Sword Born

TWENTY-THREE

"Oh, hoolies," I said with feeling.

We stood at the top of the cliff face, overlooking the switchback trail leading down to the cauldron of water. Steam rose gently from the living islands in the center.

"What?" Del asked, as the breeze took possession of her hair.

I pointed. "The ships are all down there."

"Yes, Tiger. That’s where the water is."

"It means we have to ride those molahs down."

She shrugged. "Or walk."

Uneasily I eyed the individuals who were on foot. Obviously they were laborers, or slaves, or people not of the Eleven Families. "Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe what we’ve already done — walking to and through town — is unconscionable, or something. Maybe that’s why Simonides was upset — and why, come to think of it, Herakleio would suggest we walk, if only to get my goat."

Del was perplexed. "Why?"

I chewed at my lip, marking the commerce at the trail-head. The place thronged with people and animals, not to mention the smalltime merchants who laid out their wares on tattered cloths spread along the walls. There were cheap necklaces, bracelets, earrings; sash belts, leather belts, single blue pottery beads hung on leather thongs or multicolored cord — maybe some kind of charm; sunbaked pots, painted bowls, multitudinous other items. Del and I were in the middle of it all, bumping shoulders with people and trying not to be ran into by loose goats and dogs, not to mention chickens. I occasioned little more than incurious glances, but Del, as usual, reaped the benefit of her height and coloring.

I sighed. "When Nihko brought me up, he made it clear I was not to, as he put it, soil myself by standing on the ground."

Del’s irony was delicate. "Were you supposed to hover?"

"Mats," I explained. "First we had our feet washed, and then we stood on mats."

She shrugged, catching and separating her hair into three sections preparatory to braiding. "When Prima Rhannet brought me up, nothing was said of that. We rode up, then she rented a cart to take us to the metri’s home."

"Nihko was pretty plain about it all." I glanced around. "But no one seems to be taking much notice."

Del began to braid the sections of hair, something I’ve always enjoyed watching for the deftness of her hands. "We walked while touring the winehouses looking for Herakleio."

"But we went right to the bathing pool, remember?" I leaned forward a little, enough to see a few more of the hard angles of the cliff track as I peered over the low wall. "Well, I suspect it’s too late even if there is something to all this foot-washing. Guess we may as well head down."

Finished with the single plait, she did something with a strand that captured and held the braid, tucking and looping it into itself. "Walking, or riding?"

Neither appealed to me. Walking meant dodging molahs and their muck. Riding meant sitting atop a jouncing beast heading downward at a rate of speed I considered breakneck, when you took into account the pitch of the track.

Resolution presented itself. I looked around at the ground, saw a stone, scooped it up. "Stone wins," I said, and stealthily passed it from hand to hand several times. Eventually I held both fists out, knuckles up. "Choose."

"Stone, we walk." Del flipped the braid behind her back and tapped one of my fists.

I opened it, displayed the empty palm. "Wrong choice, bascha." And tipped the stone from the other hand, dropping it back to earth.

"Well," she said with limp cheeriness, "it’s a pretty day for a ride."

"Can’t say as it’ll be pretty by the time I get to the bottom," I declared sourly. "It’s not your gehetties at risk!"

"That’s why I’ve never understood why men are almost uniformly considered superior," Del opined seriously. "The easiest way to put a man out of action is to plant a knee in his gehetties, or threaten them with a knife, or —"

"All right, bascha, you’ve made your point," I said hastily, cutting her off before she got more detailed about threatened gehetties. "Let’s find us a couple of molahs."

Del pointed. "There."

"There" constituted a congregation of molah-men hanging about the trailhead. Their molahs were tied some distance away, dozing in the sun, but the men themselves competed enthusiastically for space and custom, calling out imploringly to each passerby something I assumed was an advertisement of their services — although how one molah might be considered particularly better than another was beyond me; they weren’t horses, after all. As Del and I approached, it was no different: we were accosted, surrounded, swarmed by all the men as they competed for our coin.

"Might be a problem," I muttered to Del.

"What’s that?"

"Coin to pay them with."

"Ah." It had occured to neither of us; we’re used to having coin of some sort, and since our arrival such things as transport and comestibles had been provided. "I have nothing. Maybe we should walk after all."

From close up, the trail was a mass of puddles and droppings mashed by feet into a slimy, odoriferous layer of something approaching mud, or heaped cairns of fresh, as yet unmashed muck. Slaves and laborers stolidly stomped their way up and down the track, feet and ankles smeared, as they followed the beasts. No wonder Nihko had been so picky about us getting washed.

