Sword Born

SEVENTEEN

I stood there on the summit, poised to fall. Except I wouldn’t, couldn’t fall, because I could fly. Was expected to fly.

Needed to fly.

The wind beat at me. It whipped moisture from my eyes and sucked them dry. Stripped hair back from my face. Threatened the breath in my nostrils and thus the breath in my lungs. Plucked at my clothes like a woman desiring intimacy, until the fabric tore, shredded; was ripped from my body. And I stood naked upon the precipice, bound to fly. Or die.

Toes curled into stone. Calluses opened and bled. I lifted my arms, stretched out my arms, extended them as wings, fingers spread and rigid. Wind buffeted palms, curled into armpits. I swayed against it, fragile upon the mountain. Poised atop the pillar of the gods.

"I can," I said. "I will."

Wind wailed around me. Caressed me. Caught me.

"I can. I must. I will."

Wind filled me, broke through my lips and came into my mouth, into my throat, into my body. It was no gentle lover, no kind and thoughtful woman, but a force that threatened, that promised release and relief like none other known to man.

Arms spread, I leaned. And then the wind abated. Died away, departed the mountain, left me free to choose.

I leaned, seeking the wind. Waiting for it to lift me.

Soared.

Plummeted —

— and crashed into the ground.

"Tiger?" Del sat up, leaned over the side of the bed. "Are you all right?"

I lay in a heap on the stone floor. Groggily I asked, "What happened?"

"You fell out of bed."

Groaning, I sat up. Felt elbows, knees. Peered through the darkness. "Did you push me?"

"No, I did not push you! You woke me up trying to shout something, then lunged over the edge."

"Lunged."

"Lunged," she repeated firmly.

I felt at my forehead, aware of a sore spot. Likely a lump would sprout by morning. "Why would I lunge over the side of my bed?"

"I don’t know," Del said. "I have no idea what makes you do anything. Including drinking too much."

Back to that, were we? I stood up, tugged tunic straight, twisted one way, then the other to pop my spine. The noise was loud in the darkness.

"A dream?" she asked.

I thought about it. "I don’t remember one. I don’t remember dreaming at all." I rubbed briefly at stubbled jaw. "Probably because I feel so helpless without a sword. Kind of — itchy."

"Itchy?"

"Like something bad is going to happen."

Del made a sound of dismissal. "Too much wine." And lay back down again.

"Here," I said, "at least let me get between you and the wall. That way if I lunge out of bed again, I’ll have you to land on."

Del moved over. To the wall. Leaving me the open edge, and below it the stone floor.

"Thanks, bascha."

"You’re welcome."

I climbed back into bed, examined the side with a careful hand, found nothing to suggest a structural weakness. Likely I’d rolled too far, overbalanced, and just tipped over the edge. No matter what Del said about lunging-

Since she wouldn’t cooperate and give me the wall side, I compensated by wrapping both arms around her. If I went, she went.

Smiling my revenge, I fell into sleep again.

In the morning I had indeed sprouted a lump, though not a bad one. Del caught me fingering it, pulled hair aside to look, then made a waving gesture. "You smell like a winery."

I grinned. "Not inappropriate, since we’re living in one at the moment."

"Look at you." In tones of accusation.

I didn’t have to. I knew what she referred to. A tunic stained red with spilled wine the color of old blood. I grasped the hem cross-armed and yanked the tunic off over my head. "There," I said. "All gone."

She eyed me askance, sorting out the spill of fair hair. She was rumpled, creased, and sleepy-eyed in a sleeveless, short-cut tunic that displayed nearly all of her exceptionally long and lovely limbs, incontestably magnificent despite her morning mood. I leered and made as if to swoop down upon her.

Del ducked away. "Not until after you’ve had a bath!"

"That’ll have to wait," I said. "And so will you, if you think you can stand it."

She frowned, finger-combing her hair. "What are you talking about?"

"Today I begin transforming Herakleio into a man. It’s dirty, sweaty business, that. The bath will come later."

Warily she asked, "How are you intending to transform him into a man? By outdrinking him?"

"Oh, I have no doubt I can outdrink him. I expect I can outdo him in most things, frankly." I recalled Prima Rhannet’s comment about Herakleio’s appetite for women. "Though I have learned some self-restraint over the years."

"Have you?"

"At knife- and sword-point, maybe, but self-restraint all the same." I stretched long and hard, waiting for the bones to settle themselves back into place. Some mornings they were slower to do so than others.

"You," she said dubiously. "You, transforming, him into a man."

