Sword Born

TWENTY-TWO

When it became clear Prima Rhannet was not in the household, I dug up Simonides and asked where she was. He responded by asking what I wanted her for; possibly he could help me instead.

Since I knew very well he could not and would not give me any kind of answer that might permit Del and me to hire the renegada captain to sail us away from Skandi — and by default away from the metri and her spoiled godling — I simply said I needed to ask Prima Rhannet a question.

Whereupon Simonides, with unctuous courtesy, said perhaps I might ask him the question, as perhaps he might know the answer.

Impasse. We exchanged a long, speaking look, measuring one another’s determination not to say what each of us wanted to say, and our respective experiences with outwaiting others in identical situations. Whereupon Del sighed dramatically and inquired as to how old we were to be before the verbal dance was settled. Which reminded me all over again that the metri expected Del and me to dance with swords to settle the question of my "term of service," which in turn made me anxious to be going.

"Never mind," I said. "We can walk."

Simonides’ expression transformed itself from confident servitude to startiement, followed rapidly by mounting alarm. "Walk?"

"One step after another all strung together until you get somewhere else," I clarified. Then added, "Somewhere you want to be."

"You cannot walk," he said severely.

I smiled cheerfully. "Actually, I learned a long time ago."

He waved a hand dismissively, familiarly; clearly he had accepted me as someone who required his very special attention and personal guidence. His version of Herakleio, maybe. "You cannot walk," he repeated. "That is what molah-men are for."

"Fine. Can we borrow one?"

His expression was infinitely bland. "In order for me to summon a molah-man and his cart, I must know where you are going."

"Nice try," I said dryly. "But all you really have to do is summon him. You don’t have to tell him a thing. Which means you don’t have to know where we’re going, and I don’t have to tell you."

Simonides inclined his head the tiniest degree. "You do not speak Skandic." Clearly he believed he’d won.

"I speak enough," I said, dashing his hopes. "All I have to do is say ’Skandi.’ I think he’ll catch my drift."

"Where in Skandi?" Simonides inquired diffidently.

"We could be there and back by now," Del observed.

Simonides switched his attention to her. "Be where and back again?"

Exasperated, I permitted my voice to rise. "What does it matter, Simonides? We’re not prisoners here —" I paused with great elaboration, letting the implication hang itself upon the air in glowing letters of fire. "— are we?"

I had succeeded in horrifying him. He said something quickly and breathlessly in Skandic, which eluded both of us, then clasped both hands over his heart in a gesture of supplication. His breathing came fast and noisy, as if he were overcome.

"I’ll take that as a ’no,’ " I said dryly. "Now can we have our cart?"

His facial muscles twitched out of horror into subtle triumph. "The metri sends to say you must tutor Herakleio."

"What, the metri sends to say right now that I am to tutor Herakleio?"

"Indeed."

I raised a skeptical brow. "And when exactly, at what precise moment, did she send to say this? Just now, while we’re standing here? If so, I didn’t see her. And surely not before I found you to ask about a cart. Because surely you would have told me then the metri had sent to say I was to tutor Herakleio — except she hadn’t sent to say anything, because I found you, you didn’t come find me."

"Tiger," Del said, "I’m getting gray hair."

"Trust me, I have a lot more than you do, bascha…" I smiled in a kindly manner at Simonides. "Well?"

He drew himself up. "I am the eyes and ears of the metri."

"So, I’m assuming one of your tasks is to guess what she might or might not like, and thus control the issue?"

"I do not guess," he said with some asperity, "I anticipate." Then, lowering head, eyes, and shoulders, he said, with a shift to dolorous dignity, "I am the metri’s slave. There is so little choice in my life —"

"Oh, no." I cut him off abruptly. "You’re not using that line — or that expression — on me. I know you, Simonides: you’re a master manipulator. You’d have to be to serve the metri so devotedly for all these years." I gifted him with an overfriendly smile. "Now, where were we?"