"Nah, let’s ride," I said.

"What about coin?"

"Maybe this…" I untied the knot in my necklet, pulled it free of my neck.

"Tiger! You wouldn’t!"

"Not the claws…" I worked at thread, finally slid the silver ring free of thong. "Nihko’s little gift." I held it up so the molah-men could see it clearly in the sunlight, then pointed over the wall. "Down," I said, though I doubted any of them understood the word. Shouldn’t need to; it seemed pretty obvious what we wanted.

Some of the men shrugged, shook their heads, stepped back, indicating they worked for coin, not barter. A few others stepped forward to inspect the ring more closely — and then surged as one backward into the others, crying out something I couldn’t understand. Hands flashed up and made the warding away gestures I’d seen before with the first mate. Gazes were averted, heads lowered, palms put up into the air in unmistakable intent: we were not to come any closer.

Such an innocuous little thing glinting in my fingers. And yet it appeared to mean so much. "Are you sure?" I asked. "It’s good silver."

More gestures, more whispered, hissing comments made to one another, and the cluster of molah-men melted away to their animals until Del and I stood in the open with no one near us at all but a single ignorant chicken, pecking in the dirt.

I let the ring slide down out of my fingers into my cupped palm. A small, plain ring about as big around as my forefinger. It wasn’t whole, but cut at one point so the filed ends could pierce and be fastened into flesh. No different from what a woman might wear through her ear-lobes, though Nihko wore his — and many more of them — in his eyebrows.

And then I recalled that he’d put it on my necklet to keep me, he’d said, immune to his magic. Or whatever you wanted to call whatever it was about him that made me feel ill.

loSkandi. I’d heard — and still heard — that word said by the men who now stood away from us. I’d heard it used by Nihko, Prima, Herakleio, the metri.

Silently I hooked the brow ring back onto my thong, looped leather around my neck again and knotted it. "Let’s go," I said curtly to Del. "We’re burning daylight."

"Wait." She caught my wrist and halted my forward momentum. "What is it?"

I stopped short. "What’s what?"

"Something’s made you angry."

"I’m not angry. I’m irritated."

"Fine." She had immense patience, did the Northern bascha. "Why are you irritated?"

"Let’s just say I don’t like mysteries."

"And you want to know why they won’t take the ring."

"I know why they won’t take the ring. At least, I have an idea."

"And?"

"Nihko." I made the sound of it a curse. "I want to know what all this ioSkandi nonsense is, and what this ring is really supposed to do and mean."

"Perhaps we should ask him."

"I intend to — if I can ever get down to the boat."

She removed her hand from my wrist with alacrity. "By all means, go."

I sighed. "All right…look, bascha, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. But I’ve had it up to here —" I indicated my eyebrows. "— with all this magical mythical mystery stuff. I don’t speak the language, so I haven’t got the faintest idea what these people are saying about us; an arrogant old woman who may or may not be my grandmother is pretty much keeping me a prisoner in her house; and a young buck who may or may not be my kinsman, albeit removed umpteen hundred times, is trying to move in on my woman." I paused, rephrased immediately. "In on a woman. Whom I happen to care about a great deal."

"Thank you," she said gravely. "But why do you think Herakleio is, as you put it, trying to move in on me?"

"I just know," I said darkly.

Del is accustomed to my moods. Sometimes she ignores them, other times she provokes them. This was one of the times she wanted an explanation. "How is it that you know?"

I shook my head. "I just do."

"Is it something to do with the code of men?"

"No, it isn’t something to do with the code of men. It’s something to do with him being young, and you being young, and me being — well, older."

"I could make a joke of this —" she began.

"You could."

"— but I won’t," she finished. "I think this is something you must sort out for yourself."

Startled, I watched as she strode the last few paces to the head of the trail and took the first step downward. "Sort out for myself? What do you mean, sort out for myself?" I went after her. "Can’t you at least tell me you don’t think I’m old, and that I’m being a fool? Couldn’t you even lie, just to make me feel better?"

She slanted me a sidelong glance as she strode down the track. "Would it be a lie if I said you were being a fool?"

"Oh, Del, come on. Humor me."

"You’re going to believe whatever you decide to believe, no matter what I say."

"Well, that may be true," I conceded, "but you could say it anyway."

"I’m saving my breath."

"For what?"

"Getting to the bottom."

"He is young."

"Yes."

"He is good looking."

"A veritable godling."

"And I suppose some women might even find his attitude appealing."

"Some would."