I twisted my torso in one direction, then back again. "You think I can’t?"

Del considered her answer. "I think there are indeed things you can teach anyone," she said finally. "But — you know nothing about Skandi."

"I know a little something about being a man."

She contemplated my expression, made the decision not to allow me any more rope lest I take it and hang her with it. "Can I watch?"

I bent over to touch my toes, gripped them. "Later," I said tightly. "There’s something I need you to do, first."

"Me?"

"Go see Simonides, the metri’s servant. He’s got a few things for you."

"For me."

"Well, for me and Herakleio, actually, but we’ll be busy first thing. When you see what Simonides has assembled, you’ll know."

"Will he know I know?"

I clasped palms behind my skull and pushed it forward, twisting, letting the knots in my neck pop loose. "Probably not."

"You’re being obscure, Tiger."

"No, I’m not." I shook out my arms, let my hands flop like fish fresh off the hook. "I’m being entertaining."

In a severe tone, she said, "You’re not going out like that."

"I’m not?" I wore lightweight, baggy trousers held up by the drawstring pulled tight across my hipbones. No shirt, no shoes; I was free of encumbrances, which is the way I preferred it. "Why not?"

"You’ll frighten the poor boy half to death."

The "poor boy" was one year older than Del. "Good." I displayed my teeth in a ferocious grin. "Now, come here."

"Why?" Warily.

"Don’t trust me, bascha?"

"Sometimes."

"Come here." I paused. "Please?"

Somewhat mollified, Del got up and approached.

"Here." I grasped her arms, lifted them, urged them around me. "Tight."

"Tiger — you stink of wine!"

"Would you, please?"

She sighed and wrapped her arms around me.

"Squeeze," I directed. "Tight."

She squeezed.

"Tighter."

"Tighter than this?"

We were plastered together. "Tight as you can, bascha."

She squeezed, and several of my spinal bones decided to pop back into place. Noisily.

"Gods," she said, and let go in shock.

"Better," I sighed, then grinned at her. "Now you smell of wine."

"Which was likely your intent all along."

"Oh, no. At least, not my sole intent." I leaned forward, smacked her a kiss that landed half on her mouth, half on her chin, and headed out the door. "Don’t forget to go see Simonides."

"After my bath," she muttered.

Herakleio was spoiled. Soft. I opened the door to his room and walked in, with nary a blink from him. Probably because his eyes were sealed shut in a sleep so heavy as to verge on unconsciousness.

He was sprawled all over the bed, limbs tangled in linen. Apparently he had gone out on the town after dinner; I smelled wine and harsher liquors as well as a tracery of smoke. It wasn’t huva weed — I doubted that grew in Skandi — but something similar, very rank even in a small amount when mixed with the traditional perfume of cantina, as Del had once described it.

The first test: failed.

"Up," I said quietly.

Not a flicker of response. Second test: failed.

The nearest foot stuck out from the side of the bed. I clamped hands around the ankle and headed toward the door, dragging the slack body out of bed entirely so that he flopped to the floor.

That woke him up.

Most of the bedclothes had accompanied him, so that he remained tangled even on the floor. In a flurry of linen and curses, Herakleio finally dug himself out from under and recognized me.

"You!"

"Me."

"What do you want?"

"You."

"Me?"

It was quickly becoming a repetitive conversation. "You."

"Why?"

Well, at least it was a change. "Orders."

"Orders? Orders? Whose?"

Maybe after a night out all he could think in were single words of single syllables. "The metri’s," I answered. "Remember? I’m supposed to make a man of you."

He sat rigidly upright in a tangle of bedclothes and naked brown skin. "This is supposed to make me a man? Dragging me out of bed and dumping me on the floor?"

"It’s a start. Not much of one, I’ll admit, but a start."

He was beginning to wake up. He blinked outrage from his eyes and focused properly, brows lancing down to knit over his nose. He looked at me, and then the expression changed. "Gods," he murmured, staring fixedly at my abdomen.

Ah. The infamous scar.

"Up," I said, waggling fingers at him.

"Who did that to you?"

"A woman. Now, get up."

He didn’t move. "A woman did that to you?"

"She did have a sword," I clarified. "Up, Herakleio."

"A woman cut you? With a sword?"

"A woman. With a sword."

"Gods," he said again.

"I’m just full of little mementos," I told him. "Nihko wears tattoos, I’ve got scars." I bent down to grab a wrist, but he scrabbled back. "Then get up," I said. "You can’t learn much sitting on the floor."

"Much about what?" he asked warily.