"Walking," Del said.

Whereupon Herakleio wandered into the room and, through a mouthful of some kind of sticky confection, which also filled his hand, asked what we were talking about.

"Going into Skandi," Del answered.

He blinked. "Is this a difficulty?"

"We seem to be having a difficulty convincing Simonides, here, that we need a molah-man and his cart," I explained.

Herakleio shrugged. "Walk," he suggested, and wandered out again.

I bent a brief but sulfurous glare on Simonides, who was looking rather deflated, then turned on my heel. And walked.

It was a long walk, and hot, but the breeze cut much of the heat and made it bearable. Then again, I’m so accustomed to the sun and the dryness of the desert that I found Skandi a gentle country, though with more moisture in the air. I think had there not been the breeze I might have been less enthralled; better the dry if searing heat than the wet thickness of moist air. People could choke in that.

Del and I, from habit, matched paces — not many men can do that with me, and no other women — and fell into a companionable, long-striding rhythm. The air was laden with the scent of grapevines, a tracery of cooksmoke, the taste of the sea. I realized it felt incontestably good simply to be out from under roofs, with the sun shining on my head. Which made me smile; May the sun shine on your head is one of the ritual blessings of the South.

"What are you grinning about?" Del asked.

I shrugged. "I don’t know. Just glad to be alive, I guess." And free, for the moment, of the nagging apprehension.

"And glad to be alive to be glad you’re alive." She nodded vigorously. "I feel it, too. We are free of — encumbrances."

I glanced at her as we walked. "Encumbrances?"

She thought about how best to explain. "We have chased," she said finally, "and have been chased without true respite for too long."

"What have we chased, bascha?"

"My brother," she replied somberly. "Poor lost Jamail, who, by the time we found him, wasn’t truly my brother anymore, nor —" She broke it off abruptly as tears filled her eyes.

"Nor?" I prompted gently, though I had an idea where she was headed.

She blinked furiously; Del hates to cry. "Nor had any wish to be."

I couldn’t adequately comprehend the loss, the sense of failure and guilt that had driven her so mercilessly and now seemed merely futile. I had no brother, no sister, nor ever had. But one thing that had come clear to me in three years with Del was that family, kinship, was part of the heart of the North.

"But you couldn’t have known that," I said. "There is no way you might have predicted he would be so drastically changed by his experiences that he could bear no part of his past."

"He wasn’t — normal, anymore," she said with difficulty. "I don’t mean because of what they did to him physically, but in his mind. He wasn’t my brother anymore."

Jamail had, I felt, fallen off the edge of the known world even as his sister shaped a new one. Made mute by the loss of his tongue, rendered castrate by the slavers, it did not in the least surprise me that he had sought relief as best he could, even if it meant surrendering sanity as we knew it. I had come close myself in the mines of Aladar.

"He could never be what he was, Del. But he found respect among the Vashni, and a measure of affection after the hoolies he inhabited. In like circumstances, I don’t know that I’d have left them either."

She shook her head. "You have been changed by your experiences, yet you do not turn your back on your past. You’ve let it shape you into a stronger man instead of…instead of what Jamail became."

"Maybe. But I was older than Jamail. For me it wasn’t a question of having had stolen the means to return to my past, because my past was nothing any sane person would want. I understood that much, at least, and why I had to use the past to shape my future, and that I had to learn how to do it. That wouldn’t come naturally." I shook my head. "You can’t compare him to me, bascha. It isn’t fair to Jamail."

"But you became stronger because of what happened."

"Not for a long time." I scuffed through the cart-track, head bent as I watched dust fly. "When I was free of the Salset at last, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Just — be free. But no part of life is free; it costs. Always. And I had to find a way to pay for it."

"Sword-dancing."

"Eventually. Once I’d seen a few matches in the circle, realized what a man alone in the world might accomplish. It seemed far more fair than anything I’d encountered with the Salset. So I found out what I could, and pursued it. But…"

"But?"