"He’s even rich — or he will be."

"So he is, and so he shall be."

"So why would you remain with me if you had a chance to be with him?"

"Possibly because you’ve never given me an actionable reason to leave you."

This was a new phrase. " ’Actionable reason’ ?"

"You give me reasons to leave all the time. None of them has been of such magnitude that I acted on it."

"Oh." We walked quickly, steadily downcliff, leaving the trailhead behind. "So, reasons, but no ’actionable’ reasons."

"Until now," she said with bland clarity.

"Oh, come on. Do you blame me?" I dodged a molah and rider making their jouncing way up the track. "Hoolies, I’m not exactly what I was at seventeen, or even what he is at twenty-four."

"More."

"More? More what?"

"More than you were at seventeen. More than he is at twenty-four."

"In what way?"

"For one thing," she said, "he doesn’t doubt himself."

"That’s one way of putting it!"

"And I doubt he questions his appeal to women."

"I’ll go that."

"And I don’t doubt he thinks he could have me if he wanted me."

"No kidding!"

"But it really doesn’t matter what he thinks, Tiger. About me or anything else."

"No?"

"What matters is what I think."

"Well, of course it does —" I stopped short to avoid a laborer whose load was tipping precariously, made my way carefully around him.

Del marched on. "And if I were attracted to him to the degree that you seem to think I could be, or should be, enough that I’d rather be with him than with you, I would make it plain to you."

I caught up. "You would."

She stopped and turned to me, which necessitated me stopping. Again. "I promise," Del said. "I vow to you here and now, on this filthy trail with muck nearly to my knees, that if I decide to leave you, if the day comes when I feel I must leave you, for another man or simply to go, you will be the first to know."

Transfixed, I stared back at her. "Is that in the code of women?"

Del’s mouth twitched. "I can’t tell you."

"Oh, well, all right. I understand about codes." I looked down at my muck-splashed legs. "This is disgusting."

"Yes," she agreed, "it is. And the sooner we get to the bottom, the sooner we can wash everything off."

"Race you," I offered.

But Del was not sufficiently intrigued by that suggestion to agree, so we proceeded to traverse the balance of the track at a much more decorous pace.

Which meant we were even more disgusting by the time we reached the bottom.

A s might be expected, Del and I headed straight toward the harbor once we hit the docks, intending to dunk ourselves up to the knees in seawater. I was thinking about finding a good stout rope to hang onto since too deep a dunk might result in me drowning, and was thus more than a little startled when a cluster of shouting men came running up to us. Not for the one hundredth time I wished I had a sword; by Del’s posture, so did she. But we had no weapons, not even a knife between us. Which reminded me all over again that Del’s suggestion to the metri that she hire her to dance with me in the circle was done for a purpose, not to upset me.

Meanwhile, we found ourselves as surrounded by men vying for our attention and custom as we had been at the trailhead. Except this time what they wanted us to buy was water from pottery bottles hung over their shoulders on rope, and their washing services. Rainwater, I was assuming, gathered in the many rooftop cisterns, tubs, and bowls, since Skandi, I’d been told, had no springs, lakes, or rivers. And even the rain was scarce, and thus hoarded, and thus worth selling to people who wanted to wash molah muck off legs and feet.

I glanced around. None of the laborers and slaves and others afoot were cleaning themselves off in the harbor. In fact, none of them were cleaning themselves off at all. Apparently they figured they’d just get filthy again walking back up the track, so they didn’t bother. I guess Del and I looked like strangers. Soft touches.

They weren’t wrong, either. I would have paid for the rainwater and the drying cloths draped over their arms, had I any coin.

Inspiration mingled with curiosity. I untied the thong, pinched the silver ring between precise fingers, and held it toward the nearest man.

He looked, examined, then backed off jerkily. I saw the now-familiar gesture, heard the now-familiar hissing and whispering commingled with blurted invocations against — something. To a man they stumbled over one another to distance themselves from us.

I knotted the claw-weighted thong around my neck again. "Let’s find us a ship with a blue-headed first mate, shall we?"

This time was different. Instead of wobbling my way down the plank from ship to shore, I marched up the plank and planted my feet at the top of it. Yes, it was a precarious position; all anyone had to do to knock me off into the water was to tip me over the edge, but I was angry enough that I didn’t care.

Besides, Del was there to make sure that if I got knocked in, she’d fish me out again.

A familiar face — and the body to go with it — met me there. Not the first mate, but one of the crew. He was mildly startled to see us. But his expression smoothed into cool assessment when I said a single word: "Nihkolara."

Nihko was fetched. His expression also reflected surprise, though it was replaced a moment later by a mask of blandness. He folded his arms against his chest and neither invited us aboard, nor told us to leave.

"All right," I said, "I give up. You said something to me once about when I got tired of heaving my belly up, I was to come see you. Well, I haven’t heaved my belly up ever since you put this ring on my necklet, and I want to know why."

Nihko Blue-head smiled.

"I also want to know why it is that every time I try to use this ring as payment, they all break out in a rash of warding signs, babbling to one another words I can only assume are prayers, or curses; or, for all I know, proposals of marriage."

Nihko Blue-head stopped smiling. "You used the ring as coin?"

"Attempted to," I clarified. "We’ve got nothing else. It’s good silver; where I come from, silver in any shape is worth something."

"Oh, that brow ring is worth a lot more than something," he retorted. "No one on this island will accept it in payment, or as promise of payment, or anything at all other than what it is."

"And what is that, Nihkolara?"

"Mine," he said crisply.

"Cut the mystery," I snapped. "We’re sick of it. Give me some straight answers."

"You have your answer, be it straight, crooked, or tied in knots. That is not coin. It buys nothing any man or woman on Skandi will give you. It buys only a degree of peace for you, in your body and your mind."

I jerked the ring from the thong and held it up. It glinted in the sunlight. "And if I gave it back?"

"You are certainly free to do so," Nihko answered evenly.

"And?"

He was guileless. "Your luck will turn bad."

I flicked it in a flashing arc toward the water. "Really?"

Nihko flung out a hand and snatched the ring from the air —"Fool!"— then mimicked my flicking gesture with deft fingers.

Something slammed into my breastbone. I folded, empty of breath, of sense, and tumbled backward into Del. She yelped once as I came down on a foot, grabbed for air, caught me, and then somehow the plank was no longer beneath either of us.

Not again… I twisted in midair, grabbed for the edge, caught. Clutched wood, digging fingers in so deep the pads of my fingertips flattened until nails cracked to the quick. I hung a moment, dangling over water; heard the splash as Del went in. Then I jerked myself up even as Nihko set foot on the plank to check his handiwork.

Breath screamed in my lungs. It wasn’t fear of drowning; I had no time for that. It was pain, it was burning, it was absence of self-control over that most primitive function: the ability to breathe without conscious effort.

My chin was even with the plank. I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Nihko realized now I hadn’t gone in with Del. His hand came up; would a second gesture peel my fingers from the edge?

Not this time, you bastard.

I swung under, released, twisted and caught plank again, this time on the other side. Shoulder tensed briefly, then I thrust myself upward even as I swung a leg up and over. Toes caught, then the ball of my foot. I used the momentum. Came up, reached, grabbed the closest ankle, and jerked as hard as I could.

Nihko fell. He landed hard on the planking, rolled from his back to his side, then scrabbled wildly as he overbalanced. I thought briefly what might happen if he ended up dangling from his side of the plank while I dangled opposite him. Decided I didn’t like that much.

So as he swung down, I dropped from the edge again and kicked him in the gut. His entire body spasmed as his lungs expelled air, and his hands released the plank. The impact of his body flat upon the water soaked me thoroughly. But it was the best bath I’d ever had.

I hung there a moment, enjoying the view of Nihko floundering his way to the surface, then became aware of Del’s sea-slick head not so far away. "You all right?" I called.

She waved an assenting hand, treading water.

Relief. I clenched my teeth, hoisted myself up to the edge of the plank again, and hooked the foot on wood. A kick with my free leg gave me a little added momentum, and I thrust myself up the rest of the way. It was an ungainly maneuver that left me sprawled facedown on the trembling plank, but at least I was above the water instead of in it.

Then I saw the foot all of inches from my nose. And the glinting tip of a swordblade gesturing me to rise.

I looked up. Saw the wide smile in the freckled face, the wind-tangled swath of red hair, the gold and glass in her ears and wrapped around her throat.

"Someday," Prima Rhannet said, "you will have to learn how to swim. It might save you some little trouble."

Since she seemed to want it, I climbed to my feet. "Maybe."

The sword was lifted. I saw the flash of light on the blade, the tip brought up to skewer, knew what she meant to do. I would leap back, of course, to preserve my skin, and by doing it I’d take myself off the plank and into the water.

Not this time, you bitch.

I smashed the blade down with a forearm, stepped into her, tossed her over the edge, caught the sword as it flew from her grasp.

About damn time I had one of these suckers in my hands again.