"Anything. Look, this wasn’t my idea, remember? I owe the metri a debt, and this is how she wants me to repay it."

He stood up then, letting the bedclothes drop entirely. He wore nothing but a sullen, smoldering resentment. "And just what is it you are supposed to teach me about being a man?"

"Come along and find out."

"Come along where?"

"Out."

"Out where?"

"Hoolies, Herakleio, is there anything in your mouth besides questions? Why don’t you come along and see for yourself?"

"Breakfast," he challenged.

"After. If you’ve still got the belly for it."

That stung. "I’ve got the belly for it now."

"Maybe so, but we’re not going to put anything in it now. Now we are going to introduce you to the dance."

"The what?"

"The dance."

"Not that kind of dance."

"I don’t want an introduction to any kind of dance with you." He paused, then in tones of discovery, "You mean a sword-dance."

"Yes, I mean a sword-dance." I gestured. "Come on."

More outrage. "I have no clothes on!"

"Not willing to risk the valuable parts to a sword blade?" I grinned. "Why not, Herakleio? Too slow after last night?"

He glared. "I know nothing about using a sword, or dancing with men."

"That’s right — you prefer to dance with women. So I’ve heard." I indicated the door. "Put some pants on, then, if it makes you feel better."

He swatted tangled hair out of his eyes. "Going back to bed would make me feel better."

"Undoubtedly, after all that you drank — and smoked? — last night. But you’ve mastered that already. Now it’s time to master something else."

"A sword?" Asked with contempt.

"Among other things." I picked up a soiled tunic from a bench beside the door. "This ought to be enough."

He caught it as I flung it, curled his lip at me.

"Be a good little heir," I suggested. "Do as the metri wants."

It was reminder enough that another potential heir was in the metri’s household. He shook out the tunic and tugged it on over his head. With grand scorn, he said, "Can I take a piss first?"

"You’d better," I suggested, "or otherwise you’ll have soiled yourself before the morning is over."

Then I told him where to meet me and left him to his nightjar.

The house itself was built upon a lumpy pile of rumpled, porous, windblasted stone. It wasn’t much of a rise — except for the cliff face, none of the crescent-shaped island was sharply cut or dramatically taller than the rest — but it was somewhat higher than the land surrounding it. Akritara was encircled by outgrowth pockets of stone-tiled courtyards and terraces delineated by low, slick-blocked walls painted white. Imagine a series of spreading puddles joining up here and there with one interlocking series of rooms plopped down in the middle, on different half-levels interconnected by sloping stone staircases, and you have an idea. Despite the hand-smoothed, rounded exterior corners of the rooms, the house was in no way strictly curved, in no way cleanly defined by a square room here, a square room there. It was a whole bunch of rooms clumped and mortared together, somehow forming a whole.

Having grown up in the hyorts of the Salset, individual roundish tents set in a series of ranked circles around the headman’s larger hyort, I decided Akritara wasn’t all that different than a tribal village. But it was made of stone because, I’d been told, there was no wood on the island except what was brought in from other lands, and none of the domed, arched rooflines followed the rules of precedence or symmetry.

But one low-walled, stone-tiled terrace on the side of the house was larger than the rest, and overlooked the part of the island that led to the city, and then to the rim of the caldera. It was here I went, here I groomed the tiles free of larger pebbles, grit, of shrubbery deadfall blown inside the wall. Barefoot, I walked the stone, feeling with the soles of my feet how the tiles were fit together, how the mortar joined them into permanence. I walked the terrace slowly, carefully, letting my feet come to know the place. I searched the surface with eyes as well, and fingertips. Some of the tiles were chipped at the corners, pitted by time and water. Hairline cracks ran through many of the squares, formed larger seams in others. But it was good stone well fit together. There were no significantly loose tiles, no broken or shattered pieces, nothing that could cause a foot to catch and falter, to betray the balance.

In Alimat, shodo-trained, we learned to dance on all surfaces. The Punja, the deep desert, was composed mostly of sand, but the South was also made of other blood and bone. The shodo had samplings of these other surfaces brought in from the borders of the South, and circles were made of each. Sand, pebbles, gravel, hard-pan, cracked and sunbaked mudflats, the crumbly border soil, the shell-seasoned sand of the coast near Haziz, hand-smoothed slabs of mud brick slick in the coating of water poured across it to simulate rain. On all these surfaces, in all these circles, we learned to stand, to wait, to move, to dance — long before a sword was ever put into our hands.

There was a faint tracery of windblown powdered grit across the tiles. I would ask Simonides about having the surface washed daily, to strip the face of the tiles of obstruction that could cause a bootsole, sandal, or callused foot to slide, but for now there was nothing to do for it but bear it. And we wouldn’t be moving all that much. Not at first.

When Herakleio came at last, he found me walking the wall. It was perhaps knee-high, two handspans wide. I followed its curving spine surrounding the terrace, from the corner of one room to the corner of another, and all the distance between.

Bemused, he watched me. His posture was impatient, stiff, all hard bone and angles. There was no grace in him as he stood there, no interior balance. There is harmony in the body required by the dance. For the moment he had none.

He had, I was certain, gotten his height early. I suspected his hands and feet had seemed larger than life; he tripped over things, dropped things. Elbows were knocked against lintels, thighs scored by table corners, shins mottled by bruises. He’d outgrown that at last and now was in control of hands and feet, comfortable in the way his bones fit together, the angles of the joints, the smooth flow of tendon and sinew beneath the brown skin, the distribution of his weight. But there is spirit in bones and flesh that has nothing to do with how a man is made, only in how he thinks.

I walked the wall. Heel to toe and back again, then stood sideways across it and marked my way by instep one pace at a time. Eventually he grew bored, irritable, not even remotely curious.

As he opened his mouth to speak I stepped down off the wall. "Hop up, Herakleio."

"Up," he echoed in disbelief. Then, condescendingly, "I think not. I can conceive of better ways to waste my time."

I jerked a thumb. "Up."

"I am no longer a child, pretender, to play at such things."

"Well, the metri seems to think you are." I shrugged. "Indulge her by indulging me."

A parade of emotions flowed across his face. Resentment, realization, annoyance, impatience. But he moved. He stepped up onto the wall in one easy movement, muscles flexing smoothly beneath the flesh of his thighs below the hem of his tunic, and stood there.

"Well?" he inquired with elaborate contempt.

I pushed him off.

He didn’t fall. Didn’t wobble. Didn’t flail with arms. Overbalanced, he simply stepped off. Now the wall lay between us.

"What — ?" he began hotly.

"Get back up," I said, gesturing. "This time, stay up there."

He glared at me. "You’re only going to try to knock me off again."

"Yes," I agreed. "And you’re going to try not to be knocked off."

"This is a waste of time!"

"I thought so, at first." I shrugged. "I learned."

"Learned?"

"Many things," I told him. "Among them how to fall… and how not to fall."

"But this is —"

I stepped across the low wall, placed the flat of my hand against his spine, and shoved.

Herakleio, as expected, as intended, took one long pace in an attempt to reclaim his balance, smashed his toes into the wall, and saved himself from a nasty fall only by jerking a leg up and over, planting the foot. He barked his shin on the way, straddled the wall with a rather ungainly posture once he’d caught himself, but didn’t fall.

"There," I said. "Not so hard, is it?"

He had three choices. He could pull one leg up and over on the far side of the wall, moving away from me; he could pull the other leg up and over, moving toward me; or he could stay exactly where he was, one leg on either side of the wall.

Herakleio stayed put.

"Good," I commented. "Keep both feet on the ground whenever possible."

He was furious. He told me so using clipped, hissing words in a language I assumed was Skandic.

"Hop up," I said. "Walk the wall, Herak. Imagine you’ll die if you step down on either side." I paused. "That is, if you have any imagination."

"What, with you waiting to push me off?"

Mildly I suggested, "So don’t let me."

He sucked in wind enough to blister me with all manner of vulgar commentary, but just then Del came around the corner into view and he shut his teeth with a click.

She carried two four-foot sticks in her hands — Simonides had donated precious broom handles — plus a couple of shorter, narrower pieces of wood, leather strips, a fruit knife, cloth, and a waterskin. She wore, as she had since arriving at Akritara, a long sleeveless linen tunic, very sheer, bound at the waist by a sash of crimson cloth. Flat rings of hammered brass were stitched into the fabric. They glinted in the sunlight.

She took in the sight of Herakleio straddling the wall, me waiting at ease very nearby, and chose to perch upon the wall at some distance from us both. She laid out the makings and without saying a word set about her task.

"Walk the wall," I said.

Herakleio shot me a glance of smoldering fury. But Del was within earshot. Del could see what he did or did not do. Del was a woman; Del was a beautiful woman; Del was the kind of woman for whom a man would fall down and eat dirt until he choked if she so much as indicated an interest in seeing him do so.

He stepped up onto the wall and began to walk it.