neither were seen again."

Her eyes opened. The clear blue, strangely, had been swallowed by black pupils. "Such a woman would never expose an infant in the desert," she said. "A woman who gave up a life of privilege, leaving her mother, her people, her land, her legacy." She looked at me. "Such a woman would not have left you there, in the sand. Not by choice."

I closed my hand around the thick tail of soaked hair adhering to her spine. Squeezed. "There is no way we can ever know, bascha. None."

"You could choose —"

"— to believe that was my mother? That she loved a man enough to leave her homeland so near to term, and travel into the Punja? Yes, I could choose to believe it. I could also choose to believe otherwise."

Her gaze was steady. "And if it’s true?"

I shook my head. "It changes nothing. Not who I am, what I am, or what I will be."

Del opened her mouth to answer, but it was someone else’s voice I heard. A man’s. Saying something in a language I didn’t know, but the tone was clear enough.

We turned sharply as one, pushing off the side of the pool. A young man stood there on the far side, legs spread aggressively, arms loose at his sides. He was not kilted as the servants, but wore a thin-woven sleeveless linen tunic that displayed muscled, tanned arms. A copper-studded leather belt was wrapped around a slim, sashed waist.

He stared down upon us, green eyes fixed and fierce in a dark face. Brown hair sun-bleached bronze on top, not yet combed tame from the wind, tumbled carelessly around wide shoulders. His eyes narrowed a moment, and then he switched to a language we could understand despite the accent. "Are you the renegadas, who presume upon the metri’s courtesy?"

He was young, big, angry, and of unmistakable presence. He was a man you couldn’t ignore, especially when he stared at you. When he grew into himself, knew his body and its power as much as I knew mine, he would be formidable.

"Gods," Del breathed.

I glanced at her sidelong, saw the startled expression commingled with something else I didn’t like much. She had told me once before that indeed she looked at other men, even as I looked at other women. Now I witnessed it.

I was naked, he was not. But not much was shielded by the thin linen. "Answer me!" he snapped.

I couldn’t help myself: I smiled winsomely. "Guest," I declared, "presuming upon nothing we haven’t been given by the metri herself."

Dark brows arched up beneath a lock of thick hair fallen across his unlined brow. "Then you must be the latest pretender."

So much for being winsome. I was none too pleased to be caught weaponless and naked in the water, arguing with a boy. "What I am is none of your concern."

He stepped to the edge of the pool. "It is," he said with surprising equanamity, "when I am the metri’s only living — and acknowledged — relative." He smiled as he saw us exchange disbelieving glances. "Ask," he suggested gently, eyes alight with triumph, then turned on his heel and walked away. It was then I marked the sheath at the small of his back, and the knife riding lightly in it.

"Now I’m confused," I muttered as he disappeared. "And I don’t like being confused. Not when I don’t have a sword." Being without a blade set the fine hairs on the back of my neck to rising, now that I was challenged.

I pushed my way through water to the edge of the pool, grasped stone, and pulled myself up. Dripping, I bent down to reach for Del’s hand. "Either he’s a pretender, or I am, or the metri herself is conducting some kind of competition —" I broke off. "Are you getting out?"

As if it were afterthought, Del finally reached up so we could clasp wrists. I braced and pulled; she came up from the pool in one fluid motion, all ivory-silver and bleached gold as the water sheeted off her, Her expression was a combination of perplexity, disbelief, and startled comprehension.

I picked up the drying cloths left by a servant. Flung one at her even as I started rubbing myself down with the other. "All right," I said crossly, "you’ve proved that women look, too. But he’s gone, Del… you can stop now."

"What?" Coming belatedly out of her reverie, she bent and began to dry off.

"The young godling here a minute ago." I tossed down my cloth, grabbed up the baggy trousers and began dragging them on one leg at a time. "I don’t think he’s that impressive, but you certainly seem to."

Del blinked at me. "Tiger —"

"He’s a kid, bascha… barely formed. Not much character there yet — other than arrogance, of course, which he obviously has in full measure." I hitched the waist over my hips, tied off the drawstring, snatched up the tunic and tugged it on over my head. "But I suppose he’s pretty enough to look at." I scowled. "So long as that’s all you do."

"Yes, he’s pretty enough to look at," Del declared. "He looks like you."

That stopped me cold. "What?"

"Without the years. Without the scars." She pulled a long linen shift over her head, yanked folds free of hips and buttocks so that the hem settled around her ankles. "But very much with your ill temper." She bent over, swept her hair into some kind of complicated turban, all wrapped up in the cloth.

"My what?"

"And arrogance." She straightened, balanced the turban, snugged the woven belt around her waist with sharp jerks, stalked off.

I watched her back. It was very stiff.

"Looks like me?" I turned back to study the place where the young man had stood, recollecting my first impressions of him. "Him? Nah."

Surely not.

Scowling, I went off to find the metri and learn for myself what in hoolies was going on.