"But it was the shodo at Alimat who took the former slave — the angry, ignorant, terrified former slave — and made him truly free."

She nodded. "Because you were good."

"No. Because I might become good. Might. If I worked very hard at it."

"You are the single most physically gifted man I have ever seen," she argued vehemently, who had trained as rigorously on Staal-Ysta. "You are completely at ease in your body, and with your body; I think there is nothing you could not accomplish if you wished to."

"Sheer physical ability is one thing," I said, then tapped my skull. "There is the dance up here as well."

"That is what Alimat and the shodo taught you," Del said. "You had the body: quickness, stamina, size, power —"

"But no discipline. No patience. No comprehension of what the rituals meant, and were meant to instill. What I wanted most was to prove I was free, was no man’s chula, no matter what was said, or implied, or rumored, or believed about me…" I let it go with a hitch of one shoulder. "Let’s just say I wasn’t the most popular student."

"You bested Abbu Bensir." She touched her throat. "You gave him the broken voice he has even to this day."

"I got lucky."

"He underestimated you."

"That’s what I mean: I got lucky."

She smiled. "But did you believe so then?"

"Of course not. I felt it was my due; how could I not best a man older, smaller, and slower than I?"

"And now it is your due."

"But look how many years it took me to get here."

"And here we are," Del said quietly. "On Skandi, without encumbrances. No brother to find, no sword-dancers to defeat, no sorcerers after our swords or our bodies. No prophecies to fulfill."

"I’m pretty sick of prophecies, myself. They come in handy now and again, I suppose, to keep things from getting too boring, but mostly they just stir up trouble."

Her smile was hooked down, ironic. "But you are the jhihadi."

"Maybe." I knew she didn’t believe it. Me, a messiah? The deliverer of the desert? Right. As for me, well, I’d decided it depended on interpretation; I had come up with an idea that could eventually change the sand to grass, albeit it had nothing to do with magic, and thus lent an infinitely banal culmination to a mysterious and mythic prophecy. Which many found disappointing for its utter lack of drama; but then, real life is comprised of such banalities. "Or maybe I just got lucky. Whatever the answer, I think this jhihadi’s job is done."

"Leaving him with the balance of his life to live."

"With and without encumbrances."

"What encumbrances do you have now? The metri? Herakleio?"

"Oh, I was thinking more along the lines of you."

"Me!"

"What am I to do with you?"

"Do with me? What do you mean, do with me? What is there to do with me?"

I couldn’t help myself: I had to laugh out loud. Which resulted in Del swinging around in front of me and stopping dead in her tracks, which also were mine, so I stopped, too. As she intended.

She poked me hard in the breastbone. "Tell me."

"Oh, bascha, here you say you’ve changed me over the past three years, but what you don’t realize is I’ve changed you every bit as much."

"You have! Me?" Her chin went up. "What do you mean?"

"You argue like me, now."

"Like you? In what way? How do I argue with you?"

"You slather a poor soul with questions. The kind of questions that are phrased as challenges."

She opened her mouth, shut it. Then opened it again. "In what way," she began with deceptive quietude, "do I do this?"

"That’s better," I soothed. "That’s more like the old Delilah."

"And that is?"

"You as you are just now. Cool and calm." I dropped into a dramatic whisper. "Dangerous."

She thought about it.

"It’s not the end of the world if you lose a little of that icy demeanor and loosen up, you know," I consoled. "I was just making an observation, is all."

She thought about it more, frowning fiercely. "But you’re right."

"It’s not necessarily a bad thing, Del." I paused. "Loosening up, I mean, not me being right. Though that isn’t a bad thing either."

"By acquiring some of your mannerisms, your sayings?" She twisted her mouth. "Perhaps not; I suppose that is bound to happen. But…"

"But?"

"But I am not pleased to be told my self-control has frayed so much."

"What self-control? Self-control in that you sound like me? Self-control in that I don’t have any? Is that what you mean?"

Del abruptly shed the icy demeanor and grinned triumphantly. "Got you."

"You did not."

"I did."

"You can’t ’get’ somebody if they know what you’re doing."

"You’re saying you knew?"

"I did know. That’s why I answered the way I did."

"Slathering a poor soul — in this case, me — with questions? The kind of questions phrased as challenges?"

"Now you’re doing it again."

"Tiger —"

I caught her arm in mine, swung her around. "Let’s just go," I suggested. "We can continue this argument as we walk. Otherwise we’ll never reach the harbor by sundown."

"I don’t think I’m anything like you."

"I believe there are a whole lot of men who would agree, and be joyously thankful for it unto whatever gods they worship."

"You were such a pig when I met you!"

Our strides matched again as we moved smoothly down the cart-road leading to the city. "Why, because I thought you were attractive? Desirable? All woman? And let you know about it?"

"You let the whole world know about it, Tiger."

"Nobody disagreed, did they?"

"But it was the way you did it."

"Where I come from, leering at a woman suggests the man finds her attractive. Is that bad?"

"That’s the point," she said. "Where you come from… every male in the South leers at women."

"Not all women."

"Some women," she amended. "Which really isn’t fair either, Tiger; if you’re going to be rude to women, you ought to be rude to all women, not just the ones you’d like in your bed. Or the ones you think you’d like in your bed. Or the ones you think would like to be in your bed."

"Leer indiscriminately?"

"If you’re going to, yes."

"This may come as a surprise, bascha, but I don’t want to sleep with all women."

"We’re not discussing sleeping with. We’re discussing leering at."

"What, and have every woman alive mad at me?"

"But there are less vulgar ways of indicating interest and appreciation."

"Of course there are."

She blinked. "You agree with me?"

"Sure I agree with you. I’m not arguing that point. I’m trying to explain the code of men, here."

That startled as well as made her suspicious. "Code of men?"

"When a man leers at a woman, or whistles, or shouts —"

"Or invites her into his bed?"

"— or invites her into his bed —"

"— with very vulgar language?"

"— with or without very vulgar language —"

"Insulting and vulgar language!"

"— it’s because of two things," I finished at last.

"What two things?"

"One, it lets all the other men know you’ve got first dibs —"

"First dibs!"

"— which is what I meant about the code of men; first dibs and rite — and right — of ownership —"

"What?"

"Well, so to speak."

"It shouldn’t be part of what anyone speaks."

"Look, I’ve already told you about the code of men, which is never to be divulged —"

"And do you believe in this code?"

I hesitated.

"Well?"

"I can’t tell you that."

"Why not?"

I chewed at my lip. "The code."

"The code won’t let you tell me about the code?"

"That’s about it."

"Then why did you?"

"Because I tell you everything. That’s a code, too."

"It is? What’s this one called?"

"The code of survival."

Del shot me a look that said she’d punish me for all of this one day. "Getting back to this ’because of two things’ issue…"

"What two things?"

"First was first dibs. You know, the reason men leer and say vulgar things to women."

"Oh." I took it up again. "— and two, it certainly saves time."

"Saves time?"

"Well, yes. I mean, what if the woman’s interested?"

"What if the woman isn’t?"

"Then she lets you know. But if she is, you sure get to bed a lot faster if you don’t waste time on boring preliminaries."

Del stopped short and treated me to several minutes of precise and cogent commentary.

When she was done, I waved a forefinger in her face. "Vulgar language, bascha. Insulting and vulgar language."

She bared her teeth in a smile reminiscent of my own. "And I suppose you want to go to bed with me now. Right here in the middle of the road where anyone might come along."

I brightened. "Would you?"

Del raked me up and down with her most glacial stare. Then she put up her chin and arched brows suggestively. "Not until after we waste a lot of time on boring preliminaries."

"Oh, well, all right." Whereupon I caught her to me, arranged my arms and hers, and proceeded to dance her down the road toward the distant